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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperAudioYour Favorite Orchestral/String/Conventional Plugins
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Kyle Preston
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« on: October 04, 2014, 01:39:31 PM »

I found this earlier thread that catered more toward beginners, and I thought it might be nice to see what pieces of 'traditional' instrument software the fine people of this forum use as their bread and butter.

I'll go first.

A few years ago, Native Instruments had an awesome deal on Kontakt 5. I think it was like $150, or $199 maybe, don't remember for sure, but it came with a really REALLy nice collection of instruments.  Almost everything in there sounds great and has plenty of adjustable features. Flash forward to now, you can get Komplete for just $100 bucks more than what Kontakt 5 goes for (and includes Kontakt), and it's probably amazing, and a much better deal.   

I still constantly use Battery 3 (too stubborn to upgrade) which for the most part, seems to be the best bang for the buck. Most of the percussion libraries are solid and I love how easy it is to build and store your own kits.

My next purchase will certainly be the Cinesamples CineStrings library (does anyone currently use this?). I also plan on purchasing at least one of the Spitfire libraries, though a lot of their stuff sounds a bit too Hans Zimmerish for my taste.

VOXOS would also be nice, but I can't swing 800 F'ing dollars.

What are your favorites?

Also, pun of the day:





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Audiosprite
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« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2014, 01:49:10 PM »

hey, i think it's cool that we have no overlap in our plugins. neat that there's so much available, even for the same basic stuff.

for orchestra i'll use ewqlso gold
for drum kit i'll use steven slate drums 4
for synths i use the vstis that come with cubase 6
most else i'll try to use real instruments
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ZackParrish
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« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2014, 03:57:59 PM »

I use a mixture of things... depending on what sound I'm after...

LA Scoring Strings 2
Cinebrass
EWQL SO Gold
Sample Modeling Double Reeds
Sample Modeling 'The Trumpet'
Sample Modeling Horn and Tuba
Ample Sounds Latin, Taylor, and Martin guitars
EWQL Ministry of Rock for drumsets
Project SAM True Strike 1 for orchestral percussion
Orange Tree Samples Passion Flute or something like that... forgot the name of it.

I use a ton of other things too but it's kind of a mixed bag since I'm not a fan of what one set sounds here versus another. Like... at some point I'm planning on buying Berlin Woodwinds, because I hate the winds that Cinesamples and EWQL have. :\
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Pete301
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« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2014, 11:09:49 PM »

I use only a few plugins, but I'm looking to get more (now I know which thread to come looking to when I make my next purchase Wink )

EWQL SO Gold for most of my orchestral
Garritan Personal Orchestra for a few things
ERA Medieval Legends, this has some great instruments (Medieval Flute, Lute, Hurdy Gurdy) in it, pretty cool horns and some good soundscapes.
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Lauchsuppe
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« Reply #4 on: October 05, 2014, 03:57:45 AM »

For orchestral stuff it's just a mix of Miroslav Philharmonik, NI Damage, a bunch of other Kontakt 5 instruments, some sonic cotoure plugins and a ton of other stuff which I wouldn't consider to be my "bread and butter" but still has its place in my library. I'm also still using SampleTank and Kore 2 (lol who would do that?). Would also love to get a new library in the orchestral department, but all the decent ones are unaffordable to me at the moment.
Other than that, I probably spend most of my time with Reaktor 5, sforzando and my costum sample library.
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Oguz
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« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2014, 11:37:50 AM »

I use VSL for more or less everything with the main string library being the Dimension Strings and the main brass library being the Dimension Brass. I find it helpful to be using the same sample player with the same parameters and running them through similar mixing procedures. It also makes it easier to copy things between instruments. And I believe VSL has a more flexible sound compared to some other stuff out there so it's easier to make them work in different contexts.
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Bakuda
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« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2014, 08:14:35 AM »

I started out on Garritan Personal Orchestra but upgraded to EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Gold a year ago and what a difference!

So I use EWQL as well as Garage Band for iPad when I need an acoustic guitar.  If you haven't you should give it a try, the touch interface is awesome!  The strings are also fun to play.
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Kyle Preston
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« Reply #7 on: October 18, 2014, 10:51:42 AM »

I discovered a neat little trick the other day.  This may or may not be news to you Kontakt owners (pretty sure this works in the free player too) as I learn by going in and playing with buttons and breaking things, rather than reading the manual like you're supposed to, but if you drag and drop a wav into the Kontakt player, it will automatically make a keyboard layout of your wav file and adjust the pitch and time accordingly. 

