Orchestral Tools Berlin Brass Torrent
— Pro Sound NewsHOLLYWOOD BRASS DIAMOND EDITION(for GOLD EDITION see below)Hollywood Brass is the most powerful, realistic and extensive brass library ever created. There is a focus and ease of use in this Virtual Instrument that is unprecedented. Hollywood Brass runs flawlessly in the new PLAY 6 engine and has 10 times the content and detail than its closest competitor, without any additional complexity or clutter. New revolutionary fanfare patches are light on computer resources, but offer the most playable and instantly gratifying results on just one midi channel. But words are just words. Once you experience Hollywood Brass, you will see that this is EastWest's finest creation to date — (Producers Doug Rogers, Nick Phoenix and Thomas Bergersen).HOLLYWOOD BRASS production team includes 2019 GRAMMY WINNER 'Best Engineered Album, Classical', ACADEMY AWARD, C.A.S.
ABOUT HOLLYWOOD BRASS GOLD EDITIONHollywood Brass Gold Edition is 16-bit, with one mic positon (main) and all articulations. Upgrades to the Hollywood Brass Diamond Edition will be effortless as all articulations are included in the Gold Edition, and can be done at any time. The Gold Edition is available for purchase via download, and as data only in the Complete Composers Collection Gold Sound Data Hard Drive.ABOUT HOLLYWOOD BRASS SILVER EDITIONHollywood Brass Silver Edition is 16-bit, with one mic position (mid-tree, no divisi) Essential set of articulations and instruments with limited legato.
Upgrade to Hollywood Brass Gold and Diamond Edition when you need more options. The Silver Edition is a download.Hollywood Brass includes the following techniques:.
True legato intervals at 3 dynamics that are smooth and realistic in all situations. True connected legato repetitions at 3 dynamics. Sustained legato samples from pp all the way to fff. Electronic Musician: EastWest 'Hollywood Brass' LibraryFollowing on the success of (Hollywood Strings HS), EastWest released Hollywood Brass (HB) in late 2011. The process was much the same for the latter as for the former: Hire A-list studio musicians in Los Angeles; enlist Academy- and Emmy-winning engineer Shawn Murphy to oversee the sampling sessions; and do it in EastWest Studios (formerly known as Cello, Ocean Way, and Bill Putnam's United/Western Studios).
How's that for pedigree?Having previously reviewed HS for Electronic Musician, I had high expectations for the brass library. I was not disappointed, as the level of recording and programming detail runs deep; however, HB is much easier on your system than their string library. HB's 150GB Diamond Edition (reviewed here) is delivered on a 7200rpm hard drive and features 24-bit samples with five microphone positions, while the 20GB Gold Edition features one mic position and 16-bit samples. Available articulations between the two editions are identical; only the sample rate and mic configurations differ.I worked in both Studio 1 and Studio 2 with Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello when it was operating as Cello Studios, and I can attest to Studio 1's sound—open, but not excessively reverberant. Film Score Monthly: EastWest gives composers access to that Hollywood sound.Last year, when EastWest unveiled their Hollywood Strings, I hoped that, assuming its success in the marketplace, they would continue the 'Hollywood' brand in other instrument sections, with the idea of building an entire 'Hollywood' orchestra. The sound of the Hollywood Strings is big and bold; there are a ton of useful articulations, dynamics and idiomatic special effects, and the EastWest PLAY engine/interface has improved markedly over time. So why not adapt this to the whole orchestra, right?
Fortunately, that's what they seem to be doing, with the recent addition of the Hollywood Brass collection.It's been said many times before: No single collection of orchestral samples covers everything. Or, at least, that hasn't happened yet, that I know of.
