To Spam or Not to Spam?

Harsh and somewhat cynical post warning :)

Let’s address a very problematic topic that plagues composer forums worldwide and often the online music industry as a whole. I’m talking about relentless music spammers. The people who go to every single composer or musician group on Facebook and post the same song to each one, usually with the same description copied and pasted beneath it. “Hey guys, please enjoy this latest track I’ve been working on, I used EW Composer Cloud and I think it’s my greatest epic track so far! Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, thanks!” (People who just post the song without even a description are even worse and possibly sociopaths) Often times this link will have the name of the song followed by “Most epic emotional beautiful uplifting music.” The over compensation for a lack of a true musical career doesn’t look good on anyone. Think about it: you’re going to a group of people who all have their own careers and many have dedicated years of their lives to gaining valuable connections and building a portfolio of quality work, and asking them to take time out of their own profession to randomly listen to a song from someone who has nowhere near the level of experience and is just going through a self inflicted “creative high” that we all get when we realize we have potential to do great things creatively. To be clear, I am not talking about asking for critique or posting to a “share your track” thread. I’m talking about the ones who friend request you and ten seconds later invite you to like their band/artist/composer page. The ones who follow you on Instagram or Twitter and feel it’s somehow acceptable to send you a direct message asking you to not only listen to their new song, but to follow them on all their social media pages and share it to your fans, without even properly introducing themselves or offering anything worthwhile in return (maybe comment on a track of mine you like, and ask me to listen to one of yours, I would be much more inclined to do so once you engage in a human conversation, or at least pretend to). I’m sorry, but this kind of unsolicited self aggrandizing is so incredibly annoying, lazy, and most importantly, it will get you absolutely NOWHERE in your career. These groups are full of people who make music and want to have (or already have) success of their own. Spamming a track online will not gain you any connections or worthwhile fans, just annoy everyone around you and push them away from ever checking out your music or engaging with you again. Views and plays really mean nothing, and it’s especially not worth it if you get all those plays from one million different people who will never remember your name or listen to your music again.

Now, here’s the flip side. There is a ton of potential (and money to be made) in the music industry for orchestral and hybrid composers. Think about it…every TV show, Ad, Trailer, and online video content that you’ve seen that has awesome music in the background. Most of us have no idea who wrote this music, and most of us don’t care. Someone wrote it, however, and are probably making very good money collecting sync checks every time someone like me views or streams the content. Find out who these people are, and go check out their social media pages. They often have less than 1000 fans or followers and even less SoundCloud plays/streams. They are doing what they love and making a living off it. It’s absolutely possible and is immeasurably preferable to being known as “that one person who spams every single track to every single group and acts like their music is God’s gift to us all”.

So, to sum it up, and quote my original Facebook post I wrote after being a bit miffed and weeding thru all the group notifications that were simply useless spam, here are some honest and proven ideas:

1. Submit your music to music libraries for licensing. These people, unlike the groups you post to, are actually actively looking for composers to write consistently good music. If you're good enough, you'll get accepted, if you don't get accepted, it'll push you even harder to perfect your craft.

2. Actually have something to offer. People spam their tracks 24/7, and it gets so incredibly old. It most likely will not gain you any worthwhile professional connections. In the end, what are you trying to achieve? It's usually you want views/plays, compliments, validation, etc. It's all entirely self serving. Try to actually have something productive to offer, try to help others instead. Look out for people asking questions that you can answer, give GOOD feedback on someone asking for critique, start an important conversation about the craft or industry, etc.

3. Don't worry about plays or views and worry about your skills and talent. The vast majority of music on TV, ads, trailers, are all written by people you've never heard of, and they make a lot of money doing so. Seek out professionals who want what you have to offer. (It's highly unlikely you will find them just hanging around a Facebook forum for composers.)

4. Humble yourself. It’s such a saturated market, not everyone is going to get perfect professional connections and good pay early on. If you have no experience or credits, there is no shame in working for lower rates. Some people get so worked up about this, saying you devalue the profession as a whole, which is complete BS in my opinion. Think about it, if you want to gain real experience and make something of yourself, it will take A LOT of work and frustration and dealing with difficult clients. There is no better way than to just jump in the fray, admit you really don’t know what you’re doing, and take what you can get. If you don’t do the job, someone else will. Every single product in the world has lower priced knock-offs and budget models, and this does not diminish the market for the higher priced/premium products, because people know you do get what you pay for. There are people out there who are willing to pay GOOD money for your services. You just have to prove yourself first, often by doing low budget and unfavorable jobs. If you have something to offer, the law of attraction is real, and you will continue to thrive and succeed in this field, I guarantee it.

There’s a lot of amazing people in the online composer community and a lot of incredible and helpful content and advice just ripe for the taking. Just take what you need, and leave the rest, and please, stop trying to shove your music down everyone’s throats. Go find the people who really WANT it. Feel free to email me for further discussion (free of charge, always)

Happy composing :)

Review: Angel Strings by Auddict

Video Demo/Walkthru at the bottom of the page!

Today we’re going to look at another niche product, Auddict’s Angel Strings Vol. 1! Angel Strings is a fantastic collection of unique and experimental playing styles for an orchestral string ensemble. This library offers a different approach than your standard string ensemble library, and is focused on unique effects, tones, and playing styles that may not be offered in the more traditional collections. Not only do we have some great effects and sounds you may not find elsewhere, you also get standard sustains, spiccatos, tremolos and a basic bowed-runs builder. The library retails for 100 Pounds which is approximately $130.00 USD.

I was excited upon hearing the demos for this product, as it was something that was sorely missing in my orchestral template: performance based string effects that simply cannot be properly reproduced with standard samples alone. The price seemed fantastic. and I took the plunge (this is my first orchestral library from Auddict, and after being highly disappointed in their first synth, Hexeract, I was a bit hesitant. However, I can safely say, Angel Strings delivers!)

The Angel Strings players, who also performed for Auddict’s United Strings of Europe.

Angel Strings is not compatible with Kontakt Player, so it loads up in the file browser or your Quickload panel. It has three instrument categories:

Runs and Tremolos, SFX, and Tonal Longs and Shorts

Notice the first abbreviation, “USE2”, which stands for United Strings of Europe (vol 2), as Angel Strings features the same performers/players that recorded their main string ensemble library, United Strings of Europe. This will help it naturally blend in for owners of USE.

The bulk of the content is contained in the SFX and Tonal Longs and Shorts .nki files. Overall, the quality and detail in this library are excellent. In SFX, we have two different kinds of risers: one slow and steady, the other very grating and in your face. Next we have dives: I noticed the “Dives Attack” and “Dives Smooth” are very similar, different only slightly near the end of the sample. Tremolo dives, obviously, add a quivering tremolo technique to the dive. All of these long samples have a slider to adjust the sample start time. However: these samples do not sync to your DAW’s tempo and have no way to adjust the actual speed of the sample. This can be frustrating, having to adjust the samples in the MIDI sequencer multiple times before it fits just right in your compositions. The Trem and Sus Bridge articulations are very harsh and grating, as they are played very close to the bridge of the instrument, and sound very eerie and bizarre. Even more unnerving is the Scratch Tone, which is a slightly undulating and de-tuned sound and quite disturbing to listen to continuously,, and lastly we have Perc Sounds, which is using the bow to strike the instrument to create various percussive noises. All in all, these samples all would be excellent for a horror score, creating atmospheric tension, and building a sense of dread and unease in a track. I found it a bit odd they named it Angel Strings, as the samples sound to me more like Demon Strings: dark and perfect for building tension.

