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Disappointed in Orchestral Tools Berlin Series Main Collections

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General_Disarray

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I have a lot of orchestral libraries, to name a few:

- Eastwest's Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition
- Eastwest's Fantasy Orchestra
- Eastwest's Symphonic Orchestra
- Cinesamples
- CSS
- OT Iconica String Ensembles (Steinberg sells those but they are made by OT)
- OT Metropolis Ark 1
- VSL Epic Orchestra 2.0
- VSL Synchron Prime Edition
- Spitfire HZ Strings and Percussion
- Other minor Spitfire orchestral libs (those called "Originals")
- All the libs that come with Komplete 14 CE

Probably something else but basically that's most of it. Which means I have a few decent ones, and then some OK ones.

One of the bundles I always wanted to get but always seemed too expensive was the OT Berlin Series (https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/bundles/berlin-series-bundle)

Usually it's close to 1,900 €, which means close to $2,000 for me. It always seemed like a bundle that I should wait for, at least until I go from student to actual composer. That is until today when I saw that Orchestral Tools is running a 50% off sale that would bring that down to 949 €, and that's hard to pass, especially when it's a company that doesn't have 50% off sales very often.

The quality of their products is generally great, even the simple Iconica Ensembles sounds amazing, and Metropolis Ark 1 does as well, except that it has a bug for which C1 and C#1 in the sustains articulation of the low strings sound like Marcatos + Sustain, which they have known about it for months and done nothing to fix it yet.

That being said, a thousand bucks for a bundle that is usually about $2,000 is hard to pass. That's why I wanted to ask several people who have way more orchestral libraries than I do, and have the really good ones, is spending the thousand bucks (not something easy for me right now), really give me a much stronger orchestral library than what I already have? Playing any of the OT libraries I have, and the ones that were made for other companies (Komplete 14 CE comes with some great libraries also made by OT), the sound tells me that getting this library would be a great step forward. I kept searching for a great bass until I got Ark 1.

But a thousand bucks is still a lot of money. So I want to do my due dilligence, because maybe it's not what I think it is.

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MODERATOR EDIT: The OP edited the title of this thread to be more in line with his recent experience as outlined from post #73 https://vi-control.net/community/th...lse-from-orchestral-tools.145976/post-5451347
Click to read more...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I remember I was loading libraries into one of Ben Botkin's excellent MIDI files and there was one library I had neglected. With Ben's MIDI that library came alive and I realized I don't really need any more libraries, I need knowledge, skills, ability... anyways - back to shopping!
 
You have a great array of huge-sounding libraries. If you were going to go down the road of writing more "classic" classical work or start mocking up classical pieces (as opposed to movie soundtracks), that's the best sound attribute for the Berlin series IMO. You have good ensemble libraries and you have the whole EW boat, wich is quite a different tone vs OT. If you are scoring, I agree with others, your toolset seems quite ample.

+1 of Ben's MIDI packs
 
General_Disarray said:
That being said, a thousand bucks for a bundle that is usually about $2,000 is hard to pass. That's why I wanted to ask several people who have way more orchestral libraries than I do, and have the really good ones, is spending the thousand bucks (not something easy for me right now), really give me a much stronger orchestral library than what I already have? Playing any of the OT libraries I have, and the ones that were made for other companies (Komplete 14 CE comes with some great libraries also made by OT), the sound tells me that getting this library would be a great step forward. I kept searching for a great bass until I got Ark 1.

But a thousand bucks is still a lot of money. So I want to do my due dilligence, because maybe it's not what I think it is.
Click to expand...
I agree with the others, invest in skills and practice, don't collect more libraries. Those sales will come back, because they work for the developers. You aren't missing out on anything, no need for FOMO.
And regarding the due dilligence, you might want to buy a single instrument of the collection first and really use it for a year to see how well you get along with it and Sine.
 
General_Disarray said:
I have a lot of orchestral libraries, to name a few:

- Eastwest's Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition
- Eastwest's Fantasy Orchestra
- Eastwest's Symphonic Orchestra
- Cinesamples
- CSS
- OT Iconica String Ensembles (Steinberg sells those but they are made by OT)
- OT Metropolis Ark 1
- VSL Epic Orchestra 2.0
- VSL Synchron Prime Edition
- Spitfire HZ Strings and Percussion
- Other minor Spitfire orchestral libs (those called "Originals")
- All the libs that come with Komplete 14 CE

Probably something else but basically that's most of it. Which means I have a few decent ones, and then some OK ones.