Composers tend to mix and match sounds, then try like crazy to make them all sound like they're from the same orchestra, recorded in the same room. However, East West seems to be putting together a collection that can, at the very least, be the backbone of a great-sounding orchestra, specifically one meant for that 'film music' sound. Fill in with a few special samples from other libraries here and there, sure, but with such a varied collection as this, you may, by the time the East West folks are done, find that you use this orchestra for the vast majority of your orchestral compositions.Hollywood Brass follows faithfully in the footsteps of its string-section counterpart. Once again, the recordings were produced by Doug Rogers, Nick Phoenix and Tom Bergersen, engineered by well-known film-music mixer Shawn Murphy, and recorded in EASTWEST Studio 1, in the heart of Hollywood.Brass TacksLet's talk about the quality of the samples themselves. As you might expect, they sound great, across the board. The recordings are pristine and with a presence and depth unique to this collection.
The recordings are dry, and the Play engine allows you to choose among a multitude of high-quality convolution reverbs to add to your brass mix, either to each individual sample, or to the instrument group as a whole. In addition you can tweak those reverb settings a bit once you've added them in the mix.Historically, the most troublesome part of the brass section to make sound really good and realistic in sample form— especially in exposed passages—is the trumpets. They get too bright, brittle and generally fake-sounding. Not so much with Hollywood Brass. The few that don't sound great on their own sound better in the mix. And more important, there are mod-wheel controls that can really smooth out phrasing, curb the brightness and generally make the samples lay naturally in the orchestral space.Speaking of mod-wheel controls, holy cow, there are a ton of incredible controls that you can access via the mod wheel on your keyboard or other controller, or by control changes.
For example, say you need brass crescendos, short, medium and long. With most other libraries, you'd load in three separate samples. With Hollywood Brass, just load in Cresc MOD SPEED.ewi (tuba, in this case, though all instrument crescendos are time-synched so they'll match up in your compositions), and you've got all three speeds in a single patch, each speed triggered by a control change, as you can see in the Play 'player' window.Suddenly your sample management and workflow become much more streamlined. In addition to that, most samples come with the ability to create your own timed crescendo with the mod wheel, if the three preset durations don't work for you.
Still other samples that aren't labeled MOD are still controllable and changeable with the mod wheel, in addition to being velocity-sensitive. For those who are used to just loading a sound and having it play as is, you can still do that, but you'll get used to these controls very quickly.
Check this one out: a legato trumpet patch, with accent. This is a single patch, controlled with mod wheel and velocity.Next, there's the sheer number of samples available in the Hollywood Brass collection. Take a look at this list. And it's not just the number of samples, it's how useable they are, especially in film, TV, video game and commercial composition. And can we talk about the brass effects for a second? There are the usual flutter tongues, falls, rips and shakes, yes. But how about 'Trumpets Rises and Oddities'?
Or 'Low Brass Elephants'?So far, the only real disappointment is the lack of jazz patches in the solo trumpet department. Especially disappointing when you look at what's available from the solo trombone jazz collection29 beautiful-sounding samples. Like this, this, and this.
I'm not sure why the equivalent patches aren't available for the trumpets, but maybe we'll see them in an update sometime soon (please?!).Lastly, this sample collection is CPU-intensive (though by varying degrees, based on which samples you load). Be sure to look at the system requirements before you buy to confirm that your system can handle the load.So we've got Hollywood Brass and Hollywood Strings. I can't wait to hear what's next from EastWest in this collection. As for now, you should get Hollywood Brass. If you don't have the budget for the Diamond Edition, the Gold Edition is considerably less expensive and still features all the instrument sounds and articulations, etc.; it just has 16-bit (as opposed to 24-bit) versions and features just a single mic-position choice (as opposed to four in the Diamond Edition). Either way, it's a purchase you'll be immediately glad you made. Pro Sound News: Getting BrassyPart of any judgment within a software review is the level of its interaction with the user.
That includes the installation and registration process, as well as how long it takes to get up and running in a useful fashion. This especially applies to orchestral libraries, which, by their very nature, are massive in size and timeconsuming to load up. However, when the 150 GB library comes pre-installed on a hard drive and takes less than five minutes to authorize, you begin the review process with a good feeling.East West Hollywood Brass Diamond Edition is just such a product. As a follow-up to its popular Hollywood Strings, it once again brings together the production team of Doug Rogers, Nick Phoenix, Thomas Bergesen and award-winning engineer extraordinaire, Shawn Murphy.
