The Sound Board

Wow, looks like I am gonna purchase two brass libraries before the end of this year, although I didn't actually feel the need ... now this:

http://www.cinematicstudioseries.com/brass.html



"Cinematic Studio Brass is the result of three years of intensive recording, editing and programming. Featuring some of the world's most talented brass players in Australia's premiere scoring stage, this incredible collection of orchestral studio brass instruments will bring your music to life with a level of detail, power and realism rarely heard in the sample world.

Carefully crafted for precision and consistency, with the same easy-to-use interface and beautifully rich sound as the rest of the Cinematic Studio Series, the new Cinematic Studio Brass will be available soon for Kontakt and Kontakt Player."

Finally!

Ah, not quite "finally." Unlike with past releases from Alex this one is being teased before the release. He hopes it will be officially out before EOY.

Ok, I changed the title to ... soon. But there are demos available and to me they sound amazing! They offer the presence and balls that I am sometimes missing in Berlin Brass and also Spitfire. A very defined sound.

I'm personally really excited to see what Alex has done with the horns. This to me has been a real sore point of sample based brass libraries. Samples really struggle with legato on the horns for some reason, with difficult-to-tame phasing-like artifacts.

Would like to see a chorale demo. The demos up there now are all a bit similarly bombastic.

Quite like the tone on these, especially the Trumpet (minus one spot where they stood out negatively) and it's quite the revelation to hear the same room as the CSS/CSSS reacting to Brass. Took me a bit by surprise, but I don't yet have this sound for Brass. I'm hoping it arrives before the end of the year.

Apparently for CSS owners the price will be 279, for CSSS owners 299.
Incredibly low price, but I won't complain.

"Edge of Reality" - really impressive demo. The smooth crescendo from mp to fff with no tangible "breaks" for both short and sustain articulations. Not something you can do with Hollywood Brass for instance, there's a really obvious break at 91 velocity for most of the shorts. There are many competing brass libraries released since HWB that APPEAR to have better programming but that's because their layers are close together and don't represent the full dynamic range of the instrument (had unfortunate experiences with Auddict & Orchestral Tools brass for this reason). This sounds like there may well be 4 dynamic layers sampled for all the sustains, and the 4th is a truly blasting fff that I've only heard captured by Performance Samples and Musical Sampling's Trailer Brass.

"The Long Road" - the solo tpt just seems really well recorded and fits nicely with the strings. The low brass have that really nice warm round quality that I tend to use Berlin Brass for right now.

"Vanguard" - agility & very natural switching back and forth between shorts and longs.

The general sound. Tight, controlled, sounds like a studio.

Having mutes, flz and rips in one package. There have been a few really nice libraries like Adventure Brass and Caspian that sell as "alternatives" to the main flagship brass libraries out there, but then you need to go back to HWB or Spitfire or OT for the special articulations. Century Brass was another recent library that was aiming for the all-artics-in-one library approach. This is cheaper and IMO sounds better.

Also notice, at least according to the GUI, there are two legato speeds! The biggest nuance and selling point of CSS carries over to the brass.

In the same vein, separately recorded tenor and bass trombones, nice.

So those are all great.

What I'm not excited about: Well, the design doc is finally revealed and it's NOT an individual-instruments library like Berlin, so Berlin & Chris Hein remain the sole contenders in that category if I remember correctly. Realistically, that wasn't going to be an option for CSB because this has always been a "bread and butter essentials" designed orchestra.... but a guy can dream....

Instead of the Berlin approach, this is more like Hollywood Brass - soloists and ensembles:

2 Trumpets
Solo Trumpet
4 French Horns
Solo French Horn
2 Trombones
Solo Trombone
Bass Trombone
Tuba

The ensembles & soloists chosen seem reasonable, but I think choosing between 1 horn and 4 will be the biggest gap (a2 horns would have been a great addition). It's possible that a3 trumpets and a6 horns might be another itch that can't be scratched, but maybe layering the soloists with the ensembles will produce a sufficient a3 tpt and a5 horn sound.

