Best Orchestral Libraries for sounding like a real orchestra

Steinberg Lounge
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Hi all, I am learning Cubase Pro 15 and am using Sibelius to write my score.

A couple of months ago I got the Orchestral tools Berklee orchestra on a sale. I must confess I’m finding it a bit lacking in articulations. Also sample lag on the violins. (Note samples set to 96 (4.5ms.) I intend to go deep with articulations would Spitfires BBC Pro be ok? I am now getting tempted by Sonoscores score and orchestra and am starting to wonder if they are just as good. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

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Try some from VSL

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Sounding like a real orchestra is down to your programming skills.
You could check out EastWest, currently $239. Needs a large drive!

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Thanks for that, I didn’t know you could trial VSL.

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Thanks for that, that looks really good too. Noted the size…. Not a bad price though. It’s interesting all the different methods people use and what works for them.

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I have Spitfire BBC Pro. I run it in Cubase with a pretty powerful machine from about 2 years ago. I do like the sounds for the most part. I don’t have issues with lag. It’s a huge library, and it has a lot of articulations. I had BBC Core before that, and I upgraded to Pro mainly for the soloists, but I would say they were mostly disappointing. I tend to use other libraries for soloists. But the full orchestra is very good. So I’m not sure the upgrade from Core to Pro was really worth it. I don’t know Sonoscores to compare.

One note, even though I have 64GB of main memory, it takes quite a while to load up the orchestra. I could upgrade to 128GB, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue; when I load up a full orchestra it takes around 30GB. So I load up a project and go get a cup of coffee. Or a beer.

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I have a love/hate relationship with virtual orchestras. more hate than love…

In a nutshell, not one orchestral library is “perfect”. In an ideal world, you would put articulations on your program, and it would play perfectly, but the sounds are just disappointing most of the time.

I hope you find one you can work, and you are happy with.

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Thanks for your reply. I ended up getting it on sale so your message is reassuring. Yes it does take a while to load and there are a decent amount of articulations so I don’t have to dumb down my scoring like with Orchestra Tools Berklee. So far the sounds are pretty good. I’m undecided on the solos as I’m using a Technics P50 stage piano to play them with. I need a decent controller keyboard. Any advice on this greatly appreciated. Only thing in the string sections I would like detache which I thought it would have. I have only 32GB RAM DDR4 so might have to have 2 beers when loading everything.

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Thanks for that. I agree, there are a lot out there and most don’t have everything we need. It would be nice to have a real orchestra at our disposal but that’s not the reality. The BBC Pro seems to have good in depth sampling and decent amount of articulations. I’ll see how I go with that.

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I hear you. I hope it works well for you. :+1:

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Andy, I was able to run BBC SO Pro on my laptop within Cubase, which is almost 8 years old. It had one of the best Intel laptop processors at that time, and 32GB of memory. So maybe 32GB is not a limitation. For example, I created this with that old laptop:

I think you have to only activate the instruments you are using. That can save some space. On my newer powerful rig, it still takes a while to load, but it doesn’t use more memory. It’s a puzzle for me. I thought having a lot more memory would make BBC SO Pro load faster, but it doesn’t seem that it does.

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Thanks Early21, I really liked the mix of flutes and pizz. The solo violin you can really hear at the front on the left. I guess they are big samples so will take a while to load. Only downside of my laptop is I can’t go bigger than 2TB.
I find Cubase so much better than Pro Tools for midi. Night and day…

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@Early21 I still love that piece so much!! Cool to know that it was made with BBC SO. I never tried that one. :slight_smile:

Regarding orchestral libraries: To me it also really depends on the project, what the compositional style is, and what I want the end result to sound like. There are several libraries I own – neither of them are new ones – that I tend to reach for.

The ones that tend to sound amazing if you want a “big” sound, is the stuff from ProjectSam. Symphobia 1+2+3 for strings, brass and winds, and True Strike 1+2 for percussion (and their equally wonderful Concert Harp). These are ancient – True Strike is maybe 20 years old and still my go-to library for orchestral percussion. Because the libraries are old, they load really fast, and are fast and snappy to use.