According to the company's website, the sampling session at East West's Studio 1 lasted for 21 straight days and then took a year to process and program.After popping the hard drive into an internal bay on my computer (it can, of course, be transferred to any drive you choose), I ran the Authorization Wizard (iLok needed) and registered my code on the website. I was up and running without a drop of sweat or stress.
That's worth a few extra bucks right there.Enough on the install; the bottom line is this thing sounds fantastic. Just call up a patch, turn on the internal impulse response reverb (with various room/hall options) and get playing. You've got 24-bit/44.1 kHz samples and five mixable mic positions of a world-class Brass section at your fingertips. But there's much more to it than just static samples—the quality of sound is also directly related to the interaction with the user.It's all about how you can actually perform parts with this software. For example, the Mod Wheel controls dynamics, and it's worth time invested to understand the small nuances.
I literally spent 20 minutes playing just two notes back and forth experimenting with the touch of the wheel and its effect on the sound. Velocity also comes into play here, as that controls the intensity and dynamics of each note. Obviously with brass, the harder notes sound much more intense than soft notes, with a completely different sonic timbre.On certain patches, the Mod wheel can also instantly switch between settings, so you could go from Staccatissimo (playing each note very distinctly), to Marcato short to Marcato Long to Marcato Long with sustain, depending on how far up you push the wheel. It's very cool to play these patches and actually perform the parts in real time. It makes such a difference in the quality and believability of the performance.There are also some amazing patches for film work in the Effects section, such as Rip Trill, Rip Flutter, Flutter Tongue, Cres Mod Speed.
I mean, few things speak, 'I'm a film score,' more than a ripped French horn! Another small detail is that even things like the crescendos are tempo synced, making it easy to compose to a click. Also, the reverb is extremely high quality, adding a critical realism to the overall sound.Hollywood Brass includes samples for 2 French Horns, 2 Trombones and 1 Bass Trombone, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trumpets, 6 French Horns, Low Brass, Solo Cimbasso (an instrument in the trombone family), Solo French Horn, Solo Trombone, Solo Trumpet and Solo Tuba.Since I've already discussed the Play engine in a previous review, I'll simply mention that next to each primary instrument category sit the various types of samples for each instrument. For example, 2 French Horns offers Long, Short, Effects, Legato and Mutes. Once you've chosen the type of sample, the third box on the right offers up the specific type of articulations within the chosen category.
So 2 French Horns Long will offer up LegRep RRX4, Portato, Sus Accent, Sus Lite, Sus Marc L and Sus. Choosing, loading and operating Play is simple and effortless.But how's the drain on the computer? On my Intel Mac 2 X 2.26 GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon, a 736 MB Brass patch with both Main and Vintage mics running peaked at no more than 5 percent of my CPU on the realtime Play meter. No problemo.With just a touch of effort, you can create super-realistic brass parts that could fool even a golden ear. Seriously, these kinds of results speak wonders about the sampling quality and overall programming that went into making this product. At $795, it's not cheap.
But how far would that money get you on a real brass session? Not to sound like a broken record, but East West did it again with Hollywood Brass.
Bravo.Note that Hollywood Brass also comes in a lighter Gold Edition (on DVD), which offers up one mic position and 16-bit resolution. You can however, upgrade to the Diamond Edition from there. Features:. Produced by Doug Rogers, Nick Phoenix, and Thomas Bergersen. Sound engineered by Shawn Murphy (Academy Award, C.A.S.
(Cinema Audio Society), BAFTA, and EMMY award-winng sound engineer). 5 user-mixable mic positions, extensive articulations, and no shortcuts!. Includes new PLAY 6 64-bit software on both MAC and PC, powerful scripting for ease of use, more user control and detail than any other collection, all recorded in the world famous EASTWEST Studio 1, the home of major Hollywood soundtracks and television themes. Copyright 1995-2020 Sounds Online (A division of East West Communications, Inc.).
