I am thinking of getting one of these. Which one do you think has the best brass library?
~Rodney
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I am thinking of getting one of these. Which one do you think has the best brass library?
~Rodney
You need to be a member of Composers' Forum to add comments!
Replies
They both have their strengths I think and I know composers working professionally who use both regularly in their templates. One thing you need to consider I think is how powerful your PC/Mac is, as Hollywood Brass is apparently a lot more demanding of system resources than Cinebrass is. Also it's fairly well known that the EastWest Play engine behaves a lot more nicely on PC than it does on Mac.
In the end I think they are probably both excellent libraries, if I had the money right now I'd probably go for Cinebrass though, both for ease of use and for the fact that it is less intensive on system resources. they also just released a new update patch that fixed a lot of issues that current users were having and added a couple of new patches I believe.
Here is the latest Cinebrass Youtube video for the update:
Yes, they are both excellent libraries. Ideally you'd want to own and use both - many people do.
Hollywood Brass has a slight advantage in terms of the number of articulations included. CineBrass sounds more impressive out-of-the-box. Hollywood Brass is more demanding in terms of computer resources, but it's not as resource-hungry as Hollywood Strings are. On Mac OSX (which, as Terry correctly states, is much less efficient than Windows, when it comes to EW Play) you can load up the most useful patches for all of the instruments with about 10-12GB or RAM.
CineSamples seem very dedicated to their product, with all the new updates and even added sample material, but even after the latest updates, some (not all!) of the legatos sound a bit off to my ears. The support for Hollywood Brass is a bit less stellar - there are some outstanding programming issues, but the last update was over a year ago.
Taking all that into account, I think if you don't need the multi-mic positions, then Hollywood Brass Gold is great value for money, despite its shortcomings. If you do need the multi-mics, then it's tough choice between HB Diamond and the full CineBrass package.
Thank you Terry for all of the info! That helped a lot. Anyone else have anymore information?
Thank you for the reply. If I get EW Symphonic Gold or higher is there something missing in the brass samples that I could benifit from either of the brass libraries?
Mihkel Zilmer said:
If you're talking about the EWQL Symphonic Orchestra library then yes, it is fairly limited on the brass front compared to either of the two libraries we've been talking about so far. It has no decent "true legato" feature to speak of (the scripted legato is buggy joke quite frankly) and the Dynamic cross-fade (DXF) patches are fairly limited and not that convincing to my ears compared to either Cinebrass or Hollywood Brass.
Yes, you're missing essentially the "next generation" of brass samples. EWQL Symphonic Orchestra sounds great for what it is, but is a rather old library. The newer generation offers much deeper sampling - true recorded legato transitions and larger numbers of repeated short notes for example. This translates directly into better control over the samples.
EWQL Symphonic Orchestra can still of course sound very effective, but for someone looking to do more detailed writing, newer libraries are a much more powerful option.
I have to add though, that with the added detail and control comes the need to do more detailed programming for best results.
Rodney Carlyle Money said:
Absolutely. I read the instrument list, went through the manual, listen to demos, and watched their YouTube videos. At first where I was blown away, now when I listen I actually laugh at their "Fanfare for the Common Man" and "Krypton Fanfare" demos because the use of the 8th-note staccatos in the trombones and trumpets are down right amusing and uncharacteristic of the pieces. Good to know though that their are no single libraries that will cover what I need. I do however need samples in the trombones that can play beautiful flowing melodies and not just samples that think they need to play the soundtrack to "Inception" all the time. I have though messed with the delay and combing the legato horn solo and legato 6 horn ensemble to smooth out the "well articulated" trombones.
~Rod
Raymond Kemp said:
Here's a sample of just CineBrass Core that I have been experimenting using the legato horn solos and ensembles to soften the articulations of the trombone ensemble and tuba and bass trombone samples.
Cinebrass Alma Mater MP3.mp3
I have Hollywood Brass and it has all the articulations I need - actually I don't use half of them but might in the future. Overall Hollywood Brass sounds great and I'm very impressed with the dynamics the instruments have.
Especially the true legato patches are good, they can take a simple melody to a whole new level and I no longer have to hide the synthetic sound sound of a solo brass instrument like I did before. Before I used the Brass from EWQLSO.
Because of the many articulations in the Hollywood series, It can be quite hard to find your way around, but the quick start suggestions help a lot. To be honest I can't tell the difference between many of the articulations, this is especially true in Hollywood strings, but I guess some can here difference in the overall mix.
Anyway this thread was about Brass and the new Brass form EWQL sounds great. Add Spaces re-verb and you got a winning combination for that big Hollywood sound.
Also I should mention that the samples in the Hollywood series don't have a lot of reverb recorded into the samples like they did in symphonic orchestra - you have much better control over the reverb.