Posted
Hi all,
I'd like your advice please.
Can anyone recommend a good cheap entry level orchestral VST that will cover the basics?
I'm using SP on a macbook air so I dont have a lot of power, and I'd like to be able to work when travelling, so dont want to use an Elicenser if possible....
Any thoughts are appreciated, thanks
B
Sat, 2015-12-19 - 02:09 Permalink
if you use ableton, there are some sweet sounding orchestral packs with automation macros that are cheap, reasonable sounding (to me) and light on resourses. However you have to drive them from synfire with midi drones.
Acclaimed software offering exceptional sound qualityalso have a number of light weight vst's available.
None of the above compare to a full blown expensive setup like east west..etc but they probably cost more than your laptop.
Sat, 2015-12-19 - 02:46 Permalink
thanks for the reply blacksun
so far im still thinking i would like to use SP standalone without drones, and see whether that keeps it a bit more fluid.
looks like garritan or miroslav might be suitable for my wimpy processor....
Sat, 2015-12-19 - 13:37 Permalink
EastWest currently has a holiday offer for their Symphonic Orchestra. The Silver Edition is 85 €. It covers all basic orchestral instruments and articulations and in my opinion it sounds way better than Garritan. The sample player from East West however sometimes has issues. And you need an iLok. But when you work with Synfire, you have anyway plugged an iLok.
(http://www.soundsonline-europe.com/Symphonic-Orchestra)
Sun, 2015-12-20 - 01:05 Permalink
thanks for the heads up Juergen. Yes while on the road I'll still have the iLok plugged in for SP, so thats not a problem. However I've read that the play engine is dodgy, and the last thing i need is a glitchy sound source when I know that (being new to SP) ive got enough variables to worry about just getting set up!
Sun, 2015-12-20 - 22:47 Permalink
Just to add to that, I've got the EWQL Hollywood Gold series, plus a lot of other EWQL libraries and I've never had any problems with Play, either in Synfire or in my DAW. I don't know, but I guess you only ever hear about the few people who have problems, because the majority without problems never complain!
My only gripe with EWQL is that they don't seem to allow you to sell your licenses, so if you get it and don't like it (or you find something you prefer), you're pretty much stuck with it!
Mon, 2015-12-21 - 09:01 Permalink
Thanks Pete, yes moaning is clearly the internets primary purpose!
Ive been thinking about just trying out EWQL Silver, its so cheap. Like you say though, the NFR is annoying, otherwise I'd have just bought it.
My laptop has an SSD but only 8gig RAM, do you think PLAY will run fine?
Mon, 2015-12-21 - 12:41 Permalink
Hi Bobby, I don't think PLAY will have any problems with 8GB RAM, it's what you load into it that matters! On their site, they say 8GB is a minimum but 16GB is recommended. I used to have 12GB and it became very sluggish if I loaded more than a few of the Gold instruments because the sample size is so big. Now I have 32GB and there are no problems at all.
It may be fine with the Silver edition because obviously the samples are smaller but I don't know for sure. Maybe see if you can get hold of a demo from them before you make the plunge?
Mon, 2015-12-21 - 13:39 Permalink
id definately go with pete's advice and try get a demo. The website says even for silver you need a i5, not sure how powerful the cpu is in the macbook air.
Im on an old macbook pro with the 2.4Ghz core 2 duo, so even though the current offer for silver is fab, I wont be buying it.
Sun, 2015-12-27 - 21:36 Permalink
Im on a 2013 air i7 1.7mghz, 512 ssd and 8g ram.
Going off the idea of EW though, leaning more towards Kontakt or Garritan. Also now more willing to think about using Live and SP rewired together. Gonna do some more research on that topic.
Thanks again people.