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Audiobro Modern Scoring Brass (MSB)

Considering grabbing MSB at the Black Friday sale price, can somebody confirm whether the patches are locked or unlocked? I really want to be able to use additional scripts in Kontakt.
 
It's $400 now? Wow. It's only been what a year and a half? That's $200 less than the intro price. Now I feel like I wasted even more money.
 
Is the Full Mix version flexible enough for most cases? I have a slow internet connection and spending two weeks waiting for the whole 160GB library to download will not be fun.

I hope it is worth the wait. A bit scared I'll be disappointed but I want this library to be good.
 
I just want to say thank you to all the MSB users chiming in on this thread since its April 2019 release.

I might pick it up tonight. I might not. But it's going to be a well informed informed decision.
 
All patches are batch resaved and purged. I have also had to turn of the Kontakt time synch which did not play nice with DP tempo changes.

How many MSB instruments do you have loaded in your VEPro instance? I have considered that I should just thin things out to start with just what I use most frequently.


I have 6 horns with all mics in one player, and 6 trumpets in another player all mics, = VEpro server Cubase 10 about 2.5 Gb of ram each
 
I picked up Modern Scoring Brass last night. I've fallen behind on two projects now, but I did spend an hour with the library last night.

I'll add some impressions here. Caveat that they're brief thoughts, and brass isn't where I'm most comfortable.

No bounces yet, perhaps in a couple of weeks (sorry, I really shouldn't even be taking the time to write this, but I'm an idiot). At least there are still the isolated, official videos; Guy's walkthrough; and some content posted on page 65 of the Modern Scoring Strings thread. Also, over at The Sound Board, Guy posted more audio snippets, which were very helpful in making my purchase decision (I believe I saw elsewhere that both VI-C and TSB consider it okay to reference those). I'm not sure I'd have anything unique to share beyond those clips, anyway.
  • The first thing I did was stress test it. It wasn't a musical test in the slightest, it was some keyboard slamming and midi duplication for multiple instruments at a time for multiple articulations and multiple CC curves to see if I get get a spike (i7-8700k). No CPU issues of which to speak with VEPro.

  • Saving on RAM is far easier than I anticipated. And, with an SSD, unloaded artics zip in as needed.

  • As with my experience with Genesis, some of the default settings aren't to my liking. It's important to play with every knob, slider, and Mixer setting in Audiobro's latest libraries.

  • The Legato Speed and Transition Volume knobs are powerful and perhaps crucial for setting MSB apart from others. I know others have this out of the box as well, but I sometimes feel I have to use those in other libraries to fix issues, rather than shape sound. Not the case here, it might be more about shaping. I'm very happy about this.

  • Using the Vibrato like I do with Infinite Brass as a bit of a "humanization" helper will likely be valuable. Precision isn't necessary; just futz with it a bit. I should probably test out Detune, as well. Micro changes work wonders.

  • I appreciate the non-hyped sound. It's not "early VSL" levels of clinical, but also far from "every single note has emotion" like CineBrass or "check out how badass brass is" that JXL can be. It's between them, sort of. I think you could pull off Glory era James Horner with MSB.

  • I have many brass libraries, but what often gets me down are inconsistencies. I saw one VI-C user say MSB is fairly inconsistent, but it's not something I've yet noticed compared to the absurdities in CB or Berlin Brass.

  • I've read about some issues with unsatisfactory "harsh tone" when many instruments are used, perhaps most noticeable in context with a full mix. I'll have to check that out more, hopefully, this weekend or next.

  • I could see that issue in the horns and trombones, which can get a bit buzzy and limited on the low end richness. They sound nice lower in the dynamic range, but high dynamics are a bit odd when I'm used to hearing the density of CineBrass and JXL. Soft dynamics, however, are really nice with this library, I think. Sounds like an actual brass section. The mics do seem like they'll help pick between lesser evils, but I mostly listened to Full Mix last night.

    EDIT: Well, I A/B'd a line from The Great Migration by Horner, comparing MSB and CineBrass. CineBrass definitely has a wider range, but MSB wasn't as odd/buzzy/metallic as I thought, comparatively. Maybe my ears are misremembering. That said, I still stongly dislike the trombones.

    EDIT #2: Surround mix is just dry enough with sends off in the MSB mixer to work well with VEPro. Synchron Wide, Instrument heavy on the Dry, hella Wide. Takes some of the edge off.
I could see MSB as a "starting point" brass for a few instruments, layering in others as needs call for it. I'm not nearly there with it yet, not even close, but I could absolutely see it as a future possibility.

For the current price, I'm happier with this already than other libraries in its price range.

