During the week I started work on drawing up a new orchestral MIDI template in preparation for getting back into regular composing/orchestrating in the new year. Blending sections from various sample libraries being the best practice I had considered picking up a copy of East West Hollywood strings Gold . Damn good value for 225 bucks plus it has, to my ears, a much richer/warmer sound in the the high string registers than my default library (VSL). That said I would like to make the best use out of the libraries I already own, having burnt out the Mastercard several times already : P Thankfully the new MIRx expansion for the VSL pro 2 player (authentic room, read as more ‘warmth’, reverb) definitely improves the high register sound and after having made a few more short composition tests I’m pretty sure, in combination with the other main library, I’ll be able to achieve very decent sounding mock-ups. I’m also experimenting with doubling up the VSL chamber sections in combination with the Humanise (subtle pitch shifts) and MIRx to see how they differ from the full ensemble recordings.
I also contacted Project Sam support during the week to find out what the exact section sizes are as it surprisingly was’nt mentioned anywhere in the manual. The Symphobia sections are even smaller than I’d have guessed (10/8/6/5/3 setup for the string section, a 4/3/3/1 for brass and a 2/2/2/2 for woodwind) which just goes to show how much effect the room can have on the sound of the orchestra.
