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Looking for NI Symphony Series compositions

I know your looking for a muck up and not an opinion but I think the NI Series is overlooked to some degree.

The strings offer a professional approach to composition and they have a great sound

I think the out of box instent gratification has taken over to some degree making us put other great string library's on the back burner and course them to be less desirable
When in fact they offer a much more fundamental approach and the correct way of use

If you use the strings within its limit you can get good results as with any library.

 
I've heard that the percussion is decent, though.
I have it. They're actually good because it allows you full control of how you play the drums.

In most of the percussions, you can cut out the room sound by putting the release at 0, therefore you get a nice tight clean sound.

The different mic setups can create a big and loud sound, but they don't sound epic. Speaking of mic setups, their default stereo mic is pathetic for a lack of a better word, its best to go with your own mic mix.

I have two issues, they don't have taikos... seriously? Some of the samples can sound muddy and boxy but multi-band compression solves that problem for me.

I originally wanted CineSample's CinePerc, but it's over 100GB and too expensive. That led me to get NI's percussion, not that this has relevance to your comment, lol.
 
I have two issues, they don't have taikos... seriously? Some of the samples can sound muddy and boxy but multi-band compression solves that problem for me.

I'm missing the taikos as well, but this library is more focused on classic, symphonic percussion, rather than epic exotic stuff, which taikos to some degree are.
Mud is fine or at least not unusual for me. I cut lots of low mids in most unprocessed drum libraries whatsoever.
 
but they don't sound epic

Try playing with the pitch of the toms, layer stuff and add some effects. I'm sure you can get some "epic" sounds out of the library if you set your mind to it.

I'd rather have good timpani than "yet another set of taikos". (And I really like taikos, I just have so many already)
 
The winds are too reverby..
The rest are good..
I'd actually forgotten how good the brass is until I loaded them up recently and resolved to use them more..
 
Jumping into the conversation, I’ll try to be brave here. Here’s a composition I did utilizing NISS Brass Ensemble. Let me get the apologies out of the way-- sorry it’s not exclusively NISS, just wanted to show what the Brass can do, and I’m just a hobbyist- not a professional here. Maybe I’m stating the obvious here but the Brass is great at the loud and epic pieces. IMHO the Brass Ensemble excels at this (sorry don’t have Ark1 for comparison). I do have CSB, got it recently, and while it’s fantastic, I feel it just can’t match that overall large hall ensemble Brass power that I love. Also there’s a smidgeon of CAGE brass in here for the shorts, but all of the sustains you hear are the NISS Brass Ensemble, especially the “chorus”. Other instruments in this piece are Strings (CSS, CS2, LASS), Winds (SSW), and Percussion (HZ Percussion). Sorry if this isn’t exactly what you are looking for, just hope this helps in some small way.


 
The strings offer a professional approach to composition and they have a great sound
The sound is fantastic...the legato not so much...a shame really, considering the cost of the strings outside Komplete. At the very least, it makes me look forward to LASS 3...which should hav e a similar sound, but with all the high-end approach of their current library. 2020 is going to be a great year for libraries. :)
 
@Scalms I liked the composition a lot. I'm a fan of fast spiccato / staccatissimo lines in general. The NISS Brass was just fine, not bad and not special to my ears. I don't know what kind of processing you did but I thought the track needs more EQing in general. More treble. Less (low-mids). The typical. Some fundamentals were pretty loud. Just my 2 cents.

@DerGeist
Thanks for your submission as well. Listend to the 3 tracks so far and I see the potential, some cool ideas in there. What indeed annoyed me a little bit is the legato, mostly in strings (1.track). Honestly I didn't like the string sound in general, which doesn't leave a very good impression on the most popular library of NISS. More examples needed! :)
 
Try playing with the pitch of the toms, layer stuff and add some effects. I'm sure you can get some "epic" sounds out of the library if you set your mind to it.

I'd rather have good timpani than "yet another set of taikos". (And I really like taikos, I just have so many already)
I know, layers are keys to writing music, haha.

Timpani is the best thing about the library, which isn't saying much from me because I haven't heard other brand's timpani sounds.
 
@Scalms I liked the composition a lot. I'm a fan of fast spiccato / staccatissimo lines in general. The NISS Brass was just fine, not bad and not special to my ears. I don't know what kind of processing you did but I thought the track needs more EQing in general. More treble. Less (low-mids). The typical. Some fundamentals were pretty loud. Just my 2 cents.

@DerGeist
Thanks for your submission as well. Listend to the 3 tracks so far and I see the potential, some cool ideas in there. What indeed annoyed me a little bit is the legato, mostly in strings (1.track). Honestly I didn't like the string sound in general, which doesn't leave a very good impression on the most popular library of NISS. More examples needed! :)
I tend to agree. I'm not a big devotee to cult of legato in general but did find that the NI legato felt very exaggerated or overly deep. I did find myself working around the legato a lot. My advice for working with this library, which I do like, is to crank down the reverb and the depth of the legato. Both are way overblown in the default settings.
 
Here is an example that has NISS Strings and NISS Brass. Winds are Berlin, Percussion is Spitfire Redux. Piano is ISW Pearl. The strings begin to show up at 0:40 with a nice romatic cue at 1:08. Brass gets ballsy at 2:00. The outro at 4:17 is very string heavy. Overall, the mix isn't fantastic, but it is what it is. It was completed rather quickly and I didn't look back to try to remix it.

 
If you set your desired legato speed, then CC Learn your attack to a hardware slider you will get very surprising results.

If you want you can make the legato work very well
I've played with the legato knob. The default left position, is fast and fully clockwise is slow? I can try again I suppose...I love the sound, just didn't sound too legato.
 
@Scalms I liked the composition a lot. I'm a fan of fast spiccato / staccatissimo lines in general. The NISS Brass was just fine, not bad and not special to my ears. I don't know what kind of processing you did but I thought the track needs more EQing in general. More treble. Less (low-mids). The typical. Some fundamentals were pretty loud. Just my 2 cents.

@DerGeist
Thanks for your submission as well. Listend to the 3 tracks so far and I see the potential, some cool ideas in there. What indeed annoyed me a little bit is the legato, mostly in strings (1.track). Honestly I didn't like the string sound in general, which doesn't leave a very good impression on the most popular library of NISS. More examples needed! :)

Appreciate the feedback, Meetyhtan. Probably my mixing skills need some work. I do find that the NISS Brass is very dark/muffled out of the box, requires a lot of boost in the higher frequencies to get it sounding brighter, at least to my ears. Mixing is one area I need to get better at.
 
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