Best plugins used in the industry for mixing/glueing orchestral music?

Cubase
1

Orchestral music (i.e. classical, film scoring, etc) seems to be a second class citizen in the FX plugin world. I have tons of plugins from cheap to expensive, and 99% of the presets in them are geared towards rock, pop, EDM and even jazz, but hardly any of them are for strings, woodwinds, brass and orchestral percussion.

Yes, I know, you’re supposed to learn how each filter works, and adjust all the parameters manually, etc, etc. All good, I agree with that. But at the same time, if you’re trying to learn all this stuff on your own, and all you care about is the popular music genres, you have all these plugins that give you everything served on a silver platter, but if you want to learn how to mix orchestral music the best way possible, these plugins give you squat.

So if there’s anyone here recording and/or mixing orchestral music, what are the best plugins you use? I’ve read good things about the Soothe3 plugin, although it’s rather expensive. If it does what it promises, it’s money well spent, but every single plugin out there promises the best sound quality and this and that, but that doesn’t make it true.

2

Hey, the tools are the same for either pop, rock, metal, or orchestral.

It’s just how one uses them for a different musical style that makes the difference.

I don’t add many plugins to my orchestral mixing. Good libraries shouldn’t need much tweaking.

Look into Sugar. It gives good shine and boost to my Brass and helps with the strings.

Mastering is where is at for me.

Soothe is great, and so is Smooth Operator Pro.

The rest (compressors, reverbs etc.) are pretty standard.

3

A lot of the orchestra libraries are already optimized and don’t need a lot of processing. Many even have their own reverbs built in.
Or are you recording your own instruments?
In classical music the dynamics are king so you certainly shouldn’t be using compression / limiting as you do with modern pop / rock.
I would suggest studying the frequencies of the different instruments (Google for charts) and mastering the EQ settings that work.
Even if you can find them watch out for those pre-sets. As.there really is no one size fits all.
Certainly don’t use plug-ins for the sake of it.

4

That may be true, but still, 99% of the presets are for other genres, with a few perhaps for strings (usually meant for usage in pop music rather than orchestral). It would be great to find something that puts the same emphasis on orchestral music than on the other genres.

So I take it you do most of the final sound in mastering, not mixing?

Soothe seems pretty good. Smooth Operator Pro doesn’t have a trial and it seems to require a subscription to test it, or you can also buy it. But I would like to test anything before I buy.

5

The “second citizen” feeling stems from the fact that, apart from soundtrack music which uses orchestras more as a glorified synth, you can’t overproduce orchestral music without killing its dynamics. A good conductor with good classical musicians beats any plugin or hardware effect processing hands down. That’s stuff centuries older than modern audio production.

When it comes to virtual orchestra, much of the same techniques apply.

6

Sorry, are you saying that all orchestral soundtrack music is a glorified synth? No offense, but you really don’t know anything about film scores if that’s the way you see it. It’s a genre that is incredibly rich and original, and in some cases, yes, it has a lot of synths, while in some cases it’s a mix of both, and in several other cases there are no synths at all, and the orchestra doesn’t try to replicate any synth whatsoever. In fact, I’m surprised that orchestral music is still in use today for movies and TV scores, but I’m certainly happy about it. As I am when they fusion it with rock or synths, or both.

Of course, but nobody will make me believe that when they record orchestral music for film and TV they just rely on great conductors and musicians, and the sound engineer only records and that’s it. I’m sure they use a lot of plugins, even if it’s in less extreme ways than rock and pop.

7

That’s not what I’m saying.

8

He said:

And in many cases that’s true. I’ve noticed lots of “soundtrack music” that is basically just pads and drones, just coloring the background and providing emotional cues to the viewer through amelodic “tricks.” Of course there are exceptions–but it’s not like many movie or video productions these days have memorable “John Williams quality” music.

If they’re actually recording a live orchestral performance, the recording engineer just needs to make sure all of the audio is properly captured (mic choice and placement). The mixing engineer can pull everything together with mostly just EQ, panning, and volume control. Some light compression might be used, but the dynamics come from the performance, and most (or all) of reverb comes from the room.

If the scoring is done with VST instruments, it’s a slightly different story–but you still wouldn’t want to sculpt the performance with presets. You try to intentionally track the “right” sound from the beginning.

9

In many cases, that’s exactly what happens. A great conductor with a good orchestra in a good room can be recorded with as little as two microphones and it will sound great. Studio setting, yes, you’ll see instruments being miked individually but the bulk of the sound still is the orchestra as a whole.

Not to say an engineer won’t mix the thing. The point is, and it holds pretty much true for any style of music. A good performance mixes itself and all the engineer has to do is add that little extra on top. What you won’t see is the kind of control freak overproduction you see in pop music where everything is quantized, tuned, sample replaced, compressed, limited, clipped and made loud so it hopefully sounds “better” than the other 5000 tracks which are doing exactly the same thing.

10

As far as plugins go EastWest Spaces II comes to mind as well as VSL MIR and Synchron Stage…as far as compressors and limiters etc. the usual suspects will work :slight_smile:

Watch the panning of the library you use, some come with orchestral location baked in and some you have to do yourself :slight_smile:

11

There’s some interesting information here. Sometimes, taking a few lessons can help clarify some important concepts.

There are no truly ready-to-use plugins. Presets are rarely fully usable without having to readjust a number of parameters. Nothing is instantaneous in the world of music.

