# Combining MSS, MSB, and Genesis - Stems Included



## Duncan Krummel (May 4, 2021)

Hey all,

Thought I'd put this in its own post for its own discussion. I put together a track using MSS, MSB, and Genesis to showcase how the libraries interact with each other (+ a bit of percussion from HWP non-opus):




I also thought it would be interesting, and potentially useful, if others were able to access the individual stems for each instrument to mix themselves. I'll be the first one to admit that I've got work to do on bettering my mixes, so this is also somewhat a selfish hope for insight. Please DO leave feedback if you wish, on any element of the music/mix/master.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xo1qha08x1ago9b/AAARmCDeQtRfhm3LWft69-tha?dl=0


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## Mucusman (May 4, 2021)

Thanks for sharing the track, and providing the stems is a creative step to engaging others... nice! 

From an initial listen, here are two comments:

1) The high string runs at 1:47 and 2:02 really took me out of the moment you were creating (so, first, take this as a compliment -- I WAS with you in what you were creating). They just sound bad, in my opinion. It's not the writing, it's the implementation screams "samples" to me. I know you didn't include woodwinds (since this showcases only AudioBro products), but I think including a woodwind run here would work well... or somehow get the strings to sound better.

2) I love the brass falls at 2:14 and 2:24. Did you use the pitch-wheel or use a falls sample. I have MSB but can't remember if there are falls articulations. I thought this effect was very well written and implemented.


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## Duncan Krummel (May 4, 2021)

Mucusman said:


> Thanks for sharing the track, and providing the stems is a creative step to engaging others... nice!
> 
> From an initial listen, here are two comments:
> 
> ...


Thanks for listening!

1) I agree. I almost didn’t leave them in, but I hadn’t used the runs/scales feature yet and wanted to find a reason to. Not always the best creative rationale, but c’est la vie. In MSS’ defense, I disabled the automatic scaling feature to force them to play double speed. That may very well work against the realism here. Perhaps the Intuition patches might better serve those lines, or - as you said - adding a woodwind double.

2) Thank you again! This is all pitch bend here. Basses + bass trombone + tuba, and occasionally cello. Same thing with the string harmonic slides earlier and a few drops at the ends of phrases.


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## Toecutter (May 4, 2021)

Great writing Duncan!! Not convinced by the brass, it's just my overall impression of almost all MSB demos I heard, especially trumpets sound synthy and thin to my ears. The crescendo at 1:28 lacks power and presence for a big statement like that. The tone is terrible and I blame the room Audiobro used, it simply doesn't work for brass imo. Try CSB or Hollywood Brass, the improvement will be drastic. 

Other than the fake runs, I like the strings here!  Curious to hear this track with CSS too...


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## Duncan Krummel (May 4, 2021)

Toecutter said:


> Great writing Duncan!! Not convinced by the brass, it's just my overall impression of almost all MSB demos I heard, especially trumpets sound synthy and thin to my ears. The crescendo at 1:28 lacks power and presence for a big statement like that. The tone is terrible and I blame the room Audiobro used, it simply doesn't work for brass imo. Try CSB or Hollywood Brass, the improvement will be drastic.
> 
> Other than the fake runs, I like the strings here!  Curious to hear this track with CSS too...


Muchly appreciated 

MSB is a bit of a mixed bag for me, and not because it’s an issue of tone (for me), but because I often think I want a mellower, more classic brass ensemble sound until I actually arrive at using it. All of a sudden I realize that, yet again, I need some honky, brassy screaming to carry the music. It’s actually obnoxious...

I think MSB excels in presenting a very neutral, balanced, and warm brass sound. I do think the brass is sometimes too consistent, which can come across as sampley, but there are remedies for this much of the time. All my opinion, of course.

I think the tone has been one of the biggest complaints about MSB, but I think for me it’s a matter of not knowing how best to mix it.

Case in point: when working in this track, I was experimenting with how best to fit the brass into an appropriate space with reverb, and while I wasn’t able to achieve the ‘cavernous,’ for lack of a better word, sound I wanted, I kept getting a _fantastic _stage sound (EW Spaces II, Hollywood Scoring Stage, -2.0db dry, -14.0db wet).

And, hey, this is how brass are recorded a lot of times, so I should be able to achieve the sound I’m looking for afterwards, but I’m not as practiced there. Always more work to do.

As for CSS/CSB, depends on how masochistic I’d like to be with redrawing CC curves


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## Casiquire (Sep 10, 2021)

This sounds really nice to me. I also question the runs and they sound far more articulated than I'm used to hearing from MSS. Did you use any particular setting that might have caused that?


