MOTU Symphonic Instrument

[glmusic]

A new banner on their home page with detailed tour and nice mp3 examples of most instruments. Well done and to my ears the examples sound excellent.

[chrispick]

Where is this?

[Tritonemusic]

..

[pinky]

Originally posted by glmusic:
A new banner on their home page with detailed tour and nice mp3 examples of most instruments. Well done and to my ears the examples sound excellent.

Well, dang me, but they sound hideous on my system! I'll have to demo them at WEst LA... where's that number again...?

But the boy in the demo sure can play!

[chrispick]

Originally posted by 666:

Originally posted by heavypick:
Where is this?

On the MOTU.com website: Products/Software/MOTU Symphonic Instrument...or click here:

http://www.motu.com/products/software/msi/mp3.html/en

These are the same samples found on the various European sites.

Ah, there's the new banner on MOTU's homepage. It just popped up for me.

Thanks 666.

<small>[ July 28, 2005, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: heavypick ]</small>

[Shooshie]

Mixed response here. There is a lot of fine artistry in the presentation, but I'm wondering how much of the sometimes-lackluster results is due to the instruments themselves, or to the recording, or to the arrangers/performers. It's just hard to figure. I guess I've got to buy the darn thing just to try it.

Orchestral guys, how do you think this compares to some of the sample libraries for Kontakt 2? The piano sound isn't nearly as brilliant and present as I'd hoped, but that may be the specific usage in the songs, or the reverb, or both. I sure wish I could just demo the entire thing for a week and know for sure.

Shooshie

<small>[ July 28, 2005, 08:40 PM: Message edited by: Shooshie ]</small>

[danes]

is it already out yet?

[thracks]

MOTU gave us a demo of MX4, it would be nice if they offered a demo of this. Of course it will have to contain only a small selection of sounds, but it might help me decide.

[Shooshie]

Somehow, the first time around I missed the preset page. After listening to the presets, I know I want this. Excellent stuff, and I can see clearly where I can use these samples! Good work, MOTU! Good work to those who created the samples and who recorded the examples. Now... the rest is up to us. I think we are looking at a very fine set of tools here, folks. Not the be-all, end-all of samples, but certainly one that will find a place in some or most of your tracks in every project where orchestral instruments are appropriate.

As has been said often, variety is the key. So, MOTU Symphonic Instrument is not all you're ever going to need, but it fills a lot of holes in our repertoire and provides us with excellent material to work with.

Oh, and did I mention that the presets are also pre-panned? They each sit in their respective places in the orchestra. That can be a plus or a minus, but it's not hard to flip them or center them with the Trim plugin if needed. I find it to be helpful. Well-conceived piece of soft-gear, this.

I'm definitely buying it.

Shooshie

<small>[ July 28, 2005, 09:02 PM: Message edited by: Shooshie ]</small>

[Rush909]

wow... this is one amazing sounding piece of software... the thing I like about it is that is the sounds, sound "pre-mixed"... could be a good thing or a bad thing, but in my book they are good... some sample libraries sound too "raw" and need EQing etc... to get them to sound right... these sound good out of the box... I might not do any orchestral music, but when I do need to use orchestral elements in my records, I think that I would turn to this before any of the other libraries...

r.

[blue]

The main competition for this seems to be GPO and similarly priced orchestral libraries. A good, all-in-one sketchpad. It's definitely not in the same league as the heavy hitters VSL, EWQLSO and Sonic Implants. You're cutting some serious corners when you're offering an orchestral palette weighing in at 8 gigs these days, especially when that 8 gigs includes piano, organ and guitar. Fewer articulations, no release samples, not chromatically sampled, etc.

With time and a lot more computers, you can create a better sounding mockup with the big libraries. But for smaller setups, sketches, less exposed orchestral writing, this could be a pretty cool little tool.

[blue]

Originally posted by Rush909:
the thing I like about it is that is the sounds, sound "pre-mixed".

This is one of the nice things about EWQLSO. All the samples are ambient and in place. No need to set pan or overall instrument levels to achieve a nicely balanced orchestral sound. Saves me soooo much time mixing, affording me more time to write.

[mcevilley]

I noticed on a website selling MOTU Symphonic Instrument something that has me thinking...

If users prefer the more advanced and flexible environment provided by MachFive, MOTU••™s universal sampler plug-in, they can freely load the MOTU Symphonic Instrument sounds into MachFive for more complex layers, splits and stacks. In fact, users can bring the full weight of MachFive••™s Expert Mode to bear on designing their own dynamic instruments and ensembles.

Are they saying that there is more flexibilty if you use Mach V? If so, I wonder if it's possible to buy the sample library and not the player. And, if that's the case, why not consider some other libraries if you've already got Mach V? I guess it's for ease of use, since the samples are better organized than if one had imported another library with CDextract (I know that's what it's called anymore but I can't think of the new name.)
Any thoughts on this?

[chrispick]

Originally posted by blue:
The main competition for this seems to be GPO and similarly priced orchestral libraries. A good, all-in-one sketchpad. It's definitely not in the same league as the heavy hitters VSL, EWQLSO and Sonic Implants.

My take on it as well. Of course, that's about where it's price-positioned.

It does have some interesting components like the tutti orchestra and experimental guitar though.

[chrispick]

Originally posted by dortmunder4:
Are they saying that there is more flexibilty if you use Mach V? If so, I wonder if it's possible to buy the sample library and not the player.

I doubt you'll be able to buy the samples without the player. MOTU licenses the UVI player from Ultimate Sound Bank and uses it for both MachFive and Symphonic Instrument. You can set it up so that M5 can access SI's data library.