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What are your favourite Brass Libraries then?

Any official word on those? I know Junkie had mentioned interest after the initial feedback on the library but I haven’t heard anything since.
iirc it was more or less boiling it down to something high quality that people can actually afford, but it leaves plenty of room for a mute expansion(that's what berlin brass had). I'm kinda curious off glory days if it gets ported to sine
 
Auddict Audio - Octohorn

I like the sound of adding a reverb to the LDC Spots microphone.

 

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Using mainly
Spitfire Symphonic Brass: bread and butter, sounds so good in that room, expressive. A classic.
Forzo: More power and modern effect-y when needed
Ark 4: great sounding, particular, expressive
Cinesamples sonore: Soaring classic themes sound perfect with this

I think I'm good (yeah, sure!).
The other arks and JXL (expensive) are the only temptations at the moment.
Heard some Venture demos, dunno, something is not right for my ears.... Will give it another listen there must be a reason for the love I guess...
 
Heard some Venture demos, dunno, something is not right for my ears.... Will give it another listen there must be a reason for the love I guess...

As you probably know, Infinite Brass was recorded dry (iirc, in the bell) and the mics are obtained via convolution reverb with unique IRs. However, you can also access the dry signals and put them in your own reverb of choice - there is acutally a nice video by Cory Pelizzari about this. So I think there are lots of possibilities to further shape the sound in case you are not really satisfied with the sound coming out of the box. You might also want to check out the Infinite Series Thread for lots of further examples and different EQ settings etc. Be aware though that IB 1.5 was released recently and due to several overhauls the tone is now a bit different as in IB 1.4 (so you might want to check only recent examples from said thread to really make a judgment about the sound of IB).

Of course the reason why many people love IB (and also IW) so much is the fact that you don't need any keyswitches and the instruments are very expressive and intuitive to play. As someone with practically no keyboard skills, I was completely amazed how easy it is to obtain the sounds that I want with IB. Furthermore, they are extremely light on RAM - on the other hand, IB is naturally more CPU intensive than some other "classical" sample libs (although I can use it without a problem on my Core i7-1065G7).
 
As you probably know, Infinite Brass was recorded dry (iirc, in the bell) and the mics are obtained via convolution reverb with unique IRs. However, you can also access the dry signals and put them in your own reverb of choice - there is acutally a nice video by Cory Pelizzari about this. So I think there are lots of possibilities to further shape the sound in case you are not really satisfied with the sound coming out of the box. You might also want to check out the Infinite Series Thread for lots of further examples and different EQ settings etc. Be aware though that IB 1.5 was released recently and due to several overhauls the tone is now a bit different as in IB 1.4 (so you might want to check only recent examples from said thread to really make a judgment about the sound of IB).

Of course the reason why many people love IB (and also IW) so much is the fact that you don't need any keyswitches and the instruments are very expressive and intuitive to play. As someone with practically no keyboard skills, I was completely amazed how easy it is to obtain the sounds that I want with IB. Furthermore, they are extremely light on RAM - on the other hand, IB is naturally more CPU intensive than some other "classical" sample libs (although I can use it without a problem on my Core i7-1065G7).

Intuitive and expressive are most welcome! I don't enjoy key switches in general so that is a great direction..
Having said that, intuitive and expressive has to come together with extreme realism though.. And to MY ears, from the demos I heard, there is something off.
If it works for other people - great, it is just a personal opinion and I am open to listen again and change my mind. :)
 
And to MY ears, from the demos I heard, there is something off

If you have a chance to jump on the Infinite thread and give more detailed feedback about this "off" feeling on particular examples, I bet that would be useful. Either fans of the library can gradually learn from that feedback how to program Infinite better, or Aaron himself can take some of that feedback to see how to improve future versions.

Infinite series has thrown me into philosophical spiral, thinking about the tradeoffs between "expressiveness/control of a library" versus the "quality of the room tone". Infinite series has the potential (and gets close already) to have the best of both, by virtue of the specialized per-instrument IRs on top of a modeled approach.

But what really has been on my mind is something more vague and hard to describe. These two different camps of virtual instruments do serve different sub-genres in their own ways. Sometimes room tone and reverberation is everything. But for a more traditional orchestral tone, I think sometimes we are conflating "room tone" with "realism" and "musicality" too much. Real recordings don't always have the best room tone or spatial positioning of instruments either. But if the room tone is good enough, I think maybe it matters a LOT more that the instruments can be programmed to sound expressive, natural, and nuanced.
 
