Miroslav Philharmonik 2

[Shooshie]

Just got an email announcing Miroslav Philharmonik 2, pre-order.

Upgrade price is $199. I'm not sure, but that may be a temporary offer.
Miroslav is still one of the better orchestral VIs out there, especially for a quick mock-up. It's easy to set up, and it works well with a wind controller like the WX5 if you figure out the velocity thing. I forget how I set that up, but it wasn't hard to figure out, and it worked very well once I did. I'm not comparing it to Vienna or other nth generation sample libraries, but just saying that of all the old libraries I ever used, Miroslav is the one I still find useful for its sound, combined with ease of use. Very fast for working, and all the instruments sound decent.

Anyway, an upgrade is on the way. There may be better pricing coming; $199 is more than I spent on the whole thing plus one upgrade at IK Multimedia. It's not like they're still paying for the samples after all these years. (decades) But if $199 is the price, I'll still do it.

http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/ph ... onik2-info

[EDIT] Since posting this, I have read the text on the site. It appears that Miroslav Vitous has helped them resample the instruments. Maybe that explains the higher price. It now has a 55GB HD sound library. Well, this may be very interesting!

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Thanks, man. I have 1 but don't use it that much. Time to take another look and listen to the samples of the update. $199 is high compared to the original version, but if they've improved it a lot and it sounds good, that worth it, IMO.

[Shooshie]

Thanks, man. I have 1 but don't use it that much. Time to take another look and listen to the samples of the update. $199 is high compared to the original version, but if they've improved it a lot and it sounds good, that worth it, IMO.

If it actually improves on what was already there, $199 is a steal.

Shoosh

[kgdrum]

Listening to the demos, to my (drum damaged)ears the bits I listened to sounded way to obvious as being played on a keyboard.
I was surprised and disappointed,my question is it bad demos or bad scripting,for a major 55 gig upgrade I was expecting something much better.
I just got Albion 1 & Albion One imho no comparison.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Just scanned a few demos. I don't know... could be the performance, but it sounds awfully "canned" to me.

[Shooshie]

Listening to the demos, to my (drum damaged)ears the bits I listened to sounded way to obvious as being played on a keyboard.
I was surprised and disappointed,my question is it bad demos or bad scripting,for a major 55 gig upgrade I was expecting something much better.
I just got Albion 1 & Albion One imho no comparison.

You may recall a great argument we had in this forum a few years back when Albion (Spitfire) went online. In their demos there was a flute solo: Prelude: Apres MIDI d'une Faune, which was so bad that I played it on three different libraries that all sounded far superior, and posted them in a thread here. I still have the files. The best of them was Miroslav. Here's the deal: it wasn't the libraries that sounded better, it was the player. I was just appalled that their player had never heard Debussy's masterpiece, and did such a lousy job of it. The makers of Albion went ballistic on me for a moment, until they realized they sounded like fools defending such awful playing in a demo. Their player did it again, sounded just as bad, and finally did it once again, sounding maybe 50% better, but never coming close to my performance.

I suspect that IK Multimedia suffers the same problem when it comes to demos. They're often made by people who don't excel at musical performance in general, but who tend to specialize in pop or rock music. The performance I did on Miroslav sounded like a flute. Maybe not James Galway or Julius Baker, but it would have passed in most orchestras. Theirs... well, didn't.

Of course, I was using a WX5, and he was using a keyboard. So there's most of your difference. The library is just a starting point. It's all about what you do with it.

Shooshie

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Makes sense. Rarely can you do orchestral stuff out of the box.

[Shooshie]

Makes sense. Rarely can you do orchestral stuff out of the box.

Mine was out of the box. I guess I did enough setup to make it play on a WX5. I'm not saying it was great, but if I heard it in an orchestral recording, I wouldn't be doing double-takes over the bad flute.

