Official Discussion Thread (Ghost Edit)

[Guthey]

Does anyone know of any good Orchestral Vst, or a place to find some pretty decent samples of orchestral instruments? Violins, Violas, Cellos, Flutes, Etc.? I know of East West, but i'm not trying to create an entire symphony, I'm just looking for a decent Vst with a decent library stock. I know I could just google for one, but I think you guys would be of far greater help.

[Acsii]

Does anyone know of any good Orchestral Vst, or a place to find some pretty decent samples of orchestral instruments? Violins, Violas, Cellos, Flutes, Etc.? I know of East West, but i'm not trying to create an entire symphony, I'm just looking for a decent Vst with a decent library stock. I know I could just google for one, but I think you guys would be of far greater help.

Philharmonik Miroslav is probably one of the best. Here's an example of what it can do.
https://soundcloud.com/acsiident/ohne-dich
Also you could try some of the orchestral Kontakt suites

[Guthey]

Does anyone know of any good Orchestral Vst, or a place to find some pretty decent samples of orchestral instruments? Violins, Violas, Cellos, Flutes, Etc.? I know of East West, but i'm not trying to create an entire symphony, I'm just looking for a decent Vst with a decent library stock. I know I could just google for one, but I think you guys would be of far greater help.

Philharmonik Miroslav is probably one of the best. Here's an example of what it can do.
https://soundcloud.com/acsiident/ohne-dich
Also you could try some of the orchestral Kontakt suites

Very interesting, and a nice piece! Thanks for the info, I will definitely look into those two.

[Callenby]

Does anyone know of any good Orchestral Vst, or a place to find some pretty decent samples of orchestral instruments? Violins, Violas, Cellos, Flutes, Etc.? I know of East West, but i'm not trying to create an entire symphony, I'm just looking for a decent Vst with a decent library stock. I know I could just google for one, but I think you guys would be of far greater help.

I assume you mean you're looking for a decent, and cheap, library? Well, that's going to limit your options. Also, you'll probably going to need Kontakt if you don't already have it. It's indispensable for orchestral libraries.

There are the default factory Kontakt samples, but I've never been too fond of those. The upside to them is that they don't cost anything extra. A few are alright, but nothing spectacular. They're fine if your listeners don't normally enjoy orchestral stuff, I guess.

Albion is a good all-around package. Still pricey and it limits your options (e.g. brass isn't separated into individual instruments), but it should have everything non-orchestral musicians could want.

Native Instruments has some decent stuff. They're the ones who made Kontakt, so there's that.

Some people are fond of Symphobia. I personally don't know too much about it. It's also expensive, I'm afraid.

You could try Solokinetic. Again, though, I don't have personal experience with their products.

As you can see, this is a very expensive genre to work in. Basically, you're only going to get out of it what you put in. Want inspiring sounds? You're gonna have to invest. Do you have any specific needs? Finding comprehensive libraries that include strings AND woodwinds AND brass AND percussion AND are cheap AND sound great is, sadly, extremely unlikely.

Philharmonik Miroslav is probably one of the best.

I'm gonna have to disagree. I've heard a lot better than Miroslav. Unless you meant good for its price, in which case ignore me.

[FLAOFEI]

But a lot of people who mix exclusively on speakers have an obnoxious habit of panning major song elements hard to the left or hard to the right, which may sound fine on open speakers, but is really, really uncomfortable on headphones!

This, so much! I even saw a tutorial telling you to mix stuff full right full left!

Anyway, yeah, about speakers having to move "fast" enough to produce good bass. I doubt it's so much the speed as it is the size of the speaker membrane and its exertion. Those two factors determine how much air the speaker can move. With higher frequencies you don't have to worry much about how much air you move since those waves have a much smaller amplitude. For bas frequencies you need to move more air, and for that you need large surface areas and/or a lot of exertion. The problem is that if a speaker is big and heavy it won't produce any high frequencies, because firstly it has to much inertia. With headphones you don't need a very loud bass though, as I explained earlier.

