The Sound Board

Introducing the next chapter in our bestselling Albion series: Albion NEO. At the heart of this modern cinematic collection is a chamber-sized orchestra with a super intimate string section, split by divisi across all articulations for incredible definition and expression — all captured in the beautiful resonance of The Hall at AIR Studios.

These organic recordings have been taken to new dimensions to create an encyclopaedic range of hybrid synths, inspiring loops and textures, including over 300 curated presets to take your scores into the new decade, all in one instantly playable package. Where Albion ONE was for blockbusters, NEO is flexible across genres, designed to inspire a new wave of forward-thinking composers, artists and producers looking to create a closer, more emotive, hybrid sound – for TV, films and beyond.

Available on January 23rd. Introductory offer ends February 6th. Exclusive savings for owners of any Albion libraries.

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/albion-neo/

Neo is an anagram of One of course, but this looks like the successor to the discontinued Albion II, right? Albion Owt, perhaps? Albion Wot?

Sounds nice, but a little too similar to Tundra to compel me into any purchase. The demos are clearly showing this library positioned as a textural element, which Tundra and Evolutions already cover for me. A couple extra tricks here (including a harmonium), and if I didn't already own Tundra I might want Neo instead.

I thought its layout was quite clearly a II replacement more than Tundra with the chamber divisi strings, woods and brass all very similar. That said, I don't own either Loegria or Tundra, so it wouldn't be too overalappy for me and the into price seems relatively cheap.

But as I listened to the walkthrough, I nevertheless got a profound sense of deja vu (and is there really much difference between layering two different articulations from two separate sections than layering two from the same section?), and the QC saga has retained my sanity so it'll be another pass here.

Ahem, stopped video @ 5 seconds to avoid projectile vomiting.

well put, guy: a profound sense of deja vu. - me too.

better invest the money in a trip to yangoon

I like the idea of the strings A and B section. If the ensemble was spread out into per-instrument sections it would have been interesting.

Now it's just again another nice poly-keyboard library. I think their next step should be a hardware keyboard with all this pad and texture stuff built in and a big dial in the center. Could be the next-generation-ground-breaking-beautiful-exited-today-to-show-you Mellotron.

My favorite video for Albion Neo is the one below—not because of the product but because of the landscape. Watch with the sound down if you don't care for marketing. Some of the shots are breathtaking in my view. I'm glad I can watch this from the comfort of my home because I know it was absolutely frigid there.



Best,

Geoff

The Saxer wrote: ↑Jan 17, 2020 7:14 am I like the idea of the strings A and B section. If the ensemble was spread out into per-instrument sections it would have been interesting.

Now it's just again another nice poly-keyboard library. I think their next step should be a hardware keyboard with all this pad and texture stuff built in and a big dial in the center. Could be the next-generation-ground-breaking-beautiful-exited-today-to-show-you Mellotron.

They also write ...

"NEO is flexible across genres, designed to inspire a new wave of forward-thinking composers"

That certainly is true, if by forward-thinking composers they mean people who don't want to bother with the difference between Violins and Violas ...

Sounds lovely, and if I didn't already have a bunch of stuff like this (Aperture, Tundra, other libs...) I would def pick it up. But with all the stuff I have, this adds very little, and my template is already too big. 284 MB/1100+ tracks before I even write a note.

Without wishing to sound snarky, until I watched the video, I never realised I didn't need this library.

Spitfire seem to be really into this soundscape/bed thing, and the sheer number of libraries like this that they offer seems to be total overkill. I have Tundra, one of the EVO's and Symphonic String Evolutions library, and whilst I use them occasionally for backgrounds, I can't see why you would need so many of them.

However, I find the kind of music is so overused, and cliche - to me it's like a kind of orchestral white noise that you can chuck into a scene with ease, but ultimately, there's nothing memorable or musically satisfying about it.

Whilst I really like the guys at Spitfire, and especially all the videos they do, I think they may inadvertently be turning into the Stock, Aitken and Waterman of the sampling world.

If they were to turn all their talents and resources into, say, pushing orchestral sampling to the next level, possibly with a hybrid of sampled/modelled sounds, who knows what could be achieved, or where we may end up.

But I suppose they will keep making this kind of stuff until people stop buying it......

Mikeybabes wrote: ↑Jan 18, 2020 1:19 pm Whilst I really like the guys at Spitfire, and especially all the videos they do, I think they may inadvertently be turning into the Stock, Aitken and Waterman of the sampling world.