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## Noc (Sep 10, 2021)

Just found this through your plug in the MSB thread. I wanna say I absolutely loved the strings in this, and I was actually surprised at how great they sound during the intro – much as I want to love MSS, I’ve never been completely sold on the room tone, but be it the nature of the piece or whatever else you did, they sound gorgeous in this. Makes me all the more eager to finally give it a proper spin (been too busy with other projects to dedicate proper time to it). That said, I will agree with everyone else here about the runs – I really hope they sound a lot better when they aren’t playing at double-speed. 

The brass is generally good too, didn’t have any issue with the tone here, though as always with MSB there are moments when it maybe doesn’t quite punch through as much as it needs to. The solo legato trumpet was especially lovely and soulful throughout. The falls were great, especially for only using pitch-bend.

Mixing-wise, I’m no more than an amateur myself, but I would say the brass was consistently a bit too loud, especially so in some parts, sounding like it was just dropped on top of the mix sometimes. Conversely, the choir, whilst lovely, was a bit too distant to my ears, so that I had difficulty making out some parts; maybe a slightly closer mic mix or just making it a bit louder would help. That’s about all the notes I had.

Overall a lovely composition that does a fair job of showcasing these libs together. Thanks for sharing it.


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## Duncan Krummel (Sep 10, 2021)

Casiquire said:


> This sounds really nice to me. I also question the runs and they sound far more articulated than I'm used to hearing from MSS. Did you use any particular setting that might have caused that?


I think the main culprit is that I forced them to operate 2x the speed they were meant to, but in my defense, that's the speed called for (and maybe should be expected for runs ). I think an easy fix would be to double the runs here with the standard legato at max transition speed. One could even break it into A and B to maintain section sizes. I think that extra blur may help it be a bit more convincing.


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## Casiquire (Sep 10, 2021)

Duncan Krummel said:


> I think the main culprit is that I forced them to operate 2x the speed they were meant to, but in my defense, that's the speed called for (and maybe should be expected for runs ). I think an easy fix would be to double the runs here with the standard legato at max transition speed. One could even break it into A and B to maintain section sizes. I think that extra blur may help it be a bit more convincing.


Hmm, that could be it but with the band "runs" I'd expect them to be able to nail that speed. I might play with it tonight.

("I might play with it tonight." It's like I'm begging to be taken out of context sometimes.)


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## Gene A (Oct 22, 2021)

Duncan Krummel said:


> Hey all,
> 
> Thought I'd put this in its own post for its own discussion. I put together a track using MSS, MSB, and Genesis to showcase how the libraries interact with each other (+ a bit of percussion from HWP non-opus):
> 
> https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xo1qha08x1ago9b/AAARmCDeQtRfhm3LWft69-tha?dl=0


Hey, I think this sounds really good. Don't be shy. What's HWP and Genesis can you clarify pls?


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## Noc (Oct 22, 2021)

Gene A said:


> Hey, I think this sounds really good. Don't be shy. What's HWP and Genesis can you clarify pls?


HWP = EastWest Hollywood (Orchestral) Percussion
Genesis = Audiobro Genesis Children’s Choir


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## Duncan Krummel (Oct 22, 2021)

Gene A said:


> Hey, I think this sounds really good. Don't be shy. What's HWP and Genesis can you clarify pls?


Exactly as Noc said, and thank you!


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## toddkreuz (Oct 22, 2021)

Sounds great! Really quality writing. 
Everybody seems to be doing covers now, its nice to see
somebody actually writing. I will definitely be trying my hand
at these stems for practice and to be able to hear more inside
of what you did with this piece, thank you!


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## Russell Anderson (Nov 29, 2021)

Thank you for linking me here! Yes, MSS and MSB sound actually lovely here. I used to not care for the brass (and I’ve certainly had criticisms of the strings) but to all of those in here who are not into the MSB sound, if not this example Duncan wrote, try this:



Personally, MSB could pass as real brass, to me. In the above video, yes, the aggression and sheen of the layered libraries is fantastic and impressive, but I actually thought the first playthrough was a John Williams reference recording, MSB is that good. It is just a style of sound that you may not like. I liked them both and CSB really didn’t compare for me.

