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Pacific Strings - user demo thread

Here's a short excerpt from a piece I did recently using a combo of Vista and Pacific. I think I actually like Vista slightly more in the legatos department -- at least for layering. I'll often use a combo of vista violins as the main body of the 1st vln sound and then adding in a quieter layer of pacific 1st vlns OR (and I REALLY like this for layering) the 3 vlns FFF legato patch from pacific. The all sus patch from Pacific is really nice though, as are the whisper sustains (and the fact that these are sectional).

 
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annatar said:
well, at least for now, here are some mock-ups of film music i love, done over the last few months to test my pacific-based template

all the strings in these are pacific aside from the solo violin in the first, which is solos of the sea violin a

also bear in mind this is a template, not out of the box, and in some cases i've dramatically changed the seating of the strings, added room tone etc., with other tweaks to microphones, eq, and reverb

this is just how *i* want pacific to sound

View attachment 1.mp3
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Hi @annatar


Thank you very much for the clarifications provided a few days ago to my question on the placement of instruments for your superb mockup of "Balin's tomb" from LOTR!

I must say that I am quite obsessed with the latter, because I am totally amazed by the overall sound cohesion that you have managed to produce here (placement, width and depth, stereo image, general tone...). I did a few tests on my own just for fun to try to achieve a relatively similar result with Pacific, Chorus and JXL Brass in particular + a free "room tone" from Cinesamples and with a little EQ and panning I arrived to something relatively similar for the beginning of the piece. It was a lot of fun to do!

Where I am completely amazed is the quality of the reverb you achieved here. I think I recognize Berlin Studio but it's not sure. Would you please be kind enough to tell us a little more about the reverb(s) you used specifically for this piece? Thank you so much by advance!

Congratulations again to you for this superb achievement!

Eric
 
hi, first of all thank you for the effusive enthusiasm about the results, since this is an aesthetic which has been massively influential on my entire musical life, and if i'm managing to get close, it is a major personal victory

the reverb is really simple. first i have a particular impulse response running in space designer sampled from a celebrated but now somewhat dated hardware convolution unit, adding a little more "real" room depth to everything. i think the only key here is that the impulse response is... good. lots are smudgy, resonant, fuzzy, fizzy... this one would sound good even with the wet signal alone. that probably helps, and i did have to sort through a few other options from the same unit to find one that didn't have those issues. after that, everything hits one instance of valhalla vintage verb with a preset i've arrived at after a lot of tweaking. that's all!
 
annatar said:
hi, first of all thank you for the effusive enthusiasm about the results, since this is an aesthetic which has been massively influential on my entire musical life, and if i'm managing to get close, it is a major personal victory

the reverb is really simple. first i have a particular impulse response running in space designer sampled from a celebrated but now somewhat dated hardware convolution unit, adding a little more "real" room depth to everything. i think the only key here is that the impulse response is... good. lots are smudgy, resonant, fuzzy, fizzy... this one would sound good even with the wet signal alone. that probably helps, and i did have to sort through a few other options from the same unit to find one that didn't have those issues. after that, everything hits one instance of valhalla vintage verb with a preset i've arrived at after a lot of tweaking. that's all!
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Wow! Thank you very much for those detailed explanations. The end result is definitely worth all your effort!

Probably one of the very best LOTR mockup I've heard in terms of aesthetics and sound coherence, not to mention the top notch programming!
 
Laurin Lenschow said:
As there's a lot of hype around this library and the intro period is quite long I figured it makes sense to have a dedicated thread for user demos so that anyone who has not decided yet has quick access to a bunch of demos. I am downloading the library right now and will make a couple of videos about it and post them here; I hope other early adopters will join me.

I'm also taking video requests, so if there's anything specific you'd like to see/hear, just let me know! :)
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I made a little excerpt from the "snowspeeder rescue" from episode 5, to demonstrate the shorts a bit.
Transcribed by ear (took me only 10 minutes)
Just strings and timpani, so you can just concentrate on the strings.

Decay at around 2.2k. 0db close, -9,0db tree. I also applied some Waves Abbey road tg mastering but only used the stereo imaging, saturation and high cut to show its potential.
 

Attachments

  • Snowspeeder rescue excerpt.mp3
    1.1 MB
Here's a revisited version of my mockup of "Might of Rome" from Gladiator, originally made only with the Cinematic Studio Series libraries. Here, Pacific Ensemble Strings doubles the strings of CSS and TH Brass the brass section of CSB. I really like how these libraries complement each other!



Audio only (better quality than YouTube):



The mix of CSO libraries is based on a slightly modified version of the fabulous Project Colossal Template, expansion 2.0 by @ricoderks
 
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EricValette said:
Here's a revisited version of my mockup of "Might of Rome" from Gladiator, originally made only with the Cinematic Studio Series libraries. Here, Pacific Ensemble Strings doubles the strings of CSS and TH Brass the brass section of CSB. I really like how these libraries complement each other!



