Cinesamples - not playable ???

Yes of course, it was a little joke. Though it does seem curiously anachronistic legal language that may not hold up. Not that someone would pay a lawyer $20k to sell a $400 library.

 

It won't, really. You're just layering "bad performances" with less bad performances. Might as well leave the worse ones out. What it does is create a bigger ensemble that muffles the detail so it's harder to tell. A sampled solo trumpet is very easy to spot. 10 layered solo trumpets a little less so.

The problem with sampled libraries is that they don't have enough of variety to cater to all the different lines that you can play. They have very general shorts and very general sustains. Shorts usually have multiple round robins to help prevent machine gunning, but the issue is that there aren't enough different "note lengths". Every single line is different. The same line at different speeds will be played differently. You won't play an 8th note the same way at different tempos, same as you won't play it the same way in two lines that differ in style, even though their dynamic marking might be the same. But all you have is the same short sample, played the same way. It will only work for a small spectrum of lines. And of course, ostinatos!

The very general sustains are meant to be crossfaded, but crossfading between samples which aren't phase aligned (not to mention that you can't actually phase-align ensembles) always sounds like crossfading between different takes, rather than a single group of instruments changing dynamics, because you're not hearing higher overtones gradually disappearing . You can obfuscate this by recording wet samples, but then you get a whole another set of problems like very prominent disappearence of room sound on crossfading, obviously incorrect reverb tails (which you can try and obfuscate by adding your own reverb on top, but now you're like Arnold in Predator finale).

Cinematic Studio approaches this by offering 4 different note lengths for shorts with a consistent amount of dynamic layers consistently spread across velocities, but even then it's still keyswitching between recorded performances (not to mention phasing between dynamic layers) and you only get a slightly bigger spectrum of lines that you can now mock up.

So unless you're writing very slow and inexpressive lines, you can't get 100% cohesive output with samples. It becomes even worse if your expression is limited, which is something Adventure Brass aimed to solve.

Ideally, you'd have cohesive lines and great expression. Just so I don't leave it at only words, here's a quick take (also played in live with modwheel and some vibrato)

 

What does it mean to you for an instrument to be "playable"? I imagine that many of your answers are different than mine, which is why we have some disagreement.

For me, as a trained piano player, it means I can play in my music on the piano and quickly have it realized in midi. It is not particularly about expressiveness, nor realism, nor tone quality. Simply the speed at which my ideas can be translated into a midi sound: when I play short it is short, when I play long it is long, when I play a chord it is a chord, etc... I think we can agree that Adventure Brass (or similar) is better for that sole purpose. Most people can't tell general midi from live anyway, but that's a different discussion.

In pursuit of these 4 qualities: playability (as I have just described), expressiveness, realism, and tone quality, I think sample libraries can only really achieve 2 of these (although the future might change this!). For example, a premade Symphobia cluster effect is both very realistic and has excellent tone quality, but is certainly not playable or having control of expressiveness. The example Aaron just posted is clearly very expressive and playable to an extent (from what I understand chords are not possible?), the phase alignment causes the tone quality to really suffer (although it seems this is being slowly improved, which I am looking forward to.)

I think the discussion of phase alignment is very interesting, as aside from Clarinet (a very pure, non vib sound), it tends to greatly improve the expression at the cost of tone quality. Not to mention that the addition of needing to control vibrato now requires keyboard and two CC controls (modulation and vibrato), which I think takes the playability down. However, I think for solo instruments (brass particularly) phase alighment is the way to go (Although then the challenge is putting it in a convincing space).

 

"Playable" for me would mean how much you can get done with just the keyboard and controllers. If you can shape lines clearly and give each line the individual expression it deserves, then an instrument is playable.

You can play chords with the pedal (or whichever switch you map it to), but it's better to then move them to another instrument later. The only thing I can't really play and have it sound right every time are rips. Everything else goes, from legato to fanfares to textures, bends, flutters etc.

Nope, tone has nothing to do with phase alignment. I mean it does if it's not done right (and now we're talking about actually fucking up the audio)—in my experience, you can't do it right in wet rooms so it has to be a bone-dry room.

Here's an example with Berlin trumpets.


The playability factor here is that one will always be the exact same audio output(stacc+marc), and the other you can play 50 different ways.

Doesn't really matter which instrument it is.

Depends on your controller. An XY pad solves this. TouchOSC is $5. Leap Motion lets you do up to 10 per hand in realtime. You can also choose to punch in vibrato later.

I can also play it right on the modwheel.

Yes. A single instrument is a single voice, and that's the way to go in my in opinion as well. Brass or not It doesn't work for recorded ensembles (since you're always ending up with a single audio file).

 

Not trying to discredit your library at all Aaron, and I understand your biases! Certainly seems infinite is more playable than I imagined. The use of different controllers is something I never really considered but seems useful to control 2 CC's at once.

As far as I know, there is one person in the world who does most of the phase alignment for the different developers (Hickler maybe?). In terms of tone, I really have to disagree. Maybe it is that they have to be recorded very dry, I'm not sure. Embertone's Clarinet is the only phase aligned instrument which consistently has a good tone out of the box (imo).

 

I didn't think you were, we're just discussing playability. Of course it is, it more parameters!

If you have any examples to provide, I'd love to listen. I have my own method and with how it was recorded it really does not mess up anything at all (otherwise there would be phasing) and mf sounds like mf, it's just in phase with all the other layers. If ff isn't touched at all and mf is aligned to ff, the only difference is the overtone volume between the two, there is no quantifiable change in tone due to phase alignment.

 

FYI, both adventure brass and caspian brass are on sale right now.

 

To me, Cinebrass is another crayon in the box. There is no ultimate library for me yet. Sample Modeling is great for certain types of things, but I grab Cinebrass when I need that thick "modern" sound, especially 12 Horns and Massive Low Brass. The original solo horn (not the re-recorded one, CB ver 1) can be nice. Spitfire Symphonic Brass is somewhere in between, but also not as fast to play. I wish I had the cash for some of the sales happening right now, I would buy everything from Musical Sampling if I could.