Audiobro Modern Scoring Brass: some memory tips

[Guy Rowland]

I've still not quite hit the tipping point to buy yet

Oh, turns out I was wrong. I appear to have depleted by bank account, and am now downloading. Snappy start, says 2hrs for me for the whole 160gb.

[Lawrence]

That fine line between need and mere desire. Gearlust rulez

Can’t wait to hear your take, Guy. User demo!

[Guy Rowland]

That fine line between need and mere desire. Gearlust rulez

Can’t wait to hear your take, Guy. User demo!

Tis true..

In this case, I had this one pegged as a probable buy very soon after the original announcement partly because I strongly like the company but mostly because it would give me stuff I don't have really, which is still the acid test when buying big stuff. That's the same test that - in my case - CSB fails, however wonderful it is. If it doesn't have a specific tone / patch that another library I own DOES have... well so what? I already have that after all. Does it give me anything useful that's new or significantly better? I reasoned in the end that it (hopefully) will.

Getting my excuses in early - I do have a pretty busy coming few weeks, and I know MSB will take some time to figure out how best to use it in the template, so a proper walkthrough might take a little while. I will try and get some simple stuff up sooner though, so I'll add my own "if there's anything anyone wants to hear" in. Trumpets is a biggie I know, so I might try and knock something off relatively quickly there, I just want to be sure I'm doing the right things with it first of course. Also vibrato.

[kony]

Ha! Guy, so funny how you caved within the space of 30 minutes!

Unfortunately, I have no coin so am forced to exercise restraint - although I'm eagerly anticipating your demos/walkthrough, particularly trumpets

[Linos]

The sound is great. Awesome that they have mutes and stopped notes. However, the video confirms my concern about the lack of timbral variation. The lower dynamic example has basically one timbre (sounds somewhere aroind a mp), and it goes to a forte timbre directly somewhere above a cc1 value of 65 or 70. It sounds like there is very little to work with for the softer dynamics. And what a pitty that is, because the concept is just right. Unfortunately, with the limited timbral capabilities it's not for me.

[Guy Rowland]

The sound is great. Awesome that they have mutes and stopped notes. However, the video confirms my concern about the lack of timbral variation. The lower dynamic example has basically one timbre (sounds somewhere aroind a mp), and it goes to a forte timbre directly somewhere above a cc1 value of 65 or 70. It sounds like there is very little to work with for the softer dynamics. And what a pitty that is, because the concept is just right. Unfortunately, with the limited timbral capabilities it's not for me.

Well, that seems like as good a place to start as any. This is the 4 horns patch 1, legato, auto divisi, unison mode, first half of CC1 travel only. All out of the box sound main mics only, no note or CC1 edting, everything set to defaults, and crucially no CC11 or other volume riding. All live playing, no quantising or error fixing (which given my notoriously terrible keyboard skills should be borne in mind). The only audio tweak is basic normalisation of the entire file on the renders.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7b93vwde56tpt ... y.wav?dl=0

And here across the full CC1 travel:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vr7f4wt2letjy ... l.wav?dl=0

This is the trumpets, same conditions, lower half of CC1 only and vibrato off:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/il6tvtuzwvdv1 ... b.wav?dl=0

And here across the full range of CC1 travel:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gw8j9xmqdcvdn ... b.wav?dl=0

So far so very good for me until this last example where I hear the exact thing I didn't like in some of the demos, coming in at 11s when the chords appear. This is that sort of metallic, flat and unconvincing sound. So for the next test, all conditions the same except this is playing with vibrato (which is quite subtle) turned to max:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i38axk7r4y0iu ... b.wav?dl=0

...which goes a very long way to solving that issue for me. It just needs some movement in there - I don't perceive it as a vibrato effect really, its just a bit of randomness that takes away that flatness. I'll explore with a lot more of the settings, humanisation etc of course, but that makes for an extremely encouraging start. (oh, full disclosure - that last example I did make two midi tweaks, 1 smoothed out a CC1 bump and the other I adjusted two midi note endings which were miles apart).

