Orchestral Tools - Berlin Woodwinds + Expansion A
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Prologue
Berlin Woodwinds hits an important mark in sample playback development, being the first "notable" woodwind library with incredible sonic quality, that is easy to play with and very light on CPU and RAM (not so much on HDD space though).
Until 2012 very few woodwind packages were actually recorded in 'situ' (yep, I borrowed that word from SF) on a world-class scoring stage and featured three separately recorded flute players.

10th May finally marks the date for Berlin Woodwinds review, Kontakt library that waited way too long to get my proper attention. And that's because I misunderstood it the first time. BWW is not quite designed to function on an instrument level, rather on a "multi" level.

Introduction
BWW released at the end of 2012 came with most instruments from typical western woodwind section:

• 3 flutes (all recorded separately & in unison)
• 2 oboes (different players, 1st and 2nd chair)
• 2 Bb Clarinets & Unison
• 2 Bassoons

Needless to say, all instruments comes with vibrato and non-vibrato samples in three mic positions, and by now you've probably realized that this lib is nothing pocket-sized. It's almost 80 GB monster, though if you remove CLOSE and FAR mikes the MIX one weighs only about 24 GB.
At this point you may noticed something is missing. Ha, you're not the only one. I was like, where's Molly, where's Eb Clarinet, or Contrabassoon, or Bass Flute?!?

Layout & Specs
Relax!
Orchestral Tools has us covered
Expansion A, released in June 2013, contains most missing instruments, Bass Clarinet, Eb Clarinet and Contrabassoon. For us Bass Flute fans, that came as a slight disappointment.

• Double/Triple tongue - classic tonguing technique, sounds authentic
• Legato - three vel. layers, switchable (as of 1.5)
• Portato Long - longest short note
• Portato Short
• Staccato
• Staccatissimo - shortest short note
• Sustain - that's an easy one
• Sforzando - short pronounced
• Trill orchestrator

• 1x trills - just one played trill, similar to grace note
• Measured trills - Time Machine Pro synced trills, up to perfect 5th
• Sforzando trills - awesome sound
• Trills HT-5th - regular non-measured trills, up to perfect 5th

Fig. 1 - Oboe patch

As mentioned in the beginning, BWW is really a "multi" type of library, e.g. no consolidated patches, like in Spirfire libs. Such structure requires different workflow in your projects (one Kontakt multi per instance) - more of that tomorrow

Instruments like Flutes also comes with Progressive vibrato - one that starts senza (without) and builds into pronounced and expressive one.

X-fading script is nothing quite fancy, and introduces phasing and timbral change across layers. Legato and sustain patches are recorded with three layers for NV, V, and PV. Needless to say, layers can be turned off to prevent forementioned phasing and timbral discrepancy.


Fig. 2 - Multiscript

Multis comes with two versions - empty and basic. I would recommend building your own multis, while using empty ones as your 'shells'. Multiscript offers only basic functionality, yet it's quite flexible (you can even set sustain pedal to switch articul. )


Sound
Sound of BWW is difficult to describe, on one hand there's unique realism of real woodwinds, on the other one, artefacts introduced through x-fading. Luckily shorts are not as much affected. Anyway even though the way it crossfades diminishes its score, the overall sonic quality is still OK.

Problems & Recommendations
No problems with the script, just be aware that it's intended for separate instances. Just recap:

• Crossfading artefacts diminish the sonic quality quite a bit - better option is the way SF does it - CC value-based programmed crossfade, rather than minimum latency
• No consolidated patches - though this is more or less about the workflow and YOUR flexibility

That's probably it!

Original Product Video
Orchestral tools released very useful cues, and also what changed in 1.5 and 1.6

Conclusion
Even though I have BWW at my disposal for a long time, I never actually use it. But that's because I was lazy. I was used to load up single instance of Kontakt for 15 instruments and left it that way, so I'm still finding my way into this gold.
Berlin Woodwinds is one awesome library, that comes with HDD space tag, and a price, but the quality is worth it.
Yes the crossfade script will need refining, but overall, it's definitely a keeper for me.

Reviewer's rating:
8 out of 10 stars


Thanks for reading!

Tomorrow - Part 2 - Runs and Trills

 

Andrew's reviews, a symphony for the soul.
Very grateful for this, thanks so much.
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Another great review.
This is about the truth, not developer bullshit-blah blah blah....
Fat thanks again Andrew.

 

Thanks for the review, yet again.