Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra

[Lawrence]

I’ve seen him make nice with Spitfire since. I don’t think revenge is his motivation at all.

[riffwraith]

I’ve seen him make nice with Spitfire since. I don’t think revenge is his motivation at all.

Well, you are no fun.

[FriFlo]

I’ve seen him make nice with Spitfire since. I don’t think revenge is his motivation at all.

I have also seen him trying to settle the thing down as it is much more in his interest to do further reviews and maybe also get most libraries for free. But Paul publicly wrote on the Spitfire forum details from DJs correspondence towards spitfire. That was a really embarrassing moment for DJ and I doubt he will forget that.

[Lawrence]

I’ve seen him make nice with Spitfire since. I don’t think revenge is his motivation at all.

Well, you are no fun.

. This has always been true.

[Lawrence]

I’ve seen him make nice with Spitfire since. I don’t think revenge is his motivation at all.

I have also seen him trying to settle the thing down as it is much more in his interest to do further reviews and maybe also get most libraries for free. But Paul publicly wrote on the Spitfire forum details from DJs correspondence towards spitfire. That was a really embarrassing moment for DJ and I doubt he will forget that.

I’m sure you’re right, but I think Daniel is a lot more about career advancement than he is about hissy fits. I could be wrong.

[FriFlo]

I’ve seen him make nice with Spitfire since. I don’t think revenge is his motivation at all.

I have also seen him trying to settle the thing down as it is much more in his interest to do further reviews and maybe also get most libraries for free. But Paul publicly wrote on the Spitfire forum details from DJs correspondence towards spitfire. That was a really embarrassing moment for DJ and I doubt he will forget that.

I’m sure you’re right, but I think Daniel is a lot more about career advancement than he is about hissy fits. I could be wrong.

You may be quite right about that. ;-)

[NoamL]

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.

DJ's video was fair and thorough, although I admit Guy's point, as I could only stick around for the first 90 minutes yesterday.

No revenge or drama here, just a working composer playing sounds and saying "Ooh yeh I'd use that" or "Don't think I'll be using that much."

[FriFlo]

DJ's video was fair and thorough, although I admit Guy's point, as I could only stick around for the first 90 minutes yesterday.

No revenge or drama here, just a working composer playing sounds and saying "Ooh yeh I'd use that" or "Don't think I'll be using that much."

So, you keep your $1000 orchestral library on an HD? Come on, Noam! :-) You must know as well as me that this was a deliberate choice of presentation! Well, IMO! Of course, you can never be 100% about these matters, but ...

[kony]

DJ's video was fair and thorough, although I admit Guy's point, as I could only stick around for the first 90 minutes yesterday.

No revenge or drama here, just a working composer playing sounds and saying "Ooh yeh I'd use that" or "Don't think I'll be using that much."

So, you keep your $1000 orchestral library on an HD? Come on, Noam! :-) You must know as well as me that this was a deliberate choice of presentation! Well, IMO! Of course, you can never be 100% about these matters, but ...

DJ actually stated that he runs all of his libraries off HDDs - because he doesn't have to wait for load times since he can instantly start playing (ie Kontakt will still load a sample when you play it even if it's currently uploading that instrument). He then compared that to loading SCS while loading a patch from BBCSO - all from the same HDD. I had DJ's "first look" on in the background while I worked yesterday (admin stuff) and I also thought it was fair and balanced.

As someone else said over at VI-C, it was good to actually see and hear all the patches loaded and played from this new library - and also to communicate with the twitch community about the library itself while it was being tested. There was actually a Spitfire rep there - unofficially - who I was able chat with about the library etc while it was being put through its paces. That's not a bad thing and would be great if this was something which developers would implement formally so buyers can make an informed choice and purchase.

The one thing he did miss though - and which I was hoping to see - was loading a full template to see the load time and RAM usage.

I also wish they would sell the celeste on its own.

[Guy Rowland]

I did watch a little of the start and end of Daniel's video, and goodness me that load time was something else. It was several minutes to load the strings, even off an HDD that's extreme.