And yeah, it's hard to produce full spectrum single speakers. It's all to do with the size vs inertia problem as I understand it. If it's big enough to have good bas response it won't produce good treble, and if it's light enough for treble it won't have good bas. It's about more than inertia though, I'm no expert on the topic... yet... so I can't really tell you more :/

And Jokeblue... why would you remove your avatar when you're buissy with school O.o ?

[Stuntddude]

There's also, I think, an issue with making speakers without obvious resonant frequencies and that don't have any oscillation of their own (i.e. if you play a single short pulse, the driver/membrane/whatever should move back to a neutral position and stay there without vibrating back and forth like anything elastic normally would).

Edit: GG on those 1337 posts.

[Guthey]

As you can see, this is a very expensive genre to work in. Basically, you're only going to get out of it what you put in. Want inspiring sounds? You're gonna have to invest. Do you have any specific needs? Finding comprehensive libraries that include strings AND woodwinds AND brass AND percussion AND are cheap AND sound great is, sadly, extremely unlikely.

Philharmonik Miroslav is probably one of the best.

I'm gonna have to disagree. I've heard a lot better than Miroslav. Unless you meant good for its price, in which case ignore me.

Basically I've accumulated 727 bucks from graduation, and I'd figure I'd spend some of it on some pretty decent Vst. Of which would be an orchestral Vst. And since I don't usually do orchestral, or have that much knowledge of it, I'd figure I'd ask you guys for any input and suggestions, to which you surely delivered. Since I looked at some of said Vst's prior to asking, I've known that I'd be spending quite a bundle on it. What I would like from it I guess would be the entire bundle, Strings, Percussion, Brass, Woodwinds, and even a piano library if that's possible, not exactly cheap, but well rounded library with a overall good quality.
Because my ear isn't exactly attuned to the varying quality of instruments, this is where the problem began in the first place, and me being me, I would buy the lowest priced thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread. But since further research and looking through some of the many vst's I have made my median approx. 327 +/- 100$. Depending on what you guys would recommend, and whether you recommend I go an extra mile and put in more $.

I would be trying to incorporate what I already know but with some more orchestral instruments, but my main goal is to expand my horizon and see what I can create with instruments, I mean I could do that with just the default FL studio instruments, but everyone says they suck, which also lead me to having this discussion.

So with that in mind, what would be the best option for me?

[Guthey]

This, so much! I even saw a tutorial telling you to mix stuff full right full left!

The reason they tell you to do that is because of phase cancellation. Basically that's when two frequencies are fighting against each other. Usually when that happens it causes an annoying combination of the two sounds, usually the one with the higher amplitude will be the dominant sound you hear. So say you have vocals and some guitar playing, what would happen is if the guitar is louder than the vocals, the vocal frequencies that are the same as the guitars would take form of the guitar and vice versa, depending on which has the greater amplitude, hence forth you have a guitar that sounds like a vocal, or a vocal that sounds like a guitar. To fix this, some people say to turn something all the way to the right or left so they don't interfere. What you would think this does is that it splits the sounds so you hear only the guitar on the right or left, but what it does is it splits the frequencies and not the sound. In FL, you have the option to merge or separate. Merging puts sound in the center, where as separate separates the sound to go to your left and right, all with out them colliding. So vocals would be in center and guitar in left and right. Sometimes you would pan something to the left or right, but that usually occurs when you have a wide dynamic range of frequencies that sometimes clash, so what you would do is pan them to left or right, but only slightly. I'm not 100% on how it works, but that's what I know.

[CitricAcid]

As you can see, this is a very expensive genre to work in. Basically, you're only going to get out of it what you put in. Want inspiring sounds? You're gonna have to invest. Do you have any specific needs? Finding comprehensive libraries that include strings AND woodwinds AND brass AND percussion AND are cheap AND sound great is, sadly, extremely unlikely.

Philharmonik Miroslav is probably one of the best.