I have Hollywood Brass, QLSObrass, Cinematic Studios Brass, Metroplis Ark, Kirk Hunter Concert Brass 2, brass in the original The Orchestra, Amadeus Symphony Orchestra, Blue Street Brass, Sonic Implants Symphonic Orchestra brass, VSL Epic Orchestra 2, even some of the brass that comes with Kontakt and Logic Pro , so I have it covered.
 
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I have Hollywood Brass, QLSObrass, Cinematic Studios Brass, Metroplis Ark, Kirk Hunter Concert Brass 2, brass in the original The Orchestra, Amadeus Symphony Orchestra, Blue Street Brass, Sonic Implants Symphonic Orchestra brass, VSL Epic Orchestra 2, even some of the brass that comes with Kontakt and Logic Pro , so I have it covered.
Nah! that's just the tip of the iceberg... you need more.. try it.. say "i need more" 10 times and see what happens .. :grin:
 
My most used brass libraries are now: Aaron Venture Infinite Brass, Performance Samples Caspian and Angry Brass Pro, Spitfire Symphonic Brass (If I'm using other spitfire samples).
 
If you have a chance to jump on the Infinite thread and give more detailed feedback about this "off" feeling on particular examples, I bet that would be useful. Either fans of the library can gradually learn from that feedback how to program Infinite better, or Aaron himself can take some of that feedback to see how to improve future versions.

Infinite series has thrown me into philosophical spiral, thinking about the tradeoffs between "expressiveness/control of a library" versus the "quality of the room tone". Infinite series has the potential (and gets close already) to have the best of both, by virtue of the specialized per-instrument IRs on top of a modeled approach.

But what really has been on my mind is something more vague and hard to describe. These two different camps of virtual instruments do serve different sub-genres in their own ways. Sometimes room tone and reverberation is everything. But for a more traditional orchestral tone, I think sometimes we are conflating "room tone" with "realism" and "musicality" too much. Real recordings don't always have the best room tone or spatial positioning of instruments either. But if the room tone is good enough, I think maybe it matters a LOT more that the instruments can be programmed to sound expressive, natural, and nuanced.

I don't want to be the negative vibe guy, I wouldn't go on that thread just to criticize...
A lot of people are enjoing it...
Sometimes your ear just tells you stuff that is difficult to put in words.

If I need to quickly summarize rationally just to answer your really interesting thought process regarding the room sound...
Many many recording studios around the world are sadly closing in the last 5-10 years.
One of the last reasons for some studios to keep existing and get booking is their special rooms and how instruments shine when recorded in those rooms.
For me it is a similar thing with sample libraries: I am paying for the musicians, producers, scripters, programmers, mics, engineers, but I am also paying, maybe mainly, for the rooms. Most libs differentiate in sound in such a big way because of the room they are recorded in.

I have been a recording engineer for many years and recorded enough acoustic instruments to recognize that, in dire case of need, you can get a close-decent-usable sound (for "orchestral sounding" results, in other genres it is less important) from most instruments recorded in smaller rooms and/or close miking, with the right amount of processing (a lot), virtual spatialization, etc (and possibly you still need some samples mixed under, AND after all this it's still not going to sound as good as the instrument recorded in a great room, where you just need to push the faders up to smile).

But some brass instrument's sound IS the room sound, especially in an orchestral leaning situation. They are kind of initimately connected and it is difficult to separate the two, one is the extension, the projection of the other. And while artificial reverb, IR or whatever type, helps, it probably doesn't feel totally (to me!!) like part of the instrument.
Maybe that is why my ears are picking up something "off".

Again this is MY taste, and I'm sure it can work out fantastically for others.
And I might be tragically wrong, and as you are saying, the trade-off (if there is one) with insane playability (I haven't demoed it yet, only heard demos) is completely worth it .....
 
But some brass instrument's sound IS the room sound, especially in an orchestral leaning situation. They are kind of initimately connected and it is difficult to separate the two, one is the extension, the projection of the other. And while artificial reverb, IR or whatever type, helps, it probably doesn't feel totally (to me!!) like part of the instrument.
I totally agree with this. I think we are a long way off being able to place dry instruments in a beautiful space convincingly. Even libraries that are recorded in slightly smaller stages are difficult to place in a 'large hall' well. I have tried for years to make this work with IR trickery, algorithms, and every spatial positioning plugin out there. While you can get usable results, it is not even close to sounding like the real deal to my ears. Our current tech doesn't seem to be up for the task. It wouldn't surprise me if a company like nVidia started making clearer progress in this area in the future, utilising GPUs.

I guess that's a roundabout way of saying my favourite brass (and other orchestral) libraries are the ones that are recorded in the very best spaces by the very best engineers.
 
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