Tonal Longs and Shorts

Next we have Tonal Longs and Shorts. Here we have standard sustains, clusters, bends, sul ponticello, molto sul tasto, sautille spicattos and staccatos. I really loved the “Cluster to Unis” (this sounds almost like the deep tone in the famous “THX” logos in the beginning of movies) , as well as the bends. These really add realism and dynamic performance to any track, and really help to spice things up a bit. It’s really nice we have sustains as well, though I did find when playing softly (these notes respond to velocity, or how hard you play the keys), the release was louder than rest of the samples. Overall, this is really quality stuff, minus a few issues, but they’re quite negligible given the price and amount of unique content, and the fact most will not purchase this library for the sustains which you can find in every other string library imaginable. The Sautille Spiccatos are also excellent, very crisp and detailed.

The last instrument is Bowed Runs and Tremolos, and it has a step sequencer to allow the trems to be played in a wide variety of ways. This acts very similar to a “trance gate” on a synth pad, and it really pretty cool to use. The Bowed Runs have a tightness slider, which in theory allows them to be played super tight, or a bit lazy, and everything in between. However, when the slider is set all the way to the left, at the slowest setting, sometimes you get really bad stretching/phasing issues, and that makes it unusable at this setting.

The Mixer Panel

The Mixer Panel offers a wide variety of mic positions, though I honestly thought it was a bit confusing to use, and I preferred to use a third party reverb and pan within my DAW.

The Verdict

8.5/10

Overall, this is a quality collection, especially if you are looking for unique performance based samples for horror scores. Angel Strings seems to be very badly named, as I mentioned above, as these samples are the opposite of Angelic, more dark and tense in nature and better suited for creating unease and sense of dread. There are certain articulations I use very frequently (bends, clusters, risers) and others I don’t use at all. The video at the bottom of the page details everything you can expect with this library, so please check it out, and like and subscribe for more great content like this!

Pros+

+Unique and quality sounds that you may not find in other collections.

+Nice effects that are very usable, especially on horror tracks.

+Really good price for the content.

+Includes standard sustains and shorts, which perform very well.

Cons -

-No TM patches, does not sync to DAWS tempo

-Sample start seemed useless to abruptly come in right in the middle of a riser.

-No stretching for long samples, and have to be manually adjusted to match your tracks tempo, which can be painstaking.

-Bad phasing/stretching when “bowed runs” tightness slider is set all the way to the left.

Alternatively, there is 8dio CAGE Strings, which offers more content, but is much more expensive.

Review: TIME Macro by Orchestral Tools

Hello all! I’m back, and as promised, today we’re going to take a look at Orchestral Tools’ TIME Macro. This is a fairly recent collection, and falls under the category of additional colors, or textures, to enhance and add nuance and realism to your tracks. This is a fairly non-traditional and unique offering, as opposed to a “bread and butter” set of standard articulations. Instead, this collection focuses on movement and swells, unique textures and timbres, and subtle sound ‘palettes’ that may not be possible to achieve using your standard orchestral libraries. These kinds of products are right up my alley, as I do enjoy having this kind of motion or movement embedded into the performance itself, so I can just open the patch and instantly play, without having to fuss around with CC01 modulation. The library retails for €349 , or approximately $399.

TIME is a recent collection of textures released by Orchestral Tools.

This library is categorized into Multis and Single Instruments, and then into Combined and Individual Sections. By nature, the sound is very atmospheric, textured, and overall amazing. I can’t help but get a major Spitfire Audio vibe here, as not only are some of these patches extremely similar to what’s offered in Spitfire’s Orchestral Swarm, but a lot of them seem to really revel in the softer dynamics, and instantly remind me of some of the sounds from Albion V: Tundra (example: sul ponticello and col legno articulations). The library offers standard sustains, but where it really shines is the unique offerings, such as the playing styles mentioned previously. The Sul Ponticello strings have a more harsh and grating sound, while the Col Legno are very soft and airy. A personal favorite of the String articulations was the “Sustain 5th Drops” and the “Trem Bursts”. These capture details and colors in the actual performance by the players, so it’s very natural, and something you would not be able to properly recreate with standard articulations. Sounds like these can instantly add realism, nuance, and atmosphere to any track you could think of.

This library does focus primarily on long notes as opposed to short or dotted notes, although there are some of the latter. I found the Woodwinds Combined and Individual sections to be my favorites. I just love the magical sound of woodwind instruments playing at soft dynamics, and this library absolutely nails it. Every articulation here sounds very ethereal and magical, and would work wonders at building atmosphere or enhancing the colors in a fantasy styled composition. The Individual Woodwind Sections (High and Low) offer an “Airy Sustain” patch which sounds especially beautiful and haunting.

Managing articulations is a breeze

The three main patches in the combined sections are Strings, Woodwinds, and Choir. Having the addition of a choir here is very nice, and while it’s not comprehensive as far as features, it absolutely gets the job done and offers some wonderful sounds.

In the Individual Sections we have the Strings, Woods, and Choir, split into High and Low (or Male and Female for the choir), and this is where we also find the Brass articulations (which features Sustains and long marcato as well as the familiar textures), as well as “Harps and Vibes”, “Double Reeds”. The “Harps and Vibes” patch is very beautiful and delicate and a personal favorite.

The “Altered Time” sounds are breathtaking.

There is a section called “Altered Time”, which plays around with reversing the samples and other time based experimentation, and it contains some of the most amazing sounds of the entire library. It’s exciting opening up each new patch and having a small idea of what it will contain based on the name, but it always is surprising and utterly beautiful when you strike the keys. The “Pendulum Winds” patch sounds almost like an organ in places, as the instruments play and swell in reverse and create a purely magical pad-type sound. Think of these as some sort of orchestral synth, as the sounds are very pad-like but incredibly organic, full, and rich. For owners of the library, make sure you experiment with each and every sound included in “Altered Time”, as they truly are magnificent.

The Verdict

9.5/10

This library is truly a unique and beautiful offering from Orchestral Tools. It isn’t cheap, at $399, and be advised it does not contain legatos, although it does contain all the sustains and motion/performance based textures you might possibly need. Alternatively, there is Orchestral Swarm from Spitfire Audio, which has some VERY similar sounds, although Orchestral Swarm seems to offer more in terms of dotted note articulations, and does not include a choir or any sound design style presets (like the Altered Time section), but it does retail for quite a bit less. If you are in the market for unique and atmospheric orchestral colors, or simply want a product that captures more of the player’s performance in the samples, than you really can not go wrong with TIME Macro. I use it very frequently to spice up soft/intimate tracks, just make sure you have the standard articulations covered before you purchase, as this library is more for additional and unique textures.

PROS+

+Amazing and unique sounds

+Beautiful and haunting textures

+Altered Time patches are breathtaking

CONS-

-A tad bit pricey

-No standard legatos, which would be nice, as you could do an entire track with this one library alone.

Review: The Silver Screen Toolkit by Instant Sonics

Today we’re going to explore a brand new sound design library for Kontakt, The Silver Screen Toolkit by Instant Sonics. This is a brand new library, the first one released by Instant Sonics, so it’s fairly unknown at the time of this write-up. Instant Sonics reached out to me in order to get an in-depth and honest review of their brand new product, and provided a copy, free of charge, for me to test and critique. There is very little information out there about this product and the company behind it, so I will share what resources there are so far, and try to go beyond that and provide a very detailed and in depth look at this library!

