As you can see, you get lots of musical material to work with. Linked below is a list of every instrument and articulation in The Orchestra Complete compared with the original The Orchestra and Strings of Winter. Note that while the articulation choice is significantly expanded, there are no con sordinomuted options, which is something of a miss but not a deal-breaker. TOC combines the original instruments from The Orchestra and adds everything from SOW to give you the appropriately named The Orchestra Complete.
All of these and more are included, courtesy of the addition of Strings of Winter (SOW), which is also available separately. Best Service’s original The Orchestra featured a basic-yet-respectable set of articulations, but it lacked certain string techniques that composers have come to expect from contemporary orchestral collections, such as sul ponticello, col legno, trills, and harmonics. (Perhaps in a future update? Fingers crossed.)Īnother point of differentiation is TOC’s scope of instruments and articulations. This would make it easier to place other sample libraries in the same space as TOC. That said, I do wish the impulse responses were available as separate audio files so I could use them in other convolution reverb plug-ins. It features ten impulse responses that have been sampled from “different legendary effects processors.” I was impressed by all of the reverbs, particularly with Concert Hall 1 and Medium Halls 1–3. It can be reigned in if necessary, though.įor additional room character, convolution reverb is onboard. TOC tends to have a forward and present sound, helping the instruments cut through in a dense mix. Although critics may cite the lack of ambience control, by not providing multiple sample sets of the same material, TOC is able to maintain a relatively small file footprint weighing in at just under 11GB-especially handy for mobile rigs.Įach of the orchestral sections was sampled in position, giving them an appropriately “wide-screen” spatial relationship in terms of width and depth. For starters, TOC forgoes multiple microphone perspectives in favor of a simplified, single stereo perspective that has a decent amount of room character “baked in” to the sound. In a crowded field of orchestral libraries, TOC takes a decidedly different approach that helps it stand out from the competition in several key ways. Cheating? Magic? No, but you will undoubtedly be surprised by how easily and intuitively TOC and Elysion can render ultra-professional results, either on their own or when combined-truly brilliant. It allows you to createconvincing, fully orchestrated phrases in TOC or complete hybrid soundtrack textures in Elysion, simply by holding down a key or two on your MIDI controller. This is a MIDI processor built using Kontakt’s KSP scripting engine. TOC and Elysion offer a compelling set of compositional tools that stand apart from anything else on the market, thanks largely to the cleverly designed Ensemble Engine. To be clear, these are separate titles, but they certainly complement each other nicely.
It’s intended as an all-in-one orchestral collection, whereas Elysion is billed as a synth- and hybrid-oriented “twin” to TOC.
The Orchestra Complete (TOC hereafter) is an update to the original The Orchestra library.
Both libraries require Kontakt 6.2.1 or higher, but they also run in the free Kontakt Player-good news if you haven’t made the leap from Kontakt 5.
Two recent additions-The Orchestra Complete and Elysion, created for and exclusively distributed by Best Service-are the focus here. They have an impressive and growing catalog for other developers, as well. They’re the creative force behind Native Instruments’ Action Strikes, Action Strings, Emotive Strings, and Symphony Series: Percussion. When it comes to sample libraries of cinematic sounds, European developer Sonuscore is quite the prolific powerhouse. Sonuscore and Best Service pair an orchestral library with electronic textures and patterns to deliver the best of both worlds.