Upcoming library from Spitfire Audio "Albion"

dcoscina · Post by **dcoscina** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 8:01 am

Looks like a promising library, especially for those who find Project SAM's Symphobia 1 & 2 a little steep as far as cost goes.

http://www.spitfireaudio.com/albion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

David Polich · Post by **David Polich** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:16 am

dcoscina wrote:Looks like a promising library, especially for those who find Project SAM's Symphobia 1 & 2 a little steep as far as cost goes.

http://www.spitfireaudio.com/albion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;"

Couldn't find any audio demos. Are there any?

dcoscina · Post by **dcoscina** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 10:05 am

Next week they say

melenko · Post by **melenko** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 12:49 pm

No, no! They are available here... click on "demos".
http://www.spitfireaudio.com/demos" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

melenko · Post by **melenko** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 12:49 pm

No, no! They are available here... click on "demos". Sounds great!
http://www.spitfireaudio.com/demos" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 4:16 pm

melenko wrote:No, no! They are available here... click on "demos".
http://www.spitfireaudio.com/demos" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If I am reading the symbols correctly(tape reel symbol) Albion is not in any of the demos as of now.......hopefully it will be posted soon,this library looks intriguing.

melenko · Post by **melenko** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 10:58 am

Oups! Sorry!

malditoyanki · Post by **malditoyanki** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 2:22 pm

Interesting company. Some of their licenses are priced around or over 10,000 British pounds if I'm reading this correctly. Furthermore, you cannot simply buy them, but must be "approved." From their site, "This module is part of Spitfire’s “Bespoke” range and is been produced as an “Elite” tool restricting its use to a very limited number of licenses and are available by application to composers who support and use live musicians."

Bizarre...

scooter · Post by **scooter** » Sat Jun 18, 2011 5:59 pm

I like the font!!!!

scoots

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Sun Jun 19, 2011 9:53 am

I just listened very carefully to the demos, and frankly I don't hear anything in those expensive libraries that can't be done better with other libraries costing a fraction as much. I'm afraid that Spitfire has adopted a very aggressive marketing strategy which may attract certain kinds of buyers, but it won't make those users any more able than users of VSL or Wallander Instruments.

What supposed advantage is there to first recording the entire library to tape? I seriously doubt that they're the first to do that, as they claim. Miroslav Vitous recorded his first samples in the 1980's, when it was unlikely that he had any alternative but tape. But maybe I missed some important qualifier. Still, I don't think the samples work any better than any other, and quite worse in some cases. The solo flute and solo trumpet, for example, are not impressive. The demo that features the opening to Prelude: L'Apres-MIDI d'une faune, exhibits the bane of sampledom: the monotonous attack envelope.

[edit: this demo has been removed. A week after this was posted, it was replaced by a performance of the same excerpt, but performed as it should be, leaving no questions about the capabilities of the library. /edit]

The trumpet exhibits a number of technical problems, but they are disguised as unique quirks that distinguish the trumpet from a sampled library. In other words, we're to think it sounds "live," whereas a genuine live trumpet player who sounded that bad would never be hired in any professional orchestra that I've played in.

The £10,000 insults the intelligence of the buyer. Perhaps the hope is that people who buy in that price range do not really perform due diligence before buying, and perhaps they'd be unable to tell the difference. Or maybe they just haven't made any demos yet that really showcase the instruments. But based on what's up on their demo page, Spitfire is a joke at those prices.

Once again, my observations over the years are proven accurate: creating believable performances from instrumental MIDI libraries is more about the MIDI performer. Trying to make too much of the samples themselves misses the point by a mile, even if it does make good marketing material. The only thing that the samples should do without being told is to fade seamlessly between layers as the player crescendos from a breathless glide-in attack to the loudest sforzando. The rest should be up to the player. The instrument need only respond to the performer's every nuance.

I believe that there is still a tremendous disconnect between those who produce libraries and those who perform with them. Part of that disconnect is still due to the problem that's always been there: most people are playing these with keyboards and hoping for a miracle. The only miracle will come from breath control, pedal control, or some kind of bow control -- anything that gives the player genuinely sensitive response and potential for nuance. Trying to make these things sound "real" from a keyboard without a real-time controller (ex: BC) will always fall short, no matter how fine the player who was blowing or bowing on the instrument at the time the notes were committed to a recording, and whether the sound first went to tape, digits, or wax cylinders.

I must say this for Spitfire: they named themselves well. They possess chutzpah.

Shooshie

malditoyanki · Post by **malditoyanki** » Sun Jun 19, 2011 12:32 pm

Bam!!! But don't hold back or anything

I hear you on the trumpet demo...I was a little shocked at the slop in between notes and quite frankly some of the notes were simply out of tune. With wallander I don't really care about other brass libraries these days.

I got a chance to play around with the percussion library this weekend...still testing out the full library. It's better than the old EastWest gold percussion...but not by too much. The real plus is the variety of mic positions. I find this essential for mix reasons. The marimba? Best I've heard. I'll report a final verdict on value later if anyone cares. Needs more testing today.

I do have to say their marketing "strategy" was a bit off-putting. I don't hire orchestras in London or anywhere else NOT because I hate hiring live players, but because of the current state of music budgets in the industry. I was almost made to feel like a criminal reading their rationale.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 2:04 am

malditoyanki wrote:I don't hire orchestras in London or anywhere else NOT because I hate hiring live players, but because of the current state of music budgets in the industry. I was almost made to feel like a criminal reading their rationale.

