Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra

[NoamL]

Left some thoughts on VIC, might as well copypaste here. But totally agree with your particulars Guy & Linos. If they released the woodwinds separately I'd look at it very, very seriously even though I'm $150 deep into SpitStuWinds.

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Likes:

Start with the microphone positions. Wow. The spill mics really do make a difference compared to the tree. It feels like the sound is captured as it goes across the entire stage. JJ's mixes sound great and probably they'll do the trick 90% of the time which means this library might be quite accessible even on stock computers. The close mics are REALLY nice and close and capture a great sound. Not at all like the C mic in Albion or the Cr (close ribbon) in Mural. Can picture some really nice 70s/80s style mixes if you want to mix in the close mics more.

The hall simply sounds wonderful on the brass and woodwinds. It made me look forlornly at some of my favorite instruments, it's hard to achieve that "opened up" hall sound with plugin reverb sometimes, and here with BBCSO it's the real thing. I like the space QUITE a bit more than Air (bet HZ disagrees!).

The woodwinds feel REALLY good. They have a musical, liquid and lively sound not at all like bored players recording one note at a time. Plus a beautiful and appropriate depth to the sound.

The brass sounded pretty darn good too, with a full capture of the dynamics and a nice variety of note-attack styles. Keep in mind we were mostly hearing the 4-horn patch so triads were 12 horns, etc.

As always one of the strongest aspects of Spitfire is their attention to auxiliary instruments. Loved the blatty contrabass tuba - and the contrabass clarinet really extends the range!

Similarly there's a thorough attention paid to auxiliary articulations here, like a full setup of true con sord strings, very nice.

You can't argue with the value. There was Composer Cloud, and the Albion redo, and Berlin Orchestra Inspire, and SSO/Masse - it seems like year upon year there are deeper and cheaper "first VI" products from every developer and Spitfire have nosed ahead once again with BBCSO.

Concerns:

I have to admit as a strings guy, the strings didn't feel too special. In part because it feels like kind of standard stuff and in part because the performance legato didn't convince me. I wouldn't expect it to, tbh, because Paul was playing some quite challenging passages for VI strings and performing live. I know there's a full legato video coming so this is more of a "reserve judgement" than a "dislike."

Feels like we got a demo of everything but the legatos - again I know there's a video coming - but it'll be really crucial to learn how many dynamics of recorded legato transitions there are, etc. Some people think this is number crunching. It's really about whether the legato transitions can fit into every dynamic of performance. For example if you listen to the legatos in Hollywood Brass, to pick on an older library, they sound quite good at mf and f but if you try to play at mp the legato transitions pop right out and sound glurpy, you have to work around it or use fewer transitions when writing quietly.

In the end a lot of what I look for in a VI is just the sustains and legatos, not a highly varied palette of "sound pad colors." It seems like a wide and growing difference with the philosophy of Spitfire's products unfortunately.

I wanna make a point here for clarity's sake - I certainly do not care so much about legatos because I'm a fascist for realism or because I have a fetish for sounding like John Williams. It's simply because it is the main use case in my work. Legato strings - sometimes lyrical, sometimes emotional, sometimes fast, sometimes non vib, but the same basic articulation - accounted for 75% of the string writing I either write on assignment or am asked to synthestrate. Another 20% would be string motor stuff using a combination of spiccato, staccatissimo and staccato - so those articulations are crucial as well, especially their interchangeability. And the final 5% would be tremolos and harmonics. Everything else is used less than 1% of the time.

So, there's quite a hierarchy there.

I don't even have pizzicatos loaded in my synthestration template, if I write some I'll throw some in from my favorite library or even whatever library I scroll down to first. And while, as an ex string player, I do regret the clunkiness of "emulated" con sord and I'd probably write for muted strings MUCH more often if my template had true samples of 'em, that consideration doesn't trump using the library with the best out of the box sustains and legatos.

[The Saxer]

I think they are just still working on the (string) legatos. Nice to have a "performance legato" but I think it's a hard thing to do with all the balancing of different attacks, transitions, releases and shorts overlays. And all that over a bunch of mic-settings and all sections. Time consuming. The intro-noodling with the first violin legatos in fixed fortissimo CC setting doesn't show anything musical relevant for me except the playability in different speeds - which seems to work fine. I like the overall string sound but rarely use "High-Register-Cello-Pads" and stuff... so not too practise orientated performance in the video... Spitfire style as usual. But the depth and punch without the endless Air verb is fantastic!

