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Updated! Iconica opus or something else.. (not going for Symphony Series)

RogiervG

Senior Member
Dear fellow musicians,

Update!
I, after reading more on the symphony series and reading the comments below, have chosen to not go for the symphony series. It simply has to many cons and potential pitfalls.
My updated question is here


original question:

Since both are now very cheap to purchase.. i'm not so sure what to purchase....

I have komplete 11 (not ultimate), and i can upgrade to 12 CE for a few hundred bucks. I then get the full version of the symphony series.

What are the downsides of this series? i'm not finding very much info on the matter here. (some, but not detailed enough)
I know it made by several companies, one of them being audiobro for strings. How is each section in quality and such? (wood vs brass vs strings vs perc)

On the flipside i can go for Iconica Opus (i am using Cubase Pro), for nearly the same amount (a hundred or so difference)

Now.. Sasha Knorr' iconica demo sounds very nice (there is a video of him explaining it all)... it has a classical film sound that i do like. (not too lush, or processed, not too big or too small)
But beside that terrific demo, what are the downsides of Iconica Opus? What are the Pros for us normal musicians?

Not too sure, if the symphony series in komplete 12CE can deliver the same character?
seems it a bit bigger, more processed? Can someone elaborate on this?


all in all... What is the verdict of iconica opus and the Symphony series? How do they differ and how are they similar? how do they stand in film use scores? will in blend well with e.g. CSS, CH libraries, Musical Sampling libs, Voices or Rapture, Hangar 4, etc etc etc etc... i have already?


background of sound i am seeking:
I am into the more classical hollywood / indie (meaning independent, aka filmhouse/artistical) style lately. Not the Superhero mega processed modern hollywood per se. (although i like that too at times!)


Goal:
In essence i want a versatile orchestral addition, that brings realism and flexibility to the table.
I have no trouble in dongle use, so in case you bring that up as a con, don't, because it is not a con in my book.

The question might bring more questions to the table than answers... maybe i am vague... maybe not..
I might answer questions when needed to clarify more.
 
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well, i have it downloaded.. and it is nice indeed, however... i don't know how the symphony series are, in terms of classical film score type of setting. How well the solo instruments are, the ensembles. Can't find many user demos online. In fact, not from both iconica and symphony series.
Does this mean something? or is it just poor marketing on the dev side?

How does nucleus compare in this? (saw/heard some end user demos, non officials.. and it sounds nice too when doing the less bold composing, (however it's aimed at epic, so i am not sure about it)... albeit more lush/processed than iconica)
 
Well you have the essentials, which should give you a bit of an idea. I have the symphony series, but I don't use it. The Percussion is good, the woodwinds and brass less so. Strings better. Remember that these were also created by different developers for NI.

Iconica is already positioned and balanced - so pretty coherent.

But its always down to personal taste.
 
What is not good about the brass and woods? Legatos? shorts? sustains? the sound character as a whole? too wet?
Doesn't symphony have multiple mic options? (i thought i saw that in a screenshot)

Correction: i don't have the symphony essentials, since they are not included in komplete 11, which i have.
It is only in the ultimate version, just like komplete 12 ultimate.
the CE has the full symphony series..

I have no good reference therefor.
 
Thank you for your comment Mike.

Reading through the dislikes of the Symphony series (or nicer said: cons), i am too, feeling less confident in buying the komplete 12 CE upgrade (for especially the symphony series).
so, i am leaning to the side of iconica.

this conclusion made me rethink the choices...

- maybe i should wait for CSW and buy CSB and CSW together (with discount coupon i have), since i already have CSS. But i am not sure when that will be available... might be months of waiting.. by that time i have saved enough to buy it anyway.

- iconica Opus (and be done with it)

- Buy the two berlin inspires? (appears to be nice sounding too, and has good solo instruments as per reviews, although i haven't heard them exposed, in a good programmed lyrical way)

- Maybe Nucleus? (it's geared towards epic, but i heard a demo that was more intimate, emotional type.. and sounding good too. I guess the setting was on classical, not modern in the UI)

- other options?

I want to be flexible, still leaning heavily on the more traditional soundcharacters of the older movies from the 60/70/80 and early 90's.. where the sound was like an orchestra without too much processing in post production/mastering. Aka more refined in tone..


choices choices choices... they are hard... sometimes.
 
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Thank you for your comment Mike.

Reading through the dislikes of the Symphony series (or nicer said: cons), i am too feeling less confident in buying the komplete 12 CE upgrade (for especially the symphony series).
so, i am leaning to the side of iconica.

this conclusion made me rethink the choices...

