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5 Starter Libraries Compared

mybadmemory

mybadmemory

Senior Member
(Updated)


I recently decided to put my starter libraries (and myself) to the test, by remaking the same short piece using all five of them. This was mostly done for myself, to get to know their respective sounds, workflows, and overall pros and cons better, but I thought I might share the five versions here, along with my thoughts on how each of them worked out for me.


Everything is straight out of the box, with only volume levels and velocity values tweaked. No external reverb is used, and no other mixing or mastering is done. Please note that all libraries use the same percussion track (from CineSymphony) to put more focus on the sonic differences of the main strings / winds / brass sections.


CINESYMPHONY LITE ($399)



I’m very impressed by how far CineSymphony came, considering how basic it seems at first (with only 6 patches). The sound is fantastic, the playability and workflow top notch, and the only thing really missing to make it complete are some legato patches, solo instruments, and tonal percussion / harp. The sound and playability of the ensembles (and sections, that can be broken out from the ensemble patches) really make up for it though.


BERLIN INSPIRE ($399)



A slightly more harsh and narrow sound, with more reverb and longer tail in the recordings. Overall quite nice sounding, almost like a smaller Metropolis Arc, but still with som great punch, and very easy to work with. I did miss the individual sections from CineSymphony, but on the other hand this library comes with the legatos, solo instruments, and tonal percussion / harp that CineSymphony is missing, so together the two of them could be a good combination.


NUCLEUS ($449)



Nucleus offers a more modern tone than CineSymphony and Inspire, using a tighter space and most probably a different recording philosophy. The library sounds great though, and is just as easy to work with as the other two. It does include both ensembles, sections, and solos, as well as legatos and tonal percussion. I didn't personally like the sound of Nucleus at first, but came to appreciate the library much more after having worked with it for a while.


BBCSO CORE ($449)



BBCSO Core is a tricky one. Judging by the sound and amount of content alone I really like it, but unfortunately it has two issues that for me, are hard to overlook. The player is still a bit slower and at times unresponsive, and patches takes longer to load, and the timing of the short notes differ between the different velocity layers, making fast passages very tricky to get tight. If these two things are fixed it could easily become a favourite of mine.


SPITFIRE ORIGINALS ($87)



Considering it’s around a 5th of the price of the others I think Originals sounds great. The sound is very wet and a little harder to control, but the end result surpasses the price tag. The shorts are much tighter than BBSCO’s which is nice, and the Spitfire player is also not as slow here. Obviously this library is a bit more limited in terms of content (woodwinds and brass only come in octaves for example), but for under $100 I quite like it.


SUBMIT OTHER LIBRARIES

For anyone wanting to add (or re-add) a library, let’s stick to the following recommendations for the sake of consistency and easy comparisons:
  1. Use the same percussion track (provided as audio) for all libraries, to put the focus on the main strings / winds / brass sections.
  2. Do tweak MIDI velocities to fit the response of the respective library.
  3. Do balance volumes to make the sections (strings, brass, woodwinds) match the original track.
  4. Do balance the volumes of longs / shorts, to make them glue together and appear as the same articulation when needed.
  5. Don’t add any EQ’s, compressors, or effects.
  6. Don’t add any external reverbs. Use the build-in reverb when available.
  7. Don’t add any limiting on the master channel, but do try to match the overall volume to the original track.
Here is the zip file with the Logic, Midi, and Audio Percussion track: Download Here


LIBRARIES ADDED BY OTHER MEMBERS (V1, Using different percussion)

Albion ONE by @Brasart

Metropolis Arc 1 by @Kevperry777

VSL SSE 1 by @EgM

EWHO by @EgM

BHCT by @Cheezus

RedRoom Palette Melodics & Colors by @philtsai

Project Sam Orchestral Essentials 1 & 2 by @Manuel Stumpf

Amadeus Symphonic Orchestra by @batonruse

Sonuscore The Orchestra by @MaxOctane

Albion 2 Loegria by @MaxOctane

SSO by @yiph2

SSO by @Vladimir Bulaev

Kontakt Factory Library by @Scamper

Iconica by @MrYamamoto

Spitfire Studio Orchestra Core by @Mornats

Miroslav Philharmonik 2 by @Jazzaria

Sonivox Orchestral Companion by @GGaca

Various Libraries by @Ran Zhou


LIBRARIES ADDED BY OTHER MEMBERS (V2, Using the same percussion)

