Cinesamples - CinePerc Core
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Prologue
Cinesamples began their business way back in 2007. In mid-2011, they came up with quite extraordinary library, called CineBrass, which was later expanded to Cinebrass PRO, boasting with loads of instruments and sections, sampled in quite a unique way. Next one introduced was CineWinds, expanding their Hollywoodwinds woodwind range with 5 basic solo instruments. CinePerc was its third monstrous volume, aiming to capture essence of percussion instruments. And it did, with over 60 instruments in total, broadening the CinePerc range with Pro, Epic and Aux expansions.

Introduction
This library is huge! That needs to be said right there. For each and every instrument, Cinesamples offers at least 5 microphone mixes and one full mix, done by Dennis Sands, man behind major blockbusters as mixing and mastering engineer.
As said in the introductory video, they positioned all microphones with utmost precision, where milimeters played quite a role.

Layout & Specs

Well so what is the result of them trying to be meticulous?
Unfortunately, not quite good.


Fig. 1 - Timpani, mixer
Though one thing can't be taken from them. The GUI is highly customizable.
Upon loading an instrument, it opens with microphone mixer. On this pane, it's very easy to control the sound footprint. If in doubt how to do it well, selection of 6 presets make the mixing easier.

One of the reasons this library is so huge is the number of microphone mixes. Just look at it. Nine mixes!
To be ruthlessly honest, I don't like any mic position, they all sound "wrong" to me, like not one can stand on it's own except for full mix. That makes casting decisions which to remove very hard. Unlike in Spitfire libs, where each mic position has its sacred purpose.


Fig. 2 - Mapping page

Mapping page brings up this screen. As said before, it's highly customizable.
For Timpani, I can select velocity or CC control separately for rolls and hits, and mallet selection can be programmed in the same way. Only things missing are velocity curve response and perhaps crossfading curve.


Fig. 3 - Settings page
This is where the the magic of sound design begin. Basic effects like band-pass, chorus, delay, distortion, compression and lo-fi.
Very handy is the round robin switch, as in certain passages you'd want to use cycled round robin to imitate patterns, while in all other cases, random is the best.
Dynamic slider allows for easy control of dynamic volume response.


Well, that's about it, GUI chapter closed.
What about the sound, Andrew?
Honestly?
I don't like it.
Now don't get me wrong, there are some noteworthy examples of well-done sampling, like the Timpani.
I don't know of any other lib, that would offer you true dampened Timpani, with 3 mallets, so many velocity layers and so many mic positions.
Hmm, maybe Orchestral Tools The Timpani, but I like 1 instrument per one MIDI channel and Orchestral Tools split the articulations to many patches.

Yet apart from that gorgeous timpani, there's so little to talk about.
Some mallets are offered with just two velocity layers and two RR.

Problems & Recommendations
There aren't actual bugs in this library. Yep, Cinesamples are great coders.

• Too much background noise makes it hard to play very soft passages
• While the instruments sound awesome on their own, they are not quite compatible with most mixes.
• Loads of microphone positions are not worthy replacement for deeply sampled round robin alternations.
• Consumes quite a lot of CPU usage, even with all effects turned off

Original Product Video

Auxiliary & Demonstrational Video

[media][Video will be available in 2 days][/media]
In the video, I'll pinpoint only the highlights and drawbacks as Cinesamples made a quite good demonstrational one. *yes*

Conclusion

Please note that Cinesamples as well as ProjectSAM have that "in-the-face" sound and were primarily designed for trailer and cinematic music in mind.
CinePerc Core was a good idea, executed however in a quirky way.
Milimetre positioning proved to be quite ineffective, at least for me, as one mic position alone just couldn't make the natural sound, and once you start loading more, the CPU suffers, so it's cat and mouse hunt.
The sound is great for explosive cinematic action sequences, but I'd have hard time imagining it in romantic scene.
The library is huge, weighting over 45GB, with perhaps unnecessarily too much mic positions and too few round robins. Also the notorious Cinesamples' background noise is present even here.
To conclude, I'd highly recommend anyone to test this library, maybe you'll like it, maybe not. There are some very interesting and catching sounds, if you don't mind the drawbacks.
Remember to always try it before clicking Place Order!

Reviewer's rating:
6 out of 10 stars


PS: Sorry this one took that long, I needed to finish something very important.
PPS: As my imageshack trial expired, do you know of any good free image hosting site that would allow direct links? I'm now using Dropbox, and it does the job, but perhaps something dedicated would be nice. Thanks *yes*

Tomorrow: most likely (not 100%) a hardware related tutorial (concerning headphones! ) and one home-brewed experimental sound library *yes*

 

photobucket? I use for my piccys

 

Thanks yet again for your absolutely sterling work. Really proud to have these reviews on AudioSex. :phones:

Edit: I removed the first part for obvious reasons.

 

It's very interesting to have different point of view, that's why I love Andrew's reviews.

 

Thank you, tempo, welcome back!
And of course others for your support.

BTW, Photobucket might not be the best choice as Ghostery, an opera plugin, picked up 18 trackers there. For now, I'll probably keep photos on Dropbox *yes*

 

@Andrew I think all photos uploaded have trackers embedded (probably reason ghostery had a panic attack) and you can view the tracking info of your own pictures via your account page

 

Great review, I feel the exact same way as the OP. The timpani is fantastic but the rest of the library is unfortunately a steaming pile of shit. The bass drum has so much noise, I just couldn't believe it. Play a soft velocity and you hear more noise and buzz than drum! And as OP pointed out, crucial RRs were replaced with superfluous mic positions. A B-list release from an A-list company.

 

Thanks for the review, critical and informative as always. Looking forward especially to your next CineSamples product review!

 

Thanks andrew

 

Thanks again Andrew...

Great review.

 

Good job again!
When my libs achieved more than 20 TB I began to compare kontaks and loops in the last months... I cleaned more than 5 GB and still working.
I think that cineperc deserves one point more because they have some sounds that are unique. I deleted a lot of presets in other libs (and resave of course) but this one I didnt find courage...
Always good your reviews

 

Thanks for the review Andrew. I gave it a try and have to agree the Timpani patch is fantastic, but the number of mic positions is overdone making the library super fat. I also quite like the cymbals/gongs and base drum patches. For snares, I still prefer Project Sam or even East West stuff.

 

Andrew in terms of image-hosting what about imgur? You can even keep it off the main site by making it private.

 

I'll try imgur, thanks for suggestion.
Anyway the hardware tutorial is still undergo, mainly because I still haven't quite finished the project myself.

 

Take your time mate, we're already spoiled for life by your excellent software reviews.

 

Fantastic work. Congratulations. Very very useful.
Thank you.