First off, here’s a demo track made ONLY with sounds included in the Silver Screen Toolkit and a third party reverb- and be sure to check the detailed walkthrough/demo video at the bottom of the page!

This library retails for $150.00 here at the official site. The official thread here at VI-Control can provide more details about the specifics, and there is also more info and it’s available for purchase here at Kontakt Hub. It’s primarily a sound design library, aimed at modern cinematic music, and provides a very large variety of sounds. I’d say it’s very much focused on providing electronic, modern, cutting edge sounds and effects for hybrid and trailer music, though I could see it covering underscore, ambient, even straight up EDM. The nature of the sounds is very electronic as opposed to orchestral. The library provides 3.6 gb of content.

The Interface

The interface of this product is very basic and not flashy at all, unlike similar libraries such as Collision FX by Soundyeti and some of the libraries from Sampletraxx. However, this doesn’t bother me, as it is clear and very easy to use. With an unknown library such as this, I’m much more concerned with the quality of sounds and ease of use than having a flashy and cutting edge interface. Upon installing (quick and easy extract from the .rar file into your libraries folder) I was initially a bit shocked to see that this library contains a whopping 44 .nki files! However, they are all labelled appropriately and easy to navigate (unlike the aforementioned Collision FX). Each .nki file is very focused and specific, for instance, providing a separate .nki file for every “Complex Kit” drum patch, instead of loading up one .nki and cycling thru the kits in the interface itself. Some may find this a bit overwhelming at first glance, but I really don’t mind it, as they all have names that are very easy to identify.

The GUI has three sections: “Waveform”, which displays the visual waveform of the sample being played, and contains a slider for the sample start time. Keep in mind, this is a global settings, and not only does it change the sample start point for the current sample, but for every other sample contained in the .nki file as well, which could easily be an annoyance for some.

Beneath that, we have controls for Attack, Release, Speed (which controls the speed of the long samples like risers and swells), and a Gate. The speed knob is nice, in case you place a riser in the MIDI sequencer that doesn’t quite sync perfectly with the timing of your track, you can adjust how quickly it will play with this knob, although there is no numerical value associated with the setting here. Alternatively you can adjust the placement of the actual note in the sequencer. If you set the speed knob to the slowest setting possible, the sample becomes very strained and stretched. Either way, it is nice to have it there, just in case you wish to tweak these sounds further.

The gate is one of my favorite features, as it simply applies a “trance-gate” type effect to the samples, which can be set for various note intervals, and adjusting this slider controls the tightness of the gate effect. Use this to instantly add stutter effects and movement to any of the samples.

The effects rack includes Filters, Damage (distortion/overdrive/bitcrusher), Reverb, Delay, and Post Filters. I really liked having a low pass filter built in to the GUI, and the Damage section can really add a lot of character and punishment to the sounds.

Content and sound

As you can see below, the library contains a MASSIVE amount of .nki files, and is separated into four major categories, Drums, Effects, Instruments, and Pulses.

That’s a lot of patches….

DRUMS

The “Drums” category contains 10 separate kits, each labeled as “Complex Kit” and numbered 1 through 10. They provide highly processed drum samples, some mangled and distorted, some more traditional, yet all very electronic. These are mapped across the keys like so:

Green keys play the various bass drum type samples, yellow plays snare sounds, and the red keys play hi-hat type sounds and assorted auxiliary percussion.

Some of these sound very glitchy and crushed, somewhat similar to some of the kits from Heavyocity’s Damage, others are more clean and remind me more of a radio friendly hip hop or trap beat. Either way you have a fairly wide variety of sounds here, although some of the kits sound overly similar, they all provided quality sounds.

Effects

Next up is “Effects”, which is the largest category here, and where my favorite sounds this library produces are contained. They contain sounds such as Alarms, Booms, Bends, Braams, Drops, Hits, Risers, Swells, Transitions, and Whooshes. Most of the sounds are self explanatory, and there is a lot to enjoy here. Some of the samples do sound a bit similar, just thrown through different processing techniques, with the further ability to add your own distortion, delay, reverb, and filters with the built in effects rack. Tonal effects such as “Braams” have pitch control mapped to the lower keys of your MIDI keyboard.

The standouts here are Bends, Drops, Risers, Swells, Swell Drops, Timbres (basically atmospheric textures), Tonal Reverses, and the Whoosh Hits. Each of these patches contains a nice variety of sounds, and many of them are instantly usable in any kind of trailer or hybrid track. My favorite sounds produced by the Silver Screen Toolkit are those that are saturated and heavy, and there’s definitely a nice amount of them included. The risers are modern and intense, the swells are massive and brooding, the Drops are earth shaking and provide incredible sub-bass, as well as the Swell Drops. The Timbres really add atmosphere and textures to your tracks, and are more subtle, but still can be aggressive and moody. The Whoosh Hits are short on the riser and very punchy on the hit, and are perfect for transitions and endings. The Tonal Reverses have a very long attack and build up to a short, but thick and aggressive, swell.

instruments

Long Instruments patch and the variety of sound banks included.

Next we have the “Instruments” section, which contains Long (synth leads, bass pads, etc) amd Short (plucks, etc). There is a variety of sound banks here, and while it may not seem like a lot, they can be stacked in any combination, resulting in some fun experimentation and many possibilities. They cover a variety of tones, from soft and airy to harsh and gritty, but some seem to lack the thickness of some VST synths, especially in the bass spectrum. I find these to work best for leads, though they can also easily provide pad sounds as well, and they work exceptionally well while playing with the low pass filter. Having melodic synth-like instruments here is a very nice addition and they work very well, especially with the “Glide” setting which enables portamento. The Short Instruments patch contains less sound banks, and generally covers pluck sounds. Just these two instruments alone, and the effects included, are easily capable of producing slick and modern EDM sounds, and truly surprised me with how well they performed, as some Kontakt based “synths” leave a lot to be desired. The variety of sounds isn’t anywhere near what a standalone VST synth can offer, and don’t expect anything like a massive and thick supersaw, but they are very capable of holding their own in any hybrid track.

pulses

The last section is Pulses, which come in High and Low variations. These also have pitch control mapped to the lower keys. I think these could have been better labeled as well. For instance, some contain melodic arpeggios and others are just one pitch 16th notes. Some are also light and airy and very clean, while others are overdriven and harsh. There are some great sounds here, though not much customization (no step sequencer, no multi note arps, etc). I preferred the high melodic pulses, as they are really nice and modern. For the most part, the Low Pulses were just the same 16th note pattern, with each sample simply having different levels of distortion and other processing applied. While there is still some good content, overall I found them to be lacking, and in need of some more customization options, such as a step sequencer or an arpeggiator.

Small Critiques

While this library provides an amazing variety of sounds and many of them are top notch, not every single sample is a winner, and some seem a bit too harshly processed. The “Assorted” patches were strange, as they contained some good sounds but were scattered across the keyboard seemingly at random, never knowing what you’re going to get, and once you do find a good sound, it’s very easy to simply forget where it was mapped. I think the “assorted” patches could be better labeled, such as “assorted percs”, “assorted tonal”, “assorted atonal”, “assorted texture”, etc, as this patch contains everything from a short metallic hi-hat to a distorted dub-step type wobble. The alarms category is pretty underwhelming, and overall provides content you can make with a VST Synth and bending the pitch (certain sounds in general didn’t seem to be anything groundbreaking, just synth based with some basic processing, and I feel I could make these sounds on my own). For the most part, the “Booms” were lacking in the sub-bass spectrum. The Braams are also lacking the intensity and character provided in other libraries, such as Keepforest’s Evolution Atlantica, and this library seems to be lacking in the bass area, which would otherwise make this an almost perfectly rounded package. There’s plenty of sub bass drops and what not, but as far as a Bass Instrument, it seems to be lacking in this area.

