best HARDWARE choices for ORCHESTRAL sounds??

C

Cratinus

Member
i've been looking at the Kurzweil PC2R very closely. the demo sounds great.

the Roland SRX and SRV orchestral boards get pretty good reviews as well.

THE PROBLEM IS......in order to GET these orchestral sounds,..i'd have to buy a MODULE "chocked full" of sounds that i have no interest in JUST TO BE ABLE TO USE the "Orchestral ROM/CARD". i am NOT saying that the stock sounds on the PC2R or JV2080/JV5080 etc ARE BAD/USELESS..
....it's just that i am ONLY interested in the ORCHESTRAL sounds!!!!

i am not particularly enthused by the prospect of firing up my ANTIQUATED PC for this purpose (i stare at a computer screen all day at work and do NOT want to let the "blue screen" invade my studio if at all possible). i might CONSIDER a hardware sampler if it could fit the bill (although i'd PREFER the ease of use/instant gratification of a standalone module. cheers.

p.s. i've heard the EMU Virtuoso. i do not like it (although i tried to).

p.s.s. i also realize that "placement" and "layering" can bring out the best in certain instrument samples.

p.s.s.s. just came to my attention: can the new Roland JV5080 accept expansion boards AS WELL AS "samples" from an Orchestral CDrom??
 
What you can do is buy a sampler and some orchestral sample CD's to go with it. You will get the most realistic sounds this way.
 
been thinking about that as well, Rolando. how do you load "sample cd's" into a HARDWARE sampler?? is a computer required? a SCSI CD drive?? do any hardware samplers INCLUDE a cd drive for this purpose?? i have little experience in this area. what samplers are best?? Emu E5000?? Akai?? Yamaha?? i apologize for my naivety,...i am a "knob twiddler" and NOT a "mouse point-and-clicker". cheers.
 
Cratinus,
looks like your in a simular situation that I am.
What gear do you already have?

I have a Yamaha Motif 8 and was considering taking it back to get a roland XV-88 so that I could upgrade with the SRX boards. But I played the XV-88 and it just feels cheap.
So I think i'll be buying an XV5050 Module and just hooking it up to my Motif 8.

I guess if you want to go cheapest look at some of the JV1010 or JV2020 Roland modules. The 2020 and 5050 are expandable SRX. and the 1010 is JV-80 expandable.

Hope this helps a little bit.
-DAN
 
...i am NOT saying that the stock sounds on the PC2R or JV2080/JV5080 etc ARE BAD/USELESS..
....it's just that i am ONLY interested in the ORCHESTRAL sounds!!!!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I hear ya!
I have the JV2080 and bought the Orchestral II expansion card for it. I use maybe one or two of the stock sounds on it, but the card is great!
Some string samples here:
http://artists.iuma.com/site-bin/streammp3.m3u?204548

and the flute and strings on this one sound pretty ok:
http://artists.iuma.com/site-bin/streammp3.m3u?190193

All of the instruments on this one use the orchestral card, but I especially like the french horns:
http://artists.iuma.com/site-bin/streammp3.m3u?64469
 
I'm not familiar with the PC2R but the K2000 series is pretty sweet with the orchestral card. They will also read in samples from other libraries (check for compatability).
 
Hardware samplers normally (always???) have a CD drive to allow you to load sounds right from the disk. However, a SCSI drive gives you better ability to compile and store a library of sounds and dump them into the samplers (without digging out the disks, etc. etc.).

I must qualify my answer to indicate I am by no means a sampling expert. I do own a couple of hardware samplers which I use for specific applications (mostly sound effects and other video post production) but when ever possible I prefer to quickly find my favorite pre-sets on one of my syhths.
 
DanielJohn--i have a few modules (Alesis and Emu) and a dedicated controller keyboard. i have a tiny "phrase" sampler also.

i'm just looking for fairly realistic orchestral sounds. i am NOT Jerry Goldsmith or Hans Zimmer or Howard Shore or John Williams (at least not YET!!:) :D .....but i'd "like" to be able to "record" some orchestral pieces and "soundtrack-type" works that i have brewing in my mind.

REGARDING HARDWARE SAMPLERS---can you LOAD the sounds you want into them and KEEP them there for as long as you want (i.e. "build" your own perfect orchestra and save it into the sampler) or must you "load" samples into the unit whenever you need to use it???

i am leaning more towards a hardware "rompler" at this point (until i can afford a MASSIVE Gigastudio sampler library:) ). i think i'll check out the Roland and the Kurzweil again this weekend.

thanks for the soundlinks, M. Jones.

cheers.
 
The samplers I have worked with can not hold a libray of sounds. That is what the disks (or a seperate hard drive) are for.

My experiance has been you load in the sounds you want, tweak them, assign the MIDI receive channels, assign them to an output , etc. but - once you turn off the sampler the data is lost and the next time you fire it up you start all over again.
 
I have an EMU 6400 which you can pick up nowadays for a pretty good price. I added some memory and a hard drive then loaded up some orchestral samples from CD ROMs that I got.

There are a number of libraries that have come out recently such as the Garritan collection and now I believe it is ILIO that has the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on CD ROM.

These ultimate collections are expensive. The full Vienna ORchestra collection is about 3k. They come in various formats, however, Gigastudio seems to be winning out in sampling in much the same way as Pro Tools did for DAWs. Giga is, however, a softward sampler which means you would need a computer and sound card. Software samplers tend to be real memory hogs so using them usually requires their own computer.

The thing is, once you have the computer and the sound card as a dedicated sampler, it is not much different than a hardware sampler. That is what Giga has turned out to be for most users.

Giga is only for PC so for now, Mac users are left out though the Kontakt program from Native Instruments is reported to be able to play Giga format and is compatible with Mac.

Personally, though, the EMU that I have is quite good, there are excellent ROMs for it and, I am planning to purchase ne of these mega orchestra CD Roms in the future except that I work on a Mac and have the EMU. Therefore, I bought the Kontakt program and will see how things turn out. If between the two I cannot get what I want, I may ultimately be forced to purchase a PC and a sound card and go for Giga.

Well, there goes my two cents on sampling.
 
i use the Fater SL-880 weighted keyboard, with the Roland XV-3080. the 3080 has the Orch I and II cards installed. There isn't much that I think of as fars as strings, brass, and woodwinds that I can't do reasonably well with this sound module.

however,

I still say the orchestral percussion is not quite as lush as the other instruments.
 
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