What's new

Full orchestral library with split instruments?

glorium

New Member
I am looking for library that has split instruments like violins 1, violins 2 etc for each section in orchestra.

I have looking Berlin Insipre 1 and 2, but they are more like ensemble patches.

I can't find anything except SonusCore The Orchestra, but I feel like legatos on strings and woodwinds doesnt sound that well.

So, do you know any library like this, but that is not too big, like spitfire symphonic series, orchestral tools berlin series, i dont need such detailed libraries, and they are too huge in GBs, at least something under 100GB.

I forgot to tell this will be used on 16GB RAM.
I dont like libraries that are heavy scripted and hard on Kontakt Gui.
And final, I will buy Jeager definitelly, and jaeger itself will be one template for trailer music, I need something what covers classics and can cover epic range too.
 
I am looking for library that has split instruments like violins 1, violins 2 etc for each section in orchestra.

I have looking Berlin Insipre 1 and 2, but they are more like ensemble patches.

I can't find anything except SonusCore The Orchestra, but I feel like legatos on strings and woodwinds doesnt sound that well.

So, do you know any library like this, but that is not too big, like spitfire symphonic series, orchestral tools berlin series, i dont need such detailed libraries, and they are too huge in GBs, at least something under 100GB.

I forgot to tell this will be used on 16GB RAM.
I dont like libraries that are heavy scripted and hard on Kontakt Gui.
And final, I will buy Jeager definitelly, and jaeger itself will be one template for trailer music, I need something what covers classics and can cover epic range too.
If you want the instruments all in one single library, but not just ensemble patches, it sounds like Jaeger or Metropolis Ark 1 would be a good fit. I'd suggest using the search function and reading up on some past threads.

If you're willing to get more than one library, but want to keep it simple you might try something like the Spitfire Studio Core Bundle--make an account and add it to your wishlist in the next couple of days and you'll get an email with a discount that might bring it down to the $400-$500 range. That is if you're leaning more toward general orchestral sound. Stick to Jaeger or Arks if you're leaning toward epic.

Each of these have strengths and weaknesses, so make sure to research them and figure out what suits your needs the best. You won't find one single library that does it all.
 
Last edited:
Hey thanks.
I see you're using Musical Sampling libraries.
Are those CPU spikes that were told about on forum here fixed?
 
Hey thanks.
I see you're using Musical Sampling libraries.
Are those CPU spikes that were told about on forum here fixed?
Not that I'm aware of. I use Vienna Ensemble Pro, so when I host my instances within that instead of my DAW, which is Logic, it gets better CPU performance. That's the only fix I know about.
 
If you want to run a full orchestra with 16 gb of RAM you are going to have to make compromises.

You could consider an older library with a smaller RAM footprint like East West's older East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra. The Platinum version is slightly higher than your ceiling of 100GB.

Be aware that the older libraries from that time don't sound as good as the same companies' newer releases, but if you really want to just compose and stick with a single, low-powered computer, that's probably the most you could do.

Honestly, I'm not even sure that is going to be satisfying to you; like many others, I devote a full computer just to strings, with 64 GB of RAM and an i9 CPU.
 
Here's the Buyer's Guide thread. Even though it's pinned to the top of Sample Talk, it's easy to miss it.

Resource-wise, you might be able to pull off Spitfire's Studio Core Bundle, and with the May 5 wishlist sale it would be good bang for the buck. 32.4 GB total for your Strings, Winds, Brass, (maybe pick up Project Sam's True Strike or ISW Rhapsody Percussion if you need orchestral percussion)--you might pull it off with some track freezing or bouncing to audio and disabling. I don't own it, by the way. And it's designed for a dry studio sound, so make sure that's a sound you'd want.

Another thing you might consider is getting the Native Instruments Symphonic Series. It's resellable if you decide you're not into it, and you might be able to pick up some parts of it used on the classified thread, or at KVR Audio. I believe Sonuscore's The Orchestra is resellable too. These are exceptions to the norm, as most libraries can't be resold.

I bet a lot of people on this forum wish that they could sell the libraries they bough at first when they were getting started.;)
 
Last edited:
If you want to run a full orchestra with 16 gb of RAM you are going to have to make compromises.

You could consider an older library with a smaller RAM footprint like East West's older East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra. The Platinum version is slightly higher than your ceiling of 100GB.

Be aware that the older libraries from that time don't sound as good as the same companies' newer releases, but if you really want to just compose and stick with a single, low-powered computer, that's probably the most you could do.

Honestly, I'm not even sure that is going to be satisfying to you; like many others, I devote a full computer just to strings, with 64 GB of RAM and an i9 CPU.
Thank you, I am aware of that.
I don't know to compose professionally yet to go upgrade computer and buying big libraries.
For now only what I found is Musical Sampling to sound kinda good, that is not so heavy (is it?).
 