On the other hand the low brass seems really well represented. Another place several post-HWB competing libraries cut corners is they don't give you a tuba or there's just one size of trombone ensemble. Here there's 3 low brass soloists plus the ability to make all kinds of combo ensembles.

lucor wrote: ↑Nov 17, 2018 11:24 pm Apparently for CSS owners the price will be 279, for CSSS owners 299.
Incredibly low price, but I won't complain.

where does it say that? EDIT: nevermind, just saw the VI-C thread

I wasn't going to but any more brass libraries as I have enough. I'm going to buy this - the sound is lovely.

I too would love to hear a brass choir-style demo with some of the soloists a little more exposed. But the demos sound very promision.

It does sound nice... but I'm not quite as enthusiastic as y'all yet. While there's a lot to admire, there's a stridency in tone that I find a tad fatiguing, and a lack of warmth. That said, I think it might suit an older sound well - it actually reminded me of the '77 Star Wars recording which is middy. As opposed to, ya know, midi.

Oh man, that sounds really harsh! Specially, towards the end. It put me off a little bit.

Guy, you are absolutely right. It sounds like '77 Star Wars and actually even more like The Superman recordings. I always have to listen to Superman turned down on my speakers. I suspect, it was recorded and mixed on very 'soft' sounding speakers.

Sounds more like a vintage recording. Tone wise.

CSS sounds good but also has that 'boxy' sound. Not a huge fan of the space but it does sound nice.

I hope this new demo was either pushed a little too hard or deliberately sounding vintage because at the moment it feels like though it is old-school (not a bad thing), it seems to have picked up on the bad stuff. But, I look forward to hearing more.

man, just finally saw this.

nice tone in between cinebrass and berlin.

nice legatos - but that's probably the only thing that's really standing out to me... something that can already be mostly reproduced with sample modeling anyways.

plus we might see some swam brass and who knows how that'll fair...

Some background on Australian Orchestral trumpet playing.

We are heavily influenced by the USA trumpet sound. The USA orchestral brass tends to be brighter than the European trumpet tone, and far straighter. The French school of trumpet playing uses quite a lot of vibrato compared to other schools. In Germany, it is more common for a rotary valve trumpet to be the primary instrument of an orchestral player. They tend to have a much warmer sound - indeed traditional valve trumpets are sometimes called 'American Trumpets' in Germany. Even if German orchestral players perform on valve trumpets the concept of sound is still different to other schools. The British school of sound is different again - very much due to the Brass Band tradition in Britain.

On a side note - I've had a good listen to the demo's and I wouldn't be surprised if the solo trumpet is so David Elton, who was at the time the principal trumpet of the Sydney Symphony, where the pool of players for Cinematic Studio Strings was largely pulled from. The other top players in Sydney have a different approach (or concept of sound). If it is Dave, then we will have the co-Principal trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra at our fingertips (he was appointed co-principal late last year with Phil Cobb).

KyleJudkins wrote: ↑Nov 18, 2018 5:40 am nice legatos - but that's probably the only thing that's really standing out to me... something that can already be mostly reproduced with sample modeling anyways.

Not really. The transitions in SM are too perfect and more specifically, too uniform to be completely realistic. The transition from note-to-note on a real instrument is different for every player and is different depending on if the transition is purely a valve/slide/key change, purely a harmonic change or a combination of both and then it depends on how wide the legato interval is as depending on the notes played an interval of a perfect 5th can cross 4 harmonics on the instrument, and a French Horn can cross a different harmonic for every tone.

well I mean if you really wanted to get technical with SM, it has a whole pile of parameters and also the keyswitches that hardly anyone even touches...

I'm just saying the smooth transitions between dynamic layers combined with pretty tweakable legato has some of that stuff covered.

infact cinebrass legato isn't half bad - and it has a very similar tone.

I am really surprised by this vintage sound and the harshness.

Sounds very much like this:



Though, I would have really liked something of this sort:



I realise that some of this can be fixed in the production but if the library sounds like that out-of-the-box it means, it will need some work before it can be used in a current aesthetic context which makes me not so interested because its a lot more work. I am also not sure how useful it will be in today's scoring climate or general aesthetic in orchestral music, not musically but in terms of the sound. It does sound vintage.

Anyway, it seems everybody is loving it so I guess its just me.

It might be - I find the overall tone to be quite refreshing, and I suspect I will be adding this to my arsenal when it is released.

Not a one size fits all, but then none of them are.

Maybe just cause I'm an old guy, but yeah, I like the tone!

