Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of cristina101

January 23rd, 2009 – I’m thinking about composing for film again but my orchestral libraries need a major overhaul. Now that I’m slightly wiser, and slightly more established, I’d like to go after bigger assignments. As such, the sample libraries I have just aren’t going to cut it.

At the same time, I don’t have enough money to go nuts and get the top of the line Vienna Symphonic libraries. I have, however, been looking at the Vienna Special Edition which, at the top end edition, still costs $1100. That’s about $1099 more than I have in my pocket right now.

There are some competitors at this middle level, including the East West/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra, Halion’s Symphonic Orchestra, and Garritan’s Personal Orchestra. Those are the order of the prices from high to low as well, with Garritan’s offering coming in at $180. So you might be wondering why I would want to spend so much on sample libraries. The higher end the product, the more articulation in the instruments, with multiple samples for each note spanning different velocities and volumes. This allows you to have a ridiculously realistic sounding end product. Most of the movie soundtracks you hear nowadays are generated from sampled instruments instead of live orchestras. Check out the various products that I’ve listed and listen to the demos; you will be amazed at the realism.

The Vienna Symphonic libraries are the highest end of the spectrum and are about as professional as you can get. Being a professional solution, you must have your own reverbs and compressors to make the libraries sound good, as well as possess good mixing skills. When you listen to the samples mixed by a professional, the outcome is amazing. If you’re not good at mixing, and you aren’t willing to pay for a good mix engineer, you will not get as nice an output. In that case, all the other products I listed will be better as the samples are already wet (ie. they have reverb on them already). For me, I’m a decent enough engineer but I lack the money to buy the professional solution.

Do any of you have experience with any of the products I listed? If so I’d appreciate recommendations on what you liked and why. Thanks!