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Berlin Strings 2.0 is not the only choice you have for strings – it just happens to be one of the best ones money can buy.by Per Lichtman, May 2015Berlin Strings 2.0 with Expansion A+B from is a massive update, free to existing users. SBM is proud to bring you the very first reviews of the Berlin 2.0 series update (which covers the rest of the Berlin range such as Berlin Woodwinds)- and I strongly suggest reading my previous because this one will only cover the changes. When I reviewed BST 1.0, I praised the sound quality, detail and how the product fit into a “one articulation-per-track” workflow but thought the library was less effective for rapid sketching and noted how several competing libraries offered more key-switching and CC options for articulation control.
With the free 2.0 update, the Berlin series now uses a new interface in Kontakt that aims to address these issues and many others. Orchestral Tools provided SBM access to the 2.0 libraries throughout the very long beta process, so though it’s only officially been out for a short time, I have had a lot of time to get up-to-speed with the new interface.
But first, the new sounds.The New Samples in 2.0Berlin Strings 2.0 adds two new set of articulations: spiccato exposed for each of the five sections and the fingered legato articulation for the first violins. The spiccato exposed articulation is one of the most agile sounding short articulations in BST, especially for the basses, and the library benefits far more from this simple addition than I would have expected, making it one of the best libraries on the market for short string articulations in an ambient environment.
Now the staccato and spiccato and staccato offerings for each section include spiccato, spiccato exposed and staccato at a bare minimum with some sections offering staccato bold and spiccatissimo options as well (not to mention blurred variations of each). The library of course includes many other types of shorts but I wanted to emphasize this particular part since it is so much at the core of a lot of scoring work.The fingered legato articulation for the first violin offers a less pronounced transition than the normal legato preset. It’s a nice additional color and BST already offers a lot of legato options. As a minor issue, I’ll mention that if Orchestral Tools is going to call the new legato “fingered legato” then the name of the old legato type, “slurred legato” is simply not specific enough to differentiate between the two – depending on who is doing a reading, a slurred legato might very well be performed with fingered legato as opposed to bowed legato. But I can see how that becomes an issue when additional articulations are added after the fact – and it still sounds and plays great.
Not to mention the fact that it’s beautifully integrated into the Capsule interface alongside the other articulations, but more on that in a minute.The Interface ChangesAs great as the additional sounds are, the big deal with the 2.0 update is new Capsule interface. While I’ll openly admit that I really liked the color and feel of the old interface, there’s a great deal more power packed into the new one than ever before. Orchestral Tools has added many new powerful options (some of which will be better covered in their than here) but I would like to draw attention to the ones that are most important to me, personally.Berlin Strings now divides its presets up into three folders for each section: Single Articulation (the same organization system as in 1.0), Multi Articulations (which give does away with the dynamic layer display wheel and gives access to up to twelves articulations in a single preset) and TM (Time Machine). The Time Machine folder looks a lot like the Single Articulations one but presets now have a Time Stretch slider that can speed up or slow down the sound of the preset while leaving the release tail unaffected.Capsule offers something I’ve never seen in another orchestral ensemble product: the ability to use the recorded interval legato samples with any articulation by simply enabling legato mode with the push of a button. This is big – huge.
Do you want to use a legato interval to transition between dynamics presets? Do you want to play a legato line that transitions from legato into a portato? This is really great and makes you wish someone had done it long ago. You select the articulation and push a single button to activate legato transitions. Then you just push the button beneath it to open articulation options and tweak the legato options, including using up to three different transition types depending on the playing speed.Another great feature is the combination of dynamics matching and auto-gain. Orchestral Tools went through the library to analyze and better balance the dynamics of the different articulations and samples, not only within a given section but also within the orchestra as a whole.
Consequently, you can spend way less time worrying about getting dynamics “right” and setting levels. This is an unusual approach (Spitfire Audio is the only major other one I’ve heard talk about anything at all similar) and Orchestral Tools builds on it by offering auto-gain. Auto-gain is a toggle button – when you enable it, dragging one microphone position slider adjust the remaining ones to maintain a constant volume. And you know what? It actually works really well and takes the “more is better because it’s louder” concern out of finding the right balance.
