Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra

[Scoredog]

I clicked on the video below just now and realized that it displays the words, "PHONY ORCH," at the 22 second mark:



It reminded me that, yes, all sampled orchestras are indeed phony. Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure that's not the message Spitfire intended to drive home.

Best,

Geoff

Oh my ... I think I had to throw up in my mouth just a little bit watching that video! :-) Is it just me or do they pretend to be something else than a successful company selling you products for coin? But they present themselves as rather a social people who want to help you out. That is indeed pretty phony! Good catch ...

When I bought their Albion with all of the prerecorded FX, I asked, if they would share the sheet music of the recording session, as I always want to learn about how these things are written. Well, they did not want me to learn with that request ...

I can certainly understand them not wanting to fulfill that request. What makes each library unique is the approach taken to make them unique and giving away their trade secrets which I am sure took a lot of time is understandable. If it was a score I could understand them giving it away but how one records their product is probably not to be shared.

[FriFlo]

I can certainly understand them not wanting to fulfill that request. What makes each library unique is the approach taken to make them unique and giving away their trade secrets which I am sure took a lot of time is understandable. If it was a score I could understand them giving it away but how one records their product is probably not to be shared.

Well, there we will have to disagree ... Sonokinetic did lots of those FX libraries and they even included a score in Kontakt. So, not everybody seems to all secretive about these things. I don't want them to reveal how they record their legatos or anything sample related that could be a trade secrets. I just wanted scores for these FX, most of which were probably copied from Penderecki, anyway! ;-)
It is also a bit ridiculous, as someone with some experience with writing that kind of stuff can easily figure out, what they actually recorded there. So, it is not REALLY top secret! They just didn't wanna share, that's it.

[riffwraith]

I can certainly understand them not wanting to fulfill that request. What makes each library unique is the approach taken to make them unique and giving away their trade secrets which I am sure took a lot of time is understandable. If it was a score I could understand them giving it away but how one records their product is probably not to be shared.

While I can understand someone not wanting to reveal things on the technical side, (mics, mic placement, processing/mixing, etc.), the sheet music is simply telling the players what/how to play. Unlike the other things, there is no reason for that to be a state secret; that does not fall into the category of how they record their product. It does, however, fall into the category of how the players play; there is no reason to keep that close to the vest, unless completely unique and oddball artics are used. Such is not the case here.

Someone on the VI forum a while back accused SFA of marrying singular recordings to make sections in one or more of the Albions (I don't have full recollection here). I personally had asked not for the sheet music, but to know what instruments made up the high woods and low woods in Albion 1. Not to steal anything, but to be able to "properly" orchestrate my music; the request I made was genuine. This was back when P&C were doing most of the support - Paul told me that he would not share that info. Makes one wonder....

[Linos]

This video dispelled my last small doubts: I'm now certain that the Spitfire BBC SO is not for me. No matter what he does with the modwheel there, it's always a middle-of the-road performance. Sounds like they only sampled mp and mf, nothing else. The results, to me, sound disappointing. It lacks emotion. No whisper quiet playing, no passionate outbursts. Thus, to my ears it's lacking timbral and emotional contrast. They captured mp and mf beautifully, but that's by far not enough for me.

[Guy Rowland]

Huh - I just listened to violins 1... never ceases to amaze me that people will play CC patches without touching the CC at all. Belatedly Nick does so ("ooh let's see what the modwheel does" sounds a bit like "oooh I wonder what the gas pedal does" if reviewing a car), and I very much hear you Linos - that barely sounds like any variation at all save for sheer volume (unless another CC affects the timbre or something?). Since I've pretty much decided against this anyway I haven't gone through the rest of the video.

[Linos]

Yeah, it's not a good demonstration of the library. It gets even worse by the point he reaches the woodwinds. Yet it was enough to tell me all I needed to know.

For how I am using orchestral samples, this library won't be a good choice. Odd how Spitfire actually praises the dynamic range of the library in some of the vids. Because in my view that is clearly the achilles heel, and it's letting the library down. With all the other options around, being stuck with middleground timbre and performance is just not good enough in my opinion. The results sound lackluster to me. There is by far not enough variation and contrast.

[Piet De Ridder]

Wouldn’t put too much weight on, and certainly not draw any conclusions from how a library sounds in the hands of Mr. Murray.
If I were a developer, this is what I would dread most: that people like Mr. Murray or Mr. Bodin or any other of these bumptious and amusical organisms would decide to do a video on my product.