Bernard Herriman Composer Toolkit by @Cheezus

Note Performer by @Timothy Schmidt

Spitfire Symphonic Orchestra by @yiph2

Kontakt Factory Library by @Scamper

Iconica by @MrYamamoto

VSL BBO by @ptram

Palette by @Shiirai

Logic Pro X Factory Library by @el-bo

VSL SSE 1 by @ptram

Virtual Playing Orchestra by @pbattersby

Metropolis Arc 4 by @Ruffian Price

Various Libraries by @Hendrixon

EWQLSO XP by @José Herring

EWHO by @Alfeus Aditya
Click to read more...
 
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Great experiment and great composition to test them with!

To be honest I find BBCSO to be miles ahead of all the other libraries here, and Inspire to be pretty far behind everybody else.
I quite like Cinesymphony & Nucleus, although not a big fan of Nucleus' brass when it goes forte+
 
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Brasart said:
Great experiment and great composition to test them with!

To be honest I find BBCSO to be miles ahead of all the other libraries here, and Inspire to be pretty far behind everybody else.
I quite like Cinesymphony & Nucleus, although not a big fan of Nucleus' brass when goes forte+
Click to expand...

Thanks for listening! Is that based on your own experience with them or just regarding this very example here?
 
mybadmemory said:
Thanks for listening! Is that based on your own experience with them or just regarding this very example here?
Click to expand...

Regarding this piece!
I was actually surprised to enjoy Nucleus here, because I really didn't like how it sounded everytime I've heard that library before.

I often use BBCSO Pro myself so maybe I'm biased to its sound, but I really like how soft, flexible & wide it sounds here, comparing that to Inspire which sounds so harsh and narrow to me
 
Brasart said:
Regarding this piece!
I was actually surprised to enjoy Nucleus here, because I really didn't enjoy how it sounded everytime I've heard that library before.

I often use BBCSO Pro myself so maybe I'm biased to its sound, but I really like how soft, flexible & wide it sounds here, comparing that to Inspire which sounds so harsh and narrow to me
Click to expand...

I too was pleasantly surprised by Nucleus! And just as you I love the sound of BBCSO. The problems I had with it for this particular piece was partly the plugin itself, but mostly how surprisingly uneven the timing of the shorts were. I had to go crazy with the tightness slider to get it to sound acceptably on time. With the default setting it sounded like I had accidentally added some strange swing quantisation or midi humaniser plugin turned up to the max. Love it for slower stuff though!
 
mybadmemory said:
I too was pleasantly surprised by Nucleus! And just as you I love the sound of BBCSO. The problems I had with it for this particular piece was partly the plugin itself, but mostly how surprisingly uneven the timing of the shorts were. I had to go crazy with the tightness slider to get it to sound acceptably on time. With the default setting it sounded like I had accidentally added some strange swing quantisation or midi humaniser plugin turned up to the max. Love it for slower stuff though!
Click to expand...

That's one of my beefs with Spitfire, how sloppy the shorts are. Some of the shorts in SStS Pro have so much silence at the start, that they're pretty much unusable for me. And they're wildly inconsistent, which makes trying to do any ostinatos practically impossible with the RR.

I mean, for libraries that cost several hundred dollars, can't they run an auto trim/crop batch on the samples? I don't care about capturing whatever "magic pixie dust" is in the 100ms before the attack, if it sounds completely sloppy when triggered through an arp, then something needs fixing.
 
mybadmemory said:
I recently decided to put my starter libraries (and myself) to the test, by remaking the same short piece using all five of them. This was really only done for myself, to get to know their respective sounds, workflows, and overall pros and cons better, but I thought I might share the five versions here, along with my thoughts on how each of them worked out for me.