The Verdict

8.5/10

Other than the critiques mentioned above, the sheer variety and quality of sounds included is very nice, and you could easily make an entire track simply with this one library, as it provides drum kits, trailer effects, melodic synths, and pulses, all in one 3.6 gb Kontakt Library. Many of the categories included here could easily be sold as one single Kontakt Library, and they have included all of them in one, and none of them feel truly tacked on, with the exception of some of the pulses. I think this would be a great library for the beginner trailer composer, as it includes everything you could need in one place. To those more advanced who own more dedicated libraries, there may not be a lot here that’s new to you. I personally own many more specialized products, however you also have to consider the price paid for what you get, and I do believe this is a good and well rounded package. I can almost guarantee you I will be using the effects provided, as they are easy to use and offer nice options for tweaking the samples, and while some of the sounds lack the character of more expensive libraries, they also serve as a great starting point to apply some of your own sound design techniques and take them to the next level.

Pros+

+Impressive variety of content.

+Many top notch and instantly usable sounds.

+Easy to use interface and nice assortment of effects and customization options.

Cons-

-Some sounds lack the polish and character of more expensive libraries.

-Pulses could benefit from extra features (step sequencer, etc)

-Some of the sounds could be better categorized/labelled.

Review: Silka Choir by 8Dio

Per request, we are going to be talking about 8Dio’s Silka choir today! 8dio’s choir libraries are widely considered to be some of the best you can get when it comes to overall sound quality, so I was eager to pick this one up at it’s intro price of $348 dollars (Currently a whopping $598). The only choir libraries I owned before this, were EWQL’s Symphonic and Hollywood Choirs, which are very solid choir libraries and capable of covering a wide range of styles. I remember listening to the demos of Silka and just being blown away by the nuance and realism on display. It was immediately apparent that this is NOT a choir library for a bold, epic “Choir Wall” sound.

According to their marketing, Silka means “Gentle, Flowing”, and that is exactly the vibe you get from listening to the demos. The aforementioned Hollywood Choirs from EWQL is entirely built around an amazing feature, the Word Builder, which allows the choir to, in theory, sing any words or phrase you can think of, just by typing it out. However, it can sound very choppy, in fact it cam sound the opposite of “gentle and flowing”. For this reason, and the high praise for the previous choir libraries from 8dio from users across the internet, I was eager to dive in and check out the new Silka Choir (I even spent days trying different phrases and tweaking the multitude of settings in Hollywood Choirs word builder, just trying to get it to sound similar to the Silka demos, in order to determine if I should really spend the money on another choir library.)

The Sound

After purchasing, downloading, and installing, I loaded up one of the “4 Syllable Soft Arc” patches featuring the full choir (Male and Female combined), and just went to town. The first few hours playing around with this were incredibly fun and satisfying. The Arcs are absolutely amazing, and could quite possibly bring a tear to someones eye with the angelic nature of these samples. I own 8Dio’s Century Strings and Brass, and their “arc” articulations have been invaluable to me and make their way into almost every single track I make. I believe this is one of the key factors in Silka to getting this library to sound so instantly realistic and expressive: recording the singers naturally starting at low dynamics, building up louder to the middle of the pre-recorded phrase, and then slowly fading back to sing softly again to finish the phrase, or “arc”. In the past these dynamic swells have always been done simply by automating the CC01 (or dynamics) of the library, but having this already baked into the recordings themselves, as performed by the actual singers, takes things to a new level of realism. Check out this examples below, as the results speak for themselves.

I think it’s worth pointing out some of the amazing scripting that goes into these Arcs. This library allows for polyphonic legato, and melisma singing. (I’m going to compare again to EWQL Word Builder again, so bare with me). One of my biggest complaints with EWQL’s World Builder, was how every time you pressed a new key, or performed the next note of your sequence or phrases, the choir immediately started singing the next syllable, and did not allow you to shift between notes while continuing to sing the same syllable, which ends up giving it that choppy quality. Silka allows you to change the note you are playing, in the middle of the phrase, without actually interrupting the phrase itself. You can have multiple singers all singing a chord, all perform a legato slide up to a different chord or note, all while continuing to sing the same syllable in unison. I most likely lack the skills to properly explain this and what it means, so please check out the demo video to hear this in action, as it really is a big deal IMO. Another nice feature of the Arcs is a sequencer built in, which allows you to play any of the pre-recorded phrases in any order that you wish, so things don’t sound repetitive.

The built in sequencer for cycling through the different phrases.

After the initial “high” of having this kind of heavenly sound stream through my speakers at a moments notice, I started to explore the rest of the library. To me, the absolute highlight are the multitude of Arcs they have included, which sync to your DAW’s tempo, and can also be played at double or half speed. However, there is a lot of content in this library, which is why this review and full testing took a bit longer for me this time around.

I definitely enjoyed the Triplet Loops/Triplets as well as the Arcs and Intimate Legato patches.

There’s quite a bit of content here

The legato patches sound fairly good, especially the “Legato Intimate”, though they all sound best at a softer dynamic range. I find any choir library sounds synthetic when playing one single note at a high velocity, and Silka was no different in this aspect. Which brings me to my next section.

The inevitable quirks…

Granted, there is a LOT of content included in Silka. More importantly to me, however, is how much content there is that I will actually USE. I feel this library is centered around the Arcs, and for good reason, as they are phenomenal. However, I can’t ignore the fact that rest of the content here feels like an afterthought, tacked on to justify the very high price of almost $600.00. There are no standard sustains included here. I kind of expect every single choir library to include basic sustain articulations (Ah, Oh, Oo, etc.), especially one with a $598 price tag. Instead, when loading up the sustains, you get an “Oh”, but it is all performed in an arc or swell. When it comes to sustains, I want a steady dynamic “Oh” that I can completely control with CC01. All this offers is the syllable being sung in a dynamic arc, which is pre-determined in length and quite limited in it’s uses, to be honest. The rest of the sustains are more like effects, which seems really strange to me. (See the list below)

Next up, we have the “Fast Repeated Staccatos”, which would be good in theory, however, they play a bit off beat sometimes even though they are syncing to my DAW’s tempo. Little things like this pop up here and there, and just show that this library can only do one style (granted, it does that one very well).

The Legato Sustain patches don’t actually sustain… they hold on for a few seconds and then stop, which is incredibly confusing, as every other legato patch sustains indefinitely as long as you hold the note. However, for a patch with “sustain” specifically in the title, they do not actually… sustain.

As amazing as the arcs initially sound, they too can be difficult to time right and have them sit in a track with a steady rhythm/tempo, sometimes having to play with different phrases to find one that actually fits in with the timing of your track. Overall, every sound provided here is amazing for a slow, soft track, with a lot of “breathing room” to let the arcs fully sustain and finish the full phrase, but for something that has a steady 4/4 rhythm and needs to be tight and precise, Silka is definitely not the right choice.

