Must have sample libraries for TV?

[John_McEnroe]

I am just starting to get into writing music for TV adverts. So far I have been able to get by ust fine with the tools at my disposal (roland V-Synth, all NI plugins, Atmosphere, Logics included plugins) but I feel like I might benefit from some additional sample libraries for things like drum sounds and miscellaneous FX. Are there any really good sample libraries that you guys could recommend? I have been looking at the other spctrasonics libraries, Trilogy and Stylus, but they seem to get a bit of a bad rap. Are there any larger all inclusive style libraries? Something that would take the place of say a workstation for bread and butter sounds?

Thank you so much!

[soundfx]

Wow, who gives Stylus a bad rap? I find Stylus RMX to be the most useful tool I've got, especially for writing quickly or composing a foundation. I've written entire pieces with just Stylus RMX. I would suggest Stormdrum, Percussive Adventures 1 and 2, and a symphonic plug-in. I like MOTU's Symphonic Instrument over Quantum Leap, simply because EWQSL crashes constantly, so its useless to me on a MAC. BFD is pretty decent for drums. Symphonic Choirs sounds amazing as well, though if you're looking for stability, look elsewhere. Good luck.

[minister]

Originally Posted by soundfx

Wow, who gives Stylus a bad rap

...yeah...weird....i love it.

Originally Posted by soundfx

I like MOTU's Symphonic Instrument over Quantum Leap, simply because EWQSL crashes constantly, so its useless to me on a MAC. BFD is pretty decent for drums. Symphonic Choirs sounds amazing as well, though if you're looking for stability, look elsewhere. Good luck.

not having ANY stability issues with EWQLSO or EWQLSO on my MAC dual 2.5 with 6.5G RAM **SAMPLES ON A FW 800 RAID ARRAY**, Pro Tools 7.3.1cs2 HD ACELL|3 (w/Expansion Chassis no less), OS 10.4.8...

something must be up with your rig.

my advice is to get what sounds good to YOU. audition what libraries you can. build your own signature. why use what everyone else has?

[brucie]

Stylus bad rap???? Where?? Who??

I have no product loyalty in the software world, but I am really surprised to hear you say that about Stylus. I don't think I have ever read or heard a negative thing about it, I would be interested to hear what they have to say. I mean yes perhaps the default loops are being a bit overused, but you can do SOOO much with it once you take a few minutes. And I have to say I wish every manufacturer would take a leave out of Eric and Spectrasonics book when it comes to tutorial videos, they have loads and I learnt more in 5 minutes watching those video which showed the incredible power of RMX. Being able to add different effects to fractions of a beat is what does it for me. The fact you can take any Rex file and import it.! Wow!

Back to the question.

I would also consider Stormdrum (or Stormdrum 2 when it comes out), and perhaps something like Samplelogics A.I.R.

All the best

Neil

[soundfx]

Originally Posted by minister

...yeah...weird....i love it.

not having ANY stability issues with EWQLSO or EWQLSO on my MAC dual 2.5 with 6.5G RAM **SAMPLES ON A FW 800 RAID ARRAY**, Pro Tools 7.3.1cs2 HD ACELL|3 (w/Expansion Chassis no less), OS 10.4.8...

something must be up with your rig.

Argh! I have the exact same rig but with 4.5 Gigs of RAM and once I have more than 2 instruments going on the EWQSL Silver, the session will crash. Symphonic Choirs can be equally troublemsome. Latin World had the same issues. Kontakt never really worked either. Something strange with NI. My MOTU instruments never crash. This problem has actually traveled with me through 2 rigs at 2 different studios. Must be my bad karma. ;-) Could be that you have to have more than 5Gbs RAM. All my sound instrument libraries exist on the same FW drive, so I don't think that's the issue. Hmm.

Anyway, not to hijack the thread here. Sorry....

[minister]

Originally Posted by soundfx

Argh! I have the exact same rig but with 4.5 Gigs of RAM and once I have more than 2 instruments going on the EWQSL Silver, the session will crash. Symphonic Choirs can be equally troublemsome. Latin World had the same issues. Kontakt never really worked either. Something strange with NI. My MOTU instruments never crash. This problem has actually traveled with me through 2 rigs at 2 different studios. Must be my bad karma. ;-) Could be that you have to have more than 5Gbs RAM. All my sound instrument libraries exist on the same FW drive, so I don't think that's the issue. Hmm.

