Hi everyone! I'm new to this community (and warez community, also). I'm posting because I couldn't find any thread that answers my questions in particular, hope it isn't too repetitive. I'm a young composer in formation, looking to expand my abilities with music production so I can aspire to earn an income with this. I'm interested in learning how to make decent mockups of my compositions and also how to score music for film and videogames. From my ignorance, I've been downloading (since I really can't afford anything) things kind of erratically for my experiments, and therefore, wasting a lot of time, not knowing what is the best for what I want to do and not really caring for file sizes. For example, I've downloaded the almost 200Gb EWQLSO Platinum XP Pro and never got good results because it lacks expression. So my question is, what are the basic libraries that I need to have to start my journey? What resources for studying "classical" and film/videogame music production do you reccomend?

I've got (what I think it is) a decent PC to work, with roughly 1TB of available space, 16Gb of RAM and Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz 3.30 GHz.

I'm really amazed that such a big and useful community exists. Hope you can help me and thank you all in advance!

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2022

UJAM - Symphonic Elements STRIIIINGS VSTi
https://www.ujam.com/symphonic-elements/striiiings/

Walkthrough | Symphonic Elements STRIIIINGS

uJAM - Symphonic Elements DRUMS VSTi
https://www.ujam.com/symphonic-elements/drums/

Walkthrough | Symphonic Elements DRUMS

Syntheway Virtual Musical Instruments - Magnus Choir (Choir Synth Plugin)
https://syntheway.com/choir.htm

Magnus Choir VST VST3 Audio Unit 64 bit

Guy-Roger Duvert – Thema
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1vdliMPRtA&list=PLjAuQBFFl3RpmzdVy3X-44d1jU6eaaaYq

 

Last edited: Jan 23, 2022

https://sonic-cat.com/purity/
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/hypersonic_by_steinberg

 

https://www.uvi.net/de/orchester

https://www.bestservice.com/the_orchestra_complete.html

https://www.sonixinema.com/

https://output.com/products

 

Last edited: Jan 24, 2022

Welcome to the community! Hope you have a great stay here and you'll surely find lots of useful information here.

Since in the title, you mentioned "all-purpose" libraries, I can recommend a few which have everything you need to get started, but might not necessarily be the most detailed and expressive libraries.
1. Sonic Scores Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra: Quite lightweight and has a great selection of instruments. Also works great as a sketching tool.

2. Audio Imperia Nucleus: This one has quite a modern, cinematic sound to it. Good amount of articulations and the interface is easy to understand. Contains a few solo instruments as well, which is always nice.

3. Spitfire Audio Albion ONE: This one has a really rich and beautiful sound, owing to the fact that it was recorded in the Lyndhurst Hall. The dynamics are in the upper range, so the library fits trailer-type scoring quite well. It also has a few synths and loops which you might find handy. However, the library really has its own sound and is quite wet. Also the instruments have been divided into high and low sections, instead of the individual instrument sections.

4. Orchestral Tools Berlin Orchestra Inspire 1 and Inspire 2: These include instruments from the famed Berlin Orchestra series. Rather than individual instrument sections, the instruments have been combined in various combinations that work together really well. Inspire 1 is on the higher, more epic side of dynamics, while Inspire 2 is on the softer side of dynamics.

5. ProjectSAM Symphobia 1: A classic library that features groups of instruments that are commonly used and work great together rather than single ones. It differs from the Inspire series as these instrument groups were recorded together rather than just combined later on from individual recordings.

So I hope you find these suggestions useful! Feel free to ask any other questions you might have.

P.S.: Yes, the EWQLSO stuff is really old (early 2000s), but there are definitely some great sounds to be had there! Also, IMHO the Platinum version is not really necessary.

 

Mostly for sketching, I find Spitfire Masse quite useful. The BS is that AFAIK thats only available with SSO.

Anyone knows of an alternative that would have tutti preorchestrated (similar to Masse)? Maybe from the suggestions above?

 

First of all, I want to thank everyone for all your useful answers. Today I'm gonna dive right into everything, I'm really excited.

In your opinion, what should I keep from EWQLSO? I really like the percussion sets. I've read that it's useful as playback for Sibelius, a most useful tool for me, but I don't know if it's worth it.