Now, if you come from the classically trained world, the Symphobia libraries might initially be a turn-off in the way they are constructed, because they are maybe geared towards the Hans Zimmer wannabes that don’t want to think about the difference of what the first and second violin sections or the viola section is playing. These are “ensemble patches” where larger groups of instruments are played together. Therefore the samples sound very very good, but you don’t have the same degree of compositional freedom. Still, you can get very good results if you are willing to think a bit outside of the box. There are some amazing legato patches in Symphobia 2, with stuff like “violins and flutes playing in unison”. Of course, the project file might end up looking a bit like a mess and you have to use loads of different patches to get what you want. But these sounds load very fast and sound very convincing. And they are easy to play right out of the box.

In this theatre score from 2018, I think I used 80% ProjectSam libraries:

Now, if I on the other hand want to think more traditionally, and construct separate voices for violins 1 and 2, viola cello and bass, etc., I tend to use the libraries from Cinesamples – CineBrass, CineStrings and CineWinds. They sound good, but I’m not a big fan of the default configuration which wants you to use a sustain pedal to trigger between legato or staccato samples. I’d rather work with keyswitches. Luckily, you can configure this too, but it means that you have to spend some time in the setup stage.

On this 2019 project I used CineStrings, CineBrass and CinePerc, in combination with some synths from Arturia (I believe) and some other weird electronic stuff (I also used Cinesamples’ own piano, which blends really beautifully with the orchestral samples, it was all recorded in the same room):

Another library I tend to go to for strings is LASS (Los Angeles Scoring Strings) by Audiobro. This was released around 2010 and its sound has remained largely the same. It is more cumbersome to use, but the thing I really like is that the string sections are split in separate divisi, so there are some really cool arranging possibilities. I also really like that it has a more “intimate” sound – it is hard to describe, it just sounds a bit more raw and “airy”. And you can pick some of the divisis and construct smaller string ensembles with it, which I really like, as a full orchestral sound is actually quite often not what I am after.

On this project from way back in 2012, I used LASS for strings, True Strike for percussion and CineBrass for all the brass. In addition I had studio musicians on violin, viola, horn, trumpet and trombone overdub the “melody” parts of the score, while the “ensemble” parts, patterns etc. are all libraries.

(Track 3 “Bryllup” and onwards is where the full orchestra is utilised, especially in the latter half. Track 4 “Sjakkbrett” has some Stravinsky-esque staccato strings from LASS from 0:38 onwards, which still sound amazing to me – if you like that kind of thing.)

It needs to be said that I am a bit stuck in the past. :smiley: I have little patience for trying or learning newer libraries (if it ain’t broken, etc…). I hear that the stuff of Spitfire and Orchestral Tools is supposed to sound fantastic. And I’m sure there are lots of others as well! But just as often I hear examples of stuff that does not manage to convince me. As has been pointed out, much of this is about how much time you are willing to spend on the programming side. And here’s where I believe in learning your tools well, instead of jumping on the newest bandwagon at all times. :slight_smile:

Also: Very rarely do I rely on the included reverbs. If I use them at all, I also combine them with reverb sends, on the intention of putting the different sounds “in the same room”. For many years my go-to was the “Orchestral Plate” patch from UAD’s good old EMT140. Currently I use a combination of Seventh Heaven Professional (lovely!!) and Chameleon Surround (great alternative to Altiverb for realistic spaces).

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Please, not this abbreviation!

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I should have mentioned that the solo violin in that piece is not from BBC SO Pro, it is from 8dio. As I mentioned, the solo instruments in the strings don’t sound good to me, or at least I couldn’t find a way to make them sound good.

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Many thanks for sharing Eirik, and also your detailed email. I’ve just listened to it all. So many great sounds there. And its nice to know that the older ones sound really good too. You have mastered them really well . What piano did you use in the second one? I love the mix of electronic and traditional. Keep doing what you do.

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Thanks Andrew! I really appreciate that.

