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Audiobro Modern Scoring Brass (MSB)

Bought and as usual download managers suck. My installation got stuck, and now I can't resume my download without requesting a reinstall through mail. Absolutely ridiculous.

Update: Posted on their forum, and got a really quick reply. I can now retry the download. :emoji_thumbsup:
 
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That is just way too long for me, I have never got through any of the Daniel James's marathons. But more the merrier!
the HZS one was actually hilarious. I'm sure he was upset because he spent quite a few quid on it - but was still funny(and he can probably look back and laugh)
 
It is odd that they have this mammoth , expensive library which has been hugely anticipated and yet they have only managed two fairly similar demos and one short walk through video.
Yeah for some reason, feels like they really rushed it....Spitfire does a great job (save the latest Ambient Guitar release) of providing all you need on release day. Oh well...I still love the tones I’ve heard and am hoping for new videos and demos soon.
 
So.... Yes, of course I had to buy it. Took about 70 minutes to download the full 160 GB on my fast Comcast setup.

When I add the Notre-Dame Cathedral IR from Audioease Altiverb to any solo instrument set to close-mic it sounds AWESOME! This is a must buy library if you love symphonic brass.

Did I mention I was impressed.
 
I found that on YouTube after it was posted, but it sounds like a cut and paste job, replacing some other library with MSB. This is why I’m fine waiting a bit for demos that reflect the user taking some time to know their way around a new tool.
 
For me, brass is all about DYNAMISM!

The Strings are the bread and butter of the orchestra,

the Winds are there to be colorful and create timbral variety (which is a major reason why the rise of synths has corresponded to the decline of woodwinds but that's another can of worms),

the Percussion is there to create accents and grooves,

and the Brass is there to PUSH AIR and make you go wow.

The brass can create more dynamic contrast than any string or woodwind instrument. That's their reason for existing. So brass libaries need a wide dynamic range above all, and then they also need seamless transitions across the entire range so that you don't notice the crossfading of dynamic layers or switching of articulations. Good musicianship in every sample doesn't hurt either.

The demos of Daniel's piece and the Mahler piece are good in their respective dynamic ranges but how does the library work moving across dynamics?

I wrote this little fanfare with CSB.



I think this is a good test piece because it goes across all the dynamics both in short and long notes. I'm getting 80-90% of what I want with CSB but hey, always willing to buy another brass library ;)

EDIT: Duh, forgot the MIDI! Here it is if anyone wants to give it a shot with MSB.
 

Attachments

  • Little Fanfare MIDI.mid.zip
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Nice Noam. Am I wrong, or are the beginning trumpets a mimic of the opening oboes and harp from "Flight To Neverland"?

Anyway, what I am hearing there, is not nearly enough dynamic range. There is some, but to my (relatively inexperienced) ears, not near enough. Maybe if there any real brass players on the forum (I think there are) they can speak about this?
 
Are we really doing this again? Begging for walkthroughs and demos? I don't understand how a developer can overlook something as obvious as that. It's like they expect users to do all the work for them. Don't be cheap, AudioBro! Pay reviewers, send some NFRs, do whatever it takes but don't leave your customers hanging like that, it looks remarkably unprofessional.

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Are we really doing this again? Begging for walkthroughs and demos? I don't understand how a developer can overlook something as obvious as that. It's like they expect users to do all the work for them. Don't be cheap, AudioBro! Pay reviewers, send some NFRs, do whatever it takes but don't leave your customers hanging like that, it looks remarkably unprofessional.

Have you heard the demos on their site? As I kinda posted before, the first one is hard to follow with anything else.

Quality over quantity.
 
As a brass player... these demos I'm hearing are not convincing me. The Star Wars and Brucker sound very far from realistic. I'll stick with what I have.