Of course if you want to adjust all the faders at once, there’s also a new “chain” mode.Possibly the biggest addition is articulation switching. This is big – huge – especially because so many of my favorite libraries had some level of it already. When I went back and forth between my different libraries, the two that stuck out as being limited by not having better articulation switching support where Berlin Strings 1.0 and Hollywood Strings, each of which offer so many articulations that the absence was even more keenly felt. In both cases, a limited number of articulation switching presets were offered but often not the ones I wanted and the user had no way to create new ones. With Berlin Strings 2.0, there are more articulation switching options than you can shake a stick at in the new multi-articulation presets. It doesn’t take the VSL approach (more on that later) but you can have twelve articulations key-switched and picked at your discretion from a large pool of options. The multis are divided up into dynamics, longs, octave runs (one each for up and down) and shorts and you can choose which twelve articulation are mapped to the key-switches from any group within that category using a menu that conveniently removes entries for any articulation you’ve already loaded.The articulation switching goes further by offering both monophonic key-switching (which is mostly what we normally think of as key-switching) and a polyphonic mode I’ll discuss in a moment.
Monophonic key-switching operates in a mode where one key-switch is active a time – when you select a new key-switch it becomes active as soon as you release all notes on that channel. This is different from most other interfaces I have tried where the key-switch changes as soon as the next note is pressed, regardless of whether any notes are still sustaining. It took me a minute to figure that out so I mention it in case any users coming from other libraries get confused, too. It’s a fairly simple adjustment when performing – if you avoid overlapping your notes, the monophonic key-switch will behave as expected. If you overlap notes, then the next key-switch becomes active after you release the last note of the phrase.Polyphonic key-switching has four modes, can switch between them (or between the monophonic and polyphonic modes) using user assignable MIDI CCs. Each of the four modes allows you to select from one to four articulations at once using the same key-switches as in monophonic mode. The first mode is CC Switch: the mode uses a MIDI CC (assignable using the “MI X-Fade/Switch” parameter but set to CC 22 by default) to switch between different articulations.
The CC value that’s active when a note starts determines the note that plays, so you don’t need to worry about overlapping notes (unlike Key-switch Mono). There’s velocity switching, which works pretty much like you would expect as long as you remember that it’s switching, not XFading.
CC XFade is similar to CC Switch (including the CC # used) but you can dynamically crossfade between articulations – making it possible to XFade between different vibrato levels in Berlin Strings for the first time. CC XFade 2D uses the sort of XY cross-fading pad seen in products like the Prophet VS, Wavestation, Hartmann Neuronn and Camel Audio Chameloen, etc.
You can control it visually with a mouse or using CCs. The X-axis is mapped to the same CC as the CC Switch and CC XFade modes, while the Y-axis CC can be reassigned with the parameter named “MI – Y Fade (2D)” and is mapped to CC 23 by default. It is also possible to switch between the four polyphonic key-switch modes using CCs 25 through 28.To use the polyphonic key-switch modes, you press and hold down the key-switches for the articulations you want to add, and each is stacked in the order the key is pressed. For instance, if I’m in CC Switch and press and hold the key-switch for “immediate sustain romantic” and keep it pressed while I next depress the key-switch for “sustain accented”, then CC values 0-63 map to “immediate sustain romantic” and the top half (64-127) map to “sustain accented.” The values dynamically divide depending on whether have one, two, three or four key-switches selected. It’s possible use the polyphonic key-switch modes in a very powerful way to dynamically construct preset mappings as you play.
For instance, you switch to the CC XFade mode at the start of a piece and select just a single short articulation for the first section. Then when your part has a rest, press down a few keys to 3-layer crossfading sustain and use it for the melodic section. When the section ends, just tap a single short articulation key-switch and you’re back to your shorts again.