One of the bundles I always wanted to get but always seemed too expensive was the OT Berlin Series (https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/bundles/berlin-series-bundle)

Usually it's close to 1,900 €, which means close to $2,000 for me. It always seemed like a bundle that I should wait for, at least until I go from student to actual composer. That is until today when I saw that Orchestral Tools is running a 50% off sale that would bring that down to 949 €, and that's hard to pass, especially when it's a company that doesn't have 50% off sales very often.

The quality of their products is generally great, even the simple Iconica Ensembles sounds amazing, and Metropolis Ark 1 does as well, except that it has a bug for which C1 and C#1 in the sustains articulation of the low strings sound like Marcatos + Sustain, which they have known about it for months and done nothing to fix it yet.

That being said, a thousand bucks for a bundle that is usually about $2,000 is hard to pass. That's why I wanted to ask several people who have way more orchestral libraries than I do, and have the really good ones, is spending the thousand bucks (not something easy for me right now), really give me a much stronger orchestral library than what I already have? Playing any of the OT libraries I have, and the ones that were made for other companies (Komplete 14 CE comes with some great libraries also made by OT), the sound tells me that getting this library would be a great step forward. I kept searching for a great bass until I got Ark 1.

But a thousand bucks is still a lot of money. So I want to do my due dilligence, because maybe it's not what I think it is.
Click to expand...
I think you already may be know this but am gonna say if that makes any sense.

Never buy everything from one developer. Split, as you’re already having libraries from different devs so that will always be a safe bet.
 
I'm gonna say that while all said above is totally true and taking into account we don't know where are you exactly on your, let's say, musical way - I'd say if this purchase doesn't hurt your wallet Too much and you like what you hear in the walkthroughs and you know you'll spend time on it, compose with it, won't let it sit on SSD untouched - then go for it! :)
 
MartinH. said:
Those sales will come back, because they work for the developers. You aren't missing out on anything, no need for FOMO.
Click to expand...
That's a good point, but at the same time, this is not a company that does 50% sales all the time. Take for example Eastwest. I love their products, I think the Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition for $400 is a great library, and now that I started subscribing to their service and been testing more of their products, they are really solid. But in the little over a year since I started getting into this stuff (and theirs was the first orchestral library I bought), they've been saying they have all their products 60% off, calling it the "Summer Sale". When that one ends, it's the "Fall Sale". Now it's the "Cyber Month Sale". I've never seen them NOT having a sale.

Then there are other companies that don't have sales all the time, but still pretty often. I was able to snatch Spitfire's Hans Zimmer Strings, Hans Zimmer Percussion Pro, Appassionata Strings and a few more for 50% off. They don't have those all the time, but they do.

Orchestral Tools, on the other hand, I kept checking every couple of weeks or so since around January 2023, and I have never seen a 50% sale. Now, do I want these JUST because they are 50%? No, I wanted this bundle for a long time. I said to myself that if it ever got a 50% off sale, I would get it, since they don't do those sales often.

That being said, I don't want to fall for it and then not be absolutely thrilled with them, which has been the case many times with more than one library. That's the problem when you can't really test libraries yourself, you have to go by what you hear in the demos they posted on the product pages. But it's like the TV set you see at Costco that looks perfect and when you take it home it's a disappointment. But that TV you can return, these you cannot.

Has anyone here done any mockups with them?
 
You have a ton of libraries. As much as I love the Berlin series, you’re wasting your money getting something that your current setup can likely already do. At the very least you can buy single patches a la carte if for some reason you just need say Berlin’s trumpet a3. Judging from what you already have and don’t have, Muted Brass and Con Sordino Strings should add new things to your workflow if you really wanna get something from this sale.
General_Disarray said:
Has anyone here done any mockups with them?
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Gonna link my recent attempt at using Berlin Symphonic Strings and Berlin Brass for Star Trek.

Post in thread 'Berlin Symphonic Strings'
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/berlin-symphonic-strings.145802/post-5443993
 
By the way, if you want to listen to something really interesting and at times really good, go to https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/bundles/berlin-series-bundle and scroll down until you see the four Details buttons for all four libraries. Cmd and click on each (or CTRL and click on Windows) to open them in four separate tabs.

Then, in each page, click on the Instruments tab to show the list of instruments. Once you have all four libraries with the instruments loaded for each, click the play icon on an instrument, then move to the next tab, click play on an instrument there, and do the same for all four.