[FriFlo]

Edit: Never mind ... I made a mistake with the size of Berlin Brass.

[Ashermusic]

I think the main appeal of this is the idea that multiple composers can easily share projects and collaborate, knowing that they have an affordable, workable, good sounding orchestra that by default will sound the same, look the same, and work the same on everybody's computer.

Not a bad concept. I am intrigued.

[Guy Rowland]

I think the main appeal of this is the idea that multiple composers can easily share projects and collaborate, knowing that they have an affordable, workable, good sounding orchestra that by default will sound the same, look the same, and work the same on everybody's computer.

Not a bad concept. I am intrigued.

It's an interesting thought... our industry has never had a standard, has it? I'm a little sceptical if this will ever catch on, but the kicker might be if they do incredible education deals. If it starts to become a de facto standard there, it could spread I guess.

[Ashermusic]

I think the main appeal of this is the idea that multiple composers can easily share projects and collaborate, knowing that they have an affordable, workable, good sounding orchestra that by default will sound the same, look the same, and work the same on everybody's computer.

Not a bad concept. I am intrigued.

It's an interesting thought... our industry has never had a standard, has it? I'm a little sceptical if this will ever catch on, but the kicker might be if they do incredible education deals. If it starts to become a de facto standard there, it could spread I guess.

Composers and their orchestrators comes to mind.

[Guy Rowland]

Ah yes, good thought Jay. Anyone here who works with an orchestrator regularly tempted?

[The Saxer]

I often work as a team member with a composer. I do orchestration, co-composing, additional cues, orchestral parts added to synth backings and things like that. We also had additional orchestrators when there's less time and enough budget. I made a VSL special edition template for compatibility in a project. Nice to share DAW songs without warning messages. But that was for temporary mockups replaced by real players. BBCSO might be good enough to do pure sample orchestra parts.

But for orchestration work actually the midi data and an audio mix is enough to do the work in most cases. You have to leave the DAW and switch to a notation program anyway.

[Linos]

The mic walkthrough has been posted recently:



Sounds all pretty good to me. The mixing flexibility is there. Maybe you could have achieved the same flexibility with less than 21 mics, as I think other libraries have done. But it's not really a problem. Just use the mics you want, and the resources usage is very reasonable.


At this stage, my only concern is the legato, especially in the strings. The few bits I have heard so far didn't quite convince me. A video on the legatos should be coming as well. I hope that will tell us more.

[chrisr]

So I'm just sat watching/listening through Pauls overview whilst I'm cleaning the studio. I think it sounds absolutely fantastic. I'm also very intrigued to hear the legato specific walkthrough... but... (given that when the product was announced I was rolling my eyes so far back in my head I nearly fell backwards due to all the usual pre announcement hype) I have to say that I should now go and eat some humble pie, because I'm really, really impressed by what I'm hearing and how well thought out the player seems to be. This may well become my 1st 'proper' Spitfire purchase.

[gtrwll]

The only thing that's holding me from preordering - apart from waiting to see and hear the legato video - is the fact that I've already got a ton of orchestral samples which are probably good enough for my needs, and it kinda feels silly to spend 600€ to make them pretty much obsolete. The one thing that I don't have is solo strings , which do sound nice in BBCSO, at least to my ears...

Then again it would be soooo easy to just reach for the woodwinds after strings and they would just match without spending a while tweaking the EQ, reverb and whatnot.

[Linos]

Aaand an overview over the strings:



A few observations. Mostly this sounds very good to me. Not better than the competition, but on par. The overall sound signature is very bright. Too bright for my tastes, but others may like it that way. The legato seems to be good, except for the fast legato which does not sound convincing to my ears. And it certainly does not reach CSS kind of quality. But overall it sounds good and useful. A few other rough spots: the one short example of the marcato articulation sounded weird to me. Legato on the violas leader does not sound good to me. The fast legato has the same problem as with the other sections, but here also the standard legato does not convince me. And the vibrato demo on the bass section leader - there is definitely something wrong there. To use the proper technical term: that sounds synthy.The section leaders seem to have the same problems that all solo string libraries have, i. e. I don't see them pulling of a convincing string quartet mockup. Not even close. But they could be useful for some not too demanding solo passages.

