Hey all,
I've been using these as my main template winds and unlike re-peat, have few complaints. The stuff I'm working on doesn't have featured winds very often, more like orchestral-context winds in Goldsmith/Williams style mockups, but I think these are fairly good instruments, at a fantastic intro price, with some important holes in the lineup (no cor anglais in core version, no esp / molto vib across the library are my two main issues).
That said, I had the morning off and spent it listening to the back half of
Firebird (the 50-minute ballet version) and are these winds in that ballpark? Not even close. Neither are any sampled winds I've ever heard, except perhaps VSL in the hands of
@Guy Bacos .
I'm not sure the lyrical-solos approach to sampling makes a lot of sense. And I mean this across the instrument range, encompassing solo strings and so on. If you're on a project where they're actually letting you use winds and you're not cringing every time you open your email waiting for the infamous "Why can't it sound more like..." email, then you probably have the budget to record live winds. Same with live solo strings. They're cheap to get and will always sound better than samples, even samples of Tina Guo or Joshua Bell.
BTW when you look at the Firebird score you can see why we maybe don't use winds so much anymore. Every player with a beautiful individual part, quite detailed and with ever-changing nuances of color and articulation. That's a lot of work, and expertise. Then I look at my own use of winds in recent mockups and it's mostly doubling melody lines to soften brass or brighten strings, as well as creating runs or accents in action pieces. At 3 AM in the morning because the mockup has to get done. Being realistic, how good of a woodwinds library do I need? I'm not gonna be writing Swan Lake any time soon unfortunately. I need winds that just "get it done" fast and consistently. These winds have replaced HWW in my template for three reasons - it's Kontakt not PLAY, there's good & consistent articulation management, and they sound decent.