Lastly, sometimes you can hear phasing at high dynamics and some articulations would output nothing but silence until I exited and reloaded them again. I don’t know if it’s laziness or something else, but 8dio produces AMAZING sounds…. the problem is, after owning MANY of their products, they just have never made an all around GREAT product. Other companies produce amazing sounds AND amazing products, where everything just works (interface, usability, sound all being consistently stellar). It frustrates me that 8dio hasn’t seemed to produce such a product yet There are always some bugs and inconsistencies, and considering this, I feel overall they are overpriced. This is just my honest and possibly harsh opinion, but they lack the polish and cohesiveness that other companies consistently deliver, and it’s all the more frustrating to have to run into these problems and point them out in reviews, because honestly, the sounds are incredible.

The Verdict

This library really, really shines when it comes to the arcs and really nailing that dynamic performance. In turn, customization and versatility is sacrificed for having an instantly playable phrase that just sounds amazing. This review was probably the most difficult I’ve done so far, as when I first got this product I was in love just playing around with it, but, in context, it has quite a few flaws. When I do reviews I have to really look at so many aspects, not just how it sounds out of the box, but how it performs and holds up while writing music, and the overall practicality and versatility of a product, especially when it’s priced so high. I believe Silka is a VERY GOOD library at nailing the Arcs and the dynamic swells and realism of a real choir. However, when it comes to versatility, it’s sorely lacking. It was quite frustrating to see so many issues popping up as I was really testing all factors of this library, as the sound is so incredible, I wanted to love it. I still like it, but there are many things that need to be addressed here, and many articulations that just feel tacked on as an afterthought. In order to understand some of my compalints, let’s try to look at another product, Fluffy Audio’s Dominus Choir, which costs only $379 dollars. It offers very similar sound and performance features, at a fraction of the price. When you’re aware of such things that are also out there, I can’t help but feel 8dio is drastically overpricing it’s Silka Choir. Also consider, 8dio also has a choir library called “Insolidus”, which is incredibly similar in features and sound, and both libraries are a whopping $598 each. I’ve even seen users who report that Silka simply feels like an “Expansion” of Insolidus choir. I don’t own Insolidus so I can’t directly comment on that, but it’s definitely a viewpoint I have seen floating around. Writing these reviews can be incredibly difficult, and I also have to consider the technology present in other libraries I have purchased recently, such as Audiobro’s Genesis Choir, which has all the melisma, polyphonic legato, syllables and phrases, plus more features, for a price of $279 (granted, it is only a Childrens choir, but a damn good one). As amazing as Silka’s Arcs sound, I cannot ignore the broader picture that it is vastly overpriced, and is not as playable or usable as it may seem at first glance. There are other libraries on the market that cover so much more ground for a similar price, or you can simply settle for something just as focused for a fraction of the price.

7.0/10

Pros+

+The realism and expressiveness present in the arcs is incredible.

+Polyphone legato during arc phrases sets a new bar for realism in an 8dio library.

+ Nails the intimate choir sound.

Cons -

-Bloated articulation list. Many feel like an afterthought.

-No standard “Ah, Oh, Oo, Mm” Sustains.

-Phasing issues in certain key ranges.

-Not as playable and practical as it initially seems, quite limited in it’s use.

-Very niche and only covers one style of singing, all while sporting a very high price tag.

-Too similar to Insolidus choir to justify an entirely new product with the same price.

Review - COSMOS by Impact Soundworks

Check the video at the bottom for a walkthru of the sounds included!!

Cosmos is a fairly new Atmospheric library from Impact Soundworks. I feel that as a company, Impact Soundworks’ products offer an amazing bang for your buck. I own a number of their libraries, and always love the simplicity and focus, and the prices are some of the best you can get, while still providing a vast amount of fantastic content. Needless to say, I was excited when I heard the demos of Cosmos…beautiful atmospheres and deep rhythmic pulses… what’s not to love?! (Granted, I’m a sucker for these types of sounds in the first place…)

I made my purchase and downloaded the product in a 4 part .rar archive. Delivery of the product and installation was quick and easy.

The interface for Cosmos is fantastic. I love products that are focused and simple to use. Too often, I feel libraries go after the all-inclusive approach, and try to do everything. I dislike this for a couple reasons: One, they provide so much content it can be utterly overwhelming and too often an absolute pain to navigate and find the right sounds. Secondly, the price of these libraries can be utterly ridiculous, easily clearing the $500 dollar mark. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Cinemorphx from SampleLogic…guilty on both accounts)

Simple, easy to use, and a wonderful image of a nebula.

The library comes with two main instruments - Ambiences and Phrases. I loaded up the ambiences first. There is an option to scroll through the sound sources on the left side of the GUI. In the middle is a step sequencer, and underneath are filter controls, then in the bottom left corner are ADSR controls.

The ambiences are quite amazing. They are very evocative and inspiring, often evolving over time, with subtle pitch changes or harmonics coming into play. They seem to be either very warm and beautiful, or a bit more abrasive and tense, but always very spacey. There are two categories of sound sources provided: Tonal and Atonal. Naturally, the atonal sound sources are where things can get more ominous and capable of building some real tension. While they are all very evocative of outer space, they are also quite versatile. I did notice that most of these will sound best for underscoring or building an atmosphere, not so much for very melodic chords. I say this because many of them have some sort of subtle melody, harmonics, slight pitch modulation, etc, already built in as you hold one note. All in all, the ambiences in this library are incredible.

Navigating the phrases is a breeze thanks to the tagged categories and instant sound previews.

The second instrument provided is phrases. These come in Arps, Pulses, and Gates. Navigating through the content here is incredibly simple and intuitive, providing tags for each type of sound, etc, and also featuring an option that previews each sound before you even load it up. This is incredibly helpful and I wish more libraries would organize their files this way. The arps range from cinematic to EDM flavors, and the notes in each arpeggio is pre-determined. There are keyswitches you can load up multiple phrases at once and switch between them on the fly. I preferred the sounds of the Pulses and Gates, but that is just my own personal preference based on the style of music I compose. The pulses and gates can be soft and beautiful, or aggressive and dark, and all sound just phenomenal, and instantly useable in a wide variety of genres. I encourage playing with the resonance and cutoff for these, as they can really morph from something dark and subtle to a bright and edgy sound.

Products like this are often some of my favorite (including another from Impact Soundworks called Sonic Forest) and I end up using them MUCH more than the bigger, more expensive and wide ranging libraries. . They’re fairly small, extremely focused, and provide amazing sounds with just enough controls to be tweakable, yet not overwhelming. Not to mention, the incredibly low price you pay for such amazing content. I can highly recommend Cosmos not only for media composers like myself, but for electronic music producers and more.

The Verdict-

9.25/10

Pros+

+ Amazing sounds, evocative and inspiring.

+ Browsing through the phrases is quick and intuitive with tags and sound previews.

+ Amazing price for the amount of content.

+ Simple, focused library that can really shine and deliver the outer-space inspired sounds.

+ Perfect amount of content and controls, easy to get into and tweakable, yet never overwhelming and confusing.

Cons-

- Arps follow pre-determined notes, some were a bit harsh/EDM for my personal tastes.

- Ambiences generally don’t allow playing chords, more of a one note pad due to evolving nature of the sounds.

Cosmos is selling for $49.00. Check it out here!

Review - Hexeract by Auddict

Before I dive in and start on my official review of Hexeract, the synthesizer by Auddict, I am going to simply share some of my experience with it so far. If any of you have been following this space, you may know I posted a “first look” article about it, and a couple YouTube videos walking through all the presets and samples and offering some impressions. I’ll try to be as professional as I can here, but I’ll warn you up front, not much about my experience with this product has been positive.

