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Spitfire Studio Brass

My personal view on this is that I disagree, which at this point referring to your statement has very little to do with the library we are talking about. I could come up with multiple ways why your own comment is insulting but I won't go that road. You'll have to look for someone else to give you that rope.

Gladly we are all still free to disagree and we were both able to convey our opinions, just as anyone else should be able to.

I'd love to hear how my comment was insulting. (And it's not "give me..." but "give 'em..." as in: ffs)

A guy sell dude a thing. Dude tells guy there are a couple of obvious flaws with the thing. Instead of trying to fix the thing the guy blames dude. But dude is highly skilled at using these kinds of things. (As is the guy since he made the thing.) I'd possibly like to buy the thing but don't want to be worried about the flaws that dude found. And I'd be worried about bringing up these flaws bc guy's response. How's that? Serve the discussion?
 
To give you a direction about where my line of thought went: to me there's a difference between business talk and individuals sharing their thoughts and it would be hypocrisy to selectively adjust our standing whether or not we allow those people who also have a business to as well be able to express their personal opinion (granted in this case on the product that their own company created) towards another personal opinion about it by another individual that was made here - in a free forum.

This is a place for sharing information and points of view after all. It's not the support line or some institution where we can truly expect a less biased and more streamlined talk towards the customer's goal.
I understand that it's hard for us to perceive Paul as unbiased - why should he be? I think it's just unfair to take away his right to express his own personal opinion and to then make a rather passive aggressive comment about "y u waste time with internet, go fix product"

To me it's two people who disagree. All the power to them to share their thoughts. Both. With reference to this platform.
Doesn't mean there are no other platforms to have a more focused conversation about the problems and how to fix them or to find different agreements if that's not possible. Which of course could be shared here again, with all the personal and emotional influence that the outcome might inherit for both parties.
 
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Fair enough. I agree to the extent that there is a conflict of interest between a developer posting as the voice of a business or their own personal view. And yes, a public forum is not customer support. But when the marketing of products crosses over into what appears to be the personal voice it can be confusing at best and disingenuous at worst. And when the developer's customer support and/or quality control is lacking, I think voicing a reasonable grievance in public is a pretty normal thing to do.
 
Fair enough. I agree to the extent that there is a conflict of interest between a developer posting as the voice of a business or their own personal view. And yes, a public forum is not customer support. But when the marketing of products crosses over into what appears to be the personal voice it can be confusing at best and disingenuous at worst. And when the developer's customer support and/or quality control is lacking, I think voicing a reasonable grievance in public is a pretty normal thing to do.
I agree. All I'm trying to say is if we allow people to express their opinion in ways that could also be understood as defamation, we need to also allow the other side to be less office-template-answer towards it. At least that's my opinion. And it's what it is. An opinion. Just as Paul has one and re-peat has one. None of the words written in here can truly allow themselves to be valid for everyone, no matter who wrote them. Not unless there are also people who like the products. And there are. That doesn't mean problems don't exist.... I think you get that I'm only trying to go a more grey than black/white route.

Edit: Also I don't think that anyone can truly say that they personally don't take any pride in the work that they are doing if they at least half like their job. This probably also leads to more enthusiastic responses. It's easy to stray from the solemnly objective path but it's at least as easy to expect it from everyone else without walking in their shoes. And again: the platform also partly dictates the tone.

Some people like to think the customer is king and to some extent that might be true. I like to believe that kings also need to know how to behave. It's not a one way road. And communication is the tool to keep it from becoming one. Therefore everyone needs to be allowed to speak.
 
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I think it's just unfair to take away his right to express his own personal opinion and to then make a rather passive aggressive comment about "y u waste time with internet, go fix product"

(You keep editing your posts..)

This is a little upside down here. Guy also took the time to post his own example (which sounded pretty great to me). It would say a lot to other potential customers if he addressed the flaws that dude found before going into marketing mode. Buy hey, whatever...
 
(You keep editing your posts..)

This is a little upside down here. Guy also took the time to post his own example (which sounded pretty great to me). It would say a lot to other potential customers if he addressed the flaws that dude found before going into marketing mode. Buy hey, whatever...
Maybe he will? Maybe he won't? Whatever it will be we can then make up our mind about it.
At least we are in a community where it's possible to actually get a response from the other side (personally I enjoy that). It might have been different if the library came out two days ago and everyone is screaming for a day one patch but the voices stay unheard and ignored while the product is completely unusable. But that's not the case. So let's sit back, get a cup of tea and see how this will turn out over time.
All the other products received updates, right? Maybe this will too and stuff will get fixed. Who knows.