My only druther Duncan is 1:33 on the trumpet solo as it’s coming back down from the super squealy range… I feel like there should be more dynamic contrast, and even on the way up I think. The part is asking for some projection which I think makes it harder to balance, between the dynamic marking and the volume… …I’d have to toy with it, it’s 5:41am so it’s difficult to take the time to write out what I’d try there (sorry, what a cop out I know) but it’s really close, in general; frankly I actually like the balance of the brass and strings mostly but I think perhaps the strings… maybe could follow the brass more in their dynamics around in that area, like 1:35 they could start to peek through a little sooner. And this could potentially be accomplished by having the brass only hit the highest dynamics as like a quick swell instead of riding smoothly across the higher end of their dynamic range, not sfz-level of quick but subduing enough soon enough, phrasing allowing, that the strings have a little window to sparkle through with their beautiful and sort of relieving ostenatos. Sorry, I’m saying a lot of words here, if my computer was setup and it wasn’t late I’d play it out. That would be my feedback on the brass… Yeah. Especially the end of what I wrote eI think was a bit hard to follow, so I’m sorry, I think I’ll just try to set aside some time soon to demonstrate what I meant later if it needs to make more sense.

The strings, yeah, the ostenatos go from sounding gorgeous to sometimes sounding super synthy, some of the runs, too. It’s like the sound of the room can’t keep up with the scripting (like the room sounds sometimes like actually part of the transitions between notes, instead of being the space that reverberates with the note changes - like “room legato” if that makes sense - so perhaps a pronounced short reverb on them to try to force them into a space might improve those spots, potentially. Or it might just have to be approached differently in the engine, or… arrangement-wise. But the ideas I’m hearing are very cool. And I’ll echo what someone else said - I’m very grateful you’re writing and not mocking up existing pieces. It makes listening SO much more engaging, and providing stems too is really wonderful. I’ll see if I can do anything with them, but presently I’m working 65 hours a week, so… It is hard to do much of what I want to do, at the moment.

And on MSS, I’ve actually decided to cap my spending here for Black Friday for responsibility’s sake, so perhaps on a future sale I might go for MSS, but yeah… The ensemble sound is really quite lovely and velvety, and clean. And the articulations are absolutely incredible for a workhorse string library. You’ve done some cool things here with the aleatorics and detune, and the ostenato engine and runs are a huuuuge force in drawing me toward this library.

Lastly I just want to point out, I love 1:42, like I really love that part. In fact the progression leading into it is beautiful and that’s part of why I love it, really lovely and thoughtful writing, thanks for posting this and I wish I’d Ben here sooner!


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## Russell Anderson (Nov 29, 2021)

God, here I go with the long posts again


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## Duncan Krummel (Nov 29, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> God, here I go with the long posts again


I really appreciate the depth of your critique though! Certainly, there’s room for improvement on the track, and as someone who is mostly self taught as a mixer, I value the insights afforded by taking the leap and posting to a larger audience of music makers.

Additionally, the engine AudioBro has created for their newest/updated libraries is - while fantastic and flexible - a bit of a gargantuan to contend with. The learning curve is steep and unforgiving. Every time I work with the libraries I learn a new trick or tactic to improve something, be it realism, color, cohesion, etc.

The true downside for me is that, with every new update, I need to re-save all of my patches the way I’d prefer to start working with them. This is a challenge when there are SO many patches to edit and re-save, so most haven’t been tweaked yet. Don’t remember if that was the case for The Long Road Home, but it’s my current state of being. One of these days I’ll get around to it, and I’m sure the workflow will be easier.

I tend not to spend an unhealthy amount of time tweaking things. I spent my schooling writing for live musicians, therefore it wasn’t important to tweak a single articulation or CC, which is not how I prefer to spend my time (to the detriment of the results, but I’m stubborn on this and don’t want to change, so…. it suffers.)


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## Russell Anderson (Nov 29, 2021)

Duncan Krummel said:


> I really appreciate the depth of your critique though! Certainly, there’s room for improvement on the track, and as someone who is mostly self taught as a mixer, I value the insights afforded by taking the leap and posting to a larger audience of music makers.
> 
> Additionally, the engine AudioBro has created for their newest/updated libraries is - while fantastic and flexible - a bit of a gargantuan to contend with. The learning curve is steep and unforgiving. Every time I work with the libraries I learn a new trick or tactic to improve something, be it realism, color, cohesion, etc.
> 
> ...


That does sound tedious, re-patching your presets every update. I suppose it’s good I’m sealing my credit card in a block of ice as there is already enough to learn that’s new to me after this Black Friday (and I had stuff to learn anyway, even barring the craft itself…), MSS would be a behemoth on top of a large stack of homework. On top of 65 hour weeks (for now)!

I may throw my hat into the circle that thinks the brass may be easier to set if it’s reduced in volume in the first half, then the higher dynamics can sing over the top of the strings, but in general not lose their presence, and everything might gel a bit better. I do love their warmth in a lot of places. 