The second one, you mean Katakombens Hemmelighet? That’s all CinePiano from Cinesamples. One of the few times I’ve actually used that, but it gelled really well with the rest of the Cinesamples stuff, which were heavily used in that project.

For piano sounds, I also think Spectrasonics Keyscape is a great place to start… And some the ones included with NI Komplete are also great (The Grandeur, The Gentleman).

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I would say that Grandeur is a really convincing piano, and the one I use. I sometimes use Maverick for a different sound.

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Hi, very impressive works. A couple of questions if you have some time.

When you’re creating such pieces:

  1. What is your method of input? For example, MIDI keyboard + modwheel? Or notation (e.g. from Dorico) then with humanised/randomised velocities and hand-drawn dynamics curves?
  2. Broadly, what is your approach to mixing for orchestral libraries? (I have a conflict between having the correct dynamics already present, and tampering with track levels and FX, if you know what I mean.)

I’m a beginner composer and for orchestral stuff I use Iconica Opus.

Below is one quick track I made, largely with Iconica:

I messed up the mix in terms of track balance and panning - and maybe too many FX. But it’s frustrating to fix because some of the mix is found in the MIDI programming (+ virtual mics), and some of it is found in the more traditional overall mix. Any advice on this “conflict”?

Many thanks!

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Your video is gone, unfortunately, so I can’t comment on it. But I’ll comment on your question to Eirik, because I’ve had the same question, and I think I am seeing a trend.

On one side, I see that many film and video game composers are working in the DAW, playing in the parts with a MIDI keyboard, or possibly using the piano roll to click the parts in. Then they focus on getting it to sound the best it can. They are not thinking about an eventual score, but rather what they want the music to sound like. Cubase is one of the most popular DAWs for this purpose.

On the other side, formally trained composers who I know that are creating new music for live performance are working in scoring software - Dorico, MuseScore, or Sibelius, usually, trying out what they hear in their minds on a piano, and then placing the notes on the staff with a mouse. The scoring software then assigns sounds to the notes, and there are various options for sound libraries that can be used to do that. The resulting audio file is not necessarily very good, but gives the performers a lot to go on.

The film or video game composer is trying to create the best “mock-up” possible, which is what the output of the DAW produces. Then an orchestrator would eventually turn the mock-up into a playable score, if the project is going to be using real instruments for the score, and, I gather, only the biggest budget projects get a completely live score these days. The final score can be a mix of the mock-up with live instruments, or the mock-up by itself. For example, Hans Zimmer comes from a rock background, and purportedly can’t even read music.

Some examples of what I just described - watch Guy Michelmore on YouTube, watch Anne-Kathrin Dern, watch videos by Spitfire Audio, where they compose live. Watch videos with Hans Zimmer.

The formally trained composers are aiming to produce a readable score, and aren’t necessarily interested in creating a realistic mock-up. Their aim is to get somebody to perform it live. Often they’re working on grants to produce a piece, and if they can get recordings of a live performance, these can lead to more grants. Videos in this category are not necessarily very helpful, but there are lots of them. One youtuber I can suggest is Saad Haddad. He goes through the whole process of composing.

There’s actually a third category, which is old school composers working with pencil and paper. For example John Williams, our most celebrated film scorer. He sits at the piano with sheet music and a pencil, and sketches out his ideas. But he has a lot of help to fully orchestrate it.

So you can do it any of these ways. I personally start in the DAW. I’m not so good at reading music. I’m not bad at creating mock-ups. But I’m now using the scoring function of Cubase to create full readable scores of my pieces, and these scores are being used for public performances. I’m still encountering a lot of bugs, so I hope this will eventually improve. I’m on Cubase 14.

In terms of mixing, it often depends on the library you are using. I’m not familiar with Iconica Opus, but the Spitfire BBC Professional Orchestra that I do use comes with hall sounds already recorded, and the instruments are panned properly to represent an orchestra on stage. So, very little mixing is needed. You can just normalize the whole thing, and it’s about right.

I hope Eirik Mehr will reply, because I am also interested in how he composes for a live ensemble.

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