Tangentially, I really hope that Orchestral Tools have learnt from all this, and the reason why it is taking so long for their player to materialise is that they are getting it right first.

[FriFlo]

I am not saying that his review is not right, in case you did not notice ... the few parts I watched are absolutely correct, as I already said. I just think using a USB 2.0 HD to stream a 2019 orchestral library is probably not very representative and shows a very negative aspect, that is not nearly as relevant to most potential users. However, that doesn't change the fact that the SFA player is well behind Kontakt or even Play, regardless of the disk you stream from. The annoyance factor is just multiplied by a million using an HD ...
I find it hard to believe that a hard working and mostly successful person like DJ would run all of his orchestral libraries from USB 2.0 drives. The loading time is not the only reason to use an SSD, after all! You can stream a lot more voices from an SSD and while his Epic Music style is probably not quite as challenging regarding voices as "realistic" orchestral mockups, he surely will have some bottle necks in that regard without VEpro machines. And even with Kontakts background loading, the loading time of an instrument is still drastically reduced by an SSD, because you can seriously lower the buffer size and the that smaller buffer will read faster from an SSD.
Taking all that into consideration: do you really believe he would still be using HDs exclusively for all of his samples in 2019? Well, it is not impossible, but not very likely IMO ...

[wst3]

I agree with your comments about the BBC library for the most part. No one has created the end-all orchestral library, and in my mind no one ever will - that's called humans<G>!

This one is cool, and if I had a project that called for it I would not hesitate. But I don't, and right about now can't really come up with a situation where I would absolutely have to purchase it - but one can hope???

As for mic positions - I don't know! I grew up selecting and placing microphones in lieu of compressors and equalizers, well, at first I ran for coffee and swept the floors, but you get my drift. So having choices is, to me, never bad. Would I really use these? I may never know.

And then there is one little nit to pick, and I expect this was more about typing quickly than anything else - you wrote:

<HUGE SNIP> It is astonishing that they released this in 1977 - with the mics, converters and techniques from back then (it was all great!). We have much better technology today, but often results are not as good. The new master sounds nice, louder, more bottom end and more focus but it is made from the same recordings.

According to legend this album was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, CA. At the time the studio used a 3M 24 track tape deck and an API console - an entirely analog signal path. I'm not even sure there were commercially available converters in 1976, certainly there were none in any studio I worked in back then<G>!

You actual point remains valid, technology, or advances in technology, do not guarantee a better product. The advances can make room for improvements, and often do, but there are no guarantees!

I own the original vinyl, the first pass at a CD, and the re-mastered CD. I think that this iteration of Fleetwood Mac remains one of the best bands ever. I'm also a big fan of the Peter Green days, but that was an entirely different vibe.

For reasons that most likely have more to do with nostalgia than anything scientific, I prefer the vinyl, warts and all. The first attempt at a CD is harsh, but that comes from using a master that was made for a cutting lathe, as well as some technical limitations of converters back then. The re-mastered CD sounds good, certainly it does not suffer from the artifacts of the first generation, but it feels a little bit like they reached too far. Maybe that's ok? Maybe that's what they heard when listening to the mix in the control room? We'll never really know.

[Ashermusic]

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.

We are going to have to agree to disagree about the validity of that approach. It is valid with a library that is represented as being intuitive and easy to learn but not with ones that are clearly complex just by looking at the number of articulations and its stated goal of being a very complete library.

It’s like being a decent checkers player and applying checkers concepts to playing chess.

[Dave]

Pretty much what I expected from SFA.

[Geoff Grace]

Guy Michelmore takes a look. If you want to skip the kid on Christmas day part, go to the 4:30 mark, or so.

Guy can be a bit silly sometimes, but I enjoy his enthusiasm (and his ostinati). YMMV.



Best,

Geoff

[IFM]

Thanks Geoff. I have been waiting to see how it went and Guy's video you posted does show it can work. I do like the sound...but I also get get some great sounds from my current libraries. It might be worth giving a go.

[Geoff Grace]

I like how he just gets on to making music with it. He doesn't seem to care whether the library is flawed or not, only whether it's useful. It wouldn't hurt to take a page from his example, for those who need to get more done in less time.

