Just got my download link yesterday from Spitfire for their tiny BBC SO Discover orchestra. Those of you who know, Spitfire might just be the most epic orchestral sampled plugins. Hans Zimmer being one of their biggest fans, and in fact having his own Spitfire library.
After Spitfire Audio released their free Lab instruments, they also ditched Kontakt Player in favour of their own Spitfire Audio app. I love this move, as I don’t have Kontakt, and I find their app very light and easy on the CPU.
In terms of sound, the €49 sound library (which is free if you fill in a questionnaire - with a 14 day wait) I have to say it is brilliant. It’s not going to get you anywhere near a Christopher Nolan epic soundtrack, but if you need to add some orchestral elements in a song, these sounds will do the job.
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Yes I got myself the free version too. I found the quality and realism of the samples astounding for a free/cheap VI. I have an issue however: the enormous amount of reverb there is by default can’t be dialed down all the way, even at the minimum setting you still have a lot of reverb. Have I misse something, or have they done that on purpose to force you to buy the full license?
What’s the questionnaire that you can fill out? I guess I can just check my email.
It’s like 35 questions, and not too intrusive I have to say. Just general questions about how you came about Spitfire Audio, what kind of music you make and things like that. I thought it was well worth €49 worth of plugins.
I have to say, most orchestra plugins I’ve had (the cheap ones!) all have some reverb thrown on them. I just assumed as they are normally recorded in big concert halls, you have to put up with it? Somebody else should correct me here I think!
not always, i actually prefer the samples that are close miced over the ones recorded with ambient or stage mic. Most free versions have stage micing, which is more than horrible most times. The paid version of spitfire however, does give you the flexibility to pick the mic distance, which is nice. However I am not sure if it is algorithmic or actually mic’ed that way. I do know Nick Phoenix a personal favorite of mine, does indeed record sampled sounds with actual ambient mic and close mic. Over the course of time, you will find yourself reaching for the professional reverb and EQ plugins anyway over the reverb that comes with most sampled libraries.