Too bad, wouldve loved to play with a bunch of BBb Cimbassi samples since every other sample library only has F Cimbassi, but I'm not forkin out that much money for it. Love me some Contrabass Trombone samples, and I even play one :P

The dry room and slicing (editing) of the attacks give it a machine-like quality that seems to destroy all life when you get the full ensemble going. For lack of a better description, it sounds painfully "synthy". As soloists they may be a bit better, and serve well to augment other brass libraries, but only time will tell.
 
well here's a quick excerpt from Bruckner 8. I didn't do the trumpet parts because I've spent too much time on bruckner for one night and I'd like to try some other mockups. My first impressions are 70/30. I don't so far agree with those that said the sound was thin. It's very very flexible tone wise. I think it has a steep learning curve and has a lot of potential, but seems to be a bit limited in terms of dynamics especially on the shorts. I fiddled with a bunch of different ways to try and get the short notes in these dotted rhythms to have more bite and punchiness, but they seem to lack the same intensity of accent that is present on the sustained marcatos. The long notes here are all using the "accent" on the slider, as marcato seems more like a FFmf accent, although I think it could be quite useful. The library seems to have serious performance issues for me, not even having to do with ram or apparent CPU usage. This demo for example used only a few gigs when I purged and still it was incredibly stuttery. Simple DAW functions would cause short freezes frequently and the plugin seems to seize up any time I try to move a knob. Again this could be all on my setup and personal experience, but kind of frustrating nonetheless. Gonna do a mahler chorale next and probably put more effort into the minutiae of the sound itself. Stay tuned. Also, any short requests?

Edit: This is NOT dry. I took the stock reverb off and added some So. Cal orchestral hall from Spaces II. This is mostly close and decca mics, with the tuba having more close and the others havind more decca. The surround seems to have some weirdness to it that I don't personally like.

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/bruckner_8-mp3.19589/][/AUDIOPLUS]
Thank you for the demo...I certainly mean no offense to you whatsoever, but this sounds just terrible to my ears. Like phasey-synthy....dang, making me re-think this thing.
 
As a brass player... these demos I'm hearing are not convincing me. The Star Wars and Brucker sound very far from realistic. I'll stick with what I have.

Too bad, wouldve loved to play with a bunch of BBb Cimbassi samples since every other sample library only has F Cimbassi, but I'm not forkin out that much money for it. Love me some Contrabass Trombone samples, and I even play one :P

The dry room and slicing (editing) of the attacks give it a machine-like quality that seems to destroy all life when you get the full ensemble going. For lack of a better description, it sounds painfully "synthy". As soloists they may be a bit better, and serve well to augment other brass libraries, but only time will tell.
Hey Karl - as a fellow brass player I'm not convinced either. There is a caveat - I'm a brass player and I dont think samples will ever be convincing to my ears (SM Trombone is awesome but still not the real thing)..... just as Jose Herring posted earlier, he doesn't like Clarinet libraries (apart from the Herring Clarinet lol).
 
Nice Noam. Am I wrong, or are the beginning trumpets a mimic of the opening oboes and harp from "Flight To Neverland"?

:whistling: ;)

Anyway, what I am hearing there, is not nearly enough dynamic range. There is some, but to my (relatively inexperienced) ears, not near enough. Maybe if there any real brass players on the forum (I think there are) they can speak about this?

Yes, the range is mp-fff. Although the fff is only available on the marcato legato (instead of regular legato) but you can switch to it fairly seamlessly during a crescendo as shown here.

I would love to have true, ultra mellow p and pp brass samples but it seems like you need to buy Albion 5 or Metropolis Ark 2 to get em.

I would rather be missing the bottom end than the top though. I can tell you from comparing CSB to other libraries like Berlin Brass, Hollywood Brass etc., this is the only one that has true fff. (although the horns in Hollywood Brass are pretty great) It might not sound totally overwhelming at the ending crescendo there, but that's because in a real orchestration it would be buttressed by high winds, string tremolos, and above all the timpani and cymbal.
 
Have you heard the demos on their site? As I kinda posted before, the first one is hard to follow with anything else.

Quality over quantity.

Sorry, I don't share your excitement, the official demos didn't make a good impression on me. I talk about this particular track here: https://vi-control.net/community/th...-scoring-brass-msb.76944/page-32#post-4378321

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for more than two fully dressed demo tracks to judge a $600 brass library. I need a lot more than that to make an informed decision and open my wallet.

I usually trust my gut feeling and was hoping the user demos would redeem MSB. Unfortunately, what I heard so far -- thanks for sharing -- only confirmed my initial thoughts about it. At least I'm saving $600 for the JXL library or the upcoming ProjectSAM library.
 
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