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Woodwinds and crossfades

José Herring

Lost in Cyberspace
Is there a library that has the crossfades for solo woodwinds worked out? I'm looking for a new woodwind section(meaning to be used in the context of the orchestra and not a2 or a3 exclusively) library this week. Recorded in a decent but not large stage but would consider things like Spitfire but in general for woodwinds that stage is too large. Basically, I have HOW and now trying HOPUSWW but both suffer from the same problem. In the Opus version the blend from vibrato to non vibrato is like turning on a light switch. There's no blend and the crossfade creates an a2 effect in the middle dynamic which is where 90% of the woodwind orchestral writing presides making them not very usable. Even the section woodwinds suffer from this. I've been going over every library including CSW and I'm hearing the same problem.

What library has the vibrato crossfades and dynamic crossfades actually worked out well? Again not looking for drier libraries but things like East West Studios and Trackdown are perfect for woodwinds. Medium sized rooms. Even synchron but the synchron winds are just syncrhonized and while I do like them the sounds of the silent stage still kills me to this day.

Maybe I need to look beyond the big 4 (EW, VSL, Spitfire and Cinematic Studio). Was leaning towards CSW but then after watching a few videos I hear the same problems as the rest. Maybe my standards are too high though being a woodwind guy my ears are especially tuned to the inconsistencies that otherwise I wouldn't hear in other instruments like brass.
 
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You will probably not find what you're after, unfortunately. I can't think of any woodwind libraries that don't suffer from this to some degree.

If you're willing to relinquish control over dynamics and vibrato, you might be happy with OT's solo woodwinds or 8Dio's Claire winds; I prefer the sound of the latter as the former seems to have more audible fades from transition into sustain. Otherwise they have wonderfully natural expressiveness. These are a little more like working with a player who isn't completely happy to play what you've written as you've written it, though, so there's a tradeoff.
 
perhaps, infinite woodwinds, or the Audiomodelling woodsies.. (both are often not considered sample libs, while they technically are, ableit very tiny sample snippets are used to generate the normale sounds, via either synthesis, or timestretching/pitchshifting and what not etc)
You can shape it as you want, including vibrato and dynamics in real time, i've heard some very good user demos and ofcourse some not so good with both (and all other traditional sample libs for that matter) ;) .
 
I think your standards may just be too high unfortunately. BWW, CSW, and VSL are the top three and if CSW's fades were too much, the others are fairly similar. You could get the Berlin solo expansions but they're in a very small space and might not cover the ground you need.

Your only real options are modeled instruments. In this category I'd say Infinite has the best reputation here, and Samplemodeling/Audiomodeling are definitely good but the tone isn't always to my taste. I like a lot of Hein instruments but the winds also don't all have my favorite tone--though some of them have really grown on me and get used from time to time.

My only other thought is to grab something like BWW or VSL which lets you enable or disable dynamic layers, or otherwise get granular control over which layer is playing so that you never get a crossfade. VSL has plenty of recorded swells and dynamics.
 
Well, that embertone one always sound pretty good to me. I keep meaning to pick it up.


But the Fluffy audio Cl does a pretty good job with the cross fades across 3 dynamics layers, and additionally records de/crescendos and multiple attacks. It has different vibratos recorded also.

So not perfect, of course, but it it's the closest I have for the situation you describe. Perhaps worth a look?
 
The two options I can think of is either going for a library with only one recorded layer, like BWW Soloists, and then fake the room with reverbs. Or use something like CSW and just stay within one dynamic layer at a time, and instead use expression for dynamics. Probably not what you’re after though.
 
Infinite of course +1

And another leftfield option: Chris Hein Woodwinds. Like Aaron Venture, this has a totally different approach. It lacks in tone when compared to my favourites (Embertone, Xsample) but it does have a lot of tweakable scripted / programmed options. Such as completely controllable (artificial) vibrato. Worth a try? Just thinking out loud here... Maybe the artificial character of Infinite / Hein can be a good tradeoff in certain use cases.


 
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Infinite of course +1

And another leftfield option: Chris Hein Woodwinds. Like Aaron Venture, this has a totally different approach. It lacks in tone when compared to my favourites (Embertone, Xsample) but it does have a lot of tweakable scripted / programmed options. Such as completely controllable (artificial) vibrato. Worth a try? Just thinking out loud here... Maybe the artificial character of Infinite / Hein can be a good tradeoff in certain use cases.



Welcome back doc! ☺️
 
The two options I can think of is either going for a library with only one recorded layer, like BWW Soloists, and then fake the room with reverbs. Or use something like CSW and just stay within one dynamic layer at a time, and instead use expression for dynamics. Probably not what you’re after though.
I generally tend to like the ww in BBSCO core I think that having some extra mic position might also help because now they just get a lost in the room a lot.
Infinite of course +1

And another leftfield option: Chris Hein Woodwinds. Like Aaron Venture, this has a totally different approach. It lacks in tone when compared to my favourites (Embertone, Xsample) but it does have a lot of tweakable scripted / programmed options. Such as completely controllable (artificial) vibrato. Worth a try? Just thinking out loud here... Maybe the artificial character of Infinite / Hein can be a good tradeoff in certain use cases.



Thanks.

Welcome back.
 
I generally tend to like the ww in BBSCO core I think that having some extra mic position might also help because now they just get a lost in the room a lot.
I like them too, but feel exactly the same. I’m upgrading to Pro next sale, primarily to get more mics for the woodwinds and the harp that both are a little too distant to my liking. :)
 
Infinite of course +1

And another leftfield option: Chris Hein Woodwinds. Like Aaron Venture, this has a totally different approach. It lacks in tone when compared to my favourites (Embertone, Xsample) but it does have a lot of tweakable scripted / programmed options. Such as completely controllable (artificial) vibrato. Worth a try? Just thinking out loud here... Maybe the artificial character of Infinite / Hein can be a good tradeoff in certain use cases.



Listen briefly to the Chris Hien demos. Yes the sound is a bit brutal but very flexible. On a minor note the clarinet in one passage got that high pitched "wick" sound that comes from having a too dry reed or a crack in the reed so when you hit it with the tongue on the attack you get a very high very tiny squeak sound.....Ummmmm......Yeah me thinks I'm way too picky and that's the problem :)
 
I like them too, but feel exactly the same. I’m upgrading to Pro next sale, primarily to get more mics for the woodwinds and the harp that both are a little too distant to my liking. :)
I think I will too. I'm a bit worried about the 9,700,000 different mic positions and where I'm going to put them though :)
 
I think I will too. I'm a bit worried about the 9,700,000 different mic positions and where I'm going to put them though :)
Same here. I’d love a version with only all the instruments, and a few extra mics like close, tree, outrigger, stereo, and leader. Not sure I would ever use the rest of them. Will definitely need a new drive for it.

But I’m really liking BBCSO as a base. It just suits me well for almost everything, and I think with the added mics I will feel even less need to substitute parts of it with other libraries.
 
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