Granted, I'd love to read the kind of in-depth review that Sound On Sound does. Perhaps they're writing one now. Nonetheless, I enjoyed Guy's video.

Best,

Geoff

[Mikeybabes]

Granted, I'd love to read the kind of in-depth review that Sound On Sound does. Perhaps they're writing one now. Nonetheless, I enjoyed Guy's video.

Best,

Geoff

Theres a big review on BBCSO in this month's edition. And its the front cover story no less too.....

[Geoff Grace]

Wow, that was quick! Thanks for the heads up, Mike.

Downloading my copy now. (I have a digital subscription.)

Best,

Geoff

[Tanuj Tiku]

I agree with your comments about the BBC library for the most part. No one has created the end-all orchestral library, and in my mind no one ever will - that's called humans<G>!

This one is cool, and if I had a project that called for it I would not hesitate. But I don't, and right about now can't really come up with a situation where I would absolutely have to purchase it - but one can hope???

As for mic positions - I don't know! I grew up selecting and placing microphones in lieu of compressors and equalizers, well, at first I ran for coffee and swept the floors, but you get my drift. So having choices is, to me, never bad. Would I really use these? I may never know.

And then there is one little nit to pick, and I expect this was more about typing quickly than anything else - you wrote:

<HUGE SNIP> It is astonishing that they released this in 1977 - with the mics, converters and techniques from back then (it was all great!). We have much better technology today, but often results are not as good. The new master sounds nice, louder, more bottom end and more focus but it is made from the same recordings.

According to legend this album was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, CA. At the time the studio used a 3M 24 track tape deck and an API console - an entirely analog signal path. I'm not even sure there were commercially available converters in 1976, certainly there were none in any studio I worked in back then<G>!

You actual point remains valid, technology, or advances in technology, do not guarantee a better product. The advances can make room for improvements, and often do, but there are no guarantees!

I own the original vinyl, the first pass at a CD, and the re-mastered CD. I think that this iteration of Fleetwood Mac remains one of the best bands ever. I'm also a big fan of the Peter Green days, but that was an entirely different vibe.

For reasons that most likely have more to do with nostalgia than anything scientific, I prefer the vinyl, warts and all. The first attempt at a CD is harsh, but that comes from using a master that was made for a cutting lathe, as well as some technical limitations of converters back then. The re-mastered CD sounds good, certainly it does not suffer from the artifacts of the first generation, but it feels a little bit like they reached too far. Maybe that's ok? Maybe that's what they heard when listening to the mix in the control room? We'll never really know.

Bill, yes it was all analogue signal back in the day (I was born in 1984!). I was never part of the analogue days. By the time I started working in the industry, it was all digital.

Agreed, that the new remaster sounds a bit 'pushed' but still a good sound. It is remarkable, that it was made from the same old recordings though.

I still think BBC might be worth it. I am not sure yet but I haven't had the time to do proper research. Completing a few projects but I do try to watch some videos when I am taking a break.

[Tanuj Tiku]

DJ's video was fair and thorough, although I admit Guy's point, as I could only stick around for the first 90 minutes yesterday.

No revenge or drama here, just a working composer playing sounds and saying "Ooh yeh I'd use that" or "Don't think I'll be using that much."

So, you keep your $1000 orchestral library on an HD? Come on, Noam! :-) You must know as well as me that this was a deliberate choice of presentation! Well, IMO! Of course, you can never be 100% about these matters, but ...

DJ actually stated that he runs all of his libraries off HDDs - because he doesn't have to wait for load times since he can instantly start playing (ie Kontakt will still load a sample when you play it even if it's currently uploading that instrument). He then compared that to loading SCS while loading a patch from BBCSO - all from the same HDD. I had DJ's "first look" on in the background while I worked yesterday (admin stuff) and I also thought it was fair and balanced.

As someone else said over at VI-C, it was good to actually see and hear all the patches loaded and played from this new library - and also to communicate with the twitch community about the library itself while it was being tested. There was actually a Spitfire rep there - unofficially - who I was able chat with about the library etc while it was being put through its paces. That's not a bad thing and would be great if this was something which developers would implement formally so buyers can make an informed choice and purchase.