Overall it looks like a nice addition to the field of string libraries with a classical kind of sound. Not better nor offering anything new over the competition. But a nice option for a different kind of sound.

[wst3]

When it was first announced my reaction was split pretty evenly - on the one hand I really don't need another orchestra - or I lack the talent and imagination to understand why I might need one. On the other hand I've long been a fan of the BBC, technically and artistically - their SFX library was my first big SFX library (40 CDs for $1k).

Then there was the third hand, I'm cheap, and even at $750 or whatever the pre-order price is, too rich for my blood.

And the fourth hand - I'm no Andy Blarney nor Paul Thomson (I even forgive him for the misspelling!) - I long ago learned that I won't get the same results as some of the best demo writers, although I do get results I'm pleased with often enough.

Still I've been following along here, and the whole collaboration thing intrigues me, not because I do a lot of collaborations, but because maybe this opens up the opportunity? But cheap was still winning.

Then came the microphone video! I've long stated that the bleed between microphones (or even crosstalk between tape tracks or channel strips) is one of those "magical" elements that is missing from so many modern recordings. I love Toontrack Superior, and one of the features I make regular use of is the microphone bleed. Perhaps it has to do with spending too much time trying to minimize it as a youngster? Matters not, I can generally tell when something was recorded in isolation vs live, and part of that is the bleed between microphones. The other part is a sense that folks were playing off each other, but that's more ephemeral.

End result - the microphone video led me to revisit the other videos.

The String walk-through has me (can't believe I'm saying this) considering a pre-order. I think the thing that captured my attention was how well it works without a lot of twiddling. And then there is the sound when you just use the first two controllers (dynamics and vibrato).

My favorite articulation scheme remains the one that Cinesamples uses - all articulations on key switches except legato, which is on the pedal. That might not work here, and the flexibility in Spitfire libraries would be tied for second place with OT.

The sound is very nice - won't fit into a rock track, but for live theatre, film, and (heaven forbid) "serious" orchestral work it is really nice. As someone pointed out it isn't exactly ground breaking, but it is pretty. And it is a little bit different - possibly because of the mic bleed, but possibly because of the players an the room and a (possible) predilection, on the part of Spitfire to enjoy that BBC sound?

Listening to these demos has been somewhat ear opening. In one sentence these instruments sound like what I think I was hoping the studio series would sound like. If that makes sense.

It is not an investment to be taken lightly. And there remains, on the horizon, a new orchestra from OT which certainly has the potential to be every bit as good and every bit as useful. But all of the sudden I am taking it seriously. Never expected that!

What else - well it isn't really a $749 investment - I expect that a spinning hard drive is a minimal requirement, and the SSD might be attractive, but at $200 an EVO860 is a tough sell!

And the Spitfire Player - while I can't imagine any need to edit samples, I do have some concern about adding another sample player to the system, and especially one that is limited to libraries from one developer

Back to the sound - I really like the strings, and I love the woodwinds. The brass strikes me as a little bit harsh, but the bleed microphones remove some of that edge. Except the tuba, something about that tuba sounds so alive to me (I played horn for about eight years, and loved hearing the tubas bellowing from behind!)

I will be watching and listening a bit more I expect. Or perhaps the smartest thing I could do is just not read anything more about it???

[richhickey]

Having been burned by the Studio series, I remain skeptical of this one. I love the sound of the room, and the mics are cool, but the studio series suffered IMO from stingy sampling - not enough samples, not long enough samples and loops, not enough dynamics etc, all being stretched too thin by the patches yielding a quite unpleasant ROMpler-like quality. This in addition to the room sound not working at all like it did for BHCT.

Here on the strings demo I don't hear very much dynamic variation - when Paul rides the dynamics CC it often sounds like riding a volume knob, not like strings getting louder and softer, and at max sounds mf/f, maybe?

Their recent offerings have cemented for me that Spitfire is more about composing with orchestral 'colors' than orchestral performance emulation. Which is fine, but less interesting to me.

[lofi]

Their recent offerings have cemented for me that Spitfire is more about composing with orchestral 'colors' than orchestral performance emulation. Which is fine, but less interesting to me.

