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8DIO Century Brass

I really don't understand why people get hung up on this. It really takes very little effort to place the instruments yourself. The spoon feeding of musicians is turning us into cookie cutter engineers.
Oh no! I'm not trying to dumb anybody down :) I'll do more with the placement and mix than just a typical pan/balance, so hopefully it will be a useful option, even for more experienced engineer/composers like robgb. For this update it's more about just making this library work out of the box, and play well with other prominent commercial libraries to save people time. Thanks - Colin
 
Oh no! I'm not trying to dumb anybody down :) I'll do more with the placement and mix than just a typical pan/balance, so hopefully it will be a useful option, even for more experienced engineer/composers like robgb.
I wasn't criticizing 8Dio. I just find it disheartening that so many composers feel the need to be spoon Fed. Learn your craft for godsakes.
 
I wasn't criticizing 8Dio. I just find it disheartening that so many composers feel the need to be spoon Fed. Learn your craft for godsakes.
I don't entirely disagree that people often make it to easy on themselves - on the other hand a lot of us don't have the time to mess around with technicalities of libraries, adjust release/attack parameters, figure out ways to smoothly pan sound without it sounding like the entire room is just shifted to the right/left etc...
 
We'll share everything we have with any plugin we use. A ton of this work is just me getting Century, Spitfire, Cinematic Strings, Agitato, Cinesamples exactly as I want them in my own template, just like everybody else....

Please keep the update requests coming. I'm so used to the workflow in Century, it's easy to overlook the way other composers approach things sometimes.

Thanks,

Colin
May I say, it's good to have you here and listening...
 
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I really don't understand why people get hung up on this. It really takes very little effort to place the instruments yourself.
Yes of course anybody can pan instruments. I'm hoping Colin is speaking of adding early reflections simulating a room, probably with a Bricasti or SPAT. If such is the case, doing some with a more modern seating with V2's far right, Celli left-center and Viole right center would probably be enough to get me on board!
 
I don't entirely disagree that people often make it to easy on themselves - on the other hand a lot of us don't have the time to mess around with technicalities of libraries, adjust release/attack parameters, figure out ways to smoothly pan sound without it sounding like the entire room is just shifted to the right/left etc...
Sigh. A) No library is perfect, so adjustments are almost always mandatory; B) This reads to me as "A lot of us don't have time to learn our craft."

Yes of course anybody can pan instruments.
It isn't just a matter of panning instruments, but learning to place them in 3D space using EQ, compression, panning, etc. If the placement of the instruments in a sample library is all that's keeping you from getting on board...

I don't know. I just find the lack of curiosity and need to learn about the craft of mixing—which these days goes hand in hand with the production of any kind of music—extremely disturbing. It reminds me of the novelists I know who say, "I don't have time to learn the ins and outs of the publishing business. I just want to write my books."

Okay, I'm done ranting. I'll leave you folks in peace.
 
Yes of course anybody can pan instruments. I'm hoping Colin is speaking of adding early reflections simulating a room, probably with a Bricasti or SPAT. If such is the case, doing some with a more modern seating with V2's far right, Celli left-center and Viole right center would probably be enough to get me on board!

Exactly this. I own all Adagio/Agitato/Anthology and am familiar with the 8dio approach, but except for a few specific articulations those libraries have slowly been edged out of my template by in situ libs like Spitfire and CSS. If I'm going to drop the cash on a premium-priced library like Century, I want to know that it will fit into my template without hours of painstaking mix-related trial and error.
 
Colin -

Are there dynamics on Ho2 arcs?

I like the swell. Sounds great.
I'd just like to have the swells be able to not increase the volume & timbre of the swell to the same level all the time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the change the speed of the swells with the Speed knob.

.
 
Colin -

Are there dynamics on Ho2 arcs?

I like the swell. Sounds great.
I'd just like to have the swells be able to not increase the volume & timbre of the swell to the same level all the time.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the change the speed of the swells with the Speed knob.

.
All the arcs for both Century Brass and Strings have multiple dynamics (at least 3, depending on which art you're using, sometimes there are 4). These are triggered by velocity (p-mp triggers at low velocities, hard velocity triggers mf-ff etc. etc).