I could have probably done even a better job with Albion Spitfire, but I didn't have access to it. If it's better, then that's great. But why would they post a demo that just sounded terrible? There are lots of players who could send them that demo in about 10 minutes. (I spent about 10 minutes on the entire project, recording three versions of it: Wallander, Vienna, and Miroslav. Flute happens to be the weakest instrument in Wallander. I had not mastered the Vienna interface, or it might have been the best. (or not; I don't really know) But Miroslav was such an easy fit that I felt like I was actually playing my flute. It responded to vibrato and everything perfectly and I did it in one take. (Actually, I did all of them in one take.) I even added a horn and harp to sound more like the actual music. Had it up on the forum just 15 or 20 minutes after having heard Albion's demo for the first time. But that's irrelevant. The point isn't that I was so good. The point was that Albion's guy so terribly misrepresented what their instruments can do, and so do most demos.

You just have to wonder what people are thinking, sometimes.

Shoosh

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Perhaps the better articulation of a wind controller is the secret, in the hands of a talented player, of course.

[Shooshie]

Perhaps the better articulation of a wind controller is the secret, in the hands of a talented player, of course.

Knowing how to phrase it, I suppose you could draw it into a keyboard performance, but it sure is easier with a wind controller. Again, Miroslav is a good fit.

[cuttime]

I'm not sure there is any difference other than a 64bit upgrade.

[Shooshie]

I'm not sure there is any difference other than a 64bit upgrade.

They're saying a 55GB HD library.

My full version has a 7.5GB library. I definitely wouldn't call it HD.

That's a huge difference.

Shooshie

[nk_e]

It looks like a substantial upgrade all around. I too was put off by the demos. And I too now recall the Albion discussions. (Thanks for reminding me.) They would do well to solicit demos from more skilled users I think.

Anyway, I got an email from them telling me that "as a loyal user and early adopter of Miroslav Philharmonik" they deposited "50 jam points" (i.e., $50) in my account to use on the preorder. I believe you can combine that with other jam points for up to 30% off.

Makes the decision easy.

[Shooshie]

I just got around to listening to the demos. I have to say, I rarely hear demos that "canned" across the board. I've used the old Miroslav quite a number of times, and I NEVER sounded that way. Er... I hope!

I'm guessing the player is a very, very fine keyboardist and arranger. It was probably nothing for him to dash those off and get them in the can. But I think he has pretty much zero feel for the various orchestral performing idioms. The playing is idiomatic for a keyboard, not an ensemble of strings, winds, and/or brass. In fact, the arranging is keyboardish. It's a small world, and no doubt word will get back to the player that i'm saying these things. My suggestion to the player: learn the orchestral idiom(s). Listen to brass players, string players, and wind players to study how they do a pickup, attacks, releases, sustains, and how they blend with each other. They don't play like 10 fingers. More like herding cats. You get them focused on the same thing, and they'll move together, but they'll always be individual kitties, not piles of identical X-tuplets.

Speaking of which, it appears that Miroslav 2 can't distribute instruments over a chord, so every extra note added to a chord sounds like a whole new section of players just kicked in to play it. That also has to be taken care of in the arranging and playing. Zoned keyboards may help, or just multi-track. Yeah, it does take longer. That may be the reason Miroslav costs $500, and Vienna costs $15,000. (or it MAY do those things, but the player didn't take advantage of them)

My bottom line: I'll buy this upgrade, because it's useful to me. It's useful to me, because I know how to use it, and moreover, how NOT to use it. If you're a beginner looking for a great orchestral library, this may be perfect for you, or it may slow down your career. It depends on how much you can learn about playing and multi tracking so that a simple library can be made to sound like a complex one. It's not going to do you any favors. You'll have to wring the performance out of it. That said, if you have breath control, you're half-way there. But you still have to deal with ensemble multiplying with every added note in a chord. Maybe Miroslav can do that. If so, the demos really misrepresent it. Miroslav has great sounds, a fact proven by the countless musicians who still use it after 30 years.

I would download the demo version and try it out. If you think you can get something out of it, buy it. If not, throw it out. I'll be buying it. There are just too many great performances lurking in that library for me to disregard it. It's all in the playing and the time and ingenuity you put into it.

Shooshie
PS: I've heard a number of film arrangements by one of our illustrious forum members which he did in Miroslav. They could have been John Williams and the Boston Pops. It's THAT good when in the right hands. In fact, that was what convinced me to get Miroslav years ago!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Maybe they just went with the lowest bidder.