I’ll also note that if you are a power user, the last tab on the left (the one that’s a grid 3×3 squares) is your friend – as are the up and down arrows.Combining With Other LibrariesCapsule makes it much easier to combine the Berlin series with other libraries than the 1.0 interface, since users can recreate some of the mapping used in several other libraries. I’ll use the example of how I created a legato mapping to work well alongside an EastWest Hollywood Strings 1st Violins “Legato Powerful System” preset to demonstrate the process of emulating even a rather complex preset.First, Hollywood Strings 1st Violins Legato Powerful System crossfades between three layers of vibrato using CC1: non-vibrato at the bottom, normal vibrato through the middle and molto vibrato at the top. So the first step was loading the Berlin Strings 1st Violins Longs multi-articulation and making sure that I had sustain immediate non-vibrato, sustain immediate romantic vibrato and sustain immediate strong vibrato articulations loaded in different key-switch slots.Next, I wanted to make sure that each of these articulations had legato transitions enabled. I clicked on the name SUSIW (for the immediate sustain non-vibrato) and clicked the top icon to enable legato transitions. Then I clicked on the icon beneath it to open the articulation specific settings. Here I set all three of the legato speeds to fingered legato. I clicked the back arrow and repeated this step for the other two sustain types.
Note: This gave me the closest sound to the Legato Powerful System preset I was emulating, but if I wanted to emulate a Bow Change Legato Powerful system preset, I would use slow slurred, mid fingered legato and fast fingered legato. HS portamento variations of these presets map portamento to low velocity values, so this cannot be emulated using the speed options at this time.Next, I clicked the Mono/Poly KS button to switch to display the four polyphonic key-switch modes and selected CC XFade. I chose CC XFade instead of CC Switch since the mapping I emulated crossfaded the amount of vibrato rather than switching it.After that, I pressed and held down the key-switch for Sustain Immediate Non-Vibrato, then held down the Sustain Romantic Vibrato and kept both held while I pressed and held the Sustain Strong Vibrato key-switch – then I let go of all the notes.
Basically, you just press and hold the key-switches together and Capsule stacks them in the order each note is pressed.Next, I clicked the Controller Table icon on the left (the one that looks like a 3×3 grid) and navigated from the Dynamics window, past the Multi Articulations window with legato articulation switches to the Multi Articulations window that displayed the “MI X-Fade/Switch” parameter. I selected the MI X-Fade/Switch parameter and set the CC to CC1.The HS preset I emulated had dynamics mapped to CC11 (expression), but this BST preset originally had dynamics mapped to CC1 – which my preset was now also using for vibrato cross-fading. To fix this I stayed in the Controller Table view and clicked the down arrow twice to get back to the Dynamics window. I clicked on the Dynamic XFade parameter and changed the CC from CC1 to CC11.The HS preset I emulated was also a niente preset (meaning that the dynamic range goes down to silent). I could have just left things as they were – after all, BST assigned CC11 to Volume 2 by default – but the volume behavior of the two presets was radically different and Capsule has a dedicated niente option. So first I clicked I click on the Instrument Vol.
2 parameter in the Control Table view and set the CC to Off. Then I clicked the wrench icon on the left to bring up the Instrument Settings view. Finally I clicked the Niente button to activate the niente option.After that, I was able to use the original Hollywood Strings preset and my new Berlin Strings preset using the CC data in the same way – so I saved the preset with a new name for future use. Using these seven parts directions, the presets now functioned so similarly that I could layer them using the exact same MIDI data without tweaking. But I wanted to get them to sound even closer, I could have tweaked the curves for the MI X-Fade/Switch and Dynamic XFade in the controller table to emulate the Hollywood Strings behavior even more closely.
And if I wanted to go a step further, I could even use the dynamics slider in the Articulation Settings for each of the sustains to emulate the dynamic range of the Hollywood Strings preset even more closely. In other words, the system is a detail-oriented tweakers delight.As you can see, the flexibility of the Capsule interface allowed me to emulate the behavior of a powerful Hollywood Strings preset as I saw fit. I would be unable to setup the Hollywood Strings Legato Powerful System preset to natively re-assign the default mapping used in Berlin Strings or anything else – I would have to find workarounds using my DAW, plug-ins or other tools. On the other hand, let’s say that I was collaborating with a composer that used Cinesamples CineStrings CORE instead of Hollywood Strings and he sent me a True Legato violin part.