Hello richhickey and welcome to the soundboard!
Best,
Anders

[FriFlo]

Having been burned by the Studio series, I remain skeptical of this one. I love the sound of the room, and the mics are cool, but the studio series suffered IMO from stingy sampling - not enough samples, not long enough samples and loops, not enough dynamics etc, all being stretched too thin by the patches yielding a quite unpleasant ROMpler-like quality. This in addition to the room sound not working at all like it did for BHCT.

Here on the strings demo I don't hear very much dynamic variation - when Paul rides the dynamics CC it often sounds like riding a volume knob, not like strings getting louder and softer, and at max sounds mf/f, maybe?

Their recent offerings have cemented for me that Spitfire is more about composing with orchestral 'colors' than orchestral performance emulation. Which is fine, but less interesting to me.

I agree with this quite a lot. Certainly, after sampling the full range of instruments of a symphonic orchestra, one might think there wouldn‘t be that much left worth sampling than orchestral Fx in pad form. And certainly most developers are somewhat guilty of that.
But the truth is, all of them fool themselves when thinking they already recorded the full symphonic range! There is always a plethora of techniques that could be tackled with innovative concepts. And I prefer devs trying to do that or other devs going all the way towards a new approach like sample modeling.
This BBC offering seems impressive in the amount of content you get for the price! But I am pretty certain it did not receive the amount of love for detail that orchestra should have received! And I think with prices already that low, they are way to aggressive with this offering and also previous ones like the studio series. Smaller developers simply won‘t be able to compete at that price level! So, I think this might destroy the market a little more. Sure, many will argue, we customers gain from low prices! But I would rather pay a decent buck for my burger rather than the prospect of only Big Macs left at some point in the future, if you know what I mean ...

[Linos]

Very interesting points Bill and Rich. I too don’t necessarily need more orchestral samples. What I am constantly looking for though are samples that can emulate classical orchestral performance, as opposed to film music/epic/trailer/media music. In that regard, the BBC SO caught my interest. However, as Rich wrote there are a few signs that point towards the usual Spitfire ‘orchestral colors’ library.

The selection of articulations is one. Paul mentioned that the most commonly used articulations are on page one. These include flautando, col legno, and con sordino. While these may be techniques that Christian and Paul use often for their writing, they are certainly not common in classical music (con sordino is used rarely, the other two very rarely).

The demos posted are nice, but they fall in the category of film/media/trailer. No demo of classical music posted, which is slightly odd considering the BBC SO branding.

Good catch about the dynamics on the strings Rich. They do sound a bit flat in regards of timbre. I will have to look for true pp phrases as well. Right now they seem to capture the span from p to f.

Considering all that, my interest has considerably cooled down. I am definitely not preordering. I’ll wait and see how the library does with orchestral performances. Right now it looks like it is going to be a typical Spitfire library, i. e. tailored towards Christian’s and Paul’s way of writing.

[lofi]

@friflo
But isn’t this the first step?
More to come?
They’ve hinted that extended flutes already have been recorded. Perhaps more articulations?
If I understand this is recorded with a public service orchestra, meaning re-recordings should be easier than with a freelance orchestra.
The BBCSO might be ”cheep” for a starter pack, but aren’t other developers as guilty offering a complete orchestra for even less?
Just trying to understand the reasoning..?
Best,
/A

[wst3]

But I would rather pay a decent buck for my burger rather than the prospect of only Big Macs left at some point in the future, if you know what I mean ...

I do know what you mean, and I feel the same way. There is a delicate balance between getting a great deal and killing a marketplace.

I have no desire to go back to 1990s prices - I paid around $1000 for Garritan Orchestral Strings. They were brilliant. They sounded gorgeous, and the they were the first (to my knowledge) to offer scripting. I suspect that would be around $1600 today... that's quite an investment.

But I also do not with to drive out innovation. Innovation costs money!!!

There are enough aspects of the creative community that seem to be on a race to the bottom.

That said, technology has improved, and we've learned a ton about sampling, so it is highly likely that it costs a lot less today to create a library. If that savings is passed along so much the better. But let us not become greedy.

These are, of course, economic issue, and they play a very small role in my decision making process, but they are there - you can't pretend they aren't.

I spent what little time I had for myself this weekend (danged oak trees!) playing with all my Spitfire libraries (that isn't a lot) and especially the core Studio series winds, brass, and strings. They aren't perfect, and there are things that I believe could be remedied without putting Spitfire out of business. But the more I play them the more I like them.

