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Is Berlin Brass good for cinematic composing?

I am more forward of looking for an answer for either CSB or Berlin brass. Will Berlin brass be alright by itself without metropolis ark 1?
If it's for film scoring, then CSB. Plus its a little easier to create great sounding music on. Berlin Brass is amazing but takes more time to yield great results.
I'm lucky, I have both so I don't have to decide. However, I use CSB a lot more than BB if I had to be honest.
 
Wow jeremiahpena, thanks for sharing those stems. I personally like the BB+Met Ark 1 + HWB version.

Seems like Berlin brass really shines during the French horns part.

Curious which strings library is your workhorse.
 
I tried to build a bigger template with Berlin Brass and 64Gb of ram. Bad idea, because that library takes a lot of resources. Also what I hate is how different articulations (staccatos, marcatos, sus and legatos) are not consistent in volume. Long notes top off at mf, shorts play at fff. Working with the library was too slow for me and I haven’t use them much. I might check BB again, when I get a new PC. I just get faster results with other libraries at the moment. Too bad this library isn’t resellable.
 
Once the new shop is out, I think I'll only buy a couple of things from Berlin Brass instead of the whole library to fill the gaps that I find CSB to be lacking
 
Here we go! Many audio examples incoming! :)

When I wrote City of the Sword, I used Berlin Brass augmented with Metropolis Ark and Hollywood Brass. A short while later, Cinematic Studio Brass released and I redid the track using CSB. The version on Soundcloud is CSB version. But I still have the Berlin Brass version on Youtube, and I decided to open up the Cubase file to do some direct comparisons.


First, here is the Cinematic Studio Brass version:



Now, here is the Berlin Brass+Met Ark+HWB version:



And now for some stems!

The Cinematic Studio Brass version:

And the Berlin Brass+Met Ark+HWB version:

For reference to see what I layered in from Ark and HWB, here's the original version with those muted, leaving only Berlin Brass:

And here's the parts that were layered in from Metropolis Ark and Hollywood Brass:


Now, I wondered what it would sound like if I had only used Berlin Brass and left out the other libraries, so I threw together a version that was Berlin Brass if it was all I had:



Thanks so much for doing this! It fortifies my belief that CSB would be a great allround brass library for my needs. I hope one day there will be a nice sale on a bundle with the whole suite including woodwinds and percussion.
 
Just remember that Powell does mock ups that eventually get replaced by real orchestras. Some of us have to make do with sampled brass so it's not entirely an accurate comparison.
yeah but his mockups sounds pretty darn close to the real thing.

IIRC I think he uses BB + cinebrass for trombones.

Seems like the OP has already decided, but in general - BB has much better shorts - and lower dynamics. CSB has more aggressive fortissimo sustains, and while less deeply sampled - also takes up a smaller footprint. Also doesn't have individually sampled instruments, so if you're regularly writing chords within sections - berlin is going to handle that better.

All of the hype around CSB is literally because the sustain patch is better programmed/sampled louder so it's easier to get by with the playable patch than it is to hand pick the articulations for a phrase
 
If it's for film scoring, then CSB. Plus its a little easier to create great sounding music on. Berlin Brass is amazing but takes more time to yield great results.
I'm lucky, I have both so I don't have to decide. However, I use CSB a lot more than BB if I had to be honest.

What would be the scoring like if metropolis ark 1 and berlin brass are combined.
 
All of the hype around CSB is literally because the sustain patch is better programmed/sampled louder so it's easier to get by with the playable patch than it is to hand pick the articulations for a phrase

Are you implying every demo of CSB that I've heard so far is using just that one playable patch and it still sounds better to me than most of the much more deeply sampled complex libraries with a bajillion different articulations? If that was true, it would be even more of an argument for CSB, right?!
 
Are you implying every demo of CSB that I've heard so far is using just that one playable patch and it still sounds better to me than most of the much more deeply sampled complex libraries with a bajillion different articulations? If that was true, it would be even more of an argument for CSB, right?!
At least he's stopped repeating that false claim that CSB only goes down to mp.
 
@Land of Missing Parts : That was said as a joke, but I think both are partially true :) Berlin Brass clearly handles low dynamics better, and CSB clearly handles high dynamics better - especially on the sustain and legato patches. Both are beautiful virtual instruments, and I've heard fantastic sounding mockups with both of them. I'm not sure why everyone always want a "winner"...
 
I'm not sure why everyone always want a "winner"...

Because I'm doing this as a hobby and even only buying one library of each type already makes it an outrageously expensive hobby in comparison to all the other things that interest me. I want a "winner" because I only want to buy one and then keep using that for a looong time.
 
@Land of Missing Parts : That was said as a joke, but I think both are partially true :) Berlin Brass clearly handles low dynamics better, and CSB clearly handles high dynamics better - especially on the sustain and legato patches. Both are beautiful virtual instruments, and I've heard fantastic sounding mockups with both of them. I'm not sure why everyone always want a "winner"...
Fair point. I can't speak to Berlin Brass, since I do not own it.

CSB favors loud dynamics. By that I only mean that a majority of the cc values between 1-127 will give you a loud sound. But it is also just as capable at handling quiet dynamics, you just need to stick to lower cc values. It's not at all unusual for me to use CSB and only use the bottom half of the mod wheel for large portions of a song.

The soft dynamic layers are there thought, that is for sure.

I am still interested in owning parts of Berlin Brass, when the a la carte system is launched. Any recommendations of what to look at?
 
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Because I'm doing this as a hobby and even only buying one library of each type already makes it an outrageously expensive hobby in comparison to all the other things that interest me. I want a "winner" because I only want to buy one and then keep using that for a looong time.



My point is there is no absolute winner ! It really depends on you, your tastes, the music you want to make. I only have Berlin Brass, and can't afford to have 5 brass libraries. And you know what ? I'm dealing with it :) I'm making music with what I have and the mockups I'm doing now with Berlin Brass are way better than my first attempts with this library.
 
Fair point. I can't speak to Berlin Brass, since I do not own it.

CSB favors loud dynamics. By that I only mean that a majority of the cc values between 1-127 will give you a loud sound. But it is also just as capable at handling quiet dynamics, you just need to stick to lower cc values. It's not at all unusual for me to use CSB and only use the bottom half of the mod wheel for large portions of a song.

The soft dynamic layers are there thought, that is for sure.

Of course they are there ! But as you said, the majority of the cc values will give you a loud sound. That's kind of the opposite with those Berlin Brass sustains :) I'm not criticizing any of those libraries.
 
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