Thank you, I am aware of that.
I don't know to compose professionally yet to go upgrade computer and buying big libraries.
For now only what I found is Musical Sampling to sound kinda good, that is not so heavy (is it?).
I own Adventure Strings, Soaring Strings, and Adventure Brass. Off the top of my head, I believe both of those strings libraries are hard on my CPU. I don't remember if that's also the case with the brass but I believe so. VEPro is better at distributing the CPU load. Without it, I think I can only run maybe four or five Musical Sampling Instruments at a time before my DAW trips up.

They are very dry and upfront libraries and when I use them I need to use some spacialization (for early reflections) and reverb (for tails). Of those three, I find Adventure Brass the most useful, though I prefer to use Caspian Brass when I want a quick all-in-one brass setup. And Caspian has the same CPU spike situation as Adventure Brass, but it sounds amazing out of the box.
 
Last edited:
I own Adventure Strings, Soaring Strings, and Adventure Brass. Off the top of my head, I believe both of those strings libraries are hard on my CPU. I don't remember if that's also the case with the brass but I believe so. VEPro is better at distributing the CPU load. Without it, I think I can only run maybe four or five Sample Modeling Instruments at a time before my DAW trips up.

They are very dry and upfront libraries and when I use them I need to use some spacialization (for early reflections) and reverb (for tails). Of those three, I find Adventure Brass the most useful, though I prefer to use Caspian Brass when I want a quick all-in-one brass setup. And Caspian has the same CPU spike situation as Adventure Brass, but it sounds amazing out of the box.
I did heard that adventure patches are heavy on CPU and Disk usage.
 
A small all-in-one package that does epic and classical will be impossible to find. You'll have to compromise on one or the other. For classical, VSL Special Editions (and SE+ if you can afford) are an obvious choice. Steinberg Iconica is another option, but at 145 GB it needs more disk space than you wanted. Hollywood Orchestra Gold for a Hollywood sound. Apart from these I can't think of any comprehensive solutions for a complete orchestra.
 
I'm a single computer guy. You may consider having a "basement" library with little or no legatos and then adding something on top to get more performances. I don't have The Orchestra, although I love the concept of all-in-one small footprinted libraries. The demos had a bit of a "narrowed" sound to me, I'm not sure wether that's due to mastering or something else.

Definitely EWQLSO is a great basement library and (i disagree a bit with John here) I think it still sounds amazingly good compared to many actual libraries. Maybe not in isolation, but it blends different sections like a charm.

Complimentary libraries may be CSS, Musical Sampling (I have no spikes here, I'm on PC with Cubase), 8dio Agitato Serie....

Personally what keeps me away so far from the (very attractive) Spitfire and OT offerings is that they offer a one configuration in terms of memory and HD footprint. I've been with my finger on the buy button for Hermann's lib then I discovered it was like 150 Gbytes for a "character" library. I'd gladly get a nice mixed version with a smaller footprint. That's what sound engineers are for after all :) In general I'd love to see back the good ol' habit of offering lite versions for each of those amazing libs. Then I'll be all for them.
 
I'm a single computer guy. You may consider having a "basement" library with little or no legatos and then adding something on top to get more performances. I don't have The Orchestra, although I love the concept of all-in-one small footprinted libraries. The demos had a bit of a "narrowed" sound to me, I'm not sure wether that's due to mastering or something else.

Definitely EWQLSO is a great basement library and (i disagree a bit with John here) I think it still sounds amazingly good compared to many actual libraries. Maybe not in isolation, but it blends different sections like a charm.

Complimentary libraries may be CSS, Musical Sampling (I have no spikes here, I'm on PC with Cubase), 8dio Agitato Serie....

Personally what keeps me away so far from the (very attractive) Spitfire and OT offerings is that they offer a one configuration in terms of memory and HD footprint. I've been with my finger on the buy button for Hermann's lib then I discovered it was like 150 Gbytes for a "character" library. I'd gladly get a nice mixed version with a smaller footprint. That's what sound engineers are for after all :) In general I'd love to see back the good ol' habit of offering lite versions for each of those amazing libs. Then I'll be all for them.
Thanks a lot.
I realized I can't get all in one.

I am almost decided to buy...
- MS Adventure Strings
- MS Trailer Strings
- MS Adventure Brass
- MS Trailer Brass
- MS Soaring Strings
- Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion
- Heavyocity Master Sessions Suite
- Auddict Master Solo Woodwinds
- Lacrimosa or Olympus Micro Choir (I find Olympus to be so cheap, but kinda in demos sound similar to Lacrimosa? Or am I deaf?)
https://soundiron.com/products/olympus-micro-choir
https://8dio.com/instrument/lacrimosa-epic-choir-for-kontakt-vst-au-aax/

I checked also Oceania, but nah, I do not like that, I prefer "ohh" all the time, "mmm" all the time and "Aaa" all the time, because I would use this choir to add background element (Probably sustained or marcato) and lacrimosa fits well, and Olympus, this sounds so similar to Lacrimosa to me.