I still stand by my statement that for the price tag you get a lot out of these products which only some years ago wouldn't have been the case with regard to the features/quality/whatnot.
I also understand re-peats gripe about the way the product was marketed and can follow his argumentation. It's just the tone that bugs me and the fast approaching character of "let's start a revolution".

But then again, that's also just me.

Edit: Sorry for getting your name wrong. I wondered why it was almost too good to be true ;)
 
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At least we are in a community...
Oh...you're new here. That's fine. And agree with what you're saying for the most part. But these guys have done this dance before. You should search some older posts if you haven't already.

I still stand by my statement that for the price tag you get a lot out of these products which only some years ago wouldn't have been the case with regard to the features/quality/whatnot.
Right, "for the price.." As you know, the cost of sample libraries has dropped to maybe 10-20%(?) of what they were 15 years ago (not counting the vsl cube). The market is different. Therein lies the rub I think.
 
I think voicing a reasonable grievance in public is a pretty normal thing to do.
Piet's got e̶x̶c̶e̶l̶l̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶s̶*, he's just being boorish about it. Like calling the Spitfire Studio Woodwinds oboe — "surely, the worst-sounding, most useless Oboeoïd in the history of human civilization". That's just being a jerk.

Imagine if you were on a project and someone gave you that note--that your work was the worst, most useless in the history of civilization--how would you take that?

*EDIT: I thought he had good points at first. I decided to hear him out. Now I think he's just got a few screws loose.
 
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Piet's got excellent points, he's just being boorish about it. Like calling the Spitfire Studio Woodwinds oboe — "surely, the worst-sounding, most useless Oboeoïd in the history of human civilization". That's just being a jerk.

Imagine if you were on a project and someone gave you that note--that your work was the worst, most useless in the history of civilization--how would you take that?

That's the criticism of someone who spends a lot of time and energy wrangling samples. Granted, not the nicest way to say that.

He also endlessly sings the praises of their earlier libraries. So, honestly they should probably hire him as a consultant. Or should have. He's not their target market anymore.

From my own perspective, I still use and love Sable/SCS. I scratch my head at some of the things they release now but whatever...anything chamber string EVO I usually buy about 2 mins into the walkthrough.
 
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I'm not going to get drawn into creating more little demos to counter what Piet is saying here, as I did before. I'll simply observe that its actually pretty easy to make any sample library sound bad. You find an element that you can expose, say thats quickly moving the modwheel between certain values, and then you just ride that to make it sound as bad as possible. This is clear in the screenshot posted what is going on.

I own quite a few of the other devs libraries for my own interest - theres great stuff in all of them. However I could easily make some examples of them sounding awful. Why would I do that though? It would be incredibly unfair and unrepresentative, and I have a lot of respect for any dev who goes through the incredible amount of hard work to get a product of such complexity across the finish line.

Its a fact that Christian and I are massively involved in the creation of our products. Its a fact that they come out - thanks to a large team of very talented programmers and QA who are all also musicians - with way fewer bugs than they used to when we were a handful of people. We're always aiming of course for zero, but its complex software, and anyone involved in this knows how hard it is to catch everything. We still put out tons of updates and constantly work to improve our products.

Its a shame that so many devs have left VIC. I loved this place before I was a dev, I still enjoy coming here and following whats going on, but its so hard reading stuff presented as fact that is either unfair or simply untrue. I actually spent a week editing and refining stuff for the Ambient Guitars release only a few weeks ago. And yes - I'm not doing this *most* of the time, as I have a ton of other responsibilities, but I still get my hands dirty in all kinds of ways. I love making samples as much as I love making music. I'm not sitting in the clubhouse on the 19th hole drinking gin and tonic.

A key point - I'm still a totally passionate end user of our products, as is Christian. Thats how we started, and thats how it still is. We have really talented people working with us who have undoubtedly helped us up our game across the board.

There is a cognitive dissonance though when you on the one hand get fantastic feedback from triple A list record producers and composers, through to students and keen hobbyists who purely write for pleasure - and then you read that your products are 'absolute utter crap' - believe me I could take the King James cello and make it sound crap. Doesn't mean that the lucky cellist who currently plays it can't make it sound utterly divine!

I'm also absolutely passionate about music education and opportunity for people of all ages to discover music, performing and composing, and so I spend some of my time on that side at the moment.

Not really sure what I hope to achieve by posting this message, probably nothing. I have no desire to muzzle anyone. People have different tastes, and will like the sound of different things, I have absolutely no issue with that. I struggle with misrepresentation and confident announcements of 'fact' that bear no relation to reality.

