Hi All, I am working through some orchestrated pieces for a demo reel of sorts. I use Pro tools LE and samplebase, as well as, some built in plugins like Xpand and such. My demo reel will also consist of heavier pieces with guitar and drums as well. The point being the recordings I do are both virtual and real instruments. The themes of my music work well. However, I find the articulations for some of the strings and repetitiveness in the vibrato give a somewhat artificial feel. I am considering IK Multimedia's symphonik as an option. Things like glissandos (sp?) and orchestral hits are lacking as well. What symphonic type plug ins/etc are highly detailed yet not too burdensome on the processor etc. Any thoughts on this? It is an interesting balance, some of the video game music I listen to is obviously virtual instrumentation, but still is quite good. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, Rick

Hi.

In relation to the burdensome comment, what system do you have?

There are many good symphonic sample based sets, like IK's product. You will want a decent processor, but the main thing you will find with symphonic samplers, is they will use a considerable amount of ram. Especially if you are running a whole bunch of instruments at once Check out the recomended specs, you will want to have what is recommended, or it might get frustrating the sacrifices to need to make. You thing you may have thought about is you can always do things like, work on the string section,, then record the audio as a wav...Then work on the horns or whatever, rather than having all the virtual instruments playing at once. That will take up much less horsepower.

I agree it is always good to blend some sampled instruments with real instruments, as apposed to only sampled/synthesised instruments.

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the response.

I am running Pro Tools 7.1.1 on:
intel imac 2.0 Ghz dual core w/ 2 gig of memory

After much research, I ended up buying the Garritan Personal Orchestra. This product was very reasonably priced and should fit the bill for my needs. It was on sale for 1/2 price when I bought it. It has very nice sounds etc.

I did try the IK demo and liked that as well.

I plan on posting a link in the not too distant future for some critical analysis of where I am headed with my audio. My goal is to do video game music and maybe an indie film (I know, I know, but it is nice to dream).

Thanks again,
Rick