If they were to turn all their talents and resources into, say, pushing orchestral sampling to the next level, possibly with a hybrid of sampled/modelled sounds, who knows what could be achieved, or where we may end up.

I agree with everything you write except for this ... I can’t stand their videos. They are full of the most pretentious self-portrayal and all sorts of fake „we-are-not-a-company-making-money-but-we-are-here-for-music-and-ideals“-BS - and the opposite is true of course! Not to mention their trailers and teasers trying to present every new library as revelations to man-kind and the return of the Messiah.
Why be puzzled by them only releasing pad sounds? In most of their videos, they play nothing but pads and even in the walkthroughs it is mostly pads and if there is any real playing, it is never anything that is difficult to fake with samples.
There is some talent in the team, obviously, but that is limited to Andy Blaney, Ben Foskett and Jake Jackson - not the guys having the say! The fact that their first endeavors in sampling did turn out quite right and successful seems to me more of a lucky coincidence, where several things happen at the right time in the right place and the right people joining in. But that is why they couldn’t actually build on it. The essence of what spitfire is about is far away from that ideal - a sample developer, who is continuously working on providing better tools to achieve realistic and well-sounding virtual instrument representations of real instruments. Maybe that is no longer what it is about, anyway ...

Mikeybabes wrote: ↑Jan 18, 2020 1:19 pm But I suppose they will keep making this kind of stuff until people stop buying it......

And there you are right again ... as long as people will buy pretty much the same uninventive stuff in slightly different packaging again and a again, why should they change their game?

The teaser videos now irk me, that's sorta why I didn't put it in the OP. It's all hype, no content. But I simply ignore than now, and they have other videos which are nicely done so no dramas for me.

I don't agree FriFlo with the implication that Christian Henson has no talent. I've always enjoyed his scores in the stuff I've seen of his.

But as to the general point that we're-getting-an-awful-lot-of-this-sort-of-Scandi-Pad stuff, all the edge-of-silence / listen-to-these-flautandos... yes, we're tipping dangerously towards parody at this point. I don't have Tundra or the original Loegra, but I really don't think I need them between Sable and stuff like Orchestral Tools' Time Macro which has some lovely gentle textures for that sort of thing. The comment about how Scandi is the new Epic feels very true, and given the sheer diversity of scores out there in big movies and TV shows now, I don't think either represent some kind of hugely dominant trend in the marketplace, and just represent a lazy alternative to lazy Epic.

However, in such a mature marketplace, doing something that really does bring anything new to the table is hard for all developers. I see Cinesamples have - surprise! - another brass library in the works, lovely sounding teaser stuff but... well, you know. Like you suggest Mikeybabes, the R&D, time and money involved in something genuinely revolutionary is eye-watering.

FriFlo wrote: ↑Jan 19, 2020 6:36 am ... I can’t stand their videos. They are full of the most pretentious self-portrayal and all sorts of fake „we-are-not-a-company-making-money-but-we-are-here-for-music-and-ideals“-BS - and the opposite is true of course! Not to mention their trailers and teasers trying to present every new library as revelations to man-kind and the return of the Messiah.
Why be puzzled by them only releasing pad sounds? In most of their videos, they play nothing but pads and even in the walkthroughs it is mostly pads and if there is any real playing, it is never anything that is difficult to fake with samples.

Wow, this sums up exactly how SA videos affect me. Though I'm not pro-capitalist at all, I get that the Western World lives in a market-driven, capitalist system, so I can't blame anyone for utilizing that system to make a living. We all need money to live in the world, most of us need to do something to acquire it and all of that... BUT, disguising their run-of-the-mill materialist ambitions as somehow visionary, as dreamy spiritual service to the arts is nauseating because it is so obnoxiously manipulative and patronizing. It insults one's intelligence, and I definitely feel like I'm being played.

But I'm not suggesting that Christian and Paul are consciously being cynical or phony. Rather, they're probably decent people who believe their own b.s...

That said, a few years back I decided that I wanted some "high-end" orchestral sounds to play with, and chose Spitfire and the Albion Series route. I do like the libraries, and since I have all the Albions (even both 1 and ONE) I get the steepest discount: $243.80 to complete the set. But even this is still expensive in my neighborhood, and I can't see, after watching Thompson's walkthrough, how this is going to offer anything substantial that I can't do now. And at this point I already have an absurd amount of sonic options anyway, LOTS of ways to make semi-realistic orchestrally allusive pad sounds, so this one is a pass. The fact that it's a Native Access library only seals the non-deal.