- maybe i should wait for CSW and buy CSB and CSW together (with discount coupon i have), since i already have CSS. But i am not sure when that will be available... might be months of waiting.. by that time i have saved enough to buy it anyway.

- iconica Opus (and be done with it)

- Buy the two berlin inspires? (appears to be nice sounding too, and has good solo instruments as per reviews, although i haven't heard them exposed, in a good programmed lyrical way)

- Maybe Nucleus? (it's geared towards epic, but i heard a demo that was more intimate, emotional type.. and sounding good too. I guess the setting was on classical, not modern in the UI)

- other options?

I want to be flexible, still leaning heavily on the more traditional soundcharacters of the older movies from the 60/70/80 and early 90's.. where the sound was like an orchestra without too much processing in post production/mastering. Aka more refined in tone..


choices choices choices... they are hard... sometimes.
Yeah, i just upgraded to the ku12 "collectors edition". It's not worth it. I also can't even use Kontakt 6, because I'm stuck on El Capitan, and it won't even regonize it. Definitely money down the drain. I should have checked the requirements first, but i guess I've been so used to everything working just fine on my machine.
 
The inspires are great - but they are ensemble libraries and as such, not suitable if you want to do part writing - where you are writing for each section individually. This is a key and important difference.

If you want to learn to orchestrate you need to be able to write for each section as you see fit.

When I started I got Symphobia, an ensemble library. Which was great (and remains so to this day) until I wanted to write for the different sections.
 
Thank you for your comment Mike.

Reading through the dislikes of the Symphony series (or nicer said: cons), i am too feeling less confident in buying the komplete 12 CE upgrade (for especially the symphony series).
so, i am leaning to the side of iconica.

this conclusion made me rethink the choices...

- maybe i should wait for CSW and buy CSB and CSW together (with discount coupon i have), since i already have CSS. But i am not sure when that will be available... might be months of waiting.. by that time i have saved enough to buy it anyway.

- iconica Opus (and be done with it)

- Buy the two berlin inspires? (appears to be nice sounding too, and has good solo instruments as per reviews, although i haven't heard them exposed, in a good programmed lyrical way)

- Maybe Nucleus? (it's geared towards epic, but i heard a demo that was more intimate, emotional type.. and sounding good too. I guess the setting was on classical, not modern in the UI)

- other options?

I want to be flexible, still leaning heavily on the more traditional soundcharacters of the older movies from the 60/70/80 and early 90's.. where the sound was like an orchestra without too much processing in post production/mastering. Aka more refined in tone..


choices choices choices... they are hard... sometimes.

The inspires look like a great option. I'm currently looking to get the inspires myself. It might also be worth looking at EWHO, which would give you all the Individual sections and is at a very good price for both gold and diamond versions.
 
i was also looking for an orchestra to start with. I used the easwest composer cloud for a while. That's nice, but i was looking for something more coherent, and a good base to start from. When i heard about the promo for iconica i downloaded the demo. Well, that costed me some money :grin:
It's a very balanced orchestra, sounds really good out of the box, loads quickly, ...
The only downsides for me are:
- it doesn't play very well with logic, i guess because logic only uses au, and the vst will be much better. I also noticed in some videos that the integration with cubase is much better, with the expression maps and everything included.
- Sometimes the transitions seem to be a little bumpy. Maybe that's just my lack of experience, but sometimes there are notes, and transistions which sound weird. It takes some time to fix them at the moment, because i'm not used to it.
But overall, i like it.
EWHO is also a good contender though, the strings are amazing. in fact: i bought the eastwest strings too, because i like them so much, i still want to use them after my subscription ends. The rest of the EWHO is fine, but has its weak spots (i don't really like the percussion for example, and some of the brass is not powerfull enough IMO). But it's also way cheaper (i saw it for sale for around $350 with the solo instruments). I think it's a good option if you add some libraries for the weak spots. So in the end, it will probably cost the same, or even more.
 
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It's hard to give advice without knowing exactly what your musical training is and what kind of orchestral music you want to make.

If you want as many solo instruments as possible and the ability to start composing for a full orchestra, Iconica Opus is quite a value at a thousand dollars. As is the BBCSo was a $750. To get it for $500 is a remarkable value.

From the moment you play the Inspires you will be making such lovely music, and you will be very happy. Inspired. But even if there is an Inspire Three and Inspire Four, I doubt they will be as comprehensive in terms of number of instruments and articulations as Iconica Opus. Today they have very few solo instruments and you are looking at very few articulations.