One settings tweak I think I'd like is some auto volume riding with the CC1, to widen the dymanic range a little without adding another controller. Personally I'm pretty happy with the tonal range.

[Guy Rowland]

{EDITED POST FOR MORE EXAMPLES]

Here's some more which I don't think have been heard much yet. All conditions as above.

Piccolo Trumpets - https://www.dropbox.com/s/c5p25wwp0svo9 ... d.wav?dl=0

Trombones (focusing on the vast range) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5xkrvtxhyj69 ... n.wav?dl=0

Euphoniums - https://www.dropbox.com/s/v53dizs33i50r ... o.wav?dl=0

Flugelhorns (love these - freely playing with vibrato here) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/p788pv8k22ajt ... t.wav?dl=0
[link fixed]

Cimbassos (feel the air, but call me old fashioned... thought the plural was Cimbassi?) - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2dgcc1ra2e7lf ... o.wav?dl=0

Tuba - https://www.dropbox.com/s/y523e7qxfi4sh ... o.wav?dl=0

I've also had a cursory play with the other articulations, the sustain attacks and the ART.

Overall, my initial feeling is this is a pretty incredible library. The range and depth is phenomenal. It is by far the best polyphonic legato I've played, to the point where I think I'll routinely use it (usually I stick to separate mono legato and non-legato Poly patches). The tone is consistently strong, and there's whole new options for me with some of the instruments. I only have a VSL solo flugelhorn, and I think these in MSB are really stellar and will be invaluable for that British Brass Band / Brassed Off feeling. Piccolo Trumpets are great to have too, and I think these are totally new for me.

I find myself reliving the shock of finding it was $599. I'd sort of talked myself into thinking that it wasn't perhaps all they were reaching for and they'd lowered the price accordingly. While its still very early days, so far its greatly exceeded my expectations, and I'd be surprised if this didn't become the staple for me, once I've wrapped my head around how to best arrange it in the template.

[Linos]

Thank you Guy, this is very instructive!

[KyleJudkins]

Hey guy, you can always toss cc1 onto volume and then change the values from like 80%-100% in kontakt

The weird flatness is something that I battled with sample modelling - or in general if you reduce things to mono then try to pan them.

[Guy Rowland]

Holy crap, I just remembered the Intuition patches. This is essentially a first play through on a solo horn, just riding CC1 and CC2 (vibrato). Once more, no editing or tweaking again.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sopm8t7e9knhs ... b.wav?dl=0

I LOVE this. This does feel a little into Sample Modelling territory. It takes a long time for these full patches to load up - a good 10-15s before it starts to load samples, but I found it was almost instant on the full mixes only. These are going to be VERY handy.

Same midi notes ported over to Trumpet 1 in Bb - here I pushed up CC2 relative to the horn (for some reason the vibrato is more demure on the trumpet), and kept CC1 lower:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n2ih4ov836uw5 ... b.wav?dl=0

Damn... and there are 20 of these! Haven't yet figured out a way to turn of the verb on these, but that's the only gripe really.

I'm an exceptionally happy camper... can you tell?

Kyle, I'll look into that Kontakt tip, thanks.

[Piet De Ridder]

Thanks, Guy. You sure know how to make a man start to doubt again.

The Flügel-link brings up the Euphoniums again. Possible to correct that? Would love to hear the Flügels.

And should you have the time: perhaps a few snippets with the shorts of some of these instruments? A million thanks.
And, one final request: what's the driest ambience this library is capable of (without things starting to sound tin, tiny and toyish of course)? Another million thanks!

_

[Guy Rowland]

Doh, sorry about the duplicate link shutting out the lovely flugelhorns, fixed now.

And for you Piet anything of course. I shudder to think what you'd be able to do with this library. Stand by...

[Guy Rowland]

So here's some technical tests.

