Who's the Daddy of Orchestral Libraries these days?

[emptybe]

Hi All,
We're pondering upgrading our Orchestral VST setup and wanted to get some opinions about what's the best thing/s out there at the moment. We write music for TV so use it a lot. We've been using EWQLSO Gold and Gold XP for all our bread and butter orchestration for years as it's easy to use and sounds pretty good straight out of the box. But we feel like we need a lot more flexibility and articulations - particularly with Brass and Woodwinds. We got Hollywood Strings a few years back and have found the sound was good but the Play interface quite unwieldy and buggy. We now use LASS 2 for most of our strings as it sounds lovely but at times we still need something 'bigger' for them too.

What are people's feelings about what's 'top of the heap' for Strings and for overall orchestral stuff? EWQL are doing the whole Hollywood Bundle very cheap these days (less than half what we paid for just the strings a few years back!) and the brass sounds amazing but we'd be stuck with the interface. I've tried the 8Dio stuff and Cinematic Strings on other people's machines and been a bit underwhelmed. And heard the demos on some of the Spitfire things and felt likewise. It's a big long-term decision so we don't want to mess about!

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

[michael diemer]

The best strings I have heard are Hollywood and Mural. I don't have either, but would probably go with Mural.

[composingatnight]

Orchestral Tools for Strings, Percussion, and Woodwinds, and for Brass, CineBrass Core and Pro mixed with Sample Modeling. For cinematic synths, Zebra. For extra big strings for added aggression and cut, CineStrings.

[Fredvalle]

The best way to learn arranging and orchestration is to study scores and recordings. Do NOT use software to teach yourself orchestration. There are major problems with playback with most sample libraries, often the balance is wrong with things like low flutes projecting through an orchestra, or strange blendings that don't happen with real instruments that are just an artifact of the mixing process.

[composingatnight]

The best way to learn arranging and orchestration is to study scores and recordings. Do NOT use software to teach yourself orchestration. There are major problems with playback with most sample libraries, often the balance is wrong with things like low flutes projecting through an orchestra, or strange blendings that don't happen with real instruments that are just an artifact of the mixing process.

They are not wanting software to learn orchestration, they want to know the best sampled tools for work on tv.

[coreshanethi]

Thanks for sharing the post.

[Tally]

The best strings I have heard of the kw finder program https://www.fusiongarage.com/kw-finder-review-results are Hollywood and Mural. I don't have either, but would probably go with Mural.

Mural is definitely the best.

[amish119]

Thanks for sharing!

[dpc]

Hollywood Strings and Brass very good for a larger sound. Mural is good for a big wetter sound than Hollywood Strings (though basses a real weakness at least the last time I used in a friends studio - maybe they fixed that?) I don't think they are as detailed sounding as Hollywood. Spitfire Winds easily the best sounding though you have to tweak a lot. Spitfire percussion very good as well. A good example of the Hollywood libraries is on my sound cloud page: the piece Quantum is basically the above libraries minus Mural. The timpani Spitfire HZ01. Also Spitfire Chamber strings are layered in a lot or added in as divisi with Hollywood. Because they're small they're very good for doing that.

[mooncycles]

Hi All,
We're pondering upgrading our Orchestral VST setup and wanted to get some opinions about what's the best thing/s out there at the moment. We write music for TV so use it a lot. We've been using EWQLSO Gold and Gold XP for all our bread and butter orchestration for years as it's easy to use and sounds pretty good straight out of the box. But we feel like we need a lot more flexibility and articulations - particularly with Brass and Woodwinds. We got Hollywood Strings a few years back and have found the sound was good but the Play interface quite unwieldy and buggy. We now use LASS 2 for most of our strings as it sounds lovely but at times we still need something 'bigger' for them too.

What are people's feelings about what's 'top of the heap' for Strings and for overall orchestral stuff? EWQL are doing the whole Hollywood Bundle very cheap these days (less than half what we paid for just the strings a few years back!) and the brass sounds amazing but we'd be stuck with the interface. I've tried the 8Dio stuff and Cinematic Strings on other people's machines and been a bit underwhelmed. And heard the demos on some of the Spitfire things and felt likewise. It's a big long-term decision so we don't want to mess about!

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

The Play engine has been updated several times. It works fine these days. :-)