_

[FriFlo]

Wouldn’t put too much weight on, and certainly not draw any conclusions from how a library sounds in the hands of Mr. Murray.
If I were a developer, this is what I would dread most: that people like Mr. Murray or Mr. Bodin or any other of these bumptious and amusical organisms would decide to do a video on my product.

_

I completely agree. As much as it can be liberating how YouTube enables anyone with a camera and internet connection to become a critic, it can lead to loosing the true art of critique! And it seems, on YouTube the channels reaching most people are those with the biggest morons. So much for democratising media ...
I guess, mom Murray should not have liked a picture by son Murray, she should have rather told him to stop publicly talking about things he has no clue about ...

To summarise the whole video, he put everything you need to know about his criticism in the very beginning, after playing the legato patch without mod wheel:

“I mean ... it sounds good! Right? What else are we gonna say? It sounds good!”

Nobody could possibly do a better job in demonstrating his inability to properly do such a video with just one sentence!

[gtrwll]

My experience with a few hours of messing around is a mixed bag. The sound is gorgeous, what's been sampled is very high quality. Like someone stated earlier, I'm not sure if they've sampled enough. Time will tell how it will behave on full compositions. Especially the strings bring a more than welcome tone to my arsenal. Haven't really tested the brass much yet, apart from the horns.

RAM usage seems to be excessive, and not very efficient. Load times are long compared to batch resaved Kontakt patches. I know that I'm pretty much beta testing the library here, so I hope it will improve over time.

Slower legato lines and portamento on strings sound very good to my ears, but faster runs leave a lot to be desired (that's my experience with all libraries I own).

I paid the student discount price (600€) for it, and I still think that for the price it was a great deal. 749€? Maybe...1000€? No way. If someone is considering a purchase, I'd say wait for the next wishlist sale. I hope most quirks have been resolved by then.

[Linos]

True enough Piet. If you are looking for only a modicum of musicality, or the frailest hint of an understanding of the orchestral instruments, you will not find it there.
However, the limitations of the libraries dynamic palette shine through clearly enough for me. If you listen to this rigid and unmusical doodle (taken from Nick’s video):

https://app.box.com/s/xuo65xsx21klji72ewj0svqdzz2i1y91

Would you assume that it was supposed to be a fortissimo? It is not even a Mozart forte. Yet cc1 was at 127 all the way through, and the same is true for vibrato. This is all that the Spitfire BBC SO strings have to offer in terms of intensity. Certainly this dynamic would stand out a little more if the phrase was properly shaped, and due diligence done on the programming of cc values. But would that be enough? I don’t think so. Especially not as the same situation occurs at the lower end of the dynamics as well. They are simply not there.

How are you supposed to shape a musical performance if all you have to work with is a polite conversational tone? No real intensity, no tension, no fragility. In better hands than mine, the limitations may not matter much. A talented composer and mockuper will be able to coax some stunning music out of this library. Listen to Andy Blaney’s demo, for example. But for me, the constrains are unsurmountable. And that’s an insight courtesy to Nick Murray’s inept noodling - let’s not even bother to use cc1. Just leaving it at 127 will do. (Something that Paul does as well at times in his walkthrough videos, by the way).
In any case, working with the Spitfire BBC SO library poses some challenges that I am neither willing nor able to tackle. Thus, an easy pass for me.

[Tanuj Tiku]

Linos, while I agree with you in principle, I find that Upto three dynamic layers on sustain/legato is plenty.

We can get by easily with restrictions in dynamic layers - after all, this is all invented by developers. Nobody really knows how to represent a real player’s dynamic/timbral shift. It seems even after all these years, it is quite difficult to do.

I am sincerely more worried about creating connected performances. Even at one dynamic level - does that legato really work and create a convincing musical phrase that is consistent?

How do we create slurred passages, fast or even emotive parts which sound horribly dead with most samples.

Spitfire never had incredible handle on dynamic layers. Berlin has mapped this better and the ‘handling’ is much better as well.

Though, I would add that Sable is the best of their offerings, so far.

[Lawrence]

SCS is my fave of the three SFA libraries I own, by a mile.

[Linos]

Maybe it's hard to believe, but until now I have never had much of an issue with velocity layers. In the libraries I have, they are set up in such a way as to not draw any attention. There is the odd crossfade point that doesn't sound too good. But I can usually program around that. Here though, the uniformity of the dynamics and timbre bothers me. If a sampled instrument covers the variety of timbres their real counterpart are capable of, I don't care if it is achieved with one dynamic layer or thirteen. In this case, I hear only a small part of the timbres covered.