I'm gonna have to disagree. I've heard a lot better than Miroslav. Unless you meant good for its price, in which case ignore me.

Basically I've accumulated 727 bucks from graduation, and I'd figure I'd spend some of it on some pretty decent Vst. Of which would be an orchestral Vst. And since I don't usually do orchestral, or have that much knowledge of it, I'd figure I'd ask you guys for any input and suggestions, to which you surely delivered. Since I looked at some of said Vst's prior to asking, I've known that I'd be spending quite a bundle on it. What I would like from it I guess would be the entire bundle, Strings, Percussion, Brass, Woodwinds, and even a piano library if that's possible, not exactly cheap, but well rounded library with a overall good quality.
Because my ear isn't exactly attuned to the varying quality of instruments, this is where the problem began in the first place, and me being me, I would buy the lowest priced thinking it's the best thing since sliced bread. But since further research and looking through some of the many vst's I have made my median approx. 327 +/- 100$. Depending on what you guys would recommend, and whether you recommend I go an extra mile and put in more $.

I would be trying to incorporate what I already know but with some more orchestral instruments, but my main goal is to expand my horizon and see what I can create with instruments, I mean I could do that with just the default FL studio instruments, but everyone says they suck, which also lead me to having this discussion.

So with that in mind, what would be the best option for me?

For someone unaccustomed to orchestral music that is expanding his horizons, I think it would be better to get libraries that group instrument sections into ensembles rather than breaking up the sections. Albion and Symphobia, which Callenby already mentioned, come to mind. There's probably others that I don't know about. Libraries that break the sections up (like EastWest and VSL) might be overwhelming, since you would need to figure out what combinations of what instrument sections and what voicings and doublings will result in the sound you want.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I tried FM8 today. I think I need more FM8 in my life.

[Acsii]

Philharmonik Miroslav is probably one of the best.

I'm gonna have to disagree. I've heard a lot better than Miroslav. Unless you meant good for its price, in which case ignore me.

yea I probably should've clarified that. I agree it's not the best but I wouldn't want my money back either.

[Callenby]

So with that in mind, what would be the best option for me?

Time for Callenby's guide to orchestral shopping!!!

Alright, so I'm gonna make a big list of places I know about, but before I do there is one thing I want to stress: do a bunch of research. Find out what system requirements each of these things have, listen to a bunch of demos (even of things you're not necessarily looking to buy right away), read the EULA, compare and contrast similar libraries and see how they match up (what strengths and weaknesses it has, whether it skimps out of some things you may want, etc.).

With the budget you listed, you're not going to be able to afford the end-all be-all orchestral collection. But that's fine! You will definitely have a start and it will give you something to aim for.

(Also, this is going to assume you have Kontakt, because as I said it's pretty much required for this genre).

First, for reference, here is what I currently use.
Strings: the Adagio series by 8dio. ($800 on sale)
Brass: CineBrass CORE from Cinesamples. ($280 on sale)
Percussion: Percussion Redux from Spitfire. ($410 with discount)
And for woodwinds I just collected a bunch of solo instruments also from 8dio. ($90-100 each on sale)
Piano: Emotional Piano by Soundiron. ($150)

You'll notice that I have assembled these from various places. That's because I researched each one of them and figured out that they were in my budget. I would rate each of this highly, but CineBrass a little less so. They aren't quite the same level of quality as the others but since I don't use brass very much it isn't so important to me. That's something else I should stress: what works for me may not work for you. Ideally, I would have Berlin Woodwinds for the winds and all of Spitfire's BML series for brass, but those are simply out of my budget. You'll also have noticed that I spent more on strings than for any other section. That's because I've learned that strings are extremely important in my works. But for you it may not matter so much.

What I recommend for a smaller budget:
Strings: Cinematic Strings 2 ($250). This price is assuming you get the 50% student discount. I don't know if CS2 is worth $500 but it's definitely worth half that. This is what I used before I got Adagio.
Woodwinds: CineWinds CORE ($280). Assuming you get a 30% discount they sometimes offer. They're not the greatest ever, but they'll definitely get the job done
Brass: CineBrass CORE ($250). Same as CineWinds.
Percussion: perhaps Elite Orchestral Percussion ($200). No discounts that I know of. I don't have personal experience with this but the demos sounded decent enough for the price.