For the next time I may have both GAS and $$$$ at the same time, I'm drawn to the Edward Tarilonte Celtic Era, Dark Era and Nada maybe. If SA offered NEO as an Albion-owner crossgrade for $99 (the amount I paid for ONE) I might possibly be tempted, if only because of the absurdly irrational but real psychology wherein one enjoys the idea of "having the complete set."

I am a pretty big fan of a great many of Spitfire’s libraries, as the Libraries tab in my Kontakt can attest. In fact I suspect I own something close to 50% of everything they have available. However, the NEO walkthroughs have convinced me that one, I don’t need this library, and two, Spitfire might just be running out of good ideas.

The only thing I liked at all about these walkthroughs was the strings ... and frankly I heard almost nothing in the strings that I don’t already have well covered by my existing libraries (both those from Spitfire and from other sources). Same goes for the eDNA section … not different enough from the earlier Albion eDNA sections to capture my interest. And as far as the brass, woodwinds and harmonium are concerned, I heard the same kind of thing from all of them, a general unpleasantness that lead me to think I may start referring to this library from now on as “Albion Nasal”. It didn’t help my judgement of the woodwinds that I am not a fan of saxophones, but they somehow even made the brass sound like it had saxes layered into it.

I’m rather happy that I didn’t find NEO more enticing, actually, because I shouldn’t be adding any more libraries right now anyway. Even with my owning of ALL the other Albion’s (including the original legacy Albion as well as Loegria), the discounted price of $244 still feels like too much for what very little about NEO would interest me (basically just a couple of the strings articulations). I asked myself if I’d have bought it if I believed I had a spare $244 to spend on a sample library, but the answer is I’d rather hang onto that money and eventually use it to snag HO VENTO during a sale, to complement NOVO and FORZO in my template ... or Cinematic Studio Woodwinds, whenever that finally arrives. Either of those would likely be far more enticing than this. (And I confess that I don’t like the fact that the discount for Albion owners is time-limited ... that feels rather abusive.)

Oh well. NEO is nothing to be upset about, just a library that I don’t want or need. I’ve already given Spitfire more than enough business for one lifetime anyway.

I only own one Spitfire library simply because I don’t need them and they are pricey.

But I had a fairly lengthy talk with Christian at NAMM yesterday and I believe him to be quite sincere in his desire to give users quality products while obviously wanting their business to be successful.

I agree, Jay. I met Christian a year and a half ago at a Spitfire event and visited with him for at least a half hour. He left me with a similarly positive impression.

Of course, I don't expect that to negate people's critcal impressions about Spitfire products or policies; but I am likely to disagree with negative conclusions people may make about Christian's motives. I realize that I can't know what's inside anyone's head other than my own; but my instincts tell me he's a good guy.

Best,

Geoff

I own three Spitfire libraries. Two I rarely use and the third is fabulous and flawed.

I’m not sore about it, though. I take hyperbolic claims with a shaker full of salt. It’s really up to the buyer-if someone convinces you to buy something, they’ve done their job as a marketer/business owner. Caveat emptor.

However, when I post an opinion about my experience with a product and a horde of fans of a developer jump in and defend said developer in an epic battle of words, I just have to laugh. Passionate diatribes by tribes of people about...music software? It ain’t cancer or war or famine. Puh-leeze.

Lawrence wrote: ↑Jan 20, 2020 12:22 am when I post an opinion about my experience with a product and a horde of fans of a developer jump in and defend said developer in an epic battle of words,

The events in this cartoon are happening in realtime.

GR Baumann wrote: ↑Jan 20, 2020 12:50 am

Lawrence wrote: ↑Jan 20, 2020 12:22 am when I post an opinion about my experience with a product and a horde of fans of a developer jump in and defend said developer in an epic battle of words,

The events in this cartoon are happening in realtime.

However, the judges of this whole charade still deny their encouragement of that climate ... let’s see what is gonna happen when other Chamber Strings products hit the market and are being compared regarding QC with Sable ... a whole new world of conflicts of interests is going to emerge from that - at least that is what I would assume will happen over time ...

