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On the Fence About Spitfire Studio Woodwinds

Here's a quick run with a tighter legato with the mics put as far up front as I could (by tinkering) with a fairly tight legato. I really like the way the Bass Clarinet turned out. Light CSS to go with it.

1. Bass Clarinet
[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/spitfire-bass-clarinet-mp3.19901/][/AUDIOPLUS]

2. Bassoon
[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/spitfire-bassoon-mp3.19902/][/AUDIOPLUS]

3. Flute
[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/spitfire-flute-mp3.19903/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

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  • spitfire bass clarinet.mp3
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  • spitfire bassoon.mp3
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  • spitfire flute.mp3
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Here's a quick run with a tighter legato with the mics put as far up front as I could (by tinkering) with a fairly tight legato. I really like the way the Bass Clarinet turned out. Light CSS to go with it.
I think this sounds pretty good. I think it is a matter of learning to program to the libraries' strengths. And remember they need to take breaths. I always forget that part......
 
I think this sounds pretty good. I think it is a matter of learning to program to the libraries' strengths. And remember they need to take breaths. I always forget that part......

I didn't put a tonne of time into this. I've only had the library since yesterday, but I wanted to show that the legato was pretty decent...and that the tree mic wasn't as bad as some might think.
 
Here's a quick run with a tighter legato with the mics put as far up front as I could (by tinkering) with a fairly tight legato. I really like the way the Bass Clarinet turned out. Light CSS to go with it.

1. Bass Clarinet
[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/spitfire-bass-clarinet-mp3.19901/][/AUDIOPLUS]

2. Bassoon
[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/spitfire-bassoon-mp3.19902/][/AUDIOPLUS]

3. Flute
[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/spitfire-flute-mp3.19903/][/AUDIOPLUS]

No disrespect to anything you did, but I actually don't think this sounds good at all. It sounds incredibly MIDI-ish and flat, and those tree mics are just wrong.
 
I didnt use any modulation or expression. Didnt want to put that much time into a quick demo

I suspect this might be the kind of thing that drives developers crazy. People throwing up "demos" of a library without the slightest attention to factors that directly impact the overall impression of it. I'm sure you just did it to show the "tone" or the tree mic or whatever but a lot of things contribute to the overall impression of the "sound" of a library and the reality is that almost any library will sound bad, synthy and flat (to varying degrees) if you don't even bother to ride dynamics.

IMHO, if you're going to take the time to record a "quick demo" the least you could do is ride the modwheel even a little while you're doing it.
 
I suspect this might be the kind of thing that drives developers crazy. People throwing up "demos" of a library without the slightest attention to factors that directly impact the overall impression of it. I'm sure you just did it to show the "tone" or the tree mic or whatever but a lot of things contribute to the overall impression of the "sound" of a library and the reality is that almost any library will sound bad, synthy and flat (to varying degrees) if you don't even bother to ride dynamics.

IMHO, if you're going to take the time to record a "quick demo" the least you could do is ride the modwheel even a little while you're doing it.

Just for the record....someone here asked me for a demo. Just because someone asks for a demo doesnt mean im going to spend an entire afternoon on it.
 
Just for the record....someone here asked me for a demo. Just because someone asks for a demo doesnt mean im going to spend an entire afternoon on it.

I obviously don't know your process or workflow but, IMO, it would have been a lot fairer to the library and ultimately a lot more informative to whoever asked for the demo to skip the strings and spend the time you took recording them to record a single pass at some mod wheel data
 
I suspect this might be the kind of thing that drives developers crazy. People throwing up "demos" of a library without the slightest attention to factors that directly impact the overall impression of it. I'm sure you just did it to show the "tone" or the tree mic or whatever but a lot of things contribute to the overall impression of the "sound" of a library and the reality is that almost any library will sound bad, synthy and flat (to varying degrees) if you don't even bother to ride dynamics.

IMHO, if you're going to take the time to record a "quick demo" the least you could do is ride the modwheel even a little while you're doing it.
I would argue the exact opposite way and say it is even more valid since it shows what users could expect right out of the box. Why would a user only be allowed to 'demonstrate' something, if it works well right out of the box but not if it needs work?

Alternatives to these raw and quite honest demos are not a responsibility of the user but of anyone who wants to market the product. It's not an ad after all and it is exactly that: demonstrating what to expect. The truth is neither this nor a very sophisticated demo that sounds incredible since the latter is something that not everyone can achieve to the same standards. But everyone is starting from the same point and that's what has been demonstrated.

People who are no Photoshop pros might get worse results in Photoshop than if they had used a way less professional software that offered a preset/filter for whatever they wanted to do. Doesn't mean Photoshop is bad, just shows their skill and/or amount of work they'd had to put into it. That's one of the factors to consider.

That's my personal opinion and I'm grateful for the demo.
 
I would argue the exact opposite way and say it is even more valid since it shows what users could expect right out of the box. Why would a user only be allowed to 'demonstrate' something, if it works well right out of the box but not if it needs work?

Well, I personally would never want to hear a demo of a library that is not used how it's intended...because I would not use it that way. I do feel the good intentions from the poster of the demo, but it's not really a demo, quick or otherwise, of what the library actually sounds like. Unfortunately there is no one library that I know or have heard of, that does not require at least the use of dynamics...reason being that the samples are supposed to imitate a live player, and not supposed to be stagnant, especially winds. There isn't a professional live player that would play a violin without vibrato and some form of dynamics to show how nice it sounds...and the same needs to be done with samples, whether woodwinds, brass or strings. NOW...the only people that demos like that normally sway, are those that do not know the potential. So for a novice listener, it's potentially harmful as they might not like what they hear, but for those who know should not take that as "this is how it sounds", because it's not fair to the developer...as it's not played as intended. I think that's the point here.

Paul Thompson goes over this very exact thing in this video.

 
Something that varies between libraries, is what I call ‘plonkability’. Some libraries are designed to let you sit down and plonk in some notes like you’re at a piano. (Including some really superb libraries like the Joshua Bell - so its not an insult, just a design choice).

At the other extreme is something like spitfire solo strings. Incredible musicality, terrible plonkability.

But this is also by design. because once your get the hang of crafting the arcs, you get a performability instead - the ability to really craft a performance, that even the (otherwise magnificent) Joshua bell violin can’t match.

Which is to say the the musicality of the instrument, is by design, in what you get by crafting the performance. Christian talks about not using the wheel as being like ‘conducting a corpse’, and I think this reflects a design philosophy that runs though most of their instruments. Personally, I’ll take a performability over the instant gratification of plonkability any day. Though I do plenty of plonking myself. And I can see how developers who invest greatly in crafting the underlying performability and musicality of an instrument are driven crazy by the kind of instant gratifying unboxing videos that drive so much marketing theses days.

So a pure tone demo sans mod wheel is perfectly valuable as that. And it may tells us that the library had poor plonkability. But it’s also helpful to contextualize it as not necessarily telling us much about the real musicality if the instrument.
 
Huge fan of the solo Alto Flute, Clarinet, and all the low woodwinds. The ensemble patches for both Flute and Oboe remain the weak point of the library to my ears (but, to be perfectly blunt, Albion One for instance has a ton more defects and that's a far more popular library).

That said, I'm having a ball with SStWW. I finished up my Music for Solo Woodwinds and Celest and am now dicking around with a new piece for Solo Woodwinds and Brass (and yes, both are down to my usual terrible level of composition).

I've been so inspired by the library I've been getting only a few hours sleep a night since I bought it.
 
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