When it comes to orchestral music, a thorough knowledge of orchestral instruments is absolutely essential for achieving consistency in the writing and a convincing result, especially with virtual instruments.

It’s sometimes worth investing a little…

12

Yeah, but look, you can learn the plugin; you don’t have to go straight for the presets. Or, you can try Presets as a starting point and then tweak to see what works best.

I have a light mastering chain on my main Stereo Out bus. I use QL Spaces as an orchestral reverb (some instruments come with natural Reverb, which I like and keep).

Sugar is added to the Brass, Strings, and the Timpani (for the Strings, if needed though; it depends on the project).

Soothe is brilliant, I do use it at the Harp, Timpani, and Bass Drum, but I don’t mix the orchestra heavily at all. I leave the final sound to be worked out at the mastering, and it really works for me.

Smooth Operator is incredible. It is to be used extremely lightly, and I don’t want to overstate it, but it kinda shocked me how great it was in removing offending frequencies.

Actually, regarding orchestral recording techniques , @XLColdJ has described the process perfectly:

13

All these tools can work within any genre of music as well as non-musical applications such as voiceover and film mixing. It’s just that from a marketing standpoint plugin developers know that what gets the most attention is popular music.

Generally speaking, most film music and orchestral music does not use heavy processing or compression, preferring a lot more dynamic range. So that’s another reason plugin devs don’t highlight those genres much because it’s not really an exciting example of what their product can do (compared to a pop production that is heavily processed so you can really hear a thrilling before & after).

It’s probably better to learn the tools, but if you’re looking for something easy that works well on the master bus, as an alternative to Soothe, check out Gulfoss

It goes on sale from time to time, and is the kind of thing you can set on your mix bus with subtle settings and forget about it. I think it does a good job for orchestral music.

You can also ask around on vi-control which is a great forum for this kind of question.

14

Yes, it’s true, and it’s part of what makes film/TV music such a great genre. It’s very original, inventive, doesn’t stick to orchestral music always, and isn’t afraid to experiment. I prefer orchestral instruments, but I love when it’s mixed with synths, or electric guitars, or anything else. And I don’t think all of John Williams’ music is memorable. Surely he is one of the greats, but to me his best works are the scores for "A.I."and “Munich”. The rest is good, but he’s not on my top ten.

Thanks so much for the article!

That’s the answer I always get in every forum when I ask this question. And like I said, I agree, but at the same time, people who mix rock, pop, etc, have tons of presets they can use as a starting point.

Sure, you have to learn the plugin, the instruments in an orchestra and so on, but if you’re learning all this stuff on your own and you can’t afford going to college, or you just don’t have the time, or whatever other reason, you have to do the best you can on your own. It just would help if plugin makers were more helpful and made more presets for orchestral music.

For example, EW Spaces II has tons of presets for orchestral music, some of them even section specific. Soothe3 doesn’t have as many, but it still has quite a few. The FabFilter suite, which for what I read is one of the suites most used in the industry, has barely any presets for orchestral instruments, save maybe for a strings one or two in I can’t even remember which one.

15

That happens because “orchestral music” is a giant umbrella of all sorts of different music. Which orchestral period are we talking about? Medieval? Renaissance? Baroque? Classical? Romantic? Modernism? Contemporary? And it gets worse the closer you get to contemporary music because now you have all sorts of unconventional instruments and playing techniques, mixed ensembles which don’t follow the traditional formulas, etc. There’s also the argument that there’s way more rock and pop music being made than orchestral music so most engineers are not touching that metal or that only happens eventually so they don’t have much to pull from in terms of presets unless they make it themselves.

16

You don’t mix with presets. You mix with your ears, your musical background, your experience. For classical music, instrumental dynamics are fundamental; balancing the different sections of the orchestra and appropriate equalization for each instrument or group of instruments and ensemble are necessary for instrumental balance and dimensional placement. Compression is often used for slightly extreme dynamics or simply to bind the instruments together.

No need for presets, but good listening and sound judgment are essential.

17

@Sebastian_Alvarez

I recommend these books (PDF or ebook) by Nathan Nyquist.

18

This.
Outside of film soundtracks (where a solo triangle is as loud as the full orchestra) all of the “classical” music I’ve listened to has minimal compression and EQ.
I listen regularly to Vaughan-Williams, Sibelius, Chopin, Wagner, even works by Hildegaard Von Bingen. I have one cd of hers, recorded in a church, in the late 80s, and if you listen through headphones, you can hear the traffic out in the street.
They are all far too dynamic for there to be much, if any compression, outside of the actual recording process (tape?).

19

And those are already part of the performance in the score. What people doing modern music production often forget is orchestral music is several centuries older than electronics, microphones, amplification, computers, etc. And if you go see an orchestra perform, you’ll only see microphones if the thing is being recorded, otherwise it’s fully acoustic. Even in opera performances, the singer is not miked unless he’s being recorded (and it’s usually surprising to see how loud they can project their voices in person).

That and a good portion of orchestral libraries are sort of pre-mixed so all instruments play well with each other and produce a decent mix by themselves.

20

I completely agree. As a hobbyist, doing for 95% classical music, I use my ears and layer multiple instruments (up to four layers different 1st violins) to get my perfect sound. The only thing I do is panning.
You can do this with Cubase/Nuendo or use a special tool like Spitfire Audio Air Studios Reverb or Samplicity Berlin Studio Pro V2, etc. I use Berlin Studio because this gives me the most “classical touch”.