That is the best collection that I could come up with off the top of my head. It also would be a tad outside your budget. So, again, research!

What I recommend for you to do:
1. Don't rush any of these steps! It's okay to take time. These are large purchases so it's only sensible to try and keep yourself from buying something you'll later regret.
2. Get Kontakt if you don't have it already.
3. Play around with the default orchestral stuff in Kontakt. They're not great, but they're good for testing out ideas. Use only these for a while and see what you can do with them.
4. Find out what section is more important to you. For me it was strings, so I focused on that first. It meant having better samples for one section than for others but sometimes that's just what you gotta do (especially if you have a limited budget).
5. Find an affordable library for that section that you'd like to have and get it. Either use my recommendation or even choose something completely different! It's up to you.
6. Read the instructions and spend time just playing around with your new library. Get familiar with them and learn how they operate. Each one handles a little differently so you'll need to know each one's peculiarities.

Citric recommends that you get something with combined patches, but I have to disagree. It may be more daunting at first, but it will ultimately make you a better composer if you are able to think about and write for each individual instrument or section. If these weren't such large purchases then, yeah, I'd agree, but in the long run it's better to have them separation. Again, though, it really depends on what your own needs are and how much you're willing to do.

Eventually you'll want to expand your palate beyond the strictly orchestral, so by all means take a look at the other things they sell. For example, Soundiron has some cool experimental stuff that's fun to explore with.

Now, here's a big ol' list of places I know about

Spoiler List:

Embertone
Wavesfactory
Soundiron
8dio
Spitfire Audio
Soniccouture
Cinematic Strings 2
ProjectSAM
Sonokinetic
Native Instruments
Cinesamples
EastWest
Audiobro
Vienna Symphonic Library
Sample Logic
SampleModeling
Synthogy
Orchestral Tools
Syntone (co-run by our very own Dr Dissonance!)

Remember, each company offers something different. Even if some of those things are the same type (e.g. both Embertone and 8dio offer high-quality violin solos), there will still be key differences. Learn what these are and see what's best for you.

Dang, that took a while to write. I hope it helped!

[Guthey]

So with that in mind, what would be the best option for me?

Time for Callenby's guide to orchestral shopping!!!

Alright, so I'm gonna make a big list of places I know about, but before I do there is one thing I want to stress: do a bunch of research. Find out what system requirements each of these things have, listen to a bunch of demos (even of things you're not necessarily looking to buy right away), read the EULA, compare and contrast similar libraries and see how they match up (what strengths and weaknesses it has, whether it skimps out of some things you may want, etc.).

(Also, this is going to assume you have Kontakt, because as I said it's pretty much required for this genre).

1. Don't rush any of these steps! It's okay to take time. These are large purchases so it's only sensible to try and keep yourself from buying something you'll later regret.
2. Get Kontakt if you don't have it already.
3. Play around with the default orchestral stuff in Kontakt. They're not great, but they're good for testing out ideas. Use only these for a while and see what you can do with them.
4. Find out what section is more important to you. For me it was strings, so I focused on that first. It meant having better samples for one section than for others but sometimes that's just what you gotta do (especially if you have a limited budget).
5. Find an affordable library for that section that you'd like to have and get it. Either use my recommendation or even choose something completely different! It's up to you.
6. Read the instructions and spend time just playing around with your new library. Get familiar with them and learn how they operate. Each one handles a little differently so you'll need to know each one's peculiarities.

Citric recommends that you get something with combined patches, but I have to disagree. It may be more daunting at first, but it will ultimately make you a better composer if you are able to think about and write for each individual instrument or section. If these weren't such large purchases then, yeah, I'd agree, but in the long run it's better to have them separation. Again, though, it really depends on what your own needs are and how much you're willing to do.

