NAMM was host to a bevy of new virtual orchestra products. Here's a quick summary:
- Garritan Personal Orchestra (Windows/Mac) now comes in three versions adding more sounds and articulations:
the Second Edition update adds various enhancements and patch
additions, while a new Advanced (US$499) version includes more
instruments and articulations like harmonics and a Lite (US$149) is
aimed at students and educators. New libraries were released that focus
on band and violin solo; nothing on the Garritan site so see the MacCentral story. Powered by NI Kontakt. - Miroslav Orchestral Library from IK Multimedia (Windows/Mac) is an entirely-new orchestral sample library; see our separate article; also US$499. Powered by SampleTank technology.
- MOTU's Symphonic Instrument (Windows/Mac, every format) is another library, but has some twists that make it worth considering: 8GB for just US$299, built-in convolution reverb, and editable in MOTU's MachFive sampler (none of the others here can be directly edited). Powered by MachFive.
- Synful (Windows only) was the most unique offering: instead of just being a sample library, it actually intelligently generates phrasing and articulations. Amazingly, a whole orchestra fits in just 32M of RAM. (How . . . I don't know.) US$479.
There's a free trial of at least the Synful; big test is how it sounds
and whether it fits into the way you work. Let us know if you've found
a favorite!
Eric Lindemann is in the Bay Area
this week, giving "inside-synful" talks.
Basically, he starts with a library of
violins playing short sequences of
notes, say 2-6 seconds long. He
senses the MIDI stream, to see if
MIDI is being played legato or
staccato. Given this fact, and the
note nums/vels, he looks up which
part of which sample fits best, and
morphs it into the audio. The
library is small because it is so
versatile — a series of 10 notes
played over 4 seconds can cover
a lot potential note pairs. In
addition, the library is coded not
as samples but as sine partials +
noise. For the technically minded,
he has a bunch of patents on the
website that cover the highlights
of the technique … he played it
in person, it sounded impressive.
If you did string parts for a living,
it would be worth $500 for sure.
It's a solo instrument, not a pad …
Synful is an additive resynthesizer, which is unique because it is phrase-based rather than note-based, and because it is a very very good additive resynthizer.
-Carl
Are there any plans to make Synful available for mac?