All Arcs (Brass and Strings) and Soaring Marcatos (for brass) are programmed so the speed knob alters the length. The length is NOT altered by Time Machine or simply jumping to a release trigger. Time Machine can screw up the vibrato and sound pretty wonky beyond a 10-15% change in length. Regular release triggers don't give you the natural shape of the note. They just jump to release at whatever point you stop playing, so you lose the full shape of the note. For example, release halfway through a note, and you lose the natural decrescendo of the arc or the final "push" off of the note in a soaring marcato. That push is everything to me for epic emotional brass marcatos. I want DaaaaaaAAAAAH! Not Daaaaa....meeep :)

For Century, individual arcs and soaring marcatos are split in multiple groups with a very nuanced set of envelopes. The speed knob alters multiple sample starts and envelopes within each group. It only took about 8 months to figure it out :) So you have a "natural" performance (vs. a crossfade) that allows you to change the length organically, without artifacts. Length change on the Century speed knob is up to around 30-40% depending on art, so way beyond Time Machine capability. There are short and long variations of all these as well. In my experience I can get away from crossfading sustains and cover just about anything I want in the the typical "long" category, but now using natural organic performances. The end result is significantly better to my ears vs. sustains (even the smoothest sustains). It's not subtle, they just sound a lot better. I will only use sustains if I'm short on time, honestly (which I know most of you are!!!!). So sustain away, but this is also an option to consider!

I feel this is the number one feature of Century that is overlooked. I really thought it was going to be something that everybody loved....but THUD :) I think we haven't done enough video tutorials emphasizing this feature. It's definitely a different workflow, but worth it in my opinion.

Colin
 
Sigh. A) No library is perfect, so adjustments are almost always mandatory; B) This reads to me as "A lot of us don't have time to learn our craft."
No library is perfect but some libraries are more perfect than others. Forgive the weird sentence. :P
And a composers craft to my knowledge is primarly writing music not necessarily not making the tools used work... I'd like the developers to spend maximum effort on that so I can focus on writing music instead rather than such technicalities. Of course mastering sound design/mixing is very useful, propably even required in modern day music production. At the same time I think it is also important that your tools are as great sounding and workable as possible straight up - then you can spend more time writing the actual music with them - or making them sound even better rather than having to make workable to begin with.
Not sure if that was an understandable english sentence. :D Not a native speaker.
We may have to agree to disagree.

And just so this post isn't entirely off topic - here is some walkthorough and live composing by Dirk Ehlert which I think hasn't been shared here yet.

 
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All the arcs for both Century Brass and Strings have multiple dynamics (at least 3, depending on which art you're using, sometimes there are 4). These are triggered by velocity (p-mp triggers at low velocities, hard velocity triggers mf-ff etc. etc).

All Arcs (Brass and Strings) and Soaring Marcatos (for brass) are programmed so the speed knob alters the length. The length is NOT altered by Time Machine or simply jumping to a release trigger. Time Machine can screw up the vibrato and sound pretty wonky beyond a 10-15% change in length. Regular release triggers don't give you the natural shape of the note. They just jump to release at whatever point you stop playing, so you lose the full shape of the note. For example, release halfway through a note, and you lose the natural decrescendo of the arc or the final "push" off of the note in a soaring marcato. That push is everything to me for epic emotional brass marcatos. I want DaaaaaaAAAAAH! Not Daaaaa....meeep :)

For Century, individual arcs and soaring marcatos are split in multiple groups with a very nuanced set of envelopes. The speed knob alters multiple sample starts and envelopes within each group. It only took about 8 months to figure it out :) So you have a "natural" performance (vs. a crossfade) that allows you to change the length organically, without artifacts. Length change on the Century speed knob is up to around 30-40% depending on art, so way beyond Time Machine capability. There are short and long variations of all these as well. In my experience I can get away from crossfading sustains and cover just about anything I want in the the typical "long" category, but now using natural organic performances. The end result is significantly better to my ears vs. sustains (even the smoothest sustains). It's not subtle, they just sound a lot better. I will only use sustains if I'm short on time, honestly (which I know most of you are!!!!). So sustain away, but this is also an option to consider!

I feel this is the number one feature of Century that is overlooked. I really thought it was going to be something that everybody loved....but THUD :) I think we haven't done enough video tutorials emphasizing this feature. It's definitely a different workflow, but worth it in my opinion.

Colin

Colin,

Thanks for the detailed description.