Anyway, not to hijack the thread here. Sorry....

hmmmm.....

dunno.

i can get 6 or 7 instruments and fill up 2 or 3 and semi-fill the others. when i get there or beyond, my system does bog down, but....

i would double-check all your versions of all softwares. perform all the necessary and recommended trouble shooting tips, run disk warrior on all drives, including, and especially, your system drive.....

[John_McEnroe]

Wow great info thanks for the replies guys. I will definitely look into Stylus. symphonic library is a good idea as well. Thanks so much!

[musicjon]

Bizzare Guitar and Distorted Reality from Spectrasonics both still hold up really well.

Spectrasonics Sample Libraries Main

Altered States is a killer deal too.

Altered States :: Synth Loops/Ambient :: Virtual Instruments :: Sounds Online

[pollyserial]

What type of sample library you're interested in really depends on what type of music you're interested in making! I personally don't really love the sounds in spectrasonics stuff; but they definitely work for many people. BFD, with seemingly endless expansion packs, is to me a much more versatile tool for percussive work than stylus rmx. Atmosphere is decent but for quick pads I prefer softsynths esp. albino 3 + zebra, which have great presets. Or, get really freaky and use reaktor, metasynth or even max msp/supercollider. The question is, are you writing music which benefits by being derivative, or seeks to be more unique. IMHO you're not going to get a unique sound from spectrasonics stuff, or maybe I just don;t know how to use it. For me, if it comes down to learning how to manipulate, I want a platform which is more open than spectrasonics, like reaktor or supercollider, which are not sample libraries at all (and maybe a little OT), but highly configurable instruments.

For orchestra samples, I haven't loved EWQLSO; I prefer Vienna, it's less 'hyped' sounding to my ears. But then again, in tv you often want 'hyped' sounds. A lot of people seem to like the Garritan library, and it's pretty cheap.....but I haven't heard it.

Stormdrums is very useful for me. And project sam true strike. Ivory for pianos.

Kontakt 2.0 has been a very useful sampler for me, and incredibly powerful + customizable.
I'm on a mac, so gigasampler is I think out of the question, but a lot people like that too.

But this is a question that is absolutely endless and entirely personal, like the eternal and very important mac vs. pc debate. A good place to revisit this eternal debate in all its glory and nuance is northernsounds.com.......

The long and short of it is, see if you can try out various sample libraries/samplers before you buy them.....!!!

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/image...good/hippy.gif

[John_McEnroe]

Thanks so much to everyone who replied. Well I went out and bought Stylus RMX and so far it seems like it will be well worth the money. I probably wouldnt use it when writing music for myself, but for TV it seems great! Very easy to get highly produced sounding loops with lots of variation. I really like how I can replace single hits and have different FX on every drum hit. Im going to start with this and then wait till I get a few more jobs before I start going crazy on gear purchases. Top of my list is an Elektron Monomachine

[gsilbers]

good u got stylus. its ok for me. looks like more for groove oriented stuff and a must go for reality shows.

i found the trick for big percusion in action scenes.
get stormdrum intakt and kompakt and use them both. one for a loop, mostly all sound good and some u have haerd overused. then doble the hits with SD big hitz.
plus a layer of snare (big military sytle) works great.

i just stumble into this library which is godsend for filmscore; "A.I.R" or logic air, stands for Ambient, impacts and Rythms.
great sounds

and rememebr to create your own library.
get cecilia (csound GUI),. and soundhack. i for example bounced 8 tracks of porn samples into a stero track which i later convoluted it with a russian monk choir and also a sitar and middle eastern loops to create all this wierd and cool soundscapes.

i also create my own loops by DSPing librarty loops in LIVE or logic then do the stormdrum thing of soubling the hitz and creating altternate takes so i can a folder just of my own stuf.f

trhe guy did the movie 300 told me that he recorded a brick being pulled on the floor anf then DSP the hell out of it for some landscapes. and he does that sort of stuff all the time for his won library so he can sound different froi the kid hat download all the programs in market iligally.


in the filmscore circle of gossip, composers say the vienna strings dont have a lot of "emotion" thats why a lot of the composers use sonic implants strings. and the reason why vienna came out with their "emocional" strings library tis year.
i use both so i mix and match, its just a pain to load

[Marbarbaar]

Question for the EWQL users.

I once made an orchestral score for a TVshow-leader with the EWQL Orchestral GOLD edition.
On T.V. it sounded absolutely abominable.