Horns 2, 25 short notes set to scale on CC only (there are options for velocity or 50/50). Each file normalised to -0.1db

1/4 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/dvaeoxv6epbwy ... x.wav?dl=0
1/8 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/635tp6czcorhg ... x.wav?dl=0
1/16 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/mdq83qgk43opf ... x.wav?dl=0
DT - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ul7sx4i3vz9tb ... x.wav?dl=0

Back to the 16ths for the 3 other mixes:

Close - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ejeqwaqlc7xgx ... s.wav?dl=0
Decca - https://www.dropbox.com/s/bfnh915jecy4s ... s.wav?dl=0
Surround - https://www.dropbox.com/s/tnn2srnp52n6v ... s.wav?dl=0

And a short legato phrase for the 4 mixes without reverb:

Full Mix - https://www.dropbox.com/s/pyiajshqpqqos ... b.wav?dl=0
Close - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ai1405e5d1mah ... b.wav?dl=0
Decca - https://www.dropbox.com/s/ofm7b7vhaj7qs ... b.wav?dl=0
Surround - https://www.dropbox.com/s/p919pa908ubem ... b.wav?dl=0

A couple of thoughts on the above - you can definitely hear a couple of jump points on the short dynamics, the most pronounced is on bar 4 measure 1, but they don't overly offend me personally. I can't be sure exactly how many layers there are on these examples - anyone wanna guess?

I'm getting close to a decision that I really don't need the other mixes at all, and might just slim down... maybe put them on rust just in case. I don't see very much benefit at all recorded in this kind of hall. Also the load times of the full patches are massively higher than just the Main Mixes. That said, I'm about to batch resave just in case.

[Piet De Ridder]

Thanks again for all that, Guy. Much obliged.

More than clear by now that the doubts I had earlier on, were completely unfounded. Everything that needs to be there, seems to be there, most of it sounds outstanding (except that the lowest brass had me thinking a few times of U-He Zebra rather than of a brass section), and whatever little imperfections there may be certainly don't distract from the overall amazingness of MSB.
I'm especially taken by the horns. They seem to live on the library's Mount Olympus, the place where the gods reside. Divine sound.

_

[Confuzzly]

Thanks Guy for all the demos and impressions. Certainly enough to push me over the edge. Purchased and downloading now. It has been a few years since my last big library purchase, so I guess I shouldn't feel too ashamed.

[jneebz]

The more I hear, I think I'm realizing that what I love about this library is this notion of a "clean but human" sound...like a perfect balance to my ears. There is a subtle fragility to the brass tones in their lower dynamics, for example, that is just beautiful. Also, the thought of MSB combined with the forthcoming LASS 3, makes me think AudioBro has the potential to create a really next-level sampled orchestra.

And thank you Guy for your work on these examples...SO very helpful (well, helpful to my ears, but a serious detriment to my bank account)

[Guy Rowland]

Glad you folks found the clips helpful, figured a) it got me used to it too, b) it was better than a meandering 10 hour live walkthrough for now and c) its pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear before I ordered. Any other things just shout. I'm back on my other projects for now, but should be able to find time for bits and pieces no problem.

I batch resaved - took about half an hour but yes of course all those load times massively dropped.

[tack]

Wow, Guy, these are excellent examples. I'm still making my way through them, but damn that trombone range is absurd!

[tack]

Those Intuition patch demos are the most impressive things I've heard from this library so far, IMO.

[Guy Rowland]

Wow, Guy, these are excellent examples. I'm still making my way through them, but damn that trombone range is absurd!

Isn't it though?! I've yet to check, but there's separate alto and bass trombone patches, my guess is that this master patch kinda knits the whole lot together. I'm furiously back and forthing between Cubase and PT on another project at the mo (typing this between exports!) when I have a mo I'll check that.

And yeah those intuition patches seem like a real marvel... I'm not sure what I was expecting, but since Audiobro hadn't demoed them and nobody else had either, I figured there were a cheap and cheerful experiment afterthought or something. Very much not so.