Hexeract was released around Black Friday 2017, and it was absolutely rushed. It was very hyped up in forums, marketing, and on the official website. It promised a “new generation of synthesis” and told us wonderful claims such as:
“Hexeract is a limitlessly powerful software synth, which has vastly expanded the potential musical palette for all artists. Create sounds with Hexeract that you never before believed possible, with the resources and functions to create, indefinitely and infinitely.”

Now, I understand all companies must fuel the hype train and market themselves, but these are very bold claims, however I was genuinely excited about it, and come on, the interface and design just looks awesome. I purchased this product shortly after it released and, sadly, immediately ran into problems. This is purely my experience but I have read about many, many users reporting similar experiences.

My DAW of choice is FL Studio, and Hexeract simply didn’t work with FL Studio initially. Any time I changed the tempo of a project, it crashed. I ran into countless error messages and crashes, the magnitude of which I’ve quite honestly never experienced with any other product. I would get it to load up initially, and play around with the sounds, some of which were very cool, but ultimately it would crash, or upon loading the project again after saving and exiting, I would run into multiple error messages and the entire project wouldn’t load.

I contacted support, heard nothing for a while, contacted again and they replied after about a week. I got a reply not from the official support email, but my initial email had been apparently forwarded to the developer of the product. After explaining what happened, he told me he would take a look at it. A couple weeks went by and I sent some follow up emails which seem to go ignored, so I took to the KVR forums to kind of vent a bit on a thread about the product, and see if anyone had similar issues. I stated the product was simply unusable and wished I could just get a refund, honestly not thinking anyone from the company would read it. I got an email the next day, apologizing for the wait, and offering a refund if the problem didn’t get fixed. I felt better after that. He eventually sent me a hotfix that fixed the issue. Now I could finally test out the product!

THE REVIEW

This thing looks freaking amazing…

When you load up Hexeract, it really is quite beautiful to look at. I love the design, the color scheme, everything about it visually hits all the marks. Initially there were only two banks of presets, but the have recently released an update to version 1.1.0, so I figured now was as good a time as any to revisit this product and write my in depth review.

The core of this product consists of three oscillators, which allow you to load up samples as well as standard synth waveforms. I found this to be quite interesting and unique, and kind of exciting to explore the potential sounds you can create with that. Knowing that Auddict is a fairly established and well regarded developer of orchestral samples for Kontakt, I was expecting some great quality samples to be included with this product.

I began by scrolling through the presets, checking them out one by one. They come organized in to different categories, which vary depending on which preset bank you are currently using, For instance, in preset bank 1, you have Bass, Bass Sequences, Bursts and Blares (similar to the beloved Hollywood trailer “Inception” sound, The Braam.), Ensembles (orchestral in nature, with some added synthesis), Hits/Kicks/Etc, Leads, Pads, One Note Pads, Sequences, Shorts, and Tailored Instruments. My personal favorites were the Bass Sequences, One Note Pads, and some of the Sequences out of the second preset bank. The sounds were spacey, yet mostly organic in nature. For the most part, the presets where movement or rhythm was involved were where this product really shined. The kind of sounds that you can find on other synths, like leads, pads, etc, were simply underwhelming. There was nothing cutting edge or groundbreaking about any of these sounds, largely sounding worse than what I could achieve with any of the soft synths I own.

While some of the presets are quite good, the quality of the samples is fairly bad overall. It all sounds very midi. This is especially disappointing as Auddict has very good orchestral libraries, and it would be nice to have some included here. Now I know this product’s focus is synthesis, but it’s simply another marketing boast that failed to live up to expectations.

I’m not kidding, this happened as I was writing the review and browsing presets.

Most concerning were the performance issues and overall flakiness and instability of the engine. Even after the 1.1.0 patch and update, I continued to run into quite a few issues. Sometimes when loading a preset and testing it on various keys in different ranges, the sound just cut out, and then the plugin would output nothing but silence no matter which preset you loaded. It had to be deleted from the project and loaded again, which would sometimes simply result in a crash. When this happens a few times, it get’s insanely frustrating. Note, this happens even with the 1.1.0 update. I also get pops and clicks, and harsh glitchy noises sometimes, as if trying to load a corrupted sample. (To be sure, I have uninstalled and reinstalled this plugin and re downloaded all content a few times.) I noticed on my previous machine, that loading around 6 instances of Hexeract caused some truly insane lag and slowdown of my DAW. Now that I have a more powerful machine, and the update promises better CPU utilization, I of course wanted to test this out. I have a project with around 15 instances of Hexeract, and during a part where about 10 are playing at once, my system again experiences the worst slowdown and lag I have ever witnessed. Note: I have a Core i7 8700k at 3.7 ghz, and 64 GB of RAM. This kind of performance is laughable and simply inexcusable.

I really held off on writing this review for many months, as I am an understanding person and I really just wanted to believe in this product and have faith the company will come through and deliver on all the promises. I realize however, that by being a reviewer of products, I would be doing a disservice to everyone if I was not completely honest in my review. Auddict released an unfinished and broken product, there simply is no other way to put it. While I commend them for trying, quite frankly they failed, and I believe they are in over their heads, resulting in lack of support and long delays in getting back to customers, if they get back at all.

While some of the presets sound awesome, there’s nothing to really LOVE here. There’s nothing this product does I can’t do MUCH better with any soft synth or a vast number of better sounding (and consistently stable) Kontakt libraries. More importantly than how it sounds, is how awful the performance continues to be even after a big patch/update. Don’t expect to get any sort of usable performance with more than a few instances loaded, whereas in any other project I can load 30-60 instances of Kontakt with absolutely no hiccups.

Like I mentioned earlier, I was really excited about this product, and it was massively hyped as groundbreaking and something that could do cinematic synthesis like no other. I can honestly tell you, in all my years of producing and composing music, I honestly have never been more disappointed in a product. I think it comes down to this : Auddict over hyped, over promised, and rushed the release of this to coincide with Black Friday 2017. The released a buggy, unusable mess, and almost a year later, and many, many dissatisfied customers chiming in on forums all over the internet, they finally released an update and new presets and promised to fix the issues. Mind you, the dev emailed me a hotfix for users of FL Studio back in June. There was NEVER an official release of this hotfix. I have had at least three FL Studio users see my videos or reviews and ask me for the hotfix, because they said they contacted support and hear nothing. I gave them all the fix that was shared with me, but honestly consider this: these users got better support from a random guy on the internet than they got from the actual company who released the product.

I don’t even care if the new presets offer the most mind blowing sounds imaginable. One thing remains : it still seems to have serious bugs and performance issues and I simply can’t consider this a reliable product at this time. I hope it continues to improve, but as for the recent patch, it was simply too little too late.

If you enjoy stuff like this, you’ll love Hexeract.

The Verdict-

4.5/10

Pros+

+Visually stunning

+Some great rhythmic presets, pads. Presets with rhythmic tendencies or evolving sounds really shine.

Cons-

-It’s simply a broken product. Bugs, Crashes, Poor Performance, even after waiting almost a year for a patch.

-Sub-par sample quality.

-Very Limited Amount of presets compared to other synths.

-Does nothing new for me, despite all the claims and hype.

TL;DR: Buy Synthmaster or Serum Instead, or INVEST in some trusted kontakt libraries from output, Heavyocity, etc. You’ll thank me later.

Review: 8Dio Legion Series - 66 Tubas

You guys asked for it, so here it is! My review of 8Dio’s newest addition to it’s Legion Series , 66 Tubas. I’ve been on a bit of a hunt for some insane low brass ensembles, so this came at the perfect time for me. I purchased at the intro price so I believe I paid around $138 dollars. Currently it retails for $248 dollars here at the 8dio website.

