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Your Final Judgements: Metropolis Ark 1

For me personally, the 'district' with the band stuff is a complete waste.

I have decent guitars and amps, and bass, and Superior Drummer 3. That takes away from the value of it for me.

I fully admit that I'm splitting hairs here, though. My 'criticism' doesn't detract from how great the library is in terms of quality. I also admit that I'm biased towards real guitar, but then by that logic, I'd better start learning violin lol.
 
The best thing about Ark 1 is the choirs. It's unreal how good they sound. They're also easy to use, and they sit perfectly in any mix.

The brass is the second best thing. It just sounds incredible, and there is a lot to choose from!

The only complaint I have with the Ark series is that it can be too wet at times. Once you start stacking instance after instance, you've got a lot of washy reverb bouncing all over the place. It makes it difficult to mix, especially in conjunction with other libs. It's something I always struggle with whenever I use Ark 1 or Ark 3. If you don't like wet libs, Ark is NOT for you! But If you can get passed that hurdle, Ark 1 will serve you well, and will add that kick to the nuts that your compositions may need.

PS. I HATE the guitar!

Mike you just saved me from buying exactly what I DON'T want: another wet library. I had no idea, so I'm profoundly grateful for helping me save 670 US. Thanks so much.

I already have too many wet libraries, and I can get epic quite fine with the Hollywood series.
 
@Parsifal666 : Come to the dark side... We have room mics.:alien:

I was all set to go until the wet pronouncement...I already have way too many wet libraries, including one of my most useless purchases: Albion One.

Wet libraries limit the composer's options imo.

This is an expensive library...there are too many great, drier libraries out there (and ones I own).

I might just go LCO after all, if I buy anything.
 
Geez, now I can't understand why I've gone so long without lol! Many thanks everyone!
What kind of music are you planning to write with it? Seeing that it starts at mf and goes up to ffff (or 11 in Spinal Tap vernacular), it wouldn’t be good to use for quieter sections. However, I’m not at trailer composer nor a game composer and I’ve found a ton of use for it when writing in a Mahlerian/Wagnerian/Prokofievian/Shostakovich style. It works splendidly well and I have several custom multis set up for sketching. Both the shorts and longs and beautifully detailed but also full. There are 4
Mic settings that allow for closer less wet mixes of the instruments btw though the library shines when they are applied for more sonic detail.

My 2 cents. I own all 3 MA.
 
For me, the final word on any library is whether or not I like the sounds of the material that's being made with it. This is why I purchased the Arks and am very happy using them. There were ample demonstrations and recordings that were honest enough to make me comfortable buying Ark 1. I got using it I picked up 2 and 3 fairly quickly afterward. Nothing sounds quite exactly like them. They come close, but there's power there in the different ensembles and the room microphones sound truly excellent as far as I'm concerned.

I mostly picked up 3 because it had an introductory discount and an additional loyalty discount. For the price I paid for the library, the percussion section itself was worth it. Not that the other tools in the library are bad, mind you. Quite the opposite. But the percussion is damn awesome for its use. Still, it's very expensive otherwise and I might have avoided it were it not for the heavy discount I received.

Yes, they have a sound. They focus on sounding BIG and bold - even the low dynamics of Ark 2 still sound wide in the stereo field and thick/meaty. They're character libraries. You're either after their character or you're not. I don't personally find them too wet or washy provided you balance things correctly, but they do have a hall characteristic to them.

It would be "nice" if the Ark 1/3 had better divided string sections, but that's a square peg round hole type of deal as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Ark (should they make one) has it though, if only to compete with Jaeger. Or even a string-emphasized library to compete with HZ Strings. It would make sense.

I think Ark 1 could have used, at the very least, high winds. Ark 3 has high winds but there's no legato or sustained patches. You might be able to fake it with the decrescendos in certain situations but you won't get a really solid sense of line out of them. I realize trailer-type, or epic music (the stuff Ark 1 was really made for) almost never uses winds, but I would have appreciated the additional color.

Finally, I feel like the percussion in Ark 1 is kind of "good enough". Along with the epic hits (some of which have velocity layers with metals/lows at low velocity and combined hits at higher velocities) you get percussion that gets the job done for specific settings. But it lacks soloist/complex stuff, has limited high-end content (snares, small metals, cymbals, etc). The orchestral percussion comes as a single ensemble, so if you want to get complex with your elements mixing you'll be required to open up multiple instances of it. Not the end of the world, but it does kind of feel like that percussion detail was an afterthought. The drum kit is surprisingly good considering it's not a focus, but I'm not much of a drum kit in the orchestra kind of guy.

Screw the guitars and bass. I don't even open them. As a guitarist I'm actually offended by the tone of the instruments. Ha!

This is where Ark 3 really works well with Ark 1. It kind of makes up for that lack of percussion but still fits in well with everything Ark 1 offers.
 
I've got the lib and it's definitely a solid choice :thumbsup:
I was wondering though how do you guys typically use the high strings 8ve patch ? I can't find a nice way of using it for melody lines... if you had an audio examples of the use of this patch in a melody in particular that would be a great help
 
I tried downloading Continuata but can't get past the "which language" window. The little window just freezes.
 
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