I could quickly take the above preset I just created and make it work with the default MIDI CineStrings CORE mapping for True Legato. First, I set the Niente option back to off. Then I set Instrument Vol. 2 back to CC 11. Then I set Dynamic XFade to CC1.
Then I set MI X-Fade/Switch to CC2 (breath).Done in four steps with Capsule. Once again, if I tried to do the same thing with Hollywood Strings, I would need an external solution to handle the re-mapping because PLAY doesn’t offer one at all and PLAY Pro has not been released yet. This is why it’s much easier for me to adapt other libraries to work alongside Hollywood Strings than to adapt Hollywood Strings to work alongside other libraries.How Does the Interface Stack Up Against The Competition?As the previous section illustrates so clearly, Capsule offers the sort of flexibility to re-map and customize as the user sees fit that a library like Hollywood Strings cannot match. Berlin’s other competitors range widely in the customizability offered through their interfaces. I can’t comment on LASS since the developers have thus far declined to provide a copy for review.
However, the customization situation improves noticeably from Hollywood Strings as we go to 8DIO’s string series for Kontakt: while Adagietto uses a one-articulation-per-preset approach, both the Adagio and Agitato series allow key-switch reassignment and all of them allow you to use MIDI learn on their dynamics knobs and things of that ilk. Still, the customization would be considered fairly basic in comparison to other offerings in general and certainly compared to Capsule in particular. The Kontakt Player libraries Cinematic Strings 2.1 and Cinesamples Cinestrings CORE, each go further by offering quicker to customize interfaces with more options than 8Dio’s offerings. Cinematic Strings 2.1 does a great job of making the most of an octave of key-switch mappings and makes the process very simple and visual. I am also a big of the CineStrings CORE’s rapid reassignment GUI, especially in regards to specifying velocity or CC ranges, let alone its unusual application of the sustain pedal. However, neither of the two offers the level of detail and power to customize that Capsule does.
While CineStrings CORE can hold its own in terms of the legato sampling (it has more dynamic layers than BST), there’s simply no denying that the legato programming in BST is a lot more powerful than Cinematic Strings 2.1, let alone the customization options relating to that. In fact it’s clear that Capsule aims to take on the interfaces most specifically designed to handle large numbers of articulations: those from Spitfire Audio and VSL.Capsule vs.
Spitfire Audio’s BML InterfaceOut of the three interfaces just mentioned, Spitfire Audio’s current incarnation of their BML GUI is the one that places the greatest premium on simplicity – you never find yourself wading through text the way you sometimes can in the other two. At the same time, Capsule generally offers more powerful tweaking options and more flexible mapping and reassignmentSpitfire’s BML interface is the one that caters most specifically to individual samples issues using a context sensitive COG menu: play a note, click the COG icon and select “tweak last note” and adjust the tuning and volume of the sustain or release tail, or you can opt to omit the round-robin from being played. Click the COG and you can save, load or remove those tweaks. COG remains unique in the interfaces I’ve encountered, and I didn’t see a way to address individual tuning and volume issues using Capsule. Instead it seemed like I would have to rely on the full Kontakt’s native editing if I wanted to do that. As far as omitting round-robins, Capsule’s articulation settings interface shows a grid of the round-robins, highlighting the one currently being played, and omitting or re-enabling a particular one is as simple as clicking the circle. However, while COG addresses round-robins on a per-sample basis, Capsule address them per group.
If you omit a round-robin variation on one note in an articulation Capsule, you omit that variation for all the notes in the articulation.Next let’s look at re-mapping and transposition. BML’s interface makes transposition easy – Capsule does not offer any native transposition options that I encountered. Both libraries make it pretty easy to assign MIDI CCs – BML primarily relies on MIDI learn in conjunction with sliders provided on the main page, while Capsule integrates them natively into the interface but puts them away from the main tab. It should be noted that Capsule offers CC and velocity curve tweaking options that the BML interface does not. Spitfire Audio advocates the use of a standardized UACC mapping scheme which BML supports, but a discussion of the pros and cons of that approach are beyond the scope of this article.Some Spitfire Audio presets feature the ostinatum sequencer for launching rhythms using an internal sequencer when you play a note. There’s no equivalent to this in Capsule.While both interfaces do a very good job of managing multiple microphone positions and these are the two major orchestral libraries that seem most concerned with maintaining the original dynamics of the instruments, each has slight advantages.