While you can't play more than one instrument at a time in each tab, you can if they are in separate tabs. You might think it's a s**tshow and sounds like crap, and it is a s**tshow, but it sounds incredible! It's like an orchestra of crazy musicians, all of them playing different compositions. At times it sounds absurd, but at times it actually sounds like they're playing a cohesive piece.

Try it, you won't regret it. If you want to go really crazy, start opening more tabs and even more browsers, and start adding more to the craziness.

Right now I have only four, but it's really interesting:

Strings: Violins I Longs and Shorts
Woodwinds: Oboe 1
Brass: Horn Ensemble Bells up
Percussion: Timpani

A ridiculous but powerful masterpiece. Or maybe a masturdpiece, you be the judge!
 
General_Disarray said:
So to me that sounds really good, especially when you say you haven't done much work on them but rather just replaced the former VSL instruments with the OT ones, did I get that right?
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I originally did this mock up with just VSL Symphonic Cube. You can compare the two.

Star Trek 2009 End Credits Concert Version - Mock-up using VSL VI Series and Berlin Studio

This is my second mock-up with strings and the VSL VI Series and Berlin Studio has proven to be a really reliable combo. My initial draft used Berlin Brass because they seem better suited for cinematic but the Horn Ensemble didn't have a gliss so I decided to stick to my trusted VI Series and...
vi-control.net vi-control.net

The one I linked before was me testing out Berlin Symphonic Strings in place of VI Orchestral Strings and Berlin Brass in place of VI Brass for trumpets and horns. It was a test for something I recently bought so I hadn’t fiddled much with Symphonic Strings yet.

Comparison of pros and cons with this mock-up

Berlin Symphonic Strings
+Sounds great out of the box.
+More authentic large size because of separate Violin 2 and has the natural Teldex sound.
+Better legato and runs.
-Shorts aren’t as crisp.
-Bloated sound on divisi parts.
-Much fewer articulations.

VI Orchestral Strings
+A ton of articulations and techniques that put even modern string libraries to shame.
+Much cleaner shorts.
+Divisi parts don’t sound bloated.
-Sounds too close and thin even with Berlin Studio that emulates the Teldex room.
-No Violin 2 so need to fake it with transposition trick.
-Runs and legatos not as smooth.

Berlin Brass
+Has a lot more punch and fitting for cinematic.
+Crisper shorts and more round robins.
+Teldex’s natural room sound enhances the brass especially.
-Can sound bloated but at that time, I only had ensemble patches and not solo patches.
-Fewer articulations
-Not as many dynamic layers and sometimes is stuck on either too loud or too soft.

VI Brass
+Much more articulations.
+More dynamic layers.
-Sounds thinner in general due to the dry as can be Silent Stage.

Bottom line is, each has their clear pros and cons. At least the Berlin series seems to cover the weaknesses of the VSL Symphonic Cube so it works well for me.
 
To play devil's advocate...

For orchestral libraries, I have (in rough order of acquisition):
  • Audio Imperia (all orchestral libraries)
  • BBCSO Pro
  • Musical Sampling Adventure Brass
  • Performance Samples Fluid Shorts, Caspian, Angry Brass/Winds/Soloists, Solos of the Sea Violins
  • Cinematic Studio Series (everything but CS2)
  • Aaron Venture Infinite Brass & Woodwinds
  • SF Abbey Road One Foundations plus all Selections
  • Komplete Ultimate 13
  • East West Hollywood Orchestra Diamond
  • 8dio (Majestica/8W, Century Brass, Lacrimosa and assorted others)
  • Heavyocity (all orchestral libraries excluding NOVO expansions)
  • CineSamples (all CineSymphony)
  • SampleModeling Strings & Brass
  • Sonokinetic Strings, CS Strings and Woodwinds
  • Impact Soundworks (Bravura, Tokyo Scoring Strings & Drums)
  • VSL SZY'd-ized Special Edition 1, SZY'd Woodwinds, SZY'd Percussion, SZY'd Harp
  • Orchestral Tools Berlin almost everything, Metropolis Ark Bundle, JXL/TH Brass and just about every other Teldex library
  • Spitfire Studio Orchestra & Bernard Herrmann Composer Toolkit
  • Spitfire Abbey Road Orchestra Violins 1 and Cellos

If I'm looking for traditionally sampled, in-situ orchestra that's not in a studio environment, Berlin is first call 99% of the time. It's a big investment, but it's a massive GAS killer too. Nowadays the biggest hurdle is actually writing music instead of finding the right library to get the job done.
 