[NoamL]

Guy I'm gonna listen to your MSB demos but wanted to say first I was surprised you think there's lots of overlap between CB and CSB. I synthestrate for a composer who generally mocks up their sketch brass with a combination of Cinebrass and Symphobia 1+2, and MIDI ends up being a great deal of the final product so it has to sound great. In each sketch, it turns out there are very few things I don't replace fully with CSB. Maybe the monster-lowbrass staccatos from CB stay in, and I'll leave low-to-mid harmonic pads written in Symphobia if they already have the right vibe and don't sound too MIDI. But everything else gets redone with CSB. In my experience (and keeping in mind I am receiving rapidly written sketches not detailed mockups) the solo horn, 2horn, 6horn and 12horn patches of CB all sound terrible. An individual note is not bad but the moment you try to perform legato it's apparent you're playing an EastWest era library. I can drag the same MIDI onto my CSB track, clean up the automation, assign the divisi parts to different channels, quantize, and write new dynamics and in minutes I have a better performance. Keeping in mind that I work in Logic and I have some special housekeeping scripts that do things like completely compensate the legato latency, apply my CC1 to all divisi channels simultaneously, etc.

[NoamL]

My thoughts about Guy's demos:

1. I noticed in the horn walkthrough video, they were using CC11 liberally to "create" piano from mezzo-piano... Guy's demos confirm that there's not a lot to work with in the bottom range of these samples.

2. I'm afraid the top end of horn dynamics at least for the sustains isn't doing much for me either compared to CSB.

3. I do like that the dynamics stay balanced across all 4 horns simultaneously as you crescendo. It's easy to take for granted how hard it must have been for AudioBro to keep everybody on the same page during recording. You can't do this with Berlin Brass: https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... ass.63516/

3b. The autodivisi legato also seems like it "just works" which is another big achievement for AB.

4. Not a brass player but the scripted vibrato of the trumpets sounds pretty good to me and doesn't leap out as a scripted effect. On the horns and trombones I didn't like it as much at all. The horn vibrato especially has that "a guy playing Sample Modeling with a breath controller while moving fifteen CCs with his feet" sound to me. It's expressive and musical but not realistic.

5. Trumpet dynamic range is pretty good.

6. Tuba duet sounds NOICE. Some of the best tuba samples I've ever heard. Would love using that with 2 horns.

7. Solo trumpet is pretty incredible in terms of flexibility & fast legato.

8. To think about the comprehensiveness of the samples - stopped AND muted horns! Flugel, Euphonium, Cimbasso, Piccolo Tpt all recorded in the same way to the same specs as the main instruments! An ABSURD range sampled on the low brass instruments! - it's kind of incredible that you get this much at this price.

Overall I hear a lot to like here and the value proposition is incredible but it doesn't pass the "CSS Test" for me. Jeremiah Pena and I talked about that when CSS first came out. It was the first string library I had ever experienced where you could play a single note, not move the modwheel, and it sounds like music. In other words they actually captured a captivating musical intention in every sample. Cinematic Studio/CS2, Performance Samples, and Musical Sampling are the three devs that consistently pass the CSS Test for my viewpoint. Andrew Wallbank, Jasper Blunk and Aaron Sapp all have figured out a way to get musicians to stay musical during sample sessions. In these demos, I think the tubas and trombones come closest to passing this test, but the horns sure don't. Those tubas though...!

[FriFlo]

These passages done by you certainly show, that some of the fears where unnecessary. Thanks for showing that! I am now a little more inclined to possibly pick this up somewhere in the future - mostly for some additional instruments and for having a true divisi Brass library.
However, I am still pretty much turned of by most of the lower registers of the low brass (Horns, Trombones, Cimbassos and Tuba). There simply is no competition, if I compare these to CSB and BBr ... incredibly dull! I guess it is due to the room ringing at these frequencies in an undesirable way. I could even imagine that they tried to improve that with some processing, adding some artificial note to it. Not sure about that, but in any case, most of the low notes in this library have a VSL-vibe to me ... dry sound with some reverb on it - unfortunately never the same as brass recorded in a proper space!
Also, I keep hearing some odd things:

Tuba - https://www.dropbox.com/s/y523e7qxfi4sh ... o.wav?dl=0
-> there are some terrible legato transitions in the beginning ... could be some dropouts due to real time audio problems?