Everything is straight out of the box, with only volume levels and velocities slightly tweaked, internal reverbs turned off and some Valhalla Room and a Logic stock limiter added. Other than that just the default library mixes, with no EQs or compression.


CINESYMPHONY LITE ($399)

Very impressed by how far CineSymphony could actually go considering how basic it seems at first. The sound is fantastic, the playability and workflow top notch, and the only thing really missing are some legato patches, solo instruments, and tonal percussion / harp. The sound and playability of the ensembles (and sections that are easily missed, but are there) really make up for it though.




BERLIN INSPIRE ($399)

Quite similar in tone to CineSymphony but with more reverb and longer tail in the recordings. Overall very nice sounding, and just as easy to work with. I did miss the individual sections from CineSymphony, but on the other hand this library comes with the legatos, solo instruments, and tonal percussion / harp that CineSymphony is missing, so together the two are a great combination.




NUCLEUS ($449)

Nucleus offers a slightly different tone than CineSymphony and Inspire, that to me sounds like either a tighter space or a different recording philosophy. The library sounds great though, and is just as easy to work with as the other two. It does include both ensembles, sections, and solos, as well as legatos, tonal percussion and harp. I didn't particularly like the sound of Nucleus at first, but came to appreciate the library much more after having made an actual piece with it.




BBCSO CORE ($449)

I really wanted to like BBCSO Core and expected to do so based on how good it sounds when just playing the patches live. Getting to actually work with it revealed some problems that were hard to ignore though. The plugin itself felt very slow and unresponsive, and the short patches have undeniable timing issues and sound sloppy in faster passages. I know Spitfire have a reputation for being better at soft and slow, than at fast and aggressive, which was sadly my conclusion as well. Combined with Nucleus though it could be great option, since the tones are acceptably similar, and they together cover both the soft and slow + fast and aggressive ranges well.




SPITFIRE ORIGINALS ($87)

Spitfire Originals is around a fifth of the price of the other libraries here, which is reflected in the content. The overall sound is very wet and to me also quite hard to control. It easily becomes boomy and has a noticeable buildup of reverb noise in the more intense passages. The shorts do sound much tighter than BBSCO which is nice, but overall I found the library hard to work with, partly because of its wet sound, and partly because of its content limitations. Brass and woodwinds only come in octaves, and there is no classical orchestral percussion included (the snare used is from CineSymphony).




SUMMARY

Doing this experiment was interesting since I came out of it with a quite different feeling for the libraries than I had expected. I really liked working with CineSymphony, Berlin Inspire, and Nucleus, but sadly not so much with the two Spitfire libraries. I had to work much harder (both with the plugin itself, with the wetness of Originals, and with the sloppy shorts of BBCSO), and in the end I just didn't enjoy the process or result as much as with the other three.

Spitfire Originals will probably get removed from my template since I neither enjoyed the sound or the workflow. For the other four I found that CineSymphony and Inspire, that are reasonably similar in tone, complete each other really well in that what one lacks, the other one offers. CineSymphony has individual sections, and Inspire has legatos / solo instruments / tonal percussion and harp.

Similarly I found that Nucleus and BBCSO, which are also sufficiently similar in tone, complete each other in the way that while Nucleus is much better for fast and aggressive (louder dynamics and snappier shorts), BBCSO wins in the softer and slower territories, with more articulations, more natural noises / mistakes included, and overall smoother legatos including portamento for all string sections.

I realise that libraries can't be judged just by just one piece of music (let alone a hobbyists attempt at one), since what doesn't work for this piece might very well work perfectly for another. I'm also just a beginner trying my best, so people more experienced than myself would undoubtedly be able to make all five versions sound much better! Hopefully someone considering buying any of these might get something out of my comparisons or thoughts anyway. :)
Click to expand...

I don't own any of these, but i agree with your assessment.

