Orchestral Tools / Loire (Creative Soundpack)

[Piet De Ridder]

The French connection. Or not. Orchestral Tools has released Loire a set of 6 six instruments (recorded from 3 perspectives) suited for, but not limited to, Parisian moods and other kinds of Gaulloiseries. Some rather lovely chalumeau winds (a first in sampled format, OT says), a characteristic musette and — the reason I'm buying — a gorgeous tuba.
I lost my Front Porch Tuba library many years ago when the HD that housed it crashed. Been hoping and waiting for a nice, close-up and room-y (not hall-y) tuba ever since. The one in SF Studio Brass wasn't it. This Loire Tuba is 100% it.



Intro price: €89. (Regular price: €129.)

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[Muziksculp]

Sounds very good. I might get this library.

[doctoremmet]

Very tempted as well.

[Piet De Ridder]

That ‘100% it’ in my previous post, I know now, is a bit too high a mark. While it’s a great sounding tuba, it is only capable of a polite mezzo-ish timbre which means that, without any outside help, you can’t do those snappy, brassy, pleasantly barking staccato parts with it that make tubas such welcome and important participants in joyous small-sized music groups. (Think ragtime, ethnic stuff, circus music, small brass bands, …)
Luckily, I have outside help in the shape of Kush’s extraordinary Pusher plug-in which happens to be able to bring out exactly what I need in this tuba’s staccatos. My plan is to resample the tuba staccatos — a very easy thing to do in Logic — and expand it with a few Pusher-ized velocity layers.

As with all SINE libraries however, working with it, I’m always just as much struggling with, and annoyed by the limitations and weaknesses of the format and the software than that I’m able to enjoy the undisputed qualities of its contents. Talking of which: the recording quality of these instruments is impressive. Really good sound.

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[Muziksculp]

I might skip this library, no interest in the plucky-key stuff, The Musette, is my main interest, but I think I might have other options already from other developers. Also the Tuba seems to be limited, and not very agile in this library. Maybe buy the Musette when I can buy it a-la-Carte. in the future.