I did, on first page

 

Modelled stuff is good and all but a bit too tweak-heavy. Wouldn't suit OP anyway, apparently he was just looking for either big layered brass sections or brass + synth brass.

 

As pointed out here in previous posts, already mentioned in this thread, but SWAM are solo instruments, not ensembles.

 

I am looking for the same things.
I did try to build up some orchestral parts with the big libraries (and still play around) but to mix it all is a lot of work.
The best sounds I have are definitely in Kontakt... others have mentioned VSL and Orchestral Tools Berlin, Chris Hein, and there are so many of those cinematic libraries with neat stuff, and they don't always get too involved.

On a keyboard where you may be playing live only one patch or layering some you are more limited, but it IS more fun in a different way, and the limitations may actually force it to be more fun in that way.
I found that control over the attack makes a big difference playing like that. I have my expression pedal hooked up again for that.
I am limited in keyboard control ATM, but used to use a small separate one for keyswitching, but it was still a chore.

I have more fun if I can just assign attack to my pedal.
I liked Garritan stuff for a while, but haven't installed them on this setup.
I found some decent patches in Roland SRX Orchestra but I have gravitated back to the IKM Miroslav stuff a couple of days ago looking for woodwind and brass patches and ended up playing with solo stings again. Woe is me, but I they sound pretty good.
I ended up with ..omg the string section is actually a PAD patch in Hive...

Maybe woodwinds and brass are not what i was looking for after all....

 

The issue is that you, OP and I bet many other people are trying to make an orchestral brass section play and sound like a pop brass section. That's just not gonna happen, not with orchestral libraries. You could pull it off with a lot of careful tweaking (small room reverb, short attack, using staccato, sforzando and marcato articulations, etc) but it's still not gonna sound right to you.

You want big pre-layered ROMpler-like brass sections? Try Wizoo/AIR's Hypersonic 2/XPAND!2, Korg's Triton, Roland's JV/XV/SRX VSTs, Steinberg's HALion, Luxonix's Purity, etc, mostly in order. Most of these are smaller than 3gb each.

Or if you wanna go big you can get EastWest's Hollywood Pop Brass at 21gb or NI's Session Horns at 28gb and set them up however you want, including velocity-triggered falls like most ROMplers have them.

 

Last edited: Sep 24, 2022