The mix of CSO libraries is based on a slightly modified version of the fabulous Project Colossal Template, expansion 2.0 by @ricoderks
Click to expand...

Fantastic Job ! Loving it

The Template from @ricoderks is also great, I'm currently using it for a composition
 
EricValette said:
Here's a revisited version of my mockup of "Might of Rome" from Gladiator, originally made only with the Cinematic Studio Series libraries. Here, Pacific Ensemble Strings doubles the strings of CSS and TH Brass the brass section of CSB. I really like how these libraries complement each other!



The mix of CSO libraries is based on a slightly modified version of the fabulous Project Colossal Template, expansion 2.0 by @ricoderks
Click to expand...

Lovely. Great work! A lovely open mix, great choice of source material - a very nice piece to just sit back and enjoy...
 
EricValette said:
Here's a revisited version of my mockup of "Might of Rome" from Gladiator, originally made only with the Cinematic Studio Series libraries. Here, Pacific Ensemble Strings doubles the strings of CSS and TH Brass the brass section of CSB. I really like how these libraries complement each other!



The mix of CSO libraries is based on a slightly modified version of the fabulous Project Colossal Template, expansion 2.0 by @ricoderks
Click to expand...

Eric, this is superb!! The overall sound you are achieving here by mixing the libs you mention really is something else. Very well done! Holy moly!!

Did you take the original piece and then with TH Brass matched the timbre of the CSB brass or what?

Same with CSS and Pacific Strings.

I’m curious to hear a little about the process. Also, was it a lot of work etc.
 
Henrik B. Jensen said:
Eric, this is superb!! The overall sound you are achieving here by mixing the libs you mention really is something else. Very well done! Holy moly!!

Did you take the original piece and then with TH Brass matched the timbre of the CSB brass or what?

Same with CSS and Pacific Strings.

I’m curious to hear a little about the process. Also, was it a lot of work etc.
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Thank you so much Henrik!

Without wanting to deviate from the main subject of this thread, my approach is relatively simple here: it has been many years since I tried to copy "as closely as possible" the original aesthetic or performance of a piece when I make a cover of this type. I prefer to tell myself that this is how I would like my virtual orchestra with its own sound to play this piece in this virtual room that I have chosen myself. Here, if we compare with the original OST, I opted for a less aggressive approach concerning the brass and violins in particular.

That said, we start here from the 2.0 expansion of the Project Colossal Template for the Cinematic Studio series, whose philosophy was to mimic a great studio/hall sound, push the orchestra further to the back of the room and erase the defects of the Tree microphone of CSS and CSB in particular (before the release of update 1.7 for CSS). Only the Close (just a little bit) and Room microphones are engaged on the PCT 2.0.
For Pacific, in order to best match that, I used only the AB microphone, equalized (taking inspiration from what Blakus had done in one of his videos but adapting a little depending on the sections), reduced a little stereo image (L89-R89), put Cinematic Room Pro in insert with a "Far2" setting to match the distance with CSS, add a little tape (Waves J37) and voila.
For TH Brass, it's the AMXL Tree microphone only, all sent to Berlin Studio which is here as an insert (AB microphone only) and also a little equalization. This operation also allows the location of TH Brass instruments to be matched to the same location as those of CSB as set in PCT 2.0.

I hope this helps! :)
 
EricValette said:
Thank you so much Henrik!

Without wanting to deviate from the main subject of this thread, my approach is relatively simple here: it has been many years since I tried to copy "as closely as possible" the original aesthetic or performance of a piece when I make a cover of this type. I prefer to tell myself that this is how I would like my virtual orchestra with its own sound to play this piece in this virtual room that I have chosen myself. Here, if we compare with the original OST, I opted for a less aggressive approach concerning the brass and violins in particular.

That said, we start here from the 2.0 expansion of the Project Colossal Template for the Cinematic Studio series, whose philosophy was to mimic a great studio/hall sound, push the orchestra further to the back of the room and erase the defects of the Tree microphone of CSS and CSB in particular (before the release of update 1.7 for CSS). Only the Close (just a little bit) and Room microphones are engaged on the PCT 2.0.
For Pacific, in order to best match that, I used only the AB microphone, equalized (taking inspiration from what Blakus had done in one of his videos but adapting a little depending on the sections), reduced a little stereo image (L89-R89), put Cinematic Room Pro in insert with a "Far2" setting to match the distance with CSS, add a little tape (Waves J37) and voila.
For TH Brass, it's the AMXL Tree microphone only, all sent to Berlin Studio which is here as an insert (AB microphone only) and also a little equalization. This operation also allows the location of TH Brass instruments to be matched to the same location as those of CSB as set in PCT 2.0.

I hope this helps! :)
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That is awesome info, thank you!
 
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