I'm not saying it's perfect for all use cases, by the way, but it felt like a risky purchase that I'm happy with and think it will have a place. It's kind of like Berlin Brass, in that I'm happy I picked it up in the sales late last year, but it has too many issues for me to feel it worth more than that.

But dang, I'm really mad about the trombones.
 
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@Evans How are you finding MSB 6 months later now?

Not a lot of reviews or demos or videos out there about it. One person here mentioned they thought it had a metallic sound (but wouldn’t that be expected given it is…brass?). After using Modern Scoring Strings, the flexibility of AB’s engine and attention to detail would’ve made me think MSB could be quite good (also on sale right now).
 
@Evans How are you finding MSB 6 months later now?

Not a lot of reviews or demos or videos out there about it. One person here mentioned they thought it had a metallic sound (but wouldn’t that be expected given it is…brass?). After using Modern Scoring Strings, the flexibility of AB’s engine and attention to detail would’ve made me think MSB could be quite good (also on sale right now).
To be honest, I have not used it in a project since my last post, because I haven't had much time for personal projects and my only paid work recently has been on an old friend's album with just piano and strings sections. My project before that was for a brick and mortar store, with only wooden percussion. So, yeah, no brass.

Funny enough, I did load it up this weekend for the first time in months, and I don't think I'll ever be willing to put in the work to make the upper dynamics - especially, trombones - behave to my tastes.

Even though I'm not a seasoned professional and therefore don't have frequent, rigid deadlines on amazing projects like a Daniel James (this album is a "when it's done" thing for a semi-retired rocker who wants to be Elton John), I still don't have any interest in fighting with those high dynamics on patches that I don't like, which is at least a third of them here, maybe half. That said, the main problems (in my opinion!) would be for someone creating a bombastic piece. Something like a video game RPG battle theme.

I still think the trumpets are fantastic, and soft dynamics are pretty good across the board. Audiobro's own YouTube videos show this off very well (as well as the disappointing, in my opinion, higher dynamics). It's also nice to have all those mutes.

But again, I'm a hobbyist - educated, but still a hobbyist - with the luck of a few small paid engagements per year. I do wholly believe that my opinion is less valuable here than most.
 
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48 hour 50% off sale happening on this now. $399 certainly makes this competitive and a more interesting option.
Call me crazy, i thought it was already in that range 😯 but I've had more and more curiosity about user experiences and demos with it since my satisfaction with MSS
 
Call me crazy, i thought it was already in that range 😯 but I've had more and more curiosity about user experiences and demos with it since my satisfaction with MSS
I think it was like $469 or something previously (on sale). Same core engine and sampling philosophy as MSS - and I believe @dxmachina is a brass player (I read that somewhere on their forum), so I imagine that had a lot to do with what they've achieved.
 
Hi guys... I am a brass player but didn't do the Bond demo. I originally wrote an Intuition Brass-choir style demo that never got posted. Maybe I'll share it at some point unofficially.

It's a little ways off since we're still finishing up LASS 3 now, but MSB is going to get a very nice update.
 
Hi guys... I am a brass player but didn't do the Bond demo. I originally wrote an Intuition Brass-choir style demo that never got posted. Maybe I'll share it at some point unofficially.

It's a little ways off since we're still finishing up LASS 3 now, but MSB is going to get a very nice update.
Finishing up” LASS 3? You mean it’s actually nearing completion already? Honestly with how much work went into MSS updates I was expecting LASS 3 to get pushed back considerably, so if this is true it’s pretty grand. :)
 
Hi guys... I am a brass player but didn't do the Bond demo. I originally wrote an Intuition Brass-choir style demo that never got posted. Maybe I'll share it at some point unofficially.

It's a little ways off since we're still finishing up LASS 3 now, but MSB is going to get a very nice update.
As much as I'm intrigued by the information about LASS and getting the update, that information about MSB is worth notice too and i don't want miss the possible significance of it, as someone who's increasingly interested in the brass. I'd love to hear your demo as well as a bunch more official ones, and any tidbits you're willing to share about the update. At least in these forums, i think the general vibe is that we just haven't heard enough of what it's capable of, and now, speaking for myself, I'm curious to hear it together with MSS
 
Some very nice updates to look forward to from Audiobro always pushing and exploring every avenue to make things better.
 
At least in these forums, i think the general vibe is that we just haven't heard enough of what it's capable of, and now, speaking for myself, I'm curious to hear it together with MSS
I’m just one opinion/use case, but if you’d like to hear MSS alongside MSB and haven’t seen the thread I made a while back, I’ll link it here:


As the title indicates, stems are also available, so you can hear it completely OTB (albeit with a single setup) and mix it yourself to see how it’d fit into your sound.
 
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