I dropped in a sample of a cow mooing, which it assigns to middle C.  Then I hit C two octaves below and it sounded like a building creaking........freaking awesome. My next block of free time is now totally ruined.  Cheesy
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Audiosprite
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« Reply #8 on: October 18, 2014, 12:42:39 PM »

I discovered a neat little trick the other day.  This may or may not be news to you Kontakt owners (pretty sure this works in the free player too) as I learn by going in and playing with buttons and breaking things, rather than reading the manual like you're supposed to, but if you drag and drop a wav into the Kontakt player, it will automatically make a keyboard layout of your wav file and adjust the pitch and time accordingly. 

I dropped in a sample of a cow mooing, which it assigns to middle C.  Then I hit C two octaves below and it sounded like a building creaking........freaking awesome. My next block of free time is now totally ruined.  Cheesy

LOL awesome
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ZackParrish
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« Reply #9 on: October 18, 2014, 04:20:47 PM »

I discovered a neat little trick the other day.  This may or may not be news to you Kontakt owners (pretty sure this works in the free player too) as I learn by going in and playing with buttons and breaking things, rather than reading the manual like you're supposed to, but if you drag and drop a wav into the Kontakt player, it will automatically make a keyboard layout of your wav file and adjust the pitch and time accordingly. 

I dropped in a sample of a cow mooing, which it assigns to middle C.  Then I hit C two octaves below and it sounded like a building creaking........freaking awesome. My next block of free time is now totally ruined.  Cheesy

Yeah, Kontakt is a really powerful tool once you start learning all the features it has. Just wait until you start learning about it's scripting(if you ever go that far with it...it's how all the third party libraries do true legato patches).
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Kyle Preston
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« Reply #10 on: October 19, 2014, 09:20:10 PM »

Quote
Yeah, Kontakt is a really powerful tool once you start learning all the features it has. Just wait until you start learning about it's scripting(if you ever go that far with it...it's how all the third party libraries do true legato patches).

I intend to at some point for sure; programming was a fun hobby for me at one point in my life. Do you code your own patches in Kontakt? If so, any books or sources you'd recommend for learning the process?
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ZackParrish
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« Reply #11 on: October 20, 2014, 03:29:40 AM »

I haven't in a while but there used to be a good tutorial online by some guy named...nhils or something like that. Having knowledge of how programming languages works to begin with helps tremendously, because then it's just a matter of learning a new syntax.

Home now... here's the site I was yapping about...

http://www.nilsliberg.se/ksp/scripts/tutorial/

There is a Kontakt Script Editor somewhere on the internet that I used to use as well, that was pretty nice for keeping things organized... but that was a few years ago the last time I dabbled in this stuff...
« Last Edit: October 20, 2014, 01:25:43 PM by ZackParrish » Logged

Kyle Preston
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« Reply #12 on: October 20, 2014, 08:19:33 PM »

I haven't in a while but there used to be a good tutorial online by some guy named...nhils or something like that. Having knowledge of how programming languages works to begin with helps tremendously, because then it's just a matter of learning a new syntax.

Home now... here's the site I was yapping about...

http://www.nilsliberg.se/ksp/scripts/tutorial/

There is a Kontakt Script Editor somewhere on the internet that I used to use as well, that was pretty nice for keeping things organized... but that was a few years ago the last time I dabbled in this stuff...

Thanks Zack. Pursuing this might be huge time sinkhole, but I really do love the idea of building unique custom patches.  I also found a few promising beginner videos. 






I've read that some composers (probably the really rich ones) actually hire companies like Cinesamples and Spitfire to sample certain live orchestras, and then build custom software libraries exclusively for the composer's personal use; lucky bastards. 
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ZackParrish
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« Reply #13 on: October 21, 2014, 08:57:25 AM »

I know spitfire does for sure... No clue about cinesamples.

One thing I am thinking about trying is coding my own VST... But need to learn a better language than vb and JavaScript first. :p
« Last Edit: October 21, 2014, 02:31:08 PM by ZackParrish » Logged

Kyle Preston
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« Reply #14 on: October 21, 2014, 05:03:40 PM »

I learned C++ in school, but after graduating, I played around a lot with Python, and started building some simple games and a few GUI tools;  so I'm biased on the subject, but I'd recommend Python.  The language is elegant, intuitive, simple and learning it taught me way more about structure and syntax than C++ did.
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