The Sound Board

A significant deal here from Impact Soundworks via VST Buzz:

83% off the normal price (normally €467)!

Rhapsody: Orchestral Colors
• 30,000+ orchestral samples, Three mic positions: close, decca, outrigger
• Strings: Violins, Violas, Celli, Basses
• Brass: Trumpets, trombones, horns, tuba
• Winds: Clarinet, oboe, flute, bassoon, contrabassoon
• Choir: Men's and women's ensembles + FX

Rhapsody: Orchestral Percussion
• Comprehensive suite of 50+ instruments
• 16 & 24 bit samples, Three mic positions: close, stage, hall
• 10x dynamics, 5x RR

Furia Staccato Strings
• Focused and powerful staccatos strings
• Tutti playing (all sections), Up to 16x round robin layers
• Close + hall mic positions, Only one dynamic – EPIC!

Bravura Brass – Chords & FX
• Ensemble and Solo “Chord Maker” patches – Play single notes to create fully-voiced chords
• Ensemble and Solo Orchestrator patches - Play or sequence chords, these patches will intelligently assign each note for realistic voicings
• Articulations – Sustain, staccato, tenuto, marcato
• All aleatoric FX patches – short figures, phrases, motifs, swells, and hits

Vocalisa: Slavic Women’s Choir
• Traditional Slavic Choral Singing - Eh, mah, yah, ree, shteh, svah and oh
• Mordents, turns, clusters, FX & breaths Section-building with sopranos, mezzos, altos
• Soloist & full choir patches

Note: Requires the Full Retail version of Kontakt 5.4 or higher (NOT compatible with the free Kontakt Player)

https://vstbuzz.com/deals/83-off-orches ... soundworks

https://impactsoundworks.com/products/c ... rchestral/

Any user comments for any of these?

The orchestral percussion is worth the price alone. I bought it a couple of years ago for under €100 and it has shown as an incredible and versatile library. I've never been tempted to buy the other libraries though.

I too like the orchestral percussion except for the tuned percussion, for which I mostly use the old EWQLSO perc.

Thanks both. I feel incredibly bloated with percussion - CinePerc, EWQL, LADD, HZO1, some 8dio, ProjectSAM and many others - and in truth that goes for almost all of this collection in my case. Can either of you elaborate on what makes it particularly strong? Any USPs in the whole set? At this price it feels like an outstanding bargain for most, but still not sure I could point to any element and know I'll personally get value out of it.

It's an outstanding value package. I'd only have use for the percussion, and even for this library alone it could be worth it. I' wondering if it is not too dry for me though. I already have Hollywood Percussion Gold, which is on the drier side. What I'd need is an orchestral percussion library with a nice, ambient sound. I guess tempting as the offer is, Rhapsody Percussion is not that.

Actually Linos you might have just sold me - most of the percussion I have works best in an ambient context, if I lean on the close mics typically it thins out too much. Listening to the demos I think this library will work well in drier contexts. This sounds really good to me, I like the xylo and glock a lot:



Well, gotta keep the global economy moving somehow

That sounds very good indeed! Can you return the favour and recommend me a nice ambient percussion library?

I bought their Shreddage 2 library years ago. I really liked it. It was one of the most convincing guitar things I'd heard. Plenty of different layers and different samples within the same velocity to keep it more natural sounding. The articulations were pretty well done too. I haven't tried anything else of theirs, but I'd expect the same kind of quality at least. I'm not an expert in sampled instruments though..

Linos wrote: ↑Apr 02, 2020 7:11 am That sounds very good indeed! Can you return the favour and recommend me a nice ambient percussion library?

Ha! I tend to gravitate most to CinePerc Core and Pro, but actually frequently use all the libraries I mentioned above for specific cases. HZ01 is not standard orch percussion as you know but has real gems in it I'm an absolute sucker for - I often shoe-horn it into non-orchestral tracks too.

That demo really shows what I like about it. Call it chamber or classical but the library is really great in the nuanced playing.

Thank you Guy! I'll be on the lookout for a sale on Cineperc.

Ha, Guy, as we speak, there is a huge sale on Cinesamples libraries @Native Instruments. 75% off of Cinesamples Composer Toolset. 50% off of individual libraries:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/s ... ffer-2020/

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Apr 02, 2020 6:24 am Actually Linos you might have just sold me - most of the percussion I have works best in an ambient context, if I lean on the close mics typically it thins out too much. Listening to the demos I think this library will work well in drier contexts. This sounds really good to me, I like the xylo and glock a lot:



Well, gotta keep the global economy moving somehow

Yes, I really like ROP for things like this. Close and clear. This composer sucks though!

I also really like the solo bravura brass for that reason, too. But I guess that isn't included in this package.

Hi Blake, I bought the package yesterday. Have to say the percussion is every bit as good as I hoped and your marvellous demo reveals. So much so that for non-orchestral contexts, I think it will be my goto from now on. I was delighted by literally everything I think. Stuff like the glock is particularly good, I often find glocks troublesome in that the transient attack can be so fierce on close mics its unpleasant to listen to. Here its fabulous. The range of snares is wonderful, even including a marching band type one (I'm a sucker for marching bands). The rolls are smashing, though I do miss them on the tymps.

It's kind of ironic its called "orchestral" percussion when I see it as most useful in non-orchestral contexts, but of course its accurate as they are orchestral instruments and on a nice short-tail stage... its just I know that for a normal ambient mix the toolkit I have works very well indeed.

I did have a fairly brief whizz through the others. The choir seems fairly specific in its use, the string staccatos sounded horrible to me, the Rhaposody colours not too pleasing. The Bravura brass was the best of the rest of the bunch, obviously this is just a subset of the full range. The tuning is quite variable but that suits a kind of part.. it has a warmly human feel to it. But I really missed the lack of vibrato option in these, so I think I won't be turning to it very often. I see that other parts of the range do have vibrato control though, I'd imagine this makes it much more appealing overall.

No timp rolls? You sure about that? I could swear it had those in a different octave than the hits. I’m not at the studio though.

Oh you're quite right Bryla. One of my only other niggles is that the library does the niente thing, meaning CC controls go to silence which really dislike. The rolls are there up the top, but hidden until I push up the modwheel. Should have thought of that!