Mixing in vibrato? sorry, not an option for me! :-) It sounds wrong to have vibrato on brass in an orchestral context. I actually hear vibrato (that does not fit) where you added it to make it sound more alive. This is of course not AudioBros fault! But it tells me, you were not ok with how the brass choir sounded without vibrato and your fix is not an option for me.
...
Altogether, I am relieved that there are not problems as glaring as it looked like some days ago, but I am still not very fond of this library as I hoped I would be ...

[Guy Rowland]

Noam - well, I don't have CSB so can't compare of course, but in my experience I don't consider 2 horn or 12 horn legato to be "terrible", very far from it. In both cases medium speed is about as quick as you can really get away with admittedly, but within those parameters I think it sounds magic. 6 horn - well agreed, the legato is terrible there and always has been, but I like some of the other CB 6 horn patches.

Back to MSB - I just went back and forth many times between the Alto, Bass and general Trombone patches. And... I think.... they are all unique. They sure sound quite different in the middle range, no question there, though it could be a blend or EQing I don't think it is. In terms of players, there's only one Alto, and 2 Basses, with 4 general (or Tenor should I say?) The range of the basses is nuts - goes right up to C4, only a little lower than the general patch. The altos bottom at F4, top is G4, just a whole tone higher than the provisional Tenors. Anyone better versed in the real thing than I (pretty much anyone I'd have thought) that can confirm Tenor bones really go that low and high?

Also there's clearly 4 players in the general patch right up to F4, so can't be calling on that one Alto unless they did some tricksy pitch shifting stuff. Tonally they are similar there, ditto the very low stuff, it's the mid range where they are quite distinct tonally. Any which way, it's 3 different timbres to play with over a very broad range. Plus the Euphoniums and Flugelhorns.... my Harmon Cup runneth over.

FriFlo - I don't hear any terrible legato transitions on the tuba (the link was broken in your post but I see its my little demo), but they are a little over-pronounced perhaps which could do with an (available) tweak. Neither do I hear any problems with the lower register instruments at all, quite the contrary. The Tuba is gorgeously rich and smooth, some of the others have a terrific blast which I'll confess I'm a sucker for. Now admittedly I haven't got any into a mix yet and I might find some issues but.... well, I don't really know what to say. I guess we all have different ears, and mine certainly aren't pure gold... they just sound terrific to me.

[FriFlo]

FriFlo - I don't hear any terrible legato transitions on the tuba (the link was broken in your post but I see its my little demo), but they are a little over-pronounced perhaps which could do with an (available) tweak. Neither do I hear any problems with the lower register instruments at all, quite the contrary. The Tuba is gorgeously rich and smooth, some of the others have a terrific blast which I'll confess I'm a sucker for. Now admittedly I haven't got any into a mix yet and I might find some issues but.... well, I don't really know what to say. I guess we all have different ears, and mine certainly aren't pure gold... they just sound terrific to me.

Sorry, I just copied the text. Now fixed ...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/y523e7qxfi4sh ... o.wav?dl=0
You do not hear the very bumpy nature of the transitions - particularly the first few?
Regarding the timbre of the low register ... well, some things are a matter of taste or preference for sure. IMO the sound of a lot of those low notes does not connect with the room reverberating or the actual reverb. I am sure it can be (from my pov) improved by processing. Yet, with all those choices today (and considering all the libraries - including dryer ones - I already have) I am not in the market for a library that generally has to be processed to sound good to my ears.
But I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of the library in any way! :-) I am sure there is a lot to like about it. It is just that it does not convince me spending 600 bucks. ;-)