One more time! Lol.
My latest sample acquisition is VSL's Chamber Strings I, the full thing, standard and extended. I put out an ad on Vi-Control and as luck would have it, a composer was selling his copy off, so I managed to snag it way below retail. Woo! That's one thing to love about vsl - you can legally purchase used libraries, unlike say East West, where that's not allowed. And I really wish I could get rid of my EWQL Symphonic Orchestra as I just don't use it at all - much prefer the workflow with vsl and kontakt.
Alright, so let's do the rundown again. I need to keep reminding myself that *I have kontakt and the built-in library* - I keep going off about "I have no winds, I have no brass", yadayada, but as one of my friends pointed out, I have kontakt and there's a friggin' orchestra in there, as well as choirs, band instruments, ethnic instruments, sampled synths and more.
Strings:
VSL Chamber Strings + Solo Strings - DONE. For now.
Winds, Brass, Percussion: Konkakt 5's native library.
Truthfully, down the road I want to go down the vsl route for winds brass and percussion as well, though there are oher considerations e.g. Wallander Instruments for Brass.
Preciously, that was a no brainer as I loved the sound, and being a modelled instrument it is light on the disk, ram and cpu. However, now that I've been using a bit more vsl, I really enjoy the workflow, and apart from loading times, vsl's stuff seems very memory and cpu efficient.
But when it comes to VSL, the issue is PRICE, as well as what to buy. For brass there's 3 options, Dimension Brass, as well as Brass I and II. I don't know my brass needs at the moment, so it is difficult to say I'll need which lib. Now that I think about it, I actually should not be buying libraries because I want to "Fill the gap with VSL" - I do have the Kontakt library and it does have alot of the stuff I can use to experiment with, and if doesn't work I can get vsl.
Well no, actually I know I will get vsl, BUT, using the kontakt libraries first will give me more insight on what my needs are. E.g. I really like the legato performances in the string libs from vsl so far; I'm sure the brass and winds will have that kind of performance as well. AFAIK the kontakt libs don't have legato, at least not on the articulation page, so I hope I'm wrong and it is there just something I need to tweak.
Ok, so that's it for me then, I'll give the kontakt built-in libraries a go, but if I ever come across a good offer for vsl... heheheheh
Subnote: After much fuddling about with the Kontakt library, I can safely say I am not all all a fan of the woodwinds in there (I think they are the horizon series vsl instruments, not the current day instruments? I could be wrong) - no legato is a big killer for winds as I dabble in several types of flutes (I forsee a tenor recorder in the near future) and having an attack at every note for solo flute just blows it. Faking the legato seems to work though. Brass, I don't know, no legato but sounds ok, percussion sounds great! Strings seem to be pretty good even without legato, but this was with just a very simple midi phrase for testing.
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