Best Orchestra libraries COMPARED | Realtime playing! | Massive Playthrough #orchestrallibrary

[Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] hello everyone and welcome back dom here and this video is going to be really special we're going to have loads of fun in this video i'm going to play my favorite orchestras so my favorite libraries when it comes to orchestras and when i say orchestras they have to have all four sections so strings brass woodwinds and percussion i'm going to play everything live in real time and we're going to have loads of fun so grab your snacks grab your popcorn your coffee or tea relax and enjoy so before we start i'm going to give you some information on what you're about to see i wanted to make this video for a long long time and to be honest with you the reason why i'm making this is because i wish there was a video like this when i started out when i bought my first orchestral library this is a big investment for most people so i hope that by watching this video you will have a very clear idea on how each of the libraries that i'm going to play sound like and what sound you can expect from every library now if you already have an orchestra an orchestra library then this video might also be for you if you're looking to get a second one or a third one or a fourth one or if you're like me i've lost count because every library will give you a completely different sound and most importantly if you start layering libraries you get a very very big sound especially if you're looking for that kind of sound so like i said all the libraries that i'm going to play here today have to be full orchestras and when i'm saying full orchestras i mean they have to have all the different sections all the different instruments so not like strings it should be violins viola cellos and so on and so forth i'm not looking at sections if you want me to make a video about libraries that have sections let me know in the comments down below and i'm also planning to make more videos for dedicated string libraries brass libraries woodwinds choirs you know let me know in the comments down below what you'd like me to do next and i might just do it so the libraries i'm going to play for you today in no particular order are the east west hollywood orchestra opus steinberg iconica sections and players vienna symphonic library special edition the synchron version and the spitfire bbc orchestra i'm going to link them all down below spoiler alerts i love all of them i'm using actively all of them in productions i just scored a feature film the album is out so you can hear quite a few of these sounds in action i'm going to link the album down below and one more disclaimer i'm not going to play every articulation or every instrument because these would just for one single library would take an enormous amount of time and i know that nobody's gonna watch that but what i'm going to play here today is i'm going to compare apples to apples as much as possible and i'm going to play the main articulations that i would personally check when i'm trying out a new library because i know that these libraries are super big and they're very hard to demo so sometimes it's impossible to know how a library sounds unless you try it and i completely appreciate that and i think that every library here excels at a different thing at every different section and every different articulation so you have to watch the entire video to have a very clear idea of how these libraries sound like so it's going to be lots of fun let's get started so let's start i'm going to start with iconica sessions and players and i'm going to start with probably the first thing that i check on an orchestra when i first try it and this is the violins and more specifically the violins legato okay so let's play me [Music] next we have the hollywood strings from opus okay let's play this [Music] hey [Music] next bbc [Music] [Applause] [Music] some breaths there okay and the vsl me [Music] so i'm going to try and let you listen i don't want to cloud your opinion with my opinion but of course i'm going to try and say what i think about each library but of course use your ears because in my opinion each library of these four excels at something okay because they have to sample an entire orchestra i don't think that any library you know can do everything perfectly but what i'm gonna say is a few words for each library so vsl is actually very deep into my heart because it's one of the very first libraries that i bought and it was a massive massive library it had this reputation of being completely dry so it gave you a lot of flexibility because you were not tied to a specific room that the orchestra was recorded in and it had pretty much every articulation you could imagine i think it was first out for gigastudio maybe i'm wrong i can't remember but for some people that were not really comfortable with using reverbs to get a lush you know cinematic sound it was a little bit daunting now this has changed quite a bit with the synchron player because now if you go to mix you will see that every instrument is loaded with an impulse response so that means it places it in the orchestra and it also gets a beautiful reverb so it also has a reverb there so straight out of the box it sounds already cinematic it sounds already big it's not this kind of dry sound that many people were used to when it came to vienna symphonic library in the past so i kind of welcome that but if you want to go back to the completely dry sound you can turn off your reverbs you can turn off your impulse response and you get this dry sound that vsl is so popular about now let's talk about the bbc now the bbc is a very very beautiful library it's a very recent library and it gives you a very specific flavor it's a new player that spitfire are using so you know you have your mixing options here all libraries have some kind of mixing uh more or less and you have a lot of options there so it's a massive library again really expressive i love this for classical stuff now the next one is again a very popular library and this is again recently released because it's a new version of it and it's the opus hollywood orchestra from east west again here there are so many options in my opinion east west they have this big lush hollywood sound so if you're looking for this this is a good library to look at so again we have different microphone positions but what is twist have done with this is that they have different moods so they have the soft they have the classic which is what i'm going to play today and they also have the epic version and they have something else that's called the orchestrator that's very very cool if you want to create quick mock-ups but let's keep going and then we have iconica which is a library that was created by orchestral tools and steinberg and it's a beautiful library this is a library that i use for a lot of things i use it for pop it blends very well with electronic instruments i actually made a video recreating moza's lacrimosa with this library and i'm going to link it right here if you want to check it out again this one has a lot of microphone positions and if you play with the microphone positions you can get many many different sounds but what i like about this orchestra especially when it comes to integration with cubase is that when you have this orchestra loaded with highly and sonic you can actually take advantage of the expression map so if i go here you can see i can import key switches which means that now all the key switches that we have are already mapped and that means they will appear in my key editor and i can actually program my articulations really easily like this so if i want staccato then move to pizzicato then mercado legato and so on and so forth it's very easy rather than having to remember all the different key switches so if you're using cubase which if you're a film composer it's a big chance that you're using cubase this is a really really handy tool and this also works with the east west opus i didn't know that to be honest with you when i first tried it but it doesn't work with a spitfire and it doesn't work with a vsl so it would be a huge huge thing for me if every orchestral library supported vst expressions because let's face it many film composers use cubase so please can we have this let's play some more sounds i'm going to play some staccatos now [Music] do and you can hear they sound very very different so it really depends on what kind of music you're going to ride what kind of setting are you going to have like a classical track are you going to have a baroque track are you having a cinematic track are you going to produce like a disco track you know each library will excel at something else so let's try and play all of them together now so now i have a larger than life sound when i layer these orchestras together so i think i have to move on i'm not going to play all the articulations because like i said it's going to be a massive video let's move on to the violets i'm going to start with iconica [Music] so what i like about the iconica is that it's very agile so i can move and play notes really fast and it tends to keep up which is a very very tricky thing for a sampled library to do [Music] me [Music] me [Music] and by the way the opus also has the vibrato on quite a few of the patches on cc1 and i'm using the expression to control the dynamics by the way did i say that i use this all the time i told you watch the video if you haven't watched it about the monogram cc see how beautiful that works [Music] hey and like i said i don't have a favorite i love all of them let's move on to the via sale [Applause] [Music] and you know with the vsl you can also have a little bit of a legato blur [Music] so if you feel that the notes are a little bit disconnected you can add this but sometimes i use a vsl as a layer to get this very articulate sound when i have like long and very fast legato runs because it really helps layering it with another orchestra that's a little bit more blurry you know [Music] beautiful let's play some spicados now um so let's play them one after the other iconic east west [Music] bbc and vsl oh it's so much fun playing all these orchestras all right now one of my favorite instruments in the orchestra [Music] cellos [Music] [Applause] you know what playing orchestral sounds on the keyboard is one of my favorite things ever i can spend hours doing this so okay iconica let's go for the east west [Music] and obviously i'm not trying to play identical things on every orchestra because to be honest with you every orchestra will drive you to play different things and that's what i love about them it gives me a very different source of inspiration every orchestra every sound every articulation the way it works the way it reacts to your playing so i love that that's why i don't stick with one orchestra i know it's an expensive thing to do but you know this is what we do right let's go for the bbc now [Music] now for some staccatos let's start with iconica now of course with iconica if you want to make it dryer you can start playing with the different you know microphones you can just use the clothes which is great i use this a lot for like pop stuff because they cut through better but if you want to make it super you know big you can actually activate the surround microphones and the ab microphones it's really really huge sounding [Music] orchestra so again very very different sound let's play all of them now know what i'm saying when you layer them that's where the fun begins especially for trailer music when you want sounds that's larger than life no matter what you do when you layer different orchestras i wouldn't do this for classical music or anything like that there i would try to be like as you know detailed as possible but like for you know big sounds it pays off if you layer so this is the reason why i'm showing you this and of course the basis the drone of the orchestra [Music] wow nice i love all of them [Music] so i'm going to move on to the woodwinds now but even from the string sections i can tell you that i have different favorites from each orchestra a different articulation a different instrument i don't think that one orchestra sounded better than the other on all articulations but you know let me know in the comments down below what you think we're going to move to a very fun category now and this is the woodwinds and in my opinion woodwinds are really really hard to sample and i think that many orchestras like fall short when they do woodwinds it's a very very hard instrument group to kind of sample and make it sound good but i think all these libraries sound really really good if you want it for something better you would have to go for a specific like very dedicated library for woodwinds so let me know in the comments down below if you want me to make this video but in the meantime i'm going to play iconic first and i think for this one i'm going to stick with legatos okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] yes [Music] good [Music] well i like the fact that uh with the bbc you get this short notes that are a little bit more [Music] [Applause] [Music] defined if i was orchestrating beethoven this would be great let's go for the vsaler [Music] [Applause] and vsale does trills very well so again very quickly iconica [Music] east west [Music] bbc [Applause] and via sale [Applause] [Music] all right now clarinets and by the way i'm playing the solo instruments here not the sections okay because i think this is where these libraries will probably shine okay let's go for iconica [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] much rounder this one [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my very very nice and i think the vsl in this case might be the more agile let's play something fast on all of them [Music] is twist quite fast [Music] this has a little bit of latency like it it feels like it's trying to catch up but i think for this one if you don't play the library you can't really tell how it feels okay so that's why i'm explaining i'm trying to make you understand how it feels when you're playing it let's try the bass clarinets now [Applause] [Music] [Applause] very very different sound [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] sip of coffee english now i love the english horn [Music] very different [Music] hey [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now the oboz again very hard instrument to sample in my opinion because there are so many nuances to it [Music] yes [Music] [Music] and again vsl has many different oboes it has the french it has the vienna it has oba damore and i'm going to play the french here but each one of them has a very very different flavor [Music] [Music] [Music] it's so good that we have these sounds to play with i mean back in the day if you wanted to have anything near this kind of quality you needed to have like a pretty big and very pricey synthesizer or a workstation note that these libraries are cheap by any stretch of the imagination let's go to the bassoons now [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] contributions [Music] this is fat did somebody say since try condor bassoon man [Music] [Music] nice [Music] so so [Music] yeah like you can hear the taps [Music] nice okay another very important instrument this is the harp let's try the iconic version [Music] it's like playing a different piano it's a very very different sound let's try some percussion let's try the [Music] timpani's so that was iconica beautiful timpanis let's try the east-west now [Music] more open sound the east-west let's try the bbc [Music] and the vienna [Music] and let's try now all of them i'm going to try and play as many dynamics as possible iconica [Music] east west [Music] abc [Music] and vienna [Music] they're very very different you know just for the fun of it let's play all of them [Music] that's fun okay now let's play some glockenspiels iconic first [Music] like massively massively different sound let's try the bbc [Music] [Applause] [Music] i mean it sounds so so different i love the glockenspiel so i am a glockenspiel collector i have many libraries now let's try the celestas [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] again that proves my point they have a completely different timbre so up to this point if you tell me that every single sound every different articulation that i played you have one favorite library i think you'll be lying okay they're so different they're so versatile and each one sounds different it doesn't have to be better than the other you know it's just different sound you know different instrument now let's move on to something that i know many of you are looking forward to and this is the brass let's start with the trumpets and for the brass i'm going to try and play staccatos as well as legatos maybe some sustains but i'm going to try and compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges because these libraries have some specific instruments that are not necessarily on all the other libraries so i'm going to play the common instruments okay so let's start with the trumpets let's play the staccatissimos [Music] so okay now let's play some legatos [Applause] [Music] is [Music] hey [Music] see this is a bit of a more mellow sound but this would work great for a different kind of scene you know maybe some classical mock-ups or maybe like a softer trumpet sound [Music] because it's not so blaring you know let's go for the vsl now [Music] foreign you know for the trumpets i'm also going to play some sustain so we can check out you know these crescendos so trombones [Music] [Applause] wow and juana saw the other [Applause] okay let's play some legatos now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] i think it's time we move to the horns what do you think if there's an instrument that defines epicness it has to be the french horns and i'm going to start with the legatus [Music] ah it's so good bbc right [Music] so you can hear such a different number such a different tone for each one of these horn sections okay iconica is has a very open sound articulate but it can also become very subtle very you know classical if you want to like more tar beethoven stuff like this obviously the east west is like hollywood has some nice pianos as well [Music] low dynamics [Music] but i think the blair is the best part of it bbc [Music] it doesn't have the blair but it's such a beautiful sound it's very round beautiful for like different passages you know [Music] and via sale sit somewhere in the middle [Music] again super nice pianissimos there i love them all i love them all i find it really hard to pick a favorite here they all serve different purposes now let's try staccatissimos right i'm going to start with iconica [Music] and the last articulation i'm going to play is the sustains because for horns this is important okay so let's start with iconica first [Music] [Applause] this was ghost blair straight away [Music] now the sustains have a little bit more blare for the bbc's i think [Music] yeah the vienna is very good at this for sandals you know very nice response okay so you know what i'm gonna do now let's play them all at once [Music] [Music] and see when you layer the sun becomes a little bit more blurry so even though you're not using legatos you might be able to get away with it so there you go my friends i hope that now you have a very good idea on how these libraries sound like i hope you enjoyed this video it was so fun to make i know it is slightly long but i think it's worth it so if you enjoyed this video hit a like subscribe if you haven't done so already leave a comment down below and let me know which library you preferred for each one of the sections for each one of the instruments or the articulations i'd really like to know your thoughts and also let me know what you want me to do next do you want me to do string libraries do you want me to do brass do you want me to do choirs do you want me to do more pianos i've done a piano video i'm gonna link it right there let me know what you'd like me to do because i really enjoy making these videos and playing these sounds for you don't forget to check our wedding room the soundtrack for the feature film that i scored i hope you enjoyed this stay safe and i'll see you the next one bye

Channel: Dom Sigalas

Views: 18,030

Keywords: dom sigalas, cubase, best orchestral libraries, orchestral libraries comparison, best orchestral sample library, east west, best orchestra sounds, spitfire audio, orchestral cinematic music, spitfire bbc symphony orchestra, vsl special edition, eastwest opus, eastwest opus edition, steinberg iconica, steinberg iconica review, eastwest opus review, bbc symphony orchestra spitfire demo, orchestral libraries live demo, live playing orchestral libraries

Id: _5JchHSCKS8

Length: 54min 36sec (3276 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021