Seeking Good but simple (individual) Instrument Sound Libraries

Steinberg Lounge
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Breathe, try to relax and say what you want in a clear and pleasant manner.

Ok… It seems that I have a unique set of wants which I have so far failed to discover in the past week or two of constant searches. I am overwhelmed by the possibilities which have turned out to be less than what’s wanted.

Here are my requirements.
Properly sampled instrument sounds which will fit in with my articulations i.e. those which I have created within the notated scores.
The instrument range is vast, however. From Orchestral, String Quartet, Rock and Big Band.

I get the sense that I am asking a lot but, to be fair, these have been available to me in the past using Garritan Personal Orchestra and Jazz & Big Band libraries. That these are no longer accessible on my current system is a moot point.

After a massive crash where my hard drive and backups were burned, I have had to start over with new gear (Apple Mac mini M4 [silicon]) Scarlett 2i2 interface and Cubase 14.

I am very interested in seeing if anyone here is using such sounds as I require. Not loops, not effected sounds, not synthetic insipid sounds, not cinematic - just reasonable sounds that I can use in recordings to showcase my music.

My major project which is on hold until I can find the right sounds is an operatic musical with an ensemble comprising of a String Quartet, Winds (Flute, Clarinet, Saxes, Trumpet and Trombone), Electric and Acoustic Guitars, Bass Guitar, Piano and Organ/Synth.

I would be very grateful for any assistance
All the best
Jonathan

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Thanks to any who may have read the above plea.

Interestingly (for me, at least!) is that I have been able to sort everything out to my satisfaction.
My son discovered that my original Garritan settings and enabling had not transferred across when I performed the file transfer from the recovery drive after the crash. So, with some exercising of the system, we managed to reactivate Garritan and all of my original instrument choices were available. The only pain after was having to reassign every individual track for every song file but way better than having to assign sounds I find less than useful.

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Garritan libraries should still be working fine with things Steinberg…

A VST3 version of ARIA exists now as well. If you use a newer Mac with Apple Silicon, you’ll definitely want to use the VST3 version (doesn’t need Intel instruction sets like VST2…so no Rosetta required).

You’ll probably want to go to Make Music support and get the latest version of the ARIA player you can find there.
Download Library | Finale Music Composing and Notation Software

Note, MakeMusic made a mistake with numbering the version of the Plogue engine that ARIA uses to play SFZ libraries. You can get a newer/better version! It might be numbered lower than what is on the Garritan support site, but it’s actually newer/better.

So, once you have installed the latest version of ARIA from Garritan/MM support, it’s recommended that you also go to the Plogue website and install the latest version of sforzando.
sforzando

sforzando is a scaled down SFZ player that also happens to be capable of decrypting (phase correction for the sample files) and playing properly licensed Garritan libraries (or any other SFZ based library). It’s a little different from ARIA in that it only supports one instrument per instance, but otherwise it supports all aspects of Garritan libraries. This includes the different reverb options.

You might prefer to keep using ARIA (since it can host up to 16 instruments on your choice of MIDI channel(s) per instance) instead of sforzando, but still…

In installing the latest version of sforzando, you’ll get updates to the underlaying ‘Plogue’ engine. ARIA uses the internals of this sfz engine to work its magic.

So, it’s recommended to keep sforzando up to date. Even if you don’t use the sforzando plugin much…prefer ARIA…etc…keep sforzando up to date. Plogue is still quite active in keeping this engine working on modern hardware and OSes. Thus far, Plogue has also taken care to make sure the engine continues to work well with whatever the latest version of the Garritan ARIA Player might be.

I use windows 11 here. Since doing this, I find that the VST3 version of ARIA works properly now, and is also compatible with the latest Garritan stuff being used by my collogues on the Mac platform. I.E. If my friend on a Mac or Windows saves and shares a Dorico project that uses GPO, I can load it on my system and it works/sounds exactly as my friend saved it without needing to redo the playback templates and such (before I could only swap projects with fellow Windows users without having to rebuild the playback template).

For reference, I learned about these ‘updates’ from this thread:
GPO5 for Windows test please - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

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Thanks. Very informative extras.

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