Actually, when I said I like their videos I was not referring to their product videos, but rather their personal YouTube videos tackling a range of subjects that are music related, I discovered products like the palette gear on the channel, which whilst expensive, are perfect for me as I travel a great deal. Some of their viewpoints and the discussions that follow can be particularly enlightening. I both enjoy and value them.

The other forum, which I like to think of as the shopping channel, seem to lap the product videos up with rather alarming levels of enthusiasm. But when you look at the demos for products like CSS - they are a different level.

The videos that Spitfire use to promote their products have become a cookie cutter series, knocked out like a thoughtless automated production line. Yes the travel and cinematography for NEO looked wonderful, but the content is just the same. Same hamburger, different wrapper.

I think Spitfire as a company probably need to slightly re-invent themselves, otherwise, like Apple, they might just become the establishment they were once so proud to challenge...

“...might just become”??

Sigh…same old, same old. Yet another new library gets mostly trashed here…now along with the developers, and with only a few exceptions. Most responses on this forum are (IMHO) extremely well written though, are articulate and definitely express the respondent’s opinion, and I do admire that. But what I do find strange about this forum is that, in general, it seems to be that 80% of the posts are critical…consistently. Is there really no library or development team about which reaction is also positive? Does nearly every new library need to be picked apart and then basically rejected? Personally, I often hesitate to report here that I like a library, or mention the features I find useful, because it feels sometimes as if I might as well ‘save my breath’…other posts will indirectly point out why that should not be the case.

There is no question that sharing one’s analysis of a library is useful and of course honesty is valued. But what I am suggesting is that not every library that comes out needs to be ripped apart and micro analyzed as well. Perhaps ‘constructive criticism, but combined with some positive comments would prove more palatable to some of us? Gosh, even videos and the ‘other’ forum’s short comings are open to criticism.

To be clear, I do respect someone’s right to express their true opinion, and I believe that respect has been demonstrated over the years. What I am saying is maybe we could look at the good side of things more often as well. For example, for those of us who have met Paul and Christian know for a fact they are not the type of people some have suggested they are. For example, Christian has been more generous to me personally than any other developer I’ve ever met and Paul’s kindness has been heart warming and unquestionable. Both give far more back to our community than do most others. Again, in my opinion, their enthusiasm for their products and their love for what they do should never be seen as simply a way to get us to spend money. That’s just wrong!

Anyway, just my thoughts about threads I’ve followed on the forum; others will disagree of course. I do appreciate learning about what others feel are weak points of a library, but truly would enjoy reading about the positive aspects as well…far more often than it seems I do.

It's a fair point, Frank. And you're right actually. From what I've heard, Neo is a good library - great tone, good range of articulations.

What you're probably experiencing here is that I think TSB has a much higher proportion of people who have been around the block than other forums. I hope its not a refuge of the bitter and cynical, but rather that with so many libraries under most of our belts, it takes a pretty high bar to add something to what we already have. I certainly have a feeling I don't make anything like as much use of what I have as I might, and that the vast majority of shortcomings in my compositions wouldn't remedied by new libraries with all the expense and (even more) time needed to learn them, but lack of talent. Given that, I'm looking for something that is either new ground, or something done demonstrably better than what I have. Personally I've long tired of subtle variations of what I already have, and that probably does come off as jaded sometimes. Then there are a few Spitfire-related specifics.

The perils of a mature market and mature users perhaps, but your point is well taken.

For what it is worth, at least my one post above, while rather critical of NEO as a release, was not intended to impune the earnest intentions of Christian, Paul and the rest of the Spitfire team. In fact I was careful to state that my concern is that Spitfire "might be running out of ideas", rather than accusing them of willfully trying to dupe anyone (which is most certainly not my belief). Furthermore, Spitfire's product videos don't personally bother me ... actually I rather enjoy them in spite of the overly-effusive praise they tend to heap upon each of their new releases. The fact that I continue to seriously evaluate each and every new library Spitfire introduces should stand as evidence of that, not to mention my purchases of OA Chamber Evolutions, Orchestral Swarm and Hg2O over the last several months alone. The unfortunate fact that I haven't personally been wowed by Spitfire's last couple of major releases (BBCSO and NEO) only means that I haven't liked those releases, and I am hoping these have merely been missteps on their part.

Here's a new video from Homay covering the Brunel Loops in Neo. I. for one, find them most appealing and versatile, and perhaps they are worth considering as well when assessing the library?