Eventually you'll want to expand your palate beyond the strictly orchestral, so by all means take a look at the other things they sell. For example, Soundiron has some cool experimental stuff that's fun to explore with.

Now, here's a big ol' list of places I know about

Spoiler List:

Embertone
Wavesfactory
Soundiron
8dio
Spitfire Audio
Soniccouture
Cinematic Strings 2
ProjectSAM
Sonokinetic
Native Instruments
Cinesamples
EastWest
Audiobro
Vienna Symphonic Library
Sample Logic
SampleModeling
Synthogy
Orchestral Tools
Syntone (co-run by our very own Dr Dissonance!)

Remember, each company offers something different. Even if some of those things are the same type (e.g. both Embertone and 8dio offer high-quality violin solos), there will still be key differences. Learn what these are and see what's best for you.

Dang, that took a while to write. I hope it helped!

Wow, That sure is alot of stuff, but it is indeed helpful. Believe me when I say I'll definitely do my homework on this. I'll be sure that Kontakt is the first thing I get, and do as you said. As soon as I'm pretty well versed in it and it's applications I'll move on from there.
And thank you so much for the advice, this is absolutely invaluable, and I truly thank you for your time.

[Stuntddude]

I would be trying to incorporate what I already know but with some more orchestral instruments, but my main goal is to expand my horizon and see what I can create with instruments, I mean I could do that with just the default FL studio instruments, but everyone says they suck, which also lead me to having this discussion.

I don't think the new ones in FL 11 are bad. Still hugely limiting, though.

The reason they tell you to do that is because of phase cancellation. Basically that's when two frequencies are fighting against each other. Usually when that happens it causes an annoying combination of the two sounds, usually the one with the higher amplitude will be the dominant sound you hear. So say you have vocals and some guitar playing, what would happen is if the guitar is louder than the vocals, the vocal frequencies that are the same as the guitars would take form of the guitar and vice versa, depending on which has the greater amplitude, hence forth you have a guitar that sounds like a vocal, or a vocal that sounds like a guitar. To fix this, some people say to turn something all the way to the right or left so they don't interfere. What you would think this does is that it splits the sounds so you hear only the guitar on the right or left, but what it does is it splits the frequencies and not the sound. In FL, you have the option to merge or separate. Merging puts sound in the center, where as separate separates the sound to go to your left and right, all with out them colliding. So vocals would be in center and guitar in left and right. Sometimes you would pan something to the left or right, but that usually occurs when you have a wide dynamic range of frequencies that sometimes clash, so what you would do is pan them to left or right, but only slightly. I'm not 100% on how it works, but that's what I know.

I'm not sure you got that right. There are often problems with frequency range conflicts that can be helped by panning the elements out, but you can do that without panning major song elements all the way to the left or right. Also, making the frequency ranges of song elements work constructively is just a general task of mixing - panning is only one of a number of things that can be done to help. And I'm pretty sure that phase cancellation is something else entirely.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "what it does is it splits the frequencies and not the sound," or "In FL, you have the option to merge or separate." Do you mean the stereo separation controls in the mixer? Also, dynamic range has do with gain (the less you compress something and the more dramatic the volume dynamics, the greater the dynamic range, I think), not frequencies.


EDIT: Speaking of libraries, FM8, and Kontakt (and any other related thing that's been mentioned on this page), how worth it would it be for me to get Komplete or Komplete Ultimate (god that's a stupid name) as a primarily chiptronica/EDM centered FL user?

[S.P.P]

http://www.roland.com/support/article/? ... id=1812828 This is a free orchestral VST, and in my experience it sounds fantastic for not costing anything. Of course, paid libraries will be better but Edirol is not to be overlooked. :3

It sounds like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uC10gMdK_0

Not perfect, but it's fantastic for freeware!

It's also due to the fact that monitors are bigger than headphones. The drivers in headphones simply struggle to move fast enough to provide bass response compared to speaker cones.

