Who's got the best orchestral percussion?

[mrarnesen]

CinePerc? http://cinesamples.com/products/cineperc/

Elite Orchestral Percussion? http://www.vir2.com/instruments/elite-o ... percussion

ProjectSam True Strike? http://www.projectsam.com/Products/Feat ... ducts/1354

Others?

I can't afford anything over approx $400.

[Surfwhammy]

I think this question is in the same list as "Which is better Mac OS X or Windows?" and "Are flats better than sharps?", but since nobody else is willing to give it a try, these are a few of my thoughts . . .

(1) It depends on what you need, as well as the genres you prefer, noting that (a) Mac OS X and sharps are vastly superior to (b) Windows and flats . . .

(2) NOTION 4 comes with a wide range of percussion instruments, which I use in DISCO and Pop songs, usually after I "pump" them a bit to get the overall volume levels higher, since they are recorded in a more conservative "classical" or "orchestral" way with more headroom to allow deep and rich dynamics, which is a bit contrary to the basic rule here in the sound isolation studio, which is that there are a grand total of two highly desired dynamics, (a) pulsating and (b) loud, and there are a lot of Latin percussion instruments, which are personal favorites, where for reference I "pump" them with the T-RackS CS Grand White 2A Leveling Amplifier, which is excellent for preserving brightness and does not "squish" the overall dynamics. There is an Expansion Sounds collection available from Notion Music for percussion instruments that expands the set of percussion instruments that are bundled with NOTION 4 . . .

(3) Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments) has some very nice percussion instruments, and you can augment it with custom sampled sound libraries of specialty instruments, where two examples are the Handbells and Crystal Glasses from Bolder Sounds, which are outstanding and work nicely with Kontakt 5 . . .

Handbells (Bolder Sounds)

Crystal Glasses (Bolder Sounds)

Bolder Sounds also has other types of bells, drums, Tibetan singing bowls, wind chimes, and some truly unusual sampled sound libraries of things like different types of rocks, bottles, gardening tools, kitchen utensils, sea shells, and various children's toys . . .

Another possibility most folks probably would not consider to be "orchestral percussion" but certainly can be used for this purpose is Addictive Drums (XLN Audio), which is to drumkits what Cylcop (Sugar Bytes) is to bass, where the not so obvious aspect is that there are complete drumkits from different manufacturers tuned in different ways with a variety of tones and textures, so while the overall focus of Addictive Drums is on providing drumkits for popular music genres, a drum is a drum, and you can select a specific drum and tailor it for more of an "orchestral percussion" type of use . . .

[NOTE: At first, both of these virtual instruments (Addictive Drums and Cyclop) can appear to be simple, but they are highly customizable and have additional screens and features that make them very powerful for creating unique custom-tailored sounds, where conceptually and functionally they are similar to what AmpliTube 3 does for guitar and bass rigs, where you can select specific amplifiers, loudspeaker cabinets, microphones, microphone placements, and so forth, as well as design and build custom guitar and bass rigs with multiple units, and you are not limited to just one amplifier and loudspeaker cabinet . . . ]

[NOTE: There are free versions of Addictive Drums and AmpliTube, and there is a fully functional 30-day evaluation for Cyclop . . . ]

Addictive Drums (XLN Audio)

Cyclop (Sugar Bytes)

AmpliTube 3 (IK Multimedia)

However, I do not think that Addictive Drums has what I call "kettle drums" (or "tympani", if you prefer), although they have an add-on pack of "Session Percussion", which has a big bass drum, timbales, conga druma, and other Latin percussion instruments, including what I call a "moon block" and some Brazialian percussion instruments, where this particular MIDI add-on percussion pack is nice for Latin songs and any song that is enhanced with Latin percussion . . .

THOUGHTS

There also are the products mentioned in the original post, which as best as I can determine are more along the lines of "Hollywood" or "Cinematic" types of percussion, but in this regard it is useful to note that in many instances the "larger than life" sound one associates with motion picture scores comes from a combination of close microphone placement and compressing, leveling, limiting, noise gating, expanding, and so forth, as well as using custom reverberation and echo units . . .

[NOTE: Of the products mentioned in the original post, I like CinePerc best, without doubt . . . ]

There typically is nothing special about the percussion instruments as contrasted to other percussion instruments, and they probably are the same, made by the same manufacturers, and so forth, with the point being that if you have a good set of signal processors and effects, which certainly should include T-RackS CS Grand (IK Multimedia) and a few of the custom add-on signal processors and effects, then with a bit of experimenting and practicing you can make the percussion instruments you already have sound "big", since the "big" aspect mostly is a matter of producing and mixing rather than having musicians in Hollywood play the same instruments that everyone else plays, where to be best of my knowledge there are no magic snare drums that only Hollywood snare drum players can use, or whatever, although there are custom drums that cost a lot, hence in some instances will be more readily available in Hollywood due to motion picture studios having larger budgets, but you can get the same drums for use in other places, provided you have the money to pay for them, where as I recall there is a university somewhere that has a gigantic bass drum for its marching band, which probably is larger than any bass drum in Hollywood . . .

T-RackS CS Grand (IK Multimedia)

In other words, it sounds "big" due (a) to the way the instruments are recorded and (b) to the way the recorded audio is enhanced and manipulated by signal processors and effects plug-ins, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

P. S. I also recommend CSR Classik Studio Reverb (IK Multimedia) and for advanced echoes Timeless 2 (FabFilter Software Instruments, for sure . . .

CSR Classik Studio Reverb (IK Multimedia)

Timeless 2 (FabFilter Software Instruments)

For sure!

[Frieda]

Hi,

You can try Elite Orchestral yourself at http://www.try-sound.com/detail.asp/eli ... cussion/en.

Frieda