One thing is for sure. When someone uses one of our products, they are using something that has been lovingly nursed into existence with care and attention and a ton of work by a team of really talented people who work hard to make the products as good as they can. We often bin stuff that isn't up to our standards. We also have a fantastic and dedicated support team that you can communicate with who are a key part of us refining and making our products better, so please do talk with them. It really helps us, which helps you.

I joined VI-C in October 2005. Thats nearly 14 years ago! nuts. Still can't quite manage to tear myself away - and why should I have to? Theres a lot to love about a community of passionate music makers who are also massive geeks like me. I just need to learn the skill of selective reading ;)

Peace out

P
Paul,

I'd like to apologize if I misrepresented You, Christian, or Spitfire in anyway. I hope you know that was never my intention. If I mentioned something as fact without prefacing it with it being my opinion or assumption, I truly apologize. I tried to speak passionately as an end user and vent my frustrations that I've experienced over the course of the last few years with Spitfire products. Believe me when I say, I've been venting this frustration about different developers as well. I have a lot more I'd like to talk to you about that I think would best serve as a private conversation. Again, I do apologize for how I responded to a lot of the issues brought up here.

Cheers,

Chris
 
Regarding the studio brass pro, I have reached a conclusion of sorts: I'm sure I can make good use of studio brass but it's also pretty clear that is not a little brother of the symphonic brass. I had erroneously thought of the studio brass as a smaller and drier version of the symphonic series, but that is not really what it is. I'll have to look at the symphonic brass next time.
 
Regarding the studio brass pro, I have reached a conclusion of sorts: I'm sure I can make good use of studio brass but it's also pretty clear that is not a little brother of the symphonic brass. I had erroneously thought of the studio brass as a smaller and drier version of the symphonic series, but that is not really what it is. I'll have to look at the symphonic brass next time.
I do think that Studio Brass Pro offers a good complement to SSB in terms of content, covering instruments and articulations that are lacking in the latter. I don't yet know if they will mix effectively.
 
I do think that Studio Brass Pro offers a good complement to SSB in terms of content, covering instruments and articulations that are lacking in the latter. I don't yet know if they will mix effectively.

After another hour or two of experimentation, I'm actually pretty pleased. I am inserting a Spaces II Renolds hall and dialing back the reverb signal to ca -8 to -12 db and both studio brass and studio ww mix nicely with everything else I have. The Studio Brass sounds wonderfully rich when run through the Berlin Church B, but it's a bit too "churchy" so I switched to a concert hall for my template.
 
After another hour or two of experimentation, I'm actually pretty pleased. I am inserting a Spaces II Renolds hall and dialing back the reverb signal to ca -8 to -12 db and both studio brass and studio ww mix nicely with everything else I have. The Studio Brass sounds wonderfully rich when run through the Berlin Church B, but it's a bit too "churchy" so I switched to a concert hall for my template.
I don't have Spaces. I fiddled with a few reverbs I do have, and haven't yet found a setting that gets into the ballpark of Lyndhurst Hall. Yes, a few of the concert hall reverbs I've tried out sound very nice with the library on its own.
 
Well all those discussions wouldn’t happen if there were updates & fixes after the release of products.

I’m quite surprised at how seldom the sample companies fix their own products.

The business race seems not to consider fixes & user support as paramount. This, to me, is the main mistake and the source of countless gripes & frustration.

I’m not speaking for everyone, some (small) companies have regular updates, a perspective everyone should consider when buying a library.

Users, please raise tickets for bugs & glitches.
Companies, please patch your products.
And everyone will be happier in the long run.
 
I don't have Spaces. I fiddled with a few reverbs I do have, and haven't yet found a setting that gets into the ballpark of Lyndhurst Hall. Yes, a few of the concert hall reverbs I've tried out sound very nice with the library on its own.

Spaces II is really good! But (this might sound weird) all I've used on SStWW is RC 48 on the bus, and believe it or not the concert hall sounds pretty damn good!

I mean, it's not the freakishly excellent Altiverb or Pro-R, but it definitely works well in a pinch imo.
 
I don't have Spaces. I fiddled with a few reverbs I do have, and haven't yet found a setting that gets into the ballpark of Lyndhurst Hall. Yes, a few of the concert hall reverbs I've tried out sound very nice with the library on its own.
I would go with an Algo reverb like the Lexicon PCM (random hall). It's great at creating a warm sounding space similar to AIR. I honestly just load up the main Random Hall patch and set the tail to 2.15 seconds. That is roughly the tail at AIR. It allows me to blend all of my libraries together and from what I can tell, it's worked out well when my mock ups get mixed with the scores recorded at AIR.
 
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