I don't know Nucleus, but Iconica Opus has tremendously more to offer in terms of the options I mentioned above. And all Steinberg instruments get expression maps with one click within Cubase, from the multi-articulation guitars in HALion to Iconica.

If you want the ability to express yourself to the fullest possible extent as a composer, Iconica Opus is the choice, in my opinion. But you might not care about that so much. You might be happier with fewer choices but a different kind of sound. You certainly make wonderful music and be very happy with the two Inspires.

My personal primary choice is to go with the Cinematic Studio Series. I am just a beginner at composition. When there was only CSS, I made a lot of music for strings. Strings and piano. Strings and a solo instrument. I didn't feel in any way constrained by that, and I think I could have been happy playing CSS for the rest of my life. But I got CSSS and CSB eventually. I'm not aware of any financial incentive or for you to wait to get CSB and CSW together. It's exactly the same price--30% off for each, and you can wait as long as you want to buy any Cinematic Studio library. I like the piano too.

I would like to get CSW sooner, but like a lot of people, I am happy to wait in order for it to be as good as all the others.

As I said, I have the Inspires, and a few other orchestral libraries like The Orchestra. Solo instruments like the Fluffy Woodwinds. They were all picked up at sales, and, as a nonpro, I don't have any plans to get the massively expensive orchestral libraries from Spitfire, Orchestral Tools, Audiobro, etc.

The Cinematic Studio series is my Orchestral Library--it sounds beautiful, has a gold standard legato, a simple interface, and each library is designed to work well with the others.
 
It's hard to give advice without knowing exactly what your musical training is and what kind of orchestral music you want to make.

I have many years of musical training from the past. (when i was young(er))
It's a hobby for now.. and have no means to become a pro, or semi pro at this point.

The type of music i like, and want to make, is more in vain of the older movies like:
Jurrasic Park, Forest Gump, Titanic, Doctor Zhivago, the Shawshank Redemption, the Godfather etc etc..

The more orchestral sounding sountracks, not the Epic stuff.

If you want as many solo instruments as possible and the ability to start composing for a full orchestra, Iconica Opus is quite a value at a thousand dollars. As is the BBCSo was a $750. To get it for $500 is a remarkable value.

Yes, indeed it has quite a value at $500.

From the moment you play the Inspires you will be making such lovely music, and you will be very happy. Inspired. But even if there is an Inspire Three and Inspire Four, I doubt they will be as comprehensive in terms of number of instruments and articulations as Iconica Opus. Today they have very few solo instruments and you are looking at very few articulations.

If you want the ability to express yourself to the fullest possible extent as a composer, Iconica Opus is the choice, in my opinion. But you might not care about that so much. You might be happier with fewer choices but a different kind of sound. You certainly make wonderful music and be very happy with the two Inspires.

Well, i am also considering it still. Sounds very lovely classical. Yet, i am indeed a bit afraid it is too limiting later on, compared to e.g. Iconica.
 
opps. I just picked up the Steinberg Iconica Opus. For $500, that is a lot of features for starting library on normal Windows system. And will keep me away from the wallet & time consumng small purchases for a while.

The limited number of demo videos were sounded pretty good, especially this one:



Other contenders I considered follow. I listened to demos for all and just summarise some quick thoughts with some typos and factual errors. (Typical objections: didn't like sound, too epic sounding, performance issues, lacking features, expensive/not on major sale, too complex, old, require lots of room/ambience work):

- BBCSO - some good sounds but I have windows and don't want to be pending nit sorting. UI hidden features
-VSL - good sound, engine, performance. (but I would need expensive upgrades, synchron etc.)
- CSS - expensive etc.
- EW - too compex maybe and getting older
- Berlin Inspire 1 & 2 - limited solo inst (although good on small systems). Maybe not on sale

- Neuclus & Jaeger - maybe too epic
- Met ARk 1 - maybe too epic
- Abilon One - maybe too epic
- Project Same OE - maybe too epic

- NI Symphonic Series - varied reviews
- Soniscore The Orchrestra - limited (but cheap and nice arp engine)
- Amadeus - cheap but varied reviews on sound and programming
- Palette- no solo with true legato
 
Awesome instructional video from Steinberg to get started on Iconica (only 20 minutes). There are plenty of other tutorials on that channel. The HALion player is impressive.

 
Still waiting for the dongle in the mail, which takes Steinberg 10 days to ship within my country lol. Big fast SSD is arriving tomorrow so I need some time to do a clean install of Windows anyways.
 
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