There is no perfect library, on it terms of intent, not in terms of execution. But we are not talking about libraries so flawed that they can not be used. At least not to my ears.

No, I am no closer to pre-ordering BBCSO, and if anything probably a little further.

last thought, and probably part of the reason I am waiting - developers seldom charge for updates, yet those updates cost them money. That is probably balanced by the good will. Probably. I think they should charge something, and I'm always willing to pay some nominal fee for an update, even if it is largely bug fixes.

This sort of behavior - on both sides of the transaction - tends to encourage new products over fixes. It just makes sense for them to SELL a new library instead of giving away a fix for an existing library. I don't agree mind you, but I do understand.

[Linos]

[Tangent] That reasoning is based on a lot of assumptions, and seems a bit shaky to me. The Hollywood Orchestra has been around for quite some time now at half the price of BBC SO. Maybe it costs smaller developers some sales, but small developers couldn't manage large scale libraries like these two. If anything it should put VSL or Orchestral Tools out of business, who are comparable in content, but way more expensive. Yet, they still exist.

Has McDonald'd killed small burger grills? Some, probably. But I have the feeling that more of them exist than ever. Because McDonald's serves cheap quality at cheap prices. Plenty of space for small grills to sell better quality burgers, or special burgers. They could even benefit of the awareness for that food that McDo creates. I feel it could be similar for small sample developers. They can't develop one large orchestral library at similar prices to Eastwest and Spitfire. But if they do their own thing well, I don't see the low prices of the large developers as being catastrophic. Because, lets face it, it's not like you only buy one orchestral sample library and then never feel the need for anything else. [/Tangent off]


As to the BBC SO strings, Rich was absolutely right. If you watch this short snippet in the beginning, Paul is playing everything with dynamics and vibrato full on @127. Yet the timbre is that of a forte at best:



No crossfade from zero to 127 shown in the videos, and no information about the number of dynamic layers that were recorded. It's possible that they cut some corners here. Something to watch out for.

[FriFlo]

No crossfade from zero to 127 shown in the videos, and no information about the number of dynamic layers that were recorded. It's possible that they cut some corners here. Something to watch out for.

That was what I suspected with the post I deleted earlier ... I just had made a mistake with the comparison of size to the Berlin Series, never the less, I still think I was right in doubting them regarding this library being a complete orchestra in every (modern) sense. I just wanted to be careful not to make any mistakes, since Paul being touchy about criticism led to my banishment at ViControl.
Still, this library cannot be as complete as something like the Berlin Series - actually far from it! It offers way more microphone positions than Berlin, but the size is a lot smaller (comparing a similar scope of instruments). Of course, at that price it would be ridiculous to expect to get something that complete. So, there is nothing to complain about, except: I think many potential buyers are somewhat deceived by what this is, IMO. My guess, this is just the teaser for another long line of more things to come ... things to spend way more money on ... ;-)

[Tanuj Tiku]

It seems to me that Jake Jackson has outdone himself, recording these samples. It really does sound good.

I have not watched the strings walk through yet, so I cannot say anything about it yet.

I now want to hear recordings made in this room. Can anyone send me off in the right direction? I can probably do a bit of research but if anybody knows albums recorded here, that would be great.

[Piet De Ridder]

It seems to me that Jake Jackson has outdone himself, recording these samples. It really does sound good.

It does, yes. Strictly sonically speaking, I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything to worry about with this library. Everything that’s been sampled, sounds quite gorgeous. The question is: have they sampled enough? Because I also agree with the above posts that express some concern over the lack of dynamic differentiation. During several moments in the Strings walkthrough for example, it sounded as if the big dynamic range — of which Spitfire seems so proud — is created more by mere volume than by actual dynamic timbre changes. (Hearing the spiccati, especially, painted something of a doubtful frown on my brow.) And if that is indeed the case, I know I’ll get terribly frustrated working with this virtual orchestra.

If I ever buy this library, which is still far from sure, it won’t be for the strings. (That much I know after listening to the Strings walkthrough.) It will be, to some extent, for the brass but most of all for the woodwinds, which have struck me as a particularly pleasant, nice-sounding and most welcome surprise.

_

[ComposerGuy]

Like Piet said “Have they sampled enough?” THAT is THE most crucial question I ask myself about this lib.

[Lawrence]

It strikes me that “never enough strings” has been supplanted by “never enough winds”...at least for me.