I suspect that was part of the deal they made with the players in order to get the support of whom they consider to be the best players available. But remember that if they make you feel like a criminal for using their product, THEY MADE the blasted thing. Kind of unsteady ground they're treading, don't you think? I'll keep the marimba in mind -- one of the few real instruments that FM synthesis ever actually did a good job of emulating. That and the ice pad. Oh wait… there isn't a real ice pad, is there? Oh, I guess marimbas are important, and it's nice to know that there's a really fine one out there. The truth is that percussion works generally well in a sample format using keyboard to play it. That's because keyboards were made for percussion: a piano is a percussion instrument. You strike the object and let it ring. Any nuance is measured between one strike and another strike, the player has no effect on the ringing and decaying of the sound except for damping, which doesn't generally happen between notes on a marimba, anyway. Keyboards were also made for organs, which produce a steady sound until the key is released. That also works well in sampling, but a synth organ basically works just as well, IMO.

So in the domain of percussion, harps, guitars, pianos and organ, this library may truly be remarkable. I don't know, and I didn't listen to those demos -- at least not all of them or all the way through. (do they even have keyboards, guitars, and such? I did see the harp.) I paid close attention to string, woodwind, and brass demos. The orchestral hits sounded good, and maybe the orchestral unisons and string unisons. Those sounds do not rely on nuance for their character. Sounds of solo instruments, and especially the sounds of woodwinds and brass, are just hard to emulate in samples, because the producers of the sample libraries usually do not understand them well enough to design them for optimal playing conditions: using a wind controller, breath controller, or other continuous MIDI controller. Wallander, and Tommasini & Lucato are the only ones who have succeeded at that, IMO. There may be others who have done so; I can't claim to know them all, and new people are always entering the game, but those I mentioned have succeeded spectacularly at instrumental design. VSL has also succeeded, but in a different way. They created an interface that does the work, utilizing old-school samples, of cross-fading between layers in a believable way. For that matter, Miroslav's new home in the Sampletank interface brings them to life in a way that was not possible 10 years ago with the same samples.

In other words, there should be no excuse for what I heard in Prelude: L'Après-MIDI d'une faune: the repetitive attack of the flute where instead a continuous crescendo or decrescendo should have been present within extremely connected notes.

[edit: after a week of my asking whether the problem was in the library or the player's version of the piece, Spitfire posted a revised demo which, I'm pleased to say, proves beyond doubt that the library is capable of very subtle expression, and that it is not hampering the player in any way. Good show, Spitfire! /edit]

For the kind of money Spitfire is charging, I'd expect its interface to read the slightest nuance from the player and to alter its timbre, attacks, releases, vibrato, and loudness accordingly. They should have solved all those problems and made the thing sound like it's reading your mind. Based on the demos, that is assuredly not the case.

I'm ready to be proven wrong; if someone can produce beautiful solo instrumentals with that library, please show me. That still won't make me happy about their pricing and marketing game, but at least it would suggest that sample producers are at last figuring out the problems and coming up with creative solutions. But if they had done that, what I heard in those demos would never have happened, IMO.

Shooshie

dcoscina · Post by **dcoscina** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 10:34 am

Spitfire will only cost us North Americans about $500 or so. Well under Symphobia which is its closest competitor. It offers the same type of groupings of instruments for sketching or filling in the holes in a person's mock up. Sounds promising (the company posted a link to off the cuff noodling on VI Control).

That said, Maarten Sprujit from Project SAM said they are working on updates for both Symphobia 1 and 2. This bodes well for me and others who have had some issues with the legato on S2. I don't need Spitfire Albion but want to hear proper demos to see if the sound is in fact different from Project SAM stuff.

I'd actually be happier if Albion isn't that good as I am an early adopter of CineSamples' CineBrass and they are coming out with a PRO expansion this Fall and wouldn't mind picking that up or EW Hollywood Brass....

malditoyanki · Post by **malditoyanki** » Mon Jun 20, 2011 1:23 pm

yeah...perc libraries work on keyboard for obvious reasons. I wonder what wallander has in mind for strings????

The marimba is resonant and beefy....goes way down low. I wonder if they also sampled a bass marimba and made it one giant marimba patch. I don't know the range of a bass marimba. The glock and celeste are nice. The Vienna stuff has too much attack not enough resonance. I bet spitfire compressed the samples to get the desired effect...saves me the trouble of doing it. The timpani are quality, beefy and with the mic position options and round-robin very much an improvement over the EastWest. Don't even need reverb on 'em. Bass drum not bad. As always, run your big perc to an aux buss with waves Maxxxbass.

Churchbells you ask? EastWest wins that round. Same issue in reverse. Spitfire has too much attack not enough resonance. They're perfectly fine, just not quite as good IMO. Snares...oh dear. Awful, gutless, tinny. Sounds like waves crashing on a beach mixed with old TV white noise. Cinesnares wins the gig. The tam tam/metals menu is really fun. Lots of usable oddities and washes. And the moment you've been waiting for....the tambourine. Vienna wins hands down.

P.S. there are some cool sleigh bells I forgot to mention.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Tue Jun 21, 2011 6:22 am

malditoyanki wrote:P.S. there are some cool sleigh bells I forgot to mention.

At last! I can dig out that troika!

Shooshie

MOTUnation.com