Synful Orchestra and MotU SI

[miket]

Being on a, relatively, tight budget I'm thinking to buy either Synful Orchestra or MotU SI.
I've listened to their demos and both Virtual orchestras seem good and reliable. Also the price is quite similar, although Synful Orchesta costs a little more.

As a entry level orchestra composer, what would be the best match assuming I'm using DP5.13 and a mac G41,25DP MDD??

Other suggestions?

Thanks
Michele

[mhschmieder]

It depends. The Synful stuff may be more fun to "play" if you tend to record and/or play parts live, vs. rendering pre-recorded MIDI. The phrasing feature is interesting and works pretty well for legato stuff, but falls down when it comes to fast articulations such as are found in Mozart's music.

I owned and resold MSI. I didn't like its basic character, but that is personal taste. I've always tended more towards the darker European orchestral sound, so that may have biased my view on MSI. I just couldn't get the basic sound I wanted out of the strings, regardless of programming concerns or sample-switching issues.

I'm not convinced it is the best "starter library" for someone relatively inexperienced, but it is certainly well-priced for what you get. And to this day, I don't have replacements for some of its historical instruments. The harpsichords are excellent, and possibly better than what I have now with Vienna Instruments and a few other vendors. But harpsichords are each unique in sound, as are church pipe organs. The choirs and organ are excellent as is the classical guitar.

So, to me at least, the strengths in MSI are the extras, not the basic strings, winds, and brass. And those extras are worth the price alone. But it may work out better as a second purchase to augment a more beginner-friendly library with additional sounds (or to layer).

The Garritan Personal Orchestra (aka GPO) is often cited as the easiest to use for beginners, as it doesn't require as much (if any) sample switching tricks, separate tracks per articulation, or any of the other nonsense. It is programmed to do a reasonable job out of the box with a single MIDI track that has multiple articulations. So is Synful.

In the case of Synful, you can request a demo version first, which I recommend. Do recognise though, that it is missing a lot of instruments, groupings, etc., that you may or may not find essential. If you like it, you should get it, but you may need to budget for another library or two to fill in the gaps.