The one thing he did miss though - and which I was hoping to see - was loading a full template to see the load time and RAM usage.

I also wish they would sell the celeste on its own.

I am not a huge fan of Daniel's videos. They are very long. Though, I understand it is a live unboxing but I find it difficult to sit through it.

However, his videos often suffer from the same problem I have with many others. They showcase many patches in the most unmusical manner. I just watched a few minutes of part 1 and got irritated.

I think, it is unreasonable to acid test libraries in areas where we collectively know, it cannot do particular things well. No sample library can.

While, many musicians like random noodling or a showcase which is simplistic and realistic for the average buyer, I find it tiring and a waste of my time. I want to hear what the library can do really well. How it can shine and where it does not shine - given the current standard of sampling and what the developer has communicated the library is designed for.

There are many ways to show this successfully and in my head, it involves musicality. Where, a reviewer has spent time writing with the samples and create a nice piece of music or at least consistent and musical lines.

If you randomly plonk away, it is not helpful. May be do three different melodic ideas per articulation, which are then consistent across the ensembles. It is easy to playback in different keys. I like reviews which have done some homework. So, clearly unboxing is not for me.

Because, many reviewers simply do not read the manual or work out all the details about the GUI etc. first - it is very irritating and a huge waste of my time to see them figuring stuff out in real time.

In this video, Daniel simply does the Batman short figure and decides that the samples are not timed correctly. Does he not know that all sample libraries have this problem and there is inherent timing for all kinds of patches. One will work in a certain situation and another won't? This is another problem with some his videos - either he is ignorant about these things or he knows but puts on a fun show.

Another oddity - Deciding that the solo horn is too soft in the lowest dynamic, without first understanding the dynamic range of the library. You simply cannot test this with just playing back a solo horn patch. Very, very odd. You have to write a piece of music. You have to understand, the level of the patches, against one another, the output level at the software stage, over all balances and then knowing that often, the film music we listen to, is mastered and carefully mixed to get the final result. There is substantial hype of some sort, to mostly flat recordings for the final master.

He should know this stuff and it baffles me why he still does it?

Not helpful for me, at least.

[Tanuj Tiku]

Michael White does some reviews or showcases on his YouTube page with plugins:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJzDev ... a0i3ajd62A

I try to catch one if I am interested in something or want to learn about a plugin I am unfamiliar with and often, it is very good. He is very knowledgeable. He will go through a bit of history and explain what the functions are in detail (why they are there) and does realistic tests. He is not 'looking' for something that may not work. The tone is neutral. He does his homework and presents the plugins in a reassuring manner, where he has understood the details.

Most of them are between 20-30 minutes long and they are very effective.

Just one example of what I think a review of some sort can be. He will speak about certain areas where the plugins excel and leave other areas to user discretion, without passing final judgement. It is very much about the tone as well, even if something warrants you to be critical.

In the past, I have enjoyed Piet's examples (even with him not saying a single word) and Guy's videos. They are nice and informative.

[Lawrence]

@Tanuj-I've never been able to sit through more than a random fast forwarding through Daniel James' videos-best I can usually do in total is about 10 minutes.

[Tanuj Tiku]

@Tanuj-I've never been able to sit through more than a random fast forwarding through Daniel James' videos-best I can usually do in total is about 10 minutes.

Pretty much the same situation here. I don't think I will be watching another one any time soon. Though, I sincerely wish him the very best. He has spoken publicly about his troubles with Spitfire and Hans, both incidents leaving him in an unhealthy state of mind. I met him once in London and he is indeed a very nice guy who has had some great success.

I also have two of his libraries. Both of which are quite good.

[Mikeybabes]

I'm sure he's a terrific chap, but his reviews are so long that If I spent the time working instead I could have earnt more than the libraries actually cost.

Also, when I did try and watch one of his latest videos, I had to put on headphones, as the repetitive swearing when my wife and children were in earshot was a bit unpleasant and TBH rather unnecessary.