The legato is of some importance to me as well. From the demos and walkthrough I concur with gtwrll. The slow legato sounds fine to me. Faster legato doesn't convince me. It's too clean.

[NoamL]

I'm still mixed on this. Will probably watch the DJ walkthrough today to make up my mind finally as he always provides a pretty good playthrough of libraries, whatever you think of his music & opinions.

I think this library is gonna be a complete game changer for people who use it the way it was designed and make BBCSO the main or only orchestra in their template alongside other libraries for synths/perc/etc. The advantages are numerous: it has a lively and cohesive sound, a standardized articulation setup, reasonably deep sampling, it comes with a professional mix template, the price is amazing, and the ability to share projects instantly between rigs or between composers is a library developer taking a bold initiative to help out with a task many composers & their assistants already spend a lot of time & energy on.

There's quite a bit of complaining on VI-C about the library being "nothing new" and "just another orchestra." Not sure what to make of that; it seems like all the bread and butter articulations are there. Everyone wants their next library purchase to be "next gen," meanwhile I'm sitting here wondering what that even means.

Similarly there's a concern that "everyone will sound the same" using this library. On the contrary this library has an amazing lineup of microphones for crafting your own personal sound, which seems fully comparable to the mics they'd have out in a real recording session. The only limitation to BBCSO is if you want to get into instrument-reseating shenanigans like some of the most creative scores from Hans Zimmer, Joe Trapanese and others. But in that regard BBCSO is no more/less useful than any other library that is seated in a traditional diagram.

The issue for me is the utility of the orchestra goes down if I'm going to constantly be replacing or kibitzing certain instruments or articulations. With the music I write/assist, I really want *The Best* strings, the best brass etc. I want really deep samples so I can massage a mockup note by note and get exactly what I want. I'm willing to go through the ordeal of mixing libraries from different developers (a big challenge for me, an amateur mixer at best) as a trade-off for getting the very best & most detailed, programmable instruments in each orchestral section.

The library so far is unconvincing to me on that score. It's reasonably deep sampled, but is it at the top of the heap... I feel that if I'm constantly taking out & replacing passages with other libraries like Cinematic Studio or Berlin, then it loses the advantage of the cohesive orchestra in a single room. I also don't want to get rid of other libraries & throw out the time & expertise I put into learning them and into custom reprogramming them.

I have a feeling most pro composers will not bite down on the idea of BBCSO as their go-to orchestra purely because of convenience. It seems that pros are far more likely to mix and match their orchestral sections from what they consider the best libraries, and then use those very few libraries. Just look at JunkieXL... four thousand tracks in his template, yet it seems he always writes demos with his (custom-programmed) CinematicStrings2 or sometimes EastWest Hollywood Strings - I've never seen him use any other strings. Same with John Powell; he probably owns every library in existence yet he relies only on Cinebrass, Berlin Brass, and some SSO odds and ends for his brass.

[Tanuj Tiku]

Just to add something I have read on Facebook, just now.

It seems like all the demos for this library were mixed by Joël Dollié, who is a professional mixing engineer. He definitely mixed the legato demo (which he shared on FB) and when asked about the others - he says, that he just did some nudging on them.

I am not sure about the Andy Blaney demo but in any case, I thought it was worth knowing that these (at least the legato demo) were in fact professionally mixed. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, just worth knowing.

[Ashermusic]

I'm still mixed on this. Will probably watch the DJ walkthrough today to make up my mind finally as he always provides a pretty good playthrough of libraries, whatever you think of his music & opinions.

I think this library is gonna be a complete game changer for people who use it the way it was designed

Which frequently DJ does not, just opens it and plays without spending any time learning about it. That approach is ok for libraries with instant gratification design but e. g. his first look at Hollywood Strings was terrible because he chose the wrong articulations for what he was trying to play, etc.

So I wouldn’t rely on that very much.

[NoamL]

He's advanced musically since then. And I hope you don't mind me saying so as you're no longer with EW, but the patch organization in HWS is absurdly bad. Every time I happened to use that library to supplement something I had to look in the manual as it's totally unclear what "V1 RR Bb Vib Qxd8+" could possibly mean to an earthling. Admittedly a lot of the patches are "powered down" versions that were created for the computing ecosystem of 10 years ago.

[Ashermusic]

Indeed you do have to invest some time with it.

[riffwraith]

If I were a developer, this is what I would dread most: that people like Mr. Murray or Mr. Bodin or any other of these bumptious and amusical organisms would decide to do a video on my product.

