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Audiobro Modern Scoring Brass (MSB)

Well. I know I could make something better than this but honestly for the amount of time spent I could have done the same or better with other, way cheaper libraries. This time I tried out the spatialization thing to see if maybe the library was designed to work better that way and I think it might have turned out worse. The user experience so far has been incredibly frustrating. The library stutters so much that i feel like I spent half the time actually doing stuff and half the time waiting for the 1 - 3 second freezes that happened almost every time I touched one of the knobs. To my ears it almost sounds like the trumpets were recorded in a different room, which is weird, and everything feels simultaneously too dry to have any life but too processed to be malleable. I kind of wish I had my money back so I could buy CSB instead and have finished a whole film score in the time it took to learn the basics of MSB.

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/mahler_2-mp3.19590/][/AUDIOPLUS]

Thanks for sharing, this is bad on a whole new level... did you accidentally flip some switch that made the trumpets sound like a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle horn?

I would love to read the manual, is there one included?
 
Uhhh.... I don’t know what’s going on here. I do know for a fact that there is a very detailed manual included in the download.

I don’t presume to know or say what some of the current apparent problems are, but I’m near-certain that this isn’t how MSB is supposed to sound. I also know that Audiobro have terrific support, and they are very responsive on their forum, if there are issues that would be the first place I’d go.

I guess this whole thing does show the perils of launching without enough demos and supporting material. First impressions are hard to break. I guess finishing and tweaking the instrument itself ate up all their time, because they did originally state that they would be drip feeding demos before release, and that clearly went out the window. It feels at this point that they need to do damage limitation, which is never an enviable place to be.

It is all quite surprising. It has taken them 10 years to get this to market, I can’t imagine how long to record, edit and script. Their QC is known as being about the best in the business, and I presume this is what has eaten into their time. So it’s all, um, surprising.
 
What I notice is that MSB at least how I perceive it in the demos and walkthrough sound a way too clean (for my taste) regarding intonation and tuning which imo results in sounding kind of midi-ish / synthetic.

Apart from that I find the trumpets lacking in bite and crisp on the short articulations, which is something I hoped that they get that better for that kind of rousing fanfarish writing. I have a liking for their horns and tuba though. Also as this is something what confuses me still that they did write on their page that the instruments going from true dynamics ppp up to fff I simply I don´t hear that. I know it is not all about that blattey sound all but also the very quite dynamics and in their walkthrough when the modwheel is at 0 percent it definitely is at best a piano dynamic level.

Sometimes I think that this long promising list what they created on their page creates HUGE expectations for the crowd and when they don´t deliver everything in that regards it easily dissapoints the people. It´s dangerous to write things like this for instance:

"We know that “next generation” are words that get thrown around very liberally by sample library developers, but we think in this case you’ll agree."

Such things create super high expactations and while I think that this is great that they set very high goals for themselves, the risk to fail is high..

Is that library a next-gen library? Hm...so far, what I read from the peoples impression its not even on par with libraries which are already been out. Now don´t get it too salty: I actually like some stuff in their brass quite a lot, and some stuff just definitely not where I have to agree with the peoples critic here.

It reminds me a bit on the synchron strings with their re-invented legato and next gen library. They had big plans but it wasn´t convincing in the end. I hope that the guys from Audiobro will take some of the critic in consideration, or..which I have 50 percent hope for that they show more of the library which helps iron out the negative impressions which people have so far.
 
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Don't get me started derailing this with praises, WC II was THE reason for me to want to compose game music in the first place! ;) I freaking LOVE it and listen to it regularly to this date, haha! Not even mentioning those others...huh. Everything from either Blizzard or LucasArts is 100% gold for me.
 
finally downloaded , finding the library a breath of fresh air , as i mentioned before , faults in every library , with my morning coffee , substituting the horns in a piece i'm working on , i'm hearing its easier to fit in a mix , the tones have an up front sound, much work to do but enjoying this library
 
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.


For the sake of comparison, I've made a mockup of your short piece with... "another true divisi brass library". :whistling: This is not a MSB Mockup !

Here it is for those interested.



Edit : This could obviously sound better with some EQ, but thought it would be better to keep the demo totally raw as an exemple.
 
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I know this could be deemed as slightly demanding but can someone mockup that same Star Wars example with any of these...

CSB
SSB
BB
HOB

And if you do, then if we ever meet in person, I shall buy you some beers. ;)
 
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