What I've heard of this feature set has sounded great in various recent videos. Looking forward to hearing it up close and personal soon.

I like the overall 'Bravo' tone of the library. Should be a great counterpoint to my existing libs.

.
 
I feel this is the number one feature of Century that is overlooked. I really thought it was going to be something that everybody loved....but THUD :) I think we haven't done enough video tutorials emphasizing this feature. It's definitely a different workflow, but worth it in my opinion.

Colin

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the helpful feedback. Yes, some more video tutorials about this feature (the Century speed knob) , and how it fits into the library's functionality would be very helpful too.

Any additional video tutorials for Century Strings would also be super useful, i.e. their use in various string writing scenarios, ..etc.

Cheers,
Muziksculp
 
I really don't understand why people get hung up on this. It really takes very little effort to place the instruments yourself. The spoon feeding of musicians is turning us into cookie cutter engineers.

Colin and Troels are in the best position to do this work because they know the exact dimensions of the hall they used, the seating of players during recording sessions, and the placement of microphones. The rest of us can only guess at these variables by listening.

I wish such data would be publicly released for every orchestral library, at least a PDF floor plan of the recording sessions. It would be fascinating and also very useful. However, there are reasons why not. For example EWQLSO was recorded incognito and they are contractually not allowed to tell us what symphony hall they used. The world class engineers like Alan Meyerson and Geoff Foster who worked with Spitfire on HZ01 and HZS might have some "secret sauce" regarding micing that they don't want to spill to the world.
 
It isn't just a matter of panning instruments, but learning to place them in 3D space using EQ, compression, panningp...
You can take "dry" samples and put them in a room with panning, eq & compression? You don't hear the difference between that and Spitfire or Berlin's room sound?
 
You can take "dry" samples and put them in a room with panning, eq & compression? You don't hear the difference between that and Spitfire or Berlin's room sound?

One thing you can definitely hear on Spitfire and Berlin (own both) is ambiance issues with weird releases, "phrase connecting" and fast modwheel movements.

It's all fakery anyway :grin:. I'll take playability and quickness over actual recorded ambiance that causes nothing but trouble any day of the week. 99% of people didn't notice that the VSL samples are "fake" 15 years ago. Whichever scoring stage you take and record an orchestra in, the engineer will use reverb on the mics. Abbey road recordings - they get reverb slapped on them.

Spitfire libraries are processed. I believe they EQ their libraries, use compression per dynamic layer then bounce it and put it into Kontakt and you crossfade between processed layers. The clues are there in the samples. They sound good out of the box, but they take control away from you and with that come all the problems that these libraries have and that people have complained about. (EDIT: It was an assumption, official comment is that this isn't how they're treated.)

The "room shifting with panning" is just nonsense :grin:. You can use a simple delay and create another tap of your panned Century Brass instrument, pan that tap all the way to the other side and delay it by ~15ms, slap some reverb on top of it, leave it and come back again tomorrow, and you won't even recognize that it wasn't recorded in place.

Here's what I slapped up in 2 minutes with ripped audio from the Youtube walkthrough of Century Brass:

1. Centered - out of the box
2. Just panned
3. Delay - 1st tap 0ms 50% left, 2nd tap 18ms 100% right + Reverb on top of it all.

You can play with volume of the delayed 2nd tap to emphasize or reduce the effect.

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/century-2fh-mp3.12351/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

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99% of people didn't notice that the VSL samples are "fake" 15 years ago.
15 years ago VSL was all we had so we all just used them and that was it. Mixing engineers have always understood the problems with VSL (and other libraries) but you won't find much high-level mixing talk on vst forums.

I don't think SF eq's or compresses their samples but if they did it has nothing to do with "creating" a room.

You're audio example though is quit well done and exactly what I'm speaking about (and I hope also Colin!)

Here on the forum, I asked for something similar 5 years ago for Adagio. When bouncing their new stereo mixes for Century they'd want to add varying degrees of delays and ambience to the different mic positions before bouncing. Doing it right would be pretty complex. Here's to hoping they sound good!
 
The thing is the dry mix on CB still has a lot of the room tail in there. It's less problematic in CS. I am sceptic of the results Colin or anybody is able to achieve with such a wet chunk of audio embedded on the source.

Looking forward to it though!
 
Yeah we'll see what they can come up with. It's great having Colin in on the discussion!
 
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