+1 on Berlin series being GAS killer. Berlin Symphonic Strings and Berlin Brass removed a lot of things from my wish list. However, don’t feel pressured into buying everything now. This isn’t the first time the Berlin series went 50% off and it certainly won’t be the last. Make sure you play around a lot with your libraries first so you’d have a much better idea what you need to fill the gaps.
 
Trash Panda said:
To play devil's advocate...

For orchestral libraries, I have (in rough order of acquisition):
  • Audio Imperia (all orchestral libraries)
  • BBCSO Pro
  • Musical Sampling Adventure Brass
  • Performance Samples Fluid Shorts, Caspian, Angry Brass/Winds/Soloists, Solos of the Sea Violins
  • Cinematic Studio Series (everything but CS2)
  • Aaron Venture Infinite Brass & Woodwinds
  • SF Abbey Road One Foundations plus all Selections
  • Komplete Ultimate 13
  • East West Hollywood Orchestra Diamond
  • 8dio (Majestica/8W, Century Brass, Lacrimosa and assorted others)
  • Heavyocity (all orchestral libraries excluding NOVO expansions)
  • CineSamples (all CineSymphony)
  • SampleModeling Strings & Brass
  • Sonokinetic Strings, CS Strings and Woodwinds
  • Impact Soundworks (Bravura, Tokyo Scoring Strings & Drums)
  • VSL SZY'd-ized Special Edition 1, SZY'd Woodwinds, SZY'd Percussion, SZY'd Harp
  • Orchestral Tools Berlin almost everything, Metropolis Ark Bundle, JXL/TH Brass and just about every other Teldex library
  • Spitfire Studio Orchestra & Bernard Herrmann Composer Toolkit
  • Spitfire Abbey Road Orchestra Violins 1 and Cellos

If I'm looking for traditionally sampled, in-situ orchestra that's not in a studio environment, Berlin is first call 99% of the time. It's a big investment, but it's a massive GAS killer too. Nowadays the biggest hurdle is actually writing music instead of finding the right library to get the job done.
Click to expand...
So would you include CSS (the series) as one of the lines that Berlin has replaced for you?

I’m most likely sitting out buying into one of the more expensive ecosystems until this time next year. I have subs to CC and Musio until next Fall and bought NSS and Vista on the good sales recently to do some layering with.

I don’t think I can make a fully informed decision on what my true “sound” is until I have more experience with the libraries I have. Berlin is definitely one of the main contenders, though.
 
VannKraken said:
So would you include CSS (the series) as one of the lines that Berlin has replaced for you?
Click to expand...
Yup. It's nice to work with, but you really have to like the sound of Trackdown and want all drippingly over-the-top romantic all the time or the strings will become annoying to hear. The phasing in the solo woodwinds also never fails to drive me up a wall.

Even worse in the solo strings, brass and winds library if you can hear The Dreaded Hiss (tm), you can never unhear it. They addressed this (mostly) in the CSS 1.7 update, but this collection lives on a backup spinning drive these days for me.

General_Disarray said:
Has anyone here done any mockups with them?
Click to expand...
Here are a few.

The overused Star Wars Main Theme (very WIP from 0:26 to 1:34). No processing/mixing/mastering yet.

0:00-0:25: Berlin Woodwinds, JXL/TH Brass, Berlin Percussion, Berlin Symphonic Strings
0:26-1:34: Berlin WWs, Berlin Brass, Berlin Symphonic Strings (with Berlin Strings First Chairs from 0:26 to 0:49 layered with BSS), Berlin Percussion

View attachment Star Wars Main Theme Mvmt 1-4 Draft v1.mp3

Berlin Strings and Berlin Percussion along with Berlin Strings First Chairs in the second movement. Brass is JXL/TH. Berlin Strings SFX for a few aleatoric decorations here and there.


Berlin Symphonic Strings, Berlin Brass, Berlin Woodwinds, Berlin Percussion, Berlin Strings First Chairs, Berlin Woodwind Soloists 1, Berlin Symphonic Harps, Berlin Harpsichord


Berlin Symphonic Strings, Tallinn/MA2 Choirs and Damage 2.
 
Trash Panda said:
Yup. It's nice to work with, but you really have to like the sound of Trackdown and want all drippingly over-the-top romantic all the time or the strings will become annoying to hear. The phasing in the solo woodwinds also never fails to drive me up a wall.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the detail! I don't mind investing in some different developers, but would like to contain the overall breadth of my overall library, if possible! I appreciate your opinion. :)
 
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