Spitfire’s BML microphone preset system makes it easy to save and load a particular mic blend without affecting other settings (Capsule saves these as part of the general settings preset instead) but the BML interface has no equivalent for Capsule’s powerful auto-gain feature.In terms of legato programming, customization and flexibility, I definitely give the edge to Capsule’s implementation in BST. It would take too long to tackle every detail, but suffice to say that in their current implementations, Capsule offers more control, more powerful scripting and the ability to add legato intervals to any sustain.
Orchestral Brass Sample Library
I will note that the BML presets are set up for vibrato cross-fading out-of-the-box while BST Capsule offers the ability for users to create their own. Conversely, BML presets often segregate the legatos from the other articulations while Capsule’s more flexible system allows you to mix and match them with other longs, with or without legato.In the end, both are great interfaces designed with slightly different priorities. Spitfire’s BML interface gets the edge in individual sample adjustments and simplicity, while Capsule gets the edge in overall power and depth.Capsule vs.
Vienna Instruments/Vienna Instruments ProIn comparison with both VSL’s Instrument and Instrument Pro interfaces, Capsule offers both advantages and disadvantages. VSL’s approach continues to offer access to more articulations at once than any other approach using larger matrices, but it lacks Capsule’s ability to add sampled interval-legato sampled transitions with any articulation. Dragging and dropping articulations in Vienna Instruments is a little easier to navigate than clicking in lists in Capsule’s smaller windows, but Capsule does simplify the process by removing any articulations from the list that you have already used.Let’s look at round-robins. Both interfaces eschew Spitfire Audio’s sample-specific tools, each handles chords similarly well and use similar interfaces to add or remove round-robins. Vienna Instruments Pro has an edge in terms of offering bettering “humanize” and sequencing options, but Capsule offers an automatic round-robin reset timer that neither Vienna Instruments Pro nor BML has.Vienna Instruments Pro has a powerful sequencer that’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss. Capsule has no equivalent.Since VSL’s libraries are offered with a single mic position of centered, close-miked stereo samples, the Vienna Instrument engine has no application for Capsule’s unusual Auto-Gain option.
Orchestral Tools Berlin Brass Torrent List
On the other hand, the way that Orchestral Tools analyzed and setup the dynamics of each articulation and instrument makes for a much shorter learning curve in balancing instruments levels. By contrast Vienna Instruments Pro offers per-articulation mixing options (level and panning) that have no equivalent in the multi-articulation Capsule presets.Overall, there’s no clear winner. These are arguably the two most powerful interfaces for working with an orchestral library that have been designed to date and each has features you just can’t find anywhere else.Should I Get It?If you own Berlin Strings 1.0, you should definitely download the 2.0 update – there’s just no excuse not to. If you’re looking into getting Berlin Strings for the first time or have been on the fence, then Berlin Strings 2.0 radically improves both the ease of use for beginners and the overall functionality for power users at once. The customizability means it can pretty much be integrated into any workflow now – though obviously users that prefer a close-miked dry library will still be better served elsewhere. Beginners may still find the learning curve of Cinematic Strings 2.1 or CineStrings CORE a little shorter (especially since there are fewer articulations to learn) but Berlin Strings 2.0 is a lot faster to work with than before.
Orchestral Brass Classic
It also has to be said that beginners and experienced users alike will benefit greatly from the way the dynamics have been setup: there’s nothing like being able to throw an array of woodwinds and strings from the same company together having them balance well out of the box without adjusting a single fader.Long story short, Berlin Strings 2.0 is not the only choice you have for strings – it just happens to be one of the best ones money can buy.