So, this one is fairly self explanatory. It’s 66 freaking people each playing a tuba in one giant room. It sounds HUGE, deep, brassy, a bit farty, and they threw in a bunch of sound design presets as well.

Obviously, this is not the kind of library for the purists out there, as you’ll never be able to reproduce these sounds with a traditional orchestra. I feel it really embraces the Hans Zimmer approach to sampling, which is a mindset of pushing the boundaries, and usually “bigger is better”.

The GUI

The interface is fairly straightforward, easy on the eye, and provides the most needed controls all laid out right underneath the main articulations. The “Chaos” button randomly sets all the parameters and is appropriately named. Sometimes it can be fun to see what you get here. This library is pretty solid for sound design as well, especially for drones. The “Stack” button allows you to stack multiple articulations at once, and can definitely come in handy. It’s also nice to have an option to reverse each sample right there in the GUI. This library loads in the quick-load section or in the file browser, and has separate folders for main and spot mics, each including a DFD (Direct from Disk) folder, two time machine folders, and a separate section just for the sound-design presets.

The Sound

66 Tubas is humongous, that goes without saying. What I did notice immediately, is that the first patch that loads from the sustains section is very quiet (playing at a gentle PP), and you’ll notice that when playing through the patches, some of them are surprisingly mellow. This library sounds incredible in the range of C3 all the way up to a surprisingly high C5. I find that going lower than G2, the notes on their own don’t really hold up, as they are so deep sometimes it’s even hard to tell what note is playing. However, when you layer this low end with the higher notes, or with a standard trombone or horn library, the result is impressively massive. This library is generally also not a “smack-you-in-the-face” type of brass sound. It is a very wide, thick, and slow burning type of sound, in my opinion. It’s not as brassy as a trombone ensemble, and the sound isn’t quite up front at all, but more subtle and provides a nice growl at the higher dynamics. I believe most of this is due to the amount of players here, and I honestly think they did go a bit overboard with the amount of players and it cost them in terms of providing a focused sound. The sound can become very muddy, and there really is no close mic sound, and there also is not much of a difference between the various mix mixes, besides the trailer mix (which was my preferred mix). The trailer mix is more up front and provides a nice balance.

This library goes up to a surprisingly high register, and can be transposed even higher with the pitch selection in Kontakt. I found the higher notes to be nice when layering, but by themselves, I noticed a bit of phasing, and some overall quirks that made them unusable in an exposed setting. Like I mentioned previously, there is also a muddy quality to the recordings overall, simply from having so many players in the same room, I believe. This is a very niche library and truly provides a sound you absolutely cannot get anywhere else, and I give 8dio serious props for that. I can definitely see it being used for modern epic tracks and trailer work, but anything that requires a more focused sound would best stick to more traditional ensemble sizes. In terms of being used in my own work, I see it having definite potential as a layering tool, but not much else.

The Verdict-

7.25/10

Pros+

+MASSIVE, thick Sound

+Highly unique product that pushes the boundaries, you will not find a library like this anywhere else right now.

+Good for layering and providing a wide, thick low end.

Cons-

-Frequently too big for it’s own good. (Muddy sound, lack of focus)

-Notes in extreme low register are hard to make out

-Notes in higher register have strange phasing issues

-Inconsistencies in Legato sustain patches

Here’s a patch walkthru and pointing out some of the complaints I mentioned above.

Review : 8Dio Century Brass Ensemble

Today we’re going dig into 8Dio’s Century Brass ensemble library and offer some honest opinions and thoughts about it. This full version Kontakt library was released at the end of last year, continuing their Century Series of orchestral instruments, which at that point only contained Century Harps (as of posting it now has Solo Brass, Strings, Sordino Strings, and Ostinato Strings as well).

I was very attracted to a hearty discount of 40%, which they offered last year during a store-wide sale, and I had been searching for Kontakt libraries to gradually replace East West’s Hollywood Orchestra series, as Kontakt consistently provided me with better performance and ease of use than the Play sampling engine which is used by East West. I was really impressed by the demos of their Century Series. It seemed to offer an incredibly detailed sound, with an astonishing level of realism, versatility, and playability. They provided free “Try-Packs” of some of the patches available as well, and I was very impressed with the realism of the legato scripting in the Try-Pack for the 6 Horn ensemble.

The GUI/Interface

The Century Series interface is simple and clean.

Century Brass is a library that does not register in Native Access, therefor you have to go to the file browser in Kontakt and load it up manually. I’m generally not a fan of this approach, and it honestly confuses me, as 8dio is a major player in this business and can easily afford the fee to Native Instruments to enable their libraries to be loaded up in the library panel.

Upon loading, however, I was fairly pleased with the simplicity of the interface (some might find it a bit bland), providing easy access to all the controls and mic positions. What really impressed me most is the way articulations and keyswitches are handled, allowing you to load up to TEN articulations in any order, and assign them to the keyswitch of your choosing. This seemed like a really nice way to sort of customize and tailor the library to the playing style of each user.

As for the articulations, there are an impressive amount here, including mutes, rips, crescendos, loure, flutter tongue, and one of the main selling points, according to their marketing, the Arcs.

Century Brass Ensemble offer’s a very large selection of articulations.

The Sound

When researching this library I was confused about this term “Arcs” being thrown around all the time, but it’s just an articulation featuring the players performing a dynamic swell, starting at the lowest dynamics possible and naturally rising up to full velocity, and then slowly tapering back down. To me, I just call them “swells” when I am describing them to someone else. They really are quite spectacular to play around with, and immediately I found myself using this articulation in every single track. It adds another level of realism, instead of just controlling dynamics with the mod wheel or CC automation, having these dynamic changes already taken care of in the actual performance really is something special to have in any composers arsenal.

The overall sounds of the instruments here are spectacular, captured in pristine detail and capable of performing in a truly impressive dynamic range. Everything is recorded centered, so you’ll have to manually pan to simulate a natural orchestral seating position. From the name of the library and the imagery of the marketing, it does feel they are catering this towards a more traditional composer, maybe even to classical and classic film styles, and the library really performs beautifully in the soft and mellow ranges. However I was also thoroughly impressed with the ability to really crank it all the way up to ff, and get an incredible amount of growl, heat, and a bold, majestic sound. This could easily be used as the only brass library to compose a modern epic or trailer track as well, I have no doubt about that.

The default mic position is a mixed mic, and it offers a lot of closeness and detail while maintaining the width and space of a further mic. I found the default mix to sometimes be a bit too close, however, especially for the horns. For the 6 Horns patch, which is spectacular, I found it really sounded best with only the Decca mic enabled. There was just something different about the default mix, which is not a bad thing, just not what my ears were used to.

The trombones give an amazing amount of growl in the higher dynamics, yet still warm in the softer dynamic ranges. I found the short trombone notes to be really fun to play with and wonderfully brassy, while the trumpets were bright and natural especially in the higher register.

A Few Quirks…

I did find there to be a lot of articulations that may not be necessary and some unusual choices as well, such as a “speed” knob to control the quickness of the legato transitions and how fast the arcs played. I found this really odd for the crescendos and arcs to be controlled by a knob with no numerical value, instead of syncing to the tempo of the DAW, and found it quite cumbersome to have to tweak the speed knob over and over until it matched the tempo of the track I was working on (not to mention re-adjusting for tempo changes, etc)..