[Guy Rowland]

Yes, FWIW I don't think that particular criticism of Daniel is an especially fair one. Apart from the fact he is very accomplished in the kind of music he does (which may not be too all tastes including my own), he's always been very upfront with his methodology, to approach a library with its inherent (or otherwise) intuitiveness in mind. That's not the only way to approach things, or even the best way imo, but its a perfectly valid technique that doubtless echoes how many of us approach libraries. My own concern with Daniel's reviewing is slightly different but related - I think you gain little and lose lots if you extend this technique and stretch it to five hours where every waking thought is revealed in real time. I'd far rather he spent those five hours on his own, and then give us a summary of that process over 30 minutes.

This was (IIRC correctly) my first encounter with Nick Murray, and it wasn't a good one for the reasons I already mentioned. But I tend to agree with Linos, that even though I am acutely aware of the shortcomings in the presentation, it nevertheless can reveal genuine issues. If you are watching the mod wheel fader and it does go through pp to ff and it makes little discernible audible difference, that's a problem.

I also agree with Noam, that using the library as designed, pretty much exclusively, will reap the best rewards. It's not something I really want to do, hence - at least in part - my decision to let this one go. Add in my experience of Spitfire's QC and the various discussed shortcomings, and its pretty weighty on the right hand side of the scales.

EDIT - bonus thought. I wonder if part of the reason why videos from the likes of Nick Murray are popular is that his skill level matches many of the audience's. When many buy the library, this is their exact experience - blind-leading-the-blind. I'm acutely aware of my own shortcomings, and think I too benefit from something like this phenomenon. I hope, however, that at least I approach things in a much more musical way (such as being physically unable to play a CC-velocity patch without one hand on the modwheel it is so hard-wired), but my lack of formal training and boxing-glove playing ability hardly put me in the top tier of execution. It's perhaps the opposite of the Andy B effect where you can almost disregard whatever you hear because his skill level is clearly stratospheric - if I can make something sound good, you can likely make it sound even better.

[Linos]

Let me just say here Guy that your walkthrough videos are on a different level than Nick's. Well planned and executed, informative, and fun to watch.

As to why Nick's videos may be popular? I have a different theory than you. I assume that because many of his visitors can not discern musical quality (or a lack thereof), they judge by something else. And that is perceived success. Nick presents himself as being a succesful media and film composer, aka he isn't shy about showing that he earns money from it. From that, people infer that he must be good at it. Because he earns money from a job that his subscribers aspire to, they see in him a good advisor for themselves. Unfortunately, he is giving out some terrible advice. At one point he was offering a pay to submit music to him scheme, for example. Absolutely terrible deal for anybody but him. But apparently there are enough people with their critical thinking switched off, so they think it's a good deal.That's my theory why his videos are popular - people who are not properly equiped to recognize musical quality, judging by alledged success at what they want to do.

[Guy Rowland]

Linos - oooh that's good. You're probably right, I didn't really know all that about him. Depressing, huh?

(and thanks!)

[gtrwll]

A little update after spending this morning composing with this (or at least trying to). The performance of the player is a mess. There has to be some issues with memory management. The RAM use is truly excessive, and my 32GB is not nearly enough for it. I'm not sure even 64GB would be if one would like to use the different mics included. I have disabled all other articulations except the one or two that I'm using at the moment, and my resource monitor shows 26GB used. I'm using the default Mix1 mic, using the spill mics is not an option. I get voices dropping out in certain places, where they really shouldn't be dropping out.

It's a pity since I love the sound.

[Thorsten Meyer]

I listed all four videos including the Final Thoughts video from Daniel here:

https://www.strongmocha.com/2019/10/27/ ... orchestra/

[FriFlo]

This is no doubt DJs revenge for Paul making a fool out of him. Well, I can understand that desire to a point, as Paul really is some arrogant bloke as I witnessed myself. Fittingly, DJs first contact (or shall I say Kontakt?) with this BBC library deals exactly with my doubts, which I got banned for at Vi-C, which is the player being not on the same level as its competition ...
I want to be fair, though: Of course, DJ put the library on an HD to make it look exceptionally bad and to make a point (and take revenge)! Of course, I (and normally also he) would put it on an SSD today, which I do with every library and it would not nearly be as much annoyance to handle. But that does not change the fact, that he is absolutely right with the player being way behind the competition! And there surely are some people (especially people not making money of their music) still running the majority of their libraries from HDs. And even running from SSDs: You will get a far longer loading time with this library compared to one of similar size with Kontakt.
I don't have much desire to watch the rest of the video, though. I am not interested in the BBC library anyway and DJ as a reviewer is to me pretty much in the same category as Mr. Murray and Mr. Bodin.