Tanuj Tiku wrote: ↑Nov 18, 2018 11:58 amAnyway, it seems everybody is loving it so I guess its just me.

Hey, and me. I have dibs on reffing the Star Wars '77 thing too.

And that's the thing - I really like that that tone, in context. I have literally nothing else that sounds like it mind, and as you say it also sounds like nothing else from the past 40 years. But with a bit of saturation added, you just now someone's gonna do a killer Main Theme mockup with this.

If I have to chose, I always like to tame samples than trying to put back frequencies that aren´t there, I think it will be much more simpler to take a little of the harshness away from CSB than making CSS more bright.

I do like what I am hearing so far....the only bad thing is that my currency is 37/1 against the dollar!

I hear what you're saying with the Star Wars comparison. I think CSS is already tilted towards writing classic 80s and 90s sounding orchestrations, so CSB fits in, from the few demos shown so far. This is "feature brass." It's brass as a generously written musical instrument. Very much the opposite of the "whole note stripe it in" brass of recent years.



Listening to the demos again, there is a little claustrophobic effect as if the brass are too big, too dramatic for the room, which amps up the drama of their playing. Reminds me of E.T. where you can clearly hear the orchestra is in a big warehous-y room. The antithesis of recording at AIR.

I think that "Star Wars" feeling comes down to attitude. The solo trumpet on "The Long Road," it may be lyrical, it may be sweet, but behind the mouthpiece there's still a player who knows he's a big shot and even his quiet solos are leading the orchestra. This isn't "sink into the texture" brass, to be fair, from what I heard so far. Which is great, because I couldn't think of a better description of Berlin Brass.

The level of dryness - similar to CSS, it's more wet than the Adventure series by Musical Sampling but less wet than any other major library and will need reverb. IMO they captured the mics that they needed to with CSS. With Mural, I always load up the Gallery, Outrigger and Ambient mics and they are nice, but a competent reverb can do just as well in filling in the back space.

Quick comparison with the lead (LEAD!) trumpet of the Berlin orchestra:



Also notice that the full dynamics aren't represented, I mean, I don't play the instrument and don't know the differences between different makes, but surely a player on any instrument can produce a brassier tone than what is called "ff" at 2:20.

Noam, I get what you are saying about it being 'feature brass' and that is great. I just feel, it sounds so harsh. Specially the end of the first demo. On listening to it again, I think they may have pushed it too hard with some kind of processing. On headphones (which are usually softer sounding) it sounds a little better but on my large monitors, it sounds almost unbearable. I really have to turn down the volume. It sounds harsh, tinny and unpleasant to my ears.

The other demos sound better. You are right in that it seems the room is a little over excited with the brass sound with that splashy sound.

I do not have CSS but I have long felt that while the legatos are good and there is some good stuff in there, it sounds a little boxy to me. Though, from the demos it felt like a fixable problem. I am not sure I can say the same about the brass.

The 80's had some great music and while some of them sound harsh (probably because of mixing on softer speakers) not all of them sound that way. In the case of any score recorded and mixed by Dennis Sands, it sounds more like Hi-Fi. None of that notch at 2-3.5 Khz. So, very pleasing and musical.

Personally, if this is the direction of the library and if the aim was to go for an 80's sound, I fear that they may have thought of the wrong examples, for my taste anyway. I do not like the washy sound of Spitfire either but there is a middle ground and as an example Hollywood Brass does this very well.

Disclaimer: Personally, I find the range of 2-4 Khz the most offensive!

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Nov 18, 2018 12:29 pm

Tanuj Tiku wrote: ↑Nov 18, 2018 11:58 amAnyway, it seems everybody is loving it so I guess its just me.

Hey, and me. I have dibs on reffing the Star Wars '77 thing too.

And that's the thing - I really like that that tone, in context. I have literally nothing else that sounds like it mind, and as you say it also sounds like nothing else from the past 40 years. But with a bit of saturation added, you just now someone's gonna do a killer Main Theme mockup with this.

Duly noted sir!

Tanuj, I monitor on rather cheap headphones (ATH-M50) so it's quite likely I'm not hearing what you are. I'll take your word for it!!

FWIW - to me this feels before 80s nouveau gloss, I’d put it squarely in the sock-it-to ’em 70s in terms of film music. Would be interesting to hear how the library tackles concert music.