Anyone else getting a Berlin series?

I wanted to grab Woodwinds Revive. However I already have Chris Hein's and Auddict's... Those are solo instruments but with enough tinkering I can make them work as an ensemble...
As for Brass I have Hollywood and Adventure. So I will pass Berlin as there are some new libs on a horizon at the same price point: Cinematic Studio and Infinity.
One month ago probably I would have bought Berlin Brass in a heartbeat.
Berlin Strings and Percussion never caught my eye/ear.

 

I mean, im trying to figure out how to sell kidneys hoping I can get something out of this sale

my plan is to eventually grab the strings, brass, and perc libraries(and maybe ark 1 too?)


but you need a pretty beastly machine for the stuff, based on what I own, im pretty sure I couldn't run a solid amount of articulations if I were to make a full berlin template with 128 gb of ram. I might have to keep sections frozen. That's something to keep in mind...

 

I've heard Berlin sounds wonderful but that there are "engineering" requirements to get them to sound workable? For the price I don't see the point, honestly. 500 euros is still a ton of money for a brass library. Considering what Mike's VI scores sound like with HWO (the string library is $170 and the entirety of HWO is $372 right now; I know he uses Adventure Brass and a few others but the prices are comparable to EastWest's regular prices), I don't know what the benefit of paying $600 per library would be.

The only reason I own Spitfire libraries is because of discounts.

 

I bought into Spitfire during the BF sales last year, and wound up with their orchestra. I'm really happy with it.

I had always hoped that the Berlin Series would get discounted. I bought the Woodwinds when they were on sale earlier (i'd done a pretty good business deal so I thought I'd treat myself).

But now here we are with whole Berlin Orchestra on 40% sale, and whilst I wouldn't really miss the money too much, I can't really get excited about it, so I don't think I'll be bothering with it.

I've fallen in love with the piano solo again, partly due to Mike's beautiful take on Silent Night (gorgeous progressions). You can have the most wonderful sample libraries in the world, but you cannot beat a heart breaking tension and resolution. And what's more - they only cost a little time and effort.

(I'm currently arseing around with an iPad app called Mapping Tonal Harmony Pro, and having a whale of a time with it. It was only ten quid, and it's really good for when you haven't got a piano to hand.)

So I think I'm now done with acquiring libraries. (I have even managed to avoid any of those Scandinavian Hair Dryer libraries.)

Now where shall I put that G2add chord.....

 

I just don't get the practicality of this. You already have 128GB and you couldn't run a "solid amount of articulations"? That's probably 3 separate PCs unless you have the right MOBO/CPU. Is Berlin not even keyswitchable?

 

im saying, extrapolating what I know about berlin woodwinds revive, it can add up quick.

imagine each invidual instrument is over 1 gb for 1 mic legato.

1 piccolo flute
3 flute
1 English horn
2 oboe
2 clarinet
2 bassoon

that's WW with none of the ensemble stuff - just the solo instruments. and that's assuming I don't use the expansion, which adds 2 more clarinets and a contrabassoon.

then you've got

3 trumpets
4 horns
3 trombones
1 tuba
(piccolo trumpet, bass trumpet, contrabone, euphonium expansion)
(2 trumpet, 2 horn, 3 bone mutes, multiple of each)

then ofcourse percussion, and strings. Some percussion has like 19x round robin and 7 velocity layers...

I know the violins 1 patch with all mic's loaded is 5.19 gb for legato

and from it looks like - theres a lot of articulations for strings...

you don't need all the mics, sure - but I'd atleast use 2... for a number of reasons... a.) it's the best way to create depth b.) if you use close mic's you can bring up the quieter instruments - something that would happen in a real recording anyways.

how many mic's do you think are hiding in that room? It's not that mike didn't orchestrate correctly... that's just what murphy's(i.e. THE Hollywood sound) sounds like.


All in all - I ordered the strings, and I'll be picking up either the brass - or percussion depending on how well I do this week.

 

Holy cow. I have Spitfire's Chamber Strings and each instrument plus articulations is maybe 100-200mb, assuming it's purged to only use what is played. 1GB for 1 mic legato is insane. They don't have SSD streaming options?

Oh I get the multi-mic usage -- AIR Studios sounds pretty wonderful with the Spitfire libraries. The memory usage just seems a bit ludicrous. The "Long Powerful" patches on HWS are pretty demanding too but again, SSD streaming significantly decreases memory usage.

Let us know how it sounds! Would love to hear demos.
What I was referring to before re: Mike was his straight VI pieces, not the recorded ones.

 

I know you're talking about his mockups... I was just saying - that using close mics is extremely useful.

it cleans up a mix a lot if they are recorded well... You can essentially blend the two to add punch/clarity without so much reverb/tail build up. This also makes shorts work much better...

that is streamed SSD. They are pretty massive libraries...

 

just to show an example - ill load all 3 ambient mics(ab, tree, surround) in their 100% default setting - and then route the close mics out, and all I'm going to do is adjust the volume and pan of the close mics

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hjdp8u8dcg1clu0/CloseMicMix.mp3?dl=0

some real random shit - sucks I got to load up all of 1 strings patch before I have to go to sleep and work all day tomorrow XD

the bright side is, if im lucky I might have a full BO this December

edit, I dropped the violin CC1 by a good bit at the end, probably should have left my original performance rather than my hand scribbled in CC1 now that ive actually heard it

 

Indeed they are. Mike goes through this a good amount in the Template Balancing class.

Brass and winds sound especially good. Strings sound decent too, I just find it's hard to tell the difference between string libraries these days. I still think Cinematic Studio Strings are some of the most realistic "vintage" sounding strings, but it's hard to justify buying another string library when I have HWO and SCS.

This forum has largely been a cure for the VI-C syndrome of "oooh, new VI library!", thankfully. I'm still on Composer Cloud though and I'm starting to wonder if continuing with it is worth it, given that you don't own any of the instruments.

 

Yeah I've read the tradeoff is playability. Their legato sounds amazing but is apparently frustrating to get right. What's the appeal with Berlin over other libraries? I still can't get over the memory usage, not even being able to run a standard template with 128GB is absolutely ridiculous.

 

Good idea! I "only" have 32GB, but I should spend some time engineering the samples I have. It's tedious, and I avoid it because it's decidedly not the way I want to spend my creative time, but obviously the end result is worth it.

 

I hear a big difference, I think tone wise, I actually hate CSS, and there are almost no Dynamics with the spiccato patches, and they feel way too loud

I like the actual legato, but that's the only redeeming part about CSS to me

SCS and SSS sound great, but it takes a mountain of EQ to make them sound Hollywood

I did a very short test last night and came up with a very good sound using Berlin and just dripping some mids out.

i added a TINY bit of mass and it was movie magic

 

I don't think I've heard any other articulations from CSS other than legato actually.

SCS and SSS aren't really intended to sound "Hollywood". SCS is a 4-3-3-3 string section. Not sure precisely what they were going for with SSS but it sounds really lush and lacks aggression almost entirely.

 

I was using SCS + SSS. which gave me some nice variation and divisi.