Also, what do you all think about BS The Orchestra?

 

Last edited: Jan 24, 2022

I've read good things about the percussion from EWQLSO as well, so if you like it, you should keep it. Unfortunately I have no idea about Sibelius, so won't be able to help you with that.
I haven't personally used Best Service The Orchestra, but after watching a few reviews, seems like a pretty usable all-in-one solution. The size is not too big, so might be easier to try as well.

 

Masse definitely has a few really cool sounds. The section sizes are massive, so playing too many notes sounds way too big and a bit unrealistic. However, with many notes, it takes on a slightly "synthy" character, which I really like and it definitely has its uses in certain contexts.

For tutti libraries, you can check out some of the libraries I suggested above. ProjectSAM's Symphobia 1 and Symphobia 2 contain a few tutti patches. The difference is that the Symphobia libraries feature sections that were recorded together, instead of just combining separate recordings as in the case of Masse. And AFAIK the sections sizes are smaller than SSO/Masse too.
You can also take a look at Cinesymphony LITE by Cinesamples.

 

Many of the high quality libraries out there are substantial, the ones with multiple expressions and multiple microphone recordings.
Spitfire BBC, East West Opus, Too many good KONTAKT libraries to list.... Some require faster SSD's rather than a storage drive....
My suggestion is try them out for yourself. A lot of people use the above and many other good suggestions posted above me, some exclusively and some mix-n-match. Personally I prefer the latter because no single library will satisfy every possible need I may have.
You can try a lot out from the sister site.

 

https://www.bestservice.com/emotional_violin.html
I have such a kontakt library in my collection, it sounds good to me.

 

Hey! I'll add my question here to this thread since this is a thing, but are there orchestral plugins where it is not entirely sample-based? I kinda wanna save some space on my computer too you know.... if there are any good ones.

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2022

1. Cinematic Studio Strings No1 if you wanna fuse film/video games/classical orchestra allin1
2. Vienna Symphonic Library
3. EastWest Hollywood Orchestra
4. EastWest Hollywood Choirs
5. Metropolis Ark 1
6. Spitfire Albion 1
   
7. Garritan Personal Orchestra
   
8. Uvi Orchestral Suite
   
9. Native Instruments Cinematic
10. 8dio Studio Quarter Series

These ones are some of the best Orchestral VST plugins that I know of and some of my favourites.
Also Orchestral Tools Berlin Strings is one of the best for strings.

Also check Steinberg Iconica Sections and Players (HALion)

And I think that this video (Iconica & EastWest Hollywood Choirs are the ones used here) will help you a lot to learn to incorporate a very simple to understand and fast working workflow:

 

Last edited: Jan 25, 2022

Sonic Scores Amadeus symphonic orchestra
Spitifre Audio Albion one
Audio imperia nucleus
Audio imperia jaeger
Red room audio symphonic sketchpad
Orchestral tools orchestra inspire 1 & 2
Projectsam orhcestral essentials 1 & 2
this one which is only 9$

 

Cinematic studio series is the best scripted library out there period. For additional articulations like glissandos and hairpin strings etc i use spitfire studio series and SWAM, but spitfire studio series sucks ass for everything else. Its well marketed hot garbage. The legato scripting is awful, audible stutters in the short samples, and for the essential short samples they expect you to use 'time machine' patches, which is just time stretching in kontakt. But beggars cant be choosers i guess
The albion series is fine though, just get albion one for starters.

 

I find Cinesamples to be the best when it comes to combining styles. Since you mentioned videogame music i'm assuming you will eventually want to add rock or electronic music elements, which this one takes very well without too much fiddling around.

For courses i've only seen half of "Evenant - Cinematic Music From Idea To Finished Recording" and i think it's a very good starting point (at least the first half ).

 

Unfortunately, there aren't really any such instruments. There are a few offerings from Audio Modeling which use modeling instead of samples, but all of them are solo instruments and there are no ensemble instruments.
Also, if you want to save some space, you can check out "Lite Versions" made by me as well as a few other people on the "sister site".

 

Spitfire Albion one has also been my favorite library so far.
Some people like the Eastwood stuff but I actually never tried any of them