Huh? As I understand it, this isn't quite the problem - the drivers have to move far, far faster to recreate higher frequencies than to recreate lower frequencies.

I meant slow*, sorry. Small drivers physically cannot push out the low frequencies as well as high frequencies. Having dedicated woofers and tweeters in monitors fixes that problem.

[Bronies Are Cool]

My mom is making me delete fl studio. Reason: it slows down the computer, even when not in use. Which is not true. But, just checking with other people, do your DAWs slow down your computer when not in use? As in, a significant slowing down of your computer speed?

[eery]

Not unless its taking up a bunch of space, which it really shouldn't. Sometimes FL studio will leave these little instances running in the memory even when I close it, but even that is insignificant.

[Ricky Denzel]

I just listened to some songs from a charity album called The Gay Nineties Olde Tyme Music. It includes Weird Al Yankovic, Katy Perry, Tyler The Creator and all these other people. I'm interested in the album.

[FLAOFEI]

So I got a chance to try out some synths today :D
And the MS-20 mini has a mind of its own! I played around with it for longer than I probably should have, but nobody at the store complained :/ So I guess it was ok :3 Loved its sounds, especially when using the hp-filters self oscillation as a sub oscillator... I have a feeling that bass would probably make everything start clipping...
Anyway I loved the MS-20, I'm pretty darn sure I'm gonna buy it. Only drawbacks are an extremely flimsy, toy-looking mod-wheel, which I can overlook, but the other problem is the noise. It's got a pretty noisy output, and not in the good way. When you turned down the oscillators and opened the gate there was still noise :( But I think I can overlook that...

I tested out the Roland System 1 to, and the very hyped up !!!!SCATTER!!!! wasn't really that interesting to me. I don't want the machine picking what note to play, that's what I have midi for :I

Anyway, fun day. Bought some percussion stuff. A mini snare and a percussion rack for all the new additions to my kit :) Looking forward to playing around with all that stuff some more in the future.

[Guthey]

My mom is making me delete fl studio. Reason: it slows down the computer, even when not in use. Which is not true. But, just checking with other people, do your DAWs slow down your computer when not in use? As in, a significant slowing down of your computer speed?

Not unless it's taking up all the cpu and Ram, then you have a problem. could just be the computer sucking.

[ExoBassTix]

My mom is making me delete fl studio. Reason: it slows down the computer, even when not in use. Which is not true. But, just checking with other people, do your DAWs slow down your computer when not in use? As in, a significant slowing down of your computer speed?

Not unless it's taking up all the cpu and Ram, then you have a problem. could just be the computer sucking.

That would mean it doesn't terminate processes when you close them down, which is absolute horseshit unless you have me nan's computer.
Anyways, very small chance it's FL causing it. Make sure you tell her to put it back on when the problem isn't resolved (BaC up your files!!!).

[Stuntddude]

But, just checking with other people, do your DAWs slow down your computer when not in use? As in, a significant slowing down of your computer speed?

Only if it's currently open will it use any CPU or memory. Even while it's running, it will only slow your other processes if one or more of your CPU cores are maxed out. Otherwise, no. And it won't slow down a computer by taking up HDD space, either - the amount of used HDD space has no effect on the speed of the computer overall, unless it's so full (only a few GB left) that it's running out of swap space.

So no, your mom's just stupid about computers.

[Bronies Are Cool]

I found out today that half of the ram on the computer is always being used for some McAfee thing. That's what is slowing down the computer speed.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I accidentally showed up early for a festival and the next thing I know I'm tweaking EQ's for the sound guy and mingling with bands. Brisbane is a cool place :3

[ExoBassTix]

I found out today that half of the ram on the computer is always being used for some McAfee thing. That's what is slowing down the computer speed.

Omg another reason to dislike McAfee. How much more can they make me hate them?

I accidentally showed up early for a festival and the next thing I know I'm tweaking EQ's for the sound guy and mingling with bands. Brisbane is a cool place :3

Jesus that sounds awesome! Haha nice.