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ProjectSAM - Symphobia series​

About ProjectSAM
ProjectSAM started its bussiness in 2005 with the True Strike release, which has become the number one percussion choice for film and video game composers for being very realistic and deeply sampled in terms of velocities and repetition. In 2008 ProjectSAM released Symphobia, a trailer-aimed library with hits, scrapes, swells as well as sampled orchestra. Symphobia 2 (2010) became valuable addition to previous Sym1 owners, featuring true legato for various instruments. Last year, ProjectSAM released it's third installment in Symphobia series - Lumina, packed with more legato instruments, and aimed more for cartoon and fantasy instead of percussive action packed cues. Symphobia Colours, likely 4th episode of Symphobia series, promises to cover chords and effects.

Along with Symphobia, ProjectSAM releases include Orchestral Essentials, Concert Harp, Orchestral Brass Classic, True Strike 1,2, Organ Mystique

Prologue
I have given it much thought should I compose review for Symphobia, because unlike Spitfire stuff, where is everything quite clear, Symphobia becomes much more controversial. While I do not like the concept of mixing everything to get single patch, there are some situations where Symphobia is actually useful.
ProjectSAM libraries however sound quite same to me, basically the sound is BIG, always BIG which gets boring after a while. Play their Concert Harp for a few minutes, you'd be missing dynamic nuances that are essential in music. All you get is sound right in your face, all the time, no matter the velocity or volume.

Introduction
To keep this review as spot on and short as possible, I am going to analyze the series as a whole, stopping only to point out important features of each package.

Layout and specifics

Fig. 1 - Legato and Repetition buttons, appearance of Symphobia 1.2
Symphobia 1 - Strings, Brass and Woodwinds were recorded in families, so expect sustain patches named Strings, Brass, Woodwinds. No instrument separation based on its register, everything mixed together, which is great for chords, but nothing much else as the instruments overlay each other. There is Legato button on the main GUI, but I'd advice not to use it as it degrades the sound to cheap synthesizer. The Repetition script is far from being reliable, after 5 single notes you might actually hear neighbour-borrowed sample.
Strings sustains are sampled in 3 velocity layers, sordino covers only one velocity. Pizzicatos are single layer as well, with 5 repetitions.
Brass has only 2 velocity layers, p and mf, crossfaded together.
Woodwinds are poorest, with just single velocity layer.
The Strings are the most convincing, for Brass is adequate and for Woodwinds you'd be better with anything else.

Fig. 2 - Limited legato range for instrument groups
Symphobia 2 - It all starts with Full Orchestrator with which you can actually make music. Symphobia 2 is in a nutshell filled with shorts (pizzicato and staccato) and true legato sections, from Bassoon & Celli combo to Violin & Viola & Horn trios. The legato ranges are however very limited (two-and-a-half octaves maximum), making it difficult to assign melody lines to them. Also while the combos sound great on their own, most of them are single-layered meaning you can forget cressendos and layering them to orchestra climaxes. Legato Low Whistle and Uillean Pipes let you play only in D-major scale. While this is standard tuning for those instruments, uncle SAM could program it so that one sample covers two notes as it did nearly every library producer.

Fig. 3 - Microphone mixer in Lumina, general appearance
Symphobia 3 - We might be getting somewhere with this one. Finally Legato Soloists cover Alto Flute, Bassoon, Oboe, Clarinet, Trumpet, Soprano Voice, Recorders and Tin Whistle. Sadly though, yet again in one velocity layer. The sound however is not traditionally BIG, but tender and even pleasant. SAM also did quite a job with microphone placement, adjusting wetness just couldn't be easier. Lumina has more to offer; Stories, Textures and Gestures fill the need for multis. There are also Playable Instruments (literally)! This installment is my most favourite one out of those three.


Drawbacks
Most of the drawbacks were already mentioned. I would also add a few:

• Considering the price of €2399 for all three, those products simply don't deliver on. You would be better off with all Albions, which are nearly half the price, have Legato sections, 4 mic positions and sound a lot better.
• 1.3 update along with additional content brought higher CPU usage and inability to unload Close or Stage mic from RAM
• Some samples have broken loops (pops).

Conclusion
These three packs are great for only handful of situations. Weighting about 70GB together, it's well up to you if your HDD space is worth covering those 'handful of situations'. As for the price, I would not recommend buying them. The price tag is set way too high for what you can get out of them. First one is good for chords, second for booming staccatos and third one for a bit of expressivity. They are fun to play with, but not built for serious music production.
If you are still considering purchase, be sure to try them first!!
For others - download, play with it, then delete.

PS: I wish there were more positive to say about Symphobia, frankly I don't like the series, but that's just me.
PPS: Next review will cover Adagio, would you like review of a whole series or each one individually? Write me in the comments!

Otherwise thanks for reading!
Reviewer's rating
5 starts out of 10

 

oh well, more space for other stuff then

 

Yeah Andrew

Yet another one

 

I think you hit the nail on the head with these ones. Nice sounds for what it is, but it's basically a big and very overpriced ROMpler.

I remember loading up Lumina when it came out and going through the sounds, thinking how useless those would be in anything I'd make, with I believe 1 patch that sounded interesting to me, I deleted it immediately. Maybe I'll check it out again sometime, but you know something is wrong when the best thing about the library is the nice looking GUI...

 

Give us all Adagio

 

Andrew you're on fire man.

We might need to make a special section for reviews because I think you need more space to operate unfettered. We wouldn't want you getting caught between Kontakt encrypted library questions. *no*

Personally I'm finding these reviews infinitely useful because I don't download everything that we offer so I need to know what is truly worth the space. A sincere heartfelt thank you for sharing with us.

Concerning Adagio I would prefer individual reviews just because you can give more attention to detail and perhaps there are specifics to each library. However I understand that this can be a lot more work so feel free to do whatever is easier for you.

 

Symphobia 1 was just the first tool to give you that big sound with one key press...that's all
It is not, and was never intended to be, a full composition tool, only "meat and potatoes" to give you that big realistic sound without spending hours on layering...i meant "composition"

Of course, others released their own "vision" : Albion is more subtle, complete and "classy", Sonokinetic more on the GUI and concepts side, with different "bricks"...

Albion is the bridge between old school "bunch of articulations and separate instruments" libs like EWQLSO(a lot of work), and Symphobia "one kill key press"
More flexible and realistic than Symphobia, but need more job too.

If you just want a "simple" killer orchestral sound to spice non-orchestral tracks (without spending an arm), take a look at Sonokinetic products *yes*
To me, they are the best "bang for the buck", really killer sound.

Garritan Instant Orchestra can be nice too, but the sound really need some spice.
I simply use (on a bus) a BBE Sonic Maximizer or freeware Thrillseeker XTC to revive the dull high end and tighten the low end.
But with care...it can explode your sound with phase and transients troubles

For non-composers ppl like me, i found Albion less inspiring than Symphobia or Garritan Instant Orchestra. Those last ones are more "ROMpler", like ELpH said
A kind of Nexus, with big orchestral sound

Thanks about the review

 

+1

Since I'm an Adagio fan I'm looking forward to reading your comments about those lib's.

 

Andrew

Nice work man... (again... )

Keep going, your audience is growing....

Thanks again.




By the way, I'm completely agreed with the Catalyst sugestion of "special section"...
I think will be great...

 

Thank you all for your comments.
I would certainly welcome separate section

Each review takes about 2 days to complete, and I do those things in order
Research, play with the lib, write highlights, write review, look for pictures & take screenshots, upload pictures, release review
Just in case somebody wants to know

 

It's tough man I know and that's why I have extra appreciation for your contribution Andrew. It's always a lot quicker to consume and much harder to create. That's another reason I remind people at times to make use of the thanks button which is literally the least a person can do. Looking around the forums there are certain names that pop up again and again so we should recognize that.

 

While this was definitely a well thought-out and concise review, I have to disagree with you on it for the same reason I've disagreed with a lot of reviews pertaining to this series. I feel as if you're judging Symphobia as compared to other orchestral libraries, where it will most definitely not stack up. First and foremost, these libraries were specifically designed for film, trailer and video game composers and not for anyone who is seriously trying to put together a 100 percent fully-articulated orchestra (as in, a serious composer writing a symphony, an opera, etc.), for which you'd be much better off with a detailed (and much bigger) orchestral library. Solo instruments were never really intended to be part of it, nor were extensive mic positions, nor were certain articulations -- again, things you would need to look to a more elaborate orchestral collection for, like VSL or EWQLSO (both of which, however, you could use in conjunction with Symphobia for those specific articulations). They're designed to allow you to work up a seemingly huge and convincing overall orchestral sound on a very tight film, game or trailer production schedule with minimal effort, which is why you'd easily be able to recognize many instruments from this collection on current TV shows, games, movies and trailers. So far, I've only gotten to use Symphobia 1 in such a manner, on a trailer, and it worked surprisingly well with both percussive action beats and softer "moody" moments. I was able to articulate up and down bowing on a string section, hard and soft brass sections and use various risers and assorted trills to fill out various articulations without extensive programming and add a sense of realism to something that, had I used an older hardware ROMpler or a more generic library, would have sounded exactly like I used a ROMpler or samples. You're paying for a "big-sounding" well-recorded orchestra without the fine details -- but definitely with all the details you'd need to drop in spur-of-the-moment -- and it delivers. I've messed around with Symphobia 2, which I hope to also use soon, and I briefly installed Lumina, which, again, I hope to use in conjunction with the other two on future projects.

Where I do agree with you is in regard to some of the glitches that are seemingly present in all three libraries. I'm not sure why they continually have to update them ... it kind of seems like they keep putting these things out before they're 100 percent ready, which is not the mark of professionalism you'd hope for, given the price tag. They're actually fairly minor and can be worked around, but if you're relying on these libraries to provide a definitive amount of quality on a tight schedule, you want to know that they'll absolutely work as advertised! And they probably should have stayed out of the vocals/choirs game with Lumina. The pad-like choirs aren't terrible, but the solo voices sound absolutely horrible, almost 8-bit, especially with legato. I only played with Lumina briefly (limited internal drive space, for the moment!), but that was a major sticking point for me from an otherwise great-sounding collection. Fortunately, like I said before, you can build up your overall orchestra with the Symphobia and True Strike instruments (easily the best orchestral percussion library on the market!), then bring in more elaborate solo orchestral libraries or choir libraries like EWQL or, for me, Voices of the Apocalypse or Bela D Media's Diva to fill in the fine details or supplement what Symphobia doesn't feature.