Nucleus sounded the best to me. Lots of detail, and clarity, and the percussion really cut through! That was my favorite.

The Spitfire libraries sounded really washed out to me, almost as if there is too much reverb, which is masking the detail of things. They were my least favorite.
 
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Great experiment, thanks for doing this very useful comparison. I feel Nucleus is the best for a "video gamey" rendition of this composition and Cinesymphony Lite is the best for a more "cinematic" version... and Nucleus wins overall. Great attitude behind the samples.
 
@mybadmemory Cool! Love these experiments! I was wondering if it were possible to have the project file so I could test with some other libraries I have?

I think I prefer Cinesymphony Lite, Nucleus sounds ok but seems to lack dynamics compared to the others.
 
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They are all good, but nucleus sounds best for this piece and I don't like the version of the spitfire library. I think too much reverb is not suitable for this piece. Great composition!
 
mybadmemory said:
I recently decided to put my starter libraries (and myself) to the test, by remaking the same short piece using all five of them. This was really only done for myself, to get to know their respective sounds, workflows, and overall pros and cons better, but I thought I might share the five versions here, along with my thoughts on how each of them worked out for me.

Everything is straight out of the box, with only volume levels and velocities slightly tweaked, internal reverbs turned off and some Valhalla Room and a Logic stock limiter added. Other than that just the default library mixes, with no EQs or compression.


CINESYMPHONY LITE ($399)

Very impressed by how far CineSymphony could actually go considering how basic it seems at first. The sound is fantastic, the playability and workflow top notch, and the only thing really missing are some legato patches, solo instruments, and tonal percussion / harp. The sound and playability of the ensembles (and sections that are easily missed, but are there) really make up for it though.




BERLIN INSPIRE ($399)

Quite similar in tone to CineSymphony but with more reverb and longer tail in the recordings. Overall very nice sounding, and just as easy to work with. I did miss the individual sections from CineSymphony, but on the other hand this library comes with the legatos, solo instruments, and tonal percussion / harp that CineSymphony is missing, so together the two are a great combination.




NUCLEUS ($449)

Nucleus offers a slightly different tone than CineSymphony and Inspire, that to me sounds like either a tighter space or a different recording philosophy. The library sounds great though, and is just as easy to work with as the other two. It does include both ensembles, sections, and solos, as well as legatos, tonal percussion and harp. I didn't particularly like the sound of Nucleus at first, but came to appreciate the library much more after having made an actual piece with it.




BBCSO CORE ($449)

I really wanted to like BBCSO Core and expected to do so based on how good it sounds when just playing the patches live. Getting to actually work with it revealed some problems that were hard to ignore though. The plugin itself felt very slow and unresponsive, and the short patches have undeniable timing issues and sound sloppy in faster passages. I know Spitfire have a reputation for being better at soft and slow, than at fast and aggressive, which was sadly my conclusion as well. Combined with Nucleus though it could be great option, since the tones are acceptably similar, and they together cover both the soft and slow + fast and aggressive ranges well.




SPITFIRE ORIGINALS ($87)

Spitfire Originals is around a fifth of the price of the other libraries here, which is reflected in the content. The overall sound is very wet and to me also quite hard to control. It easily becomes boomy and has a noticeable buildup of reverb noise in the more intense passages. The shorts do sound much tighter than BBSCO which is nice, but overall I found the library hard to work with, partly because of its wet sound, and partly because of its content limitations. Brass and woodwinds only come in octaves, and there is no classical orchestral percussion included (the snare used is from CineSymphony).




SUMMARY

Doing this experiment was interesting since I came out of it with a quite different feeling for the libraries than I had expected. I really liked working with CineSymphony, Berlin Inspire, and Nucleus, but sadly not so much with the two Spitfire libraries. I had to work much harder (both with the plugin itself, with the wetness of Originals, and with the sloppy shorts of BBCSO), and in the end I just didn't enjoy the process or result as much as with the other three.