It’s cool and strange that in a DAW, the writer is the performer, of midi data, quite a bit different from an instrument but also similar, kind of… It is nice sometimes to also have libraries which “just work” rather than just a full Melda-like suite of tweaks _of_ tweaks in a library, which for the potential realism comes with a lot of added responsibility. Audiobro’s comprehensive approach does remind me of Melda (which I love, but could never use every single time). NSS and Performance Samples libraries may be the easiest I’ve programmed for results I like, and Infinite series depending on the line. But to some extent there’s no getting around re-drawing/recording the same little cc1 passage 17 times. Woohooo!

Well, I don’t know where you sit with this piece and the others you’re working on past and present, but I’m looking forward to hearing what else you work on.


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## PeterN (Nov 29, 2021)

No MSG


---

What tool you used for pitch bending?


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## Russell Anderson (Nov 29, 2021)

PeterN said:


> No MSG
> 
> 
> ---
> ...


It’s only bad if you have a sensitivity to it! Or maybe if you combine it with things that create a sensitivity along your… …it’s been a long time since I understood brain chemicals, nevermind. Something about some pathway being overexcited. Anyway

I’m pretty sure the pitch bending is just part of the new Audiobro engine. It’s built into MSS, pretty sure it’d be there for MSB too.


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## PeterN (Nov 30, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> It’s only bad if you have a sensitivity to it! Or maybe if you combine it with things that create a sensitivity along your… …it’s been a long time since I understood brain chemicals, nevermind. Something about some pathway being overexcited. Anyway
> 
> I’m pretty sure the pitch bending is just part of the new Audiobro engine. It’s built into MSS, pretty sure it’d be there for MSB too.


Yea but it was not only strings bending. Curious on this topic, experimenting with pitch, the deeper the dive, the more it can create uncleanliness.


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## Russell Anderson (Nov 30, 2021)

PeterN said:


> Yea but it was not only strings bending. Curious on this topic, experimenting with pitch, the deeper the dive, the more it can create uncleanliness.


MSB is also using the new engine.


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## PeterN (Nov 30, 2021)

Russell Anderson said:


> MSB is also using the new engine.


Thanks man. Keep hearing that developer almost every time pitch bending is mentioned. Havent checked them in detail, simply because I hope they didnt do someething unique here (ie. dont want to spend another thousand). Oh..f. it.


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## Russell Anderson (Nov 30, 2021)

PeterN said:


> Thanks man. Keep hearing that developer almost every time pitch bending is mentioned. Havent checked them in detail, simply because I hope they didnt do someething unique here (ie. dont want to spend another thousand). Oh..f. it.


There are other ways, but you’d need to combine it with a reverb after the fact so you aren’t bending the sound of the room at the same time, which would be kind of obvious lol. You can try Alterboy for realtime bending, but I’m also pretty sure Audiobro is using something under the hood in Kontakt, so a little bit of poking around in there may get you the results you’re after. And if the libraries you want to bend are locked, you can resample the phrase you want to shift into Kontakt and then bend it that way. Or use a resynthesis plugin, but it would be probably artifacty. 

IRCAM Stretch, or maybe Scrub, which may or may not be sold outside of Falcon are other options, Harmor and Padshop are other options, MSoundFactory is another with its resampling (or MAutoPitch, MTransformer, MRhythmizer, MHarmonizer, MUnison, but afaik all of those but MRhythmizer will artifact, and MRhythmizer will necessarily affect time as well as it can only stretch in realtime, it won’t adjust pitch or time without affecting the other)

That is my essay on pitch bending. There’s also Time ‘N Pitch by Serato but at that point, buy Audiobro libraries unless you want the best $800 pitch/time algorithm for every use (and limited to a few semitones iirc)


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## Duncan Krummel (Nov 30, 2021)

Nothing special for pitch bend! Just using basic pitch bend as provided by Logic’s automation track. MSB and MSS are very dry by default, so fairly extreme bending isn’t an issue I find. Honestly, I’d rather more libraries support it. It frustrates me that I have to use an external plugin to bend CSS. Bending room tone isn’t always an issue. Sometimes it actually adds a nice effect, especially if absolute realism is a secondary concern.


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## PeterN (Dec 1, 2021)

Duncan Krummel said:


> Nothing special for pitch bend! Just using basic pitch bend as provided by Logic’s automation track. MSB and MSS are very dry by default, so fairly extreme bending isn’t an issue I find. Honestly, I’d rather more libraries support it. It frustrates me that I have to use an external plugin to bend CSS. Bending room tone isn’t always an issue. Sometimes it actually adds a nice effect, especially if absolute realism is a secondary concern.


Thanks for reply. Sorry I might eat up your comment space by focusing solely on this triviality. I will leave it here. Just a bit curious if theres a magic wand out there. Im mostly using Alterboy myself, and one pitch plugin, - not too satisfied. Thanks for reply and music too.


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