I really suspect this is because of EWQL's poor mono compatibility.
Because when I converted my mix to mono on my DAW it sounded exactly like it did on T.V.; like crap.
(in stereo it sounds fine)

Someone once mentioned dropping a channel from all stereo samples so that phase issues dissapear, or either DPS it until it sounds o.k. in mono, but whatever I do, EWQL Gold orchestra sounds horrendous in mono.

How do you guys cope with this?


Other possibilities for my bad sound:

Back then, in my infinite wisdom, I had battered the master with the L2 vst and
didn't inform about the networks' broadcasting standards (those excist!? )
Also, the show's producer knew shit about audio, so he might be to blame also, perhaps converting my file to mono or mixing it poorly with the shows sfx....but still, my guess is the EWQL's anti-mono-ness

[londontown]

the problem with atmosphere, storm drum and all these libraries (not orchestral though, unless it's orch loops and phrases (wish there was a vomit emoticon here) etc. is they're all so friggin overused.
I've heard atmos SO many times, and it's kind of soul-destroying to hear people doing 4 bar phrases, 4 chords, I IV V I with an atmos pad and putting a basic stormdrum or stylus drum thing over the top - and then that's it. It's not so much which libraries as to how one uses what one's got. TV music can be so lame at its worst and so brilliant at its best.

stylus is okay because it's deeper than it looks and you can load other stuff into it to tweak - but atmosphere is so...generic. Just my two cents. I'd say way cooler would be to get some plugs and run your own recordings into them, start doing granular stuff, perhaps look into reaktor etc. etc. and instead of reaching for generic soft pad number 1, pull up yer own, homegrown sounds.

This isn't meant as a criticism or otherwise of any of the above or of anybody including the original post, only as a gripe about the over-use of certain libraries. kind of like digital native dance or various other done to death synth sounds.

[londontown]

Originally Posted by gsilbers

in the filmscore circle of gossip, composers say the vienna strings dont have a lot of "emotion" thats why a lot of the composers use sonic implants strings. and the reason why vienna came out with their "emocional" strings library tis year.
i use both so i mix and match, its just a pain to load

sonic implants I find is good for harmonics, tremolo (sul pont and ord). There isn't a good string library commercially available for simple lines...some come close but nobody has a product out that's really superb yet imho. There is a non-commercial one but it's in the possession of a big german bloke. It's light years ahead.

[gsilbers]

Originally Posted by londontown

sonic implants I find is good for harmonics, tremolo (sul pont and ord). There isn't a good string library commercially available for simple lines...some come close but nobody has a product out that's really superb yet imho. There is a non-commercial one but it's in the possession of a big german bloke. It's light years ahead.

are u refering to the hanz zimeer strings? i heard them through a friend (who gont give them to me ) but it seemed more of the same. a few good things here and there but still all that studio uses a mix of everyting. on the plus side, they where surround and 96k, thats a big load!!.

then i saw a booth at namm2007 with ssampled strings at 192/24 and really expensive. dont rememebr the name or the company bbut the demo was kickass. but , then again, so os the EWQL demo and any other demo of "high end" stuff.

[londontown]

Originally Posted by gsilbers

are u refering to the hanz zimeer strings? i heard them through a friend (who gont give them to me ) but it seemed more of the same. a few good things here and there but still all that studio uses a mix of everyting. on the plus side, they where surround and 96k, thats a big load!!.

then i saw a booth at namm2007 with ssampled strings at 192/24 and really expensive. dont rememebr the name or the company bbut the demo was kickass. but , then again, so os the EWQL demo and any other demo of "high end" stuff.

i think that he would be happy that they're not getting too widely flung around I think as I heard that they've been distributed far more widely than they should have been really by people 'loaning' them to friends - the first version that is. The original variants of them weren't great. The ones I heard a year or so back were more recent recordings I think, and were damn near indistinguishable from the real thing. Still takes seriously good programming to get the results good. But soooo playable.

My fave at the moment is using the thermionic culture vulture over the long string buss...really really subtly, but it adds some of the glisten and fuzziness the real thing imparts. Ultra realism isn't the goal because ultimately you'll never have the sympathetic resonances and the acoustic effects of one note being played versus another, so going for a slightly bigger than life sound, perhaps wetter than life, sounds more realistic. Also chaining convolution verbs works well, for example on scoring stages you'll often see a bit of 480L being slid in with the room mics...so I quite like the todd-ao IR1 impulse and the large random hall 480 impulse mixed. With careful balancing sounds fatter and richer than just one, and nice and real.