With Lacrimosa my budget is out, with Olympus I can buy soemthing more, but I will buy Lacrimosa if more quality over
 
  • Like
Reactions: lux
For small computer footprint I can recommend the following products to have a look at:

1) East West Symphonic Orchestra (Gold or Platinum)
This is the most complete package. It just includes every orchestral instrument. Even solo instruments, harp, piano...
The recording is rather ambient.
It is a very old library many things are controlled by velocity, which nowadays often use the modwheel. But it is a stunning library.
Edit: Also Hollywood Orchestra Gold would be an option. It is recorded dry compared to Symphonic Orchestra. But you reach 16GB of RAM very quickly with this one. It has very nice legato string patches.

2) NI Symphony Series Essentials
Also rather ambient recording. No true legato in the essentials version, but still very capable for the beginning.

3) Spitfire Studio Series
Misses percussion.
The recording is more dry.

Listen to some demos and trust your own ears what you like best. Taste differs.

I too like the musical sampling products :)
Be aware that you need a full version of Kontakt for many of the libraries you have listed above.

If you want Lacrimosa wait for a sale. 8Dio regularly does very deep sales. Also NI normally does a sale in the summertime. And spitfire has the wishlist sale coming next week. Also East West is known to have regular steep discounts.
 
Last edited:
I would go for:

  • CSS
  • CSB

And Woodwinds, Percs of your choice

The worst thing would be to buy twice, what has happened to many people in this forum already.

CSS and CSB seem to be very reliable for most people here. If you own one, you will get a discount for your next library.
 
Last edited:
I also vote for the Cinematic Studio series, but as you are getting Jaeger too, it's worth pointing out that Jaeger is 36 GB, CSS is 32 GB and CSB is 34 GB. With CSS, CSB and Jaeger you'll be at 100 GB or so and you'll still need Woods, and probably another percussion library. I also have no idea how the Cinematic series runs on 16GB.

The Inspire series may not be what you are looking for, but it sounds great, and is designed to work on small systems. The two of them together are less than 20 GB.

FYI, between Inspire 1 & 2 there are some solo instruments, albeit without a full set of articulations:
Violin, Cello, French Horn, Trumpet, Flute, Clarinet, Oboe, and Bassoon. As they added solo instruments in Inspire 2, it seems likely that Inspire 3 (I believe there will be an Inspire 3) will add Viola, Bass, Trombone, Tuba, and English Horn. Perhaps some others, like Contrabassoon. In any case, I feel confident it will be an evolving series.

It also doesn't sound like Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra is what you're looking for, but no harm in taking a look at it, because it has a great GUI, will work on any system 4 GB or more. and has all the main instruments and articulations. Plus some fun additions, like the "Symphony" feature. And only 10 GB.



In terms of wasting money buying the wrong library, I think you may need to upgrade your computer someday to fully utilize the best libraries. And it will always be useful to still have a more compact library that can be taken on a laptop to a coffee shop or on vacation.
 
Last edited:
Just to also throw out there, Orchestral Tools are launching their new store front
later this year, which i think essentially lets you buy what you need from their various collections, rather than having to buy a whole library and then not use half of it, or duplicate stuff you already have. Might be a good way to get going, or fill in the gaps from what you don't manage to get from other libraries.



I'm just getting going and have started off with the Symphobia Libraries. I like them alot and are very user friendly and sound great out of the box. I'm filling in with some other stuff as I go, notably Embertone and hope to graduate to some Orchestral Tools Stuff later in the year. You can sometimes pick up some ProjectSam libraries in the used section here on this forum. Good Luck !
 
I've had good results with Spitfire Studio Orchestra Core + Rhapsody Percussion with 16gb of RAM, so I can vouch for that combination on a setup similar to yours. I should note, though, that I haven't been using a giant template that pre-loads every articulation of every instrument I own, I mostly just load things as I need them.
 
According to my calculations, below are the smallest (per mic) full orchestral library configurations that I know of.

Without legato:

CineSymphony Lite
= 3 GB

Trailer Strings +
Caspian Brass +
Kontakt Factory Woodwinds +
Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion
= 4.13 GB

With legato:

LASS Lite +
Sample modeling brass +
Kontakt Factory Woodwinds with WIPS +
Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion
= 6.07 GB

Sonuscore The Orchestra
= 7 GB

Additional stuff
:

Olympus Micro Choirs = 0.448 GB
Apocalypse Percussion Micro = 0.283 GB
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom