The Sound Board

Hi,

Orchestral Tools has just released their new Berlin Symphonic Harps Library !

Sounds Great to me.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

More Info here :

http://www.orchestraltools.com/berlin_s ... _harps.php


Trailer :




Walkthrough :

Seems quite good. Will be very interesting to compare this against something such as Cineharps.

In all other harp VIs as far as I'm aware, the "pedal simulation" is just selecting 7 of the chromatically sampled strings. This is an actual pedal simulation, where they recorded each string in each tuning position.

That is a true "next gen" game changing feature. For starters it means you can perform your own bisbigliandos.

Moreover, let's say we want to tune the harp to G minor pentatonic:

D C Bb | E# F G A#

or to C octatonic:

Db C Bb | Eb Fb Gb A#

Those duplicate notes will now actually be included in the glissando, and sound like different strings instead of strangely repeating round robins of one string.

Also, any note that is tuned sharp on the harp will sound a little more bright and tense, while notes that are tuned flat will sound more mellow and resonant.

Finally, not only do you get 2 harps but you get the six-mic OT standard, which is great for positioning the sound, offers REAL control for the dry close sound, and has a few different mics at equivalent positions so you can shape the sound to different colors independently of distance.

With the sad lack of harp writing I'm called to do, it's not worth $300 to me ($240 intro) but it's nice to see a developer continue to push the envelope.

At least you know what you’re talking about.

Back in the day, there were two middle aged women who seemed to be the harpists on EVERY session in NYC. My knowledge was limited to writing chord charts, a few specific notes and gliss markings up down and sideways. These two ladies always made great choices regarding the chordal notes to use in the glisses, bless them. Nowadays I either use pre recorded glisses or play broken chords going up
or down.

and I just bought cineharps

>.> damnit hahaha


should be a good point of reference for me though, getting cineharp to sit with other berlin stuff

NoamL wrote: ↑May 09, 2018 9:30 pm In all other harp VIs as far as I'm aware, the "pedal simulation" is just selecting 7 of the chromatically sampled strings. This is an actual pedal simulation, where they recorded each string in each tuning position.

That is a true "next gen" game changing feature. For starters it means you can perform your own bisbigliandos.

Thanks
Just wanted to mentioned that while all that is of course true, we already did full sampling of all pedal positions in Symphonic Sphere back in 2011

Tobias Escher wrote: ↑May 10, 2018 10:32 am

NoamL wrote: ↑May 09, 2018 9:30 pm In all other harp VIs as far as I'm aware, the "pedal simulation" is just selecting 7 of the chromatically sampled strings. This is an actual pedal simulation, where they recorded each string in each tuning position.

That is a true "next gen" game changing feature. For starters it means you can perform your own bisbigliandos.

Thanks
Just wanted to mentioned that while all that is of course true, we already did full sampling of all pedal positions in Symphonic Sphere back in 2011

Yeah, but isn't that symphonic sphere an "old library"? ;-) Seriously, I think this looks (and sounds) like a very good release. I am pleased, that with this harp you can actually midi-control the pedals vs just setting up presets. That was not possible with the SS, at least not before the capsule update.
Now, I suppose I will be 200 bucks poorer, as I wasn't asked to do a demo on this one. :-)

my OT bucket list is a little long

I had a listen to the walkthrough which has many lovely sounds, but my general feeling was that it sounded a little muted (warm but not quite bright enough.)

Is it just my impression from listening to overhyped harps?

what are the stage positions of these things?

Is this the only library that samples the pedals? Maybe it is just a feature that I missed on some other harps, it's so far I've been extremely amused just loading up a chord and whooshing around on it, even though it's still the same sustain patch from when I loaded it up

Hopefully tonight I'll have time to actually play with it a little more, maybe even using the playable glissando patch

, but it's certainly interesting, and playing things with the enharmonic accidentals is fun