While for the most part the legato patches sounded amazing when I first heard them, the more time I spent with the library, I did notice some annoyances (from minor to quite major) and bugs here and there. The legato transition volume sometimes seemed inconsistent, and adjusting the “Legato Volume” knob did absolutely nothing. It seems sometimes the legato transition volume is affected by the velocity at which you play the key, but sometimes I would be playing a very soft horn melody, yet each time I changed to a new note, the volume of the legato transitions was wildly inconsistent with the volume of the sustained notes I was playing. This honestly made some tracks unusable, as I would listen to them later through headphones and notice that the transitions sounded completely off and unnatural. There’s also an issue with the legato patch triggering the last note that was played instead of only playing the note I want it to play (it will play the wrong note for a split second before jumping back to the correct note), which again rendered this library unusable for a certain project I was working on. I also noticed some inconsistencies in timbre/volume across the full range of a single instrument (it was rare, but you can tell some notes have a different timbre, as if playing that note triggered a different mic mix as opposed to the one I had selected.)

I did email 8Dio support about these issues, and they responded saying they were aware of the issues and they would be fixed in an upcoming update, so I have no complaints about support as they got back to me immediately and said they are working on a solution. I also noticed Colin O’Malley of 8Dio has posted on a VI-Control forum back in March 2018 promising they are working on a free update for this library to offer new mixing options including pre-panned mixes, etc. I was a bit worried after I read users feeling that 8dio sometimes abandoned their libraries instead of releasing updates and fixes, but it seems if that was ever true, they are doing much more as a company to listen and stay engaged and offer updates to their customers.

The Verdict-

8.5/10

PROS+

+Amazing detail and realism in soft AND loud dynamics.

+Vast Amount of Articulations, including unique and highly playable arcs.

+Intuitive GUI with ability to customize key switches and load up to 10 articulations, all in one NKI file.

CONS-

-Some strange choices such as the speed knob, only one length of marcatos.

-A few bugs and inconsistencies really bring down the usability sometimes, especially with the otherwise incredible legato patches.

TL;DR: Century Brass is a very good library, but it’s note quite achieved greatness yet. The wealth of articulations and versatility, as well as the realism and detail captured in the recordings, are some of the highlights of Century Brass. These standout features are slightly marred by inconsistencies and bugs, but I have high hopes they will address these issues in the upcoming 2.0 update!

*(In the future I will update this review and possibly adjust the final score to included the 2.0 updates)

Review - Native Instruments Symphony Series: Percussion

Hello everyone! I’m continuing my promised onslaught of reviews with my most recent purchase, Native Instruments’ Symphony Series: Percussion!

Details

I am a big fan of Native Instruments, and when I bought Komplete 10 Ultimate a few years ago, I was a bit surprised by the lack of in depth orchestral samples. Granted, they had some amazing VSL patches included in the Kontakt Factory Library, plus two of my all time favorites, the epic percussion of Action Strikes and the outstanding riser and impact designer, Rise and Hit.

So of course, the following update, Komplete 11, contained exactly what was missing from 10, an all new collection of orchestral samples created in partnership with Native Instruments and various developers (Soundiron on Symphony Series Woodwinds and Brass, while Audiobro, creators of the acclaimed LASS, contributed to Strings)

Slightly different GUI’s for Symphony Series (left) and Essentials

Each new collection comes in two versions: Symphony Essentials, which is the version included in Komplete Ultimate collections, is a light version, only containing the basic articulations and not including as many features. Being the person I am, of course I had to strive for the upgraded and much larger Symphony Series, which includes everything in Essentials plus a lot more (the full, complete edition). For previous Komplete owners, the crossgrade price was $199.99 (regularly $299.99)

The most recent edition to the Symphony Series was created in partnership with Sonuscore, which immediately got me excited, as this is the same developer as the aforementioned Action Strikes.

Setup and the GUI

After downloading and installing via Native Access, I immediately started playing around with these new sounds. I was enticed by the fact they included a great variety of orchestral percussion instruments, so you got all the usual rhythmic instruments (cymbals, bass drums, snares, toms, gongs, triangle, etc) as well as tuned percussion (timpani, celeste, vibraphone, xylophone, low piano hits) and a nice variety of kits.

I LOVE the clean interface on display here.

The GUI for the Symphony Series in honestly one of my all time favorites. It’s clean, simple, intuitive, and there’s a lot of features and customization available. Being able to control the attack is something that is sometimes overlooked in sample libraries, and there are very deep microphone and mixing options, and everything is very clearly laid out, showing information regarding keyswitches, mapping, round robins, etc. The big knob in the center controls dynamics on tremolo articulations for the Timpani and Cymbals. All in all, the interface is flawless.

The Sound

Let me just state this up front, that this is NOT the percussion library you want to get in you’re looking to achieve a modern blockbuster/ “epic” sound. It is very traditional. Think John Williams or classics like Max Steiner as opposed to Hans Zimmer or Brian Tyler. For me, it is replacing Hollywood Percussion by East West/Quantum Leap, as I greatly prefer Kontakt over the Play engine.

I knew what to expect after listening to multiple audio demos, but was still very pleased just playing around with the new sample set. Also being an owner of Symphony Series Woodwinds, I knew that this was not going to be a dry library. This library is recorded wet, which may be an annoyance for some users. Enabling the close mics eliminates the natural reverb, however. The overall sound quality is great, some of my favorites being the powerful timpani hits and rolls, punchy snares, CC1 controllable cymbal swells, as well as the very useful kits, which include different instruments in each category mapped across the midi keyboard.

As for the different mallet instruments included (celeste, vibraphone, xylophone, glockenspiel), I was not a fan of the default stereo mix option for these. You get a LOT of the sound of the room, which may help for placing these instruments in a natural orchestral seating position, but for playing them by themselves. they sounded too distant to me. There was also an unnecessary amount of room noise in my opinion, which made some of the mic positions unusable, as you could almost hear more noise than the actual instrument itself. I preferred to isolate the close mics, or even the spot mics, in order to get the exact sound I wanted. It is not that much of a big deal to need to mess with mic positions, but just beware you may have to experiment and play around a bit with the mic positions to get a sound that is favorable to your ears, and that some of them feature A LOT of room noise which seems like a very strange decision.

The following video goes thru some of the sounds included in NI Symphony Series Percussion, and then compares them to some of the patches included in the Kontakt Factory Library.

All in all, this is a good orchestral percussion library, no doubt. Are there better ones on the market? I can almost guarantee it. However I don’t think their angle is to offer the most mind blowing and realistic samples ever heard. What the Symphony Series can offer is a wealth of content, perfectly usable in any project, for a VERY good price. 29 gb of content for $199 is a steal. I don’t really like the default mic positions but, that is really an easy fix. (KEEP IN MIND: The Symphony Essentials version of this library only offers ONE microphone position, and it is the one I don’t like, so please keep that in mind if you decide to purchase the smaller Symphony Essentials version) This library will also not do those massive walls of taiko drums or anything Hans Zimmer-esque, so for the epic/trailer composers that’s something to keep in mind. It is nonetheless worth every penny.

The Verdict:

8.0/10

Pros:

+ Large amount of content for the price. (Tuned and Auxiliary Percussion)

+ Intuitive GUI, one of the best I’ve seen

+ Perfect for traditional orchestral arrangements

+ Overall high quality sounds and lots of effects

Cons:

- Won’t do epic

- High amount of room noise in some tuned percussion. (Enable Spot/close mics and add reverb to eliminate this completely)

- Baked in reverb/hall sound isn’t the best