Spitfire Originals will probably get removed from my template since I neither enjoyed the sound or the workflow. For the other four I found that CineSymphony and Inspire, that are reasonably similar in tone, complete each other really well in that what one lacks, the other one offers. CineSymphony has individual sections, and Inspire has legatos / solo instruments / tonal percussion and harp.

Similarly I found that Nucleus and BBCSO, which are also sufficiently similar in tone, complete each other in the way that while Nucleus is much better for fast and aggressive (louder dynamics and snappier shorts), BBCSO wins in the softer and slower territories, with more articulations, more natural noises / mistakes included, and overall smoother legatos including portamento for all string sections.

I realise that libraries can't be judged just by just one piece of music (let alone a hobbyists attempt at one), since what doesn't work for this piece might very well work perfectly for another. I'm also just a beginner trying my best, so people more experienced than myself would undoubtedly be able to make all five versions sound much better! Hopefully someone considering buying any of these might get something out of my comparisons or thoughts anyway. :)
Click to expand...

Send this track to NFL Films it sounds like an old soundtrack to a 1970s Minnesota Vikings playoff run.
 
unclecheeks said:
That's one of my beefs with Spitfire, how sloppy the shorts are. Some of the shorts in SStS Pro have so much silence at the start, that they're pretty much unusable for me. And they're wildly inconsistent, which makes trying to do any ostinatos practically impossible with the RR.

I mean, for libraries that cost several hundred dollars, can't they run an auto trim/crop batch on the samples? I don't care about capturing whatever "magic pixie dust" is in the 100ms before the attack, if it sounds completely sloppy when triggered through an arp, then something needs fixing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the inconsistency is the tricky part. I totally understand varying preroll on patch level (though I prefer Audio Imperias approach of keeping everything the same and adjustable), but when it varies on note level, and even on round robin level, it makes things VERY tricky.
 
Mike Fox said:
I don't own any of these, but i agree with your assessment.

Nucleus sounded the best to me. Lots of detail, and clarity, and the percussion really cut through! That was my favorite.

The Spitfire libraries sounded really washed out to me, almost as if there is too much reverb, which is masking the detail of things. They were my least favorite.
Click to expand...

Same here, I preferred Nucleus and CineSymphony! I'm sure the Spitfire libraries could shine at something slower and softer though! Regarding Inspire I agree with @Brasart that is sounds a bit narrow and harsh. Especially the string shorts.

Thanks for listening!
 
EgM said:
@mybadmemory Cool! Love these experiments! I was wondering if it were possible to have the project file so I could test with some other libraries I have?

I think I prefer Cinesymphony Lite, Nucleus sounds ok but seems to lack dynamics compared to the others.
Click to expand...

Sure I guess that could be arranged! It's in Logic format, and the midi and instrumentation is slightly different for all five versions. Which libraries are you considering testing it with? Would you need the ensemble, or the section versions of the midi? :)
 
mybadmemory said:
Sure I guess that could be arranged! It's in Logic format, and the midi and instrumentation is slightly different for all five versions. Which libraries are you considering testing it with? Would you need the ensemble, or the section versions of the midi? :)
Click to expand...

Could try VSL, EW, 8Dio, I even have lots of custom older stuff that I wonder how it would sound. I do have Logic and the section tracks would work better I think. I'll contact you in private message, Thanks! :)
 
RonOrchComp said:
Nice comparison!



For me, these exs plainly show how on par with everything else BBSO is. It sounds good, but not any better than the other exs. Different, but not better.
Click to expand...


In defence of BBCSO I could argue that this piece was written with the simpler libraries in mind, and for CineSymphony first, only using longs and shorts. Therefore I also only really used the very basic parts of BBCSO.

If I would have gone the other route, written a piece for BBCSO first, utilizing all of its articulations, it would have undoubtedly been impossible to recreate using the simpler libraries, and probably sound quite bad if moved over.

To me it mostly proves that a library is an instrument that you need to know and write for, while considering it’s strong and weak points. Which for me was the point of doing this. To learn my libraries better. :)
 
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