I am looking for a rackmount to use in orchestral score. Since I will playback from the module, the sound quality is the most important for me. Second, I will concern about the multitrimbal parts. I heard from my friend K2600R + orch ROM has a outstanding sound quality. It uses VAST (what's this?) But I also heard about an orchestral module from E-Mu (Virtuoso 2000) has lots of polyphony & multitrimbal. I still have no idea on buying which module. Can anyone give me any opinion? Thanks.

try gigastudio www.nemesysmusic.com

As far as I know, you can't put gigastudio in a RACK.

Baltantong, the products you are asking to compare are VERY VERY different animals. The K2600 is a workstation / workhorse. It has incredible sonic generation, synthesis and sorts of whistles and bells (of course, at a price)

The Virtuoso is basically a sound module with voices leaning mostly in the Orchestral range. It has some nifty features, but does not have expandibility like the K2600.

So, to help you decide, what features do you need? The E-Mu is roughly $800, the Kurzweil is on manufacturer special for $2600 right now. The Kurzweil is more powerful and more expandable. The E-Mu has a smaller learning curve. In the end, you should listen to both. If you have the need of a workstation, you can't go wrong with the Kurzweil, if you only need an orchestra sound module, the E-Mu probably would suffice. Besides, for the price of a 2600R, you could get 3 E-Mu's and have some money left over...taking your polyphony to 384!

I, too, am in the market for an orchestral module, and like you, the sonic quality is of utmost importance. I just auditioned the E-Mu Virtuoso 2000 and I was thoroughly DISAPPOINTED! To me, every single non-percussion sample/patch had a VERY synthesizer-type "buzz" to it, even the flutes (which should be derived from relatively harmonic-free sine waves). It reminded me of the Roland synths of the 80's. Most disappointing. So I'm still looking.

Hi Baltanong,

Why do you need a rackmount? If you want realistic orchestral scoring capabilities, you definitely need more than one module. The K2600 is a great sounding synth and it's ROM is okay. It will *not* compete with some of the orchestral sample libraries available today for realism unless you add RAM to it (I don't think that you need the sample option unless you want to do your own sampling if I'm not mistaken). It's strength is VAST and that's useful for synth sounds. Recreating realistic orchestral sounds is not its forte.

It all depends on how real you want it to sound and how much money you have. IMHO, Gigastudio with a fast PC (you can get a rackmount PC by the way) and a couple of large hard drives will give you the best, most inexpensive results. Other than that, you would need a few K2600R's or a few Emu samplers to get a realistic orchestral reproduction.

Put it this way, the Miroslav Vitous Orchestral library comes on 5 CD's (approx. 3.25 GB), the Peter Siedlaczek Advanced Orchestra sample library comes on 8 CD's including the Upgrade set (that's 5.2 GB). The Kirk Hunter Strings - 5 CD's alone for just the String section.

There is a reason why Hans Zimmer has a wall full of samplers to create his virtual orchestra. It's because he needs to. You have not given anyone a budget here that you want to work with or exactly what you'll be doing for your orchestral scoring (ie how realistic you need it).

Personally, the Virtuoso 2000, I find weak too, especially it's strings. It's difficult to get a good representation in only 64 MB of space (the Virtuoso2K has 2 Roms in it). oh well, I've gone on too much here.

If you're scoring simply in studio or at home, the K2600R is a better choice than the Virt-2K. There may be better alternatives for you though.

HTH,
fv

I, too, am in the market for an orchestral module, and like you, the sonic quality is of utmost importance. I just auditioned the E-Mu Virtuoso 2000 and I was thoroughly DISAPPOINTED! To me, every single non-percussion sample/patch had a VERY synthesizer-type "buzz" to it, even the flutes (which should be derived from relatively harmonic-free sine waves). It reminded me of the Roland synths of the 80's. Most disappointing. So I'm still looking.



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Thank you. From all your advices, It seems to me that I may consider on samplers & sample CDs unless it has a suitable orchestral module in the market. However, budget is not my first consideration, the realistic orchestral sounds are my primary needs. I think I should find and audition the orchestral sample CDs to find how good they are.

To anyone seeing this topic:

20-sec Logo Opening: (346K)
http://www.geocities.com/baltantong/btmusic/logo_eq.wma

This is a riff from a sound module. What do you think the style of the riff & which sound module make it?

#UPDATED#

To anyone seeing this topic:
20-sec Logo Opening: (346K)
http://www.geocities.com/baltantong/btmusic/logoeq.wma

This is a riff from a sound module. What do you think the style of the riff & which sound module make it?

#SORRY, UPDATED AGAIN#
To anyone seeing this topic:
20-sec Logo Opening: (346K)
www.geocities.com/baltantong/btmusic/logoeq.wma

This is a riff from a sound module. What do you think the style of the riff & which sound module make it?

I'm not sold on GigaXXX.

1) Company must not be confident in their product since there is no demo version and no online manual to peruse before buying.

2) All demo's are mp3's which means there is loss in the compresion and you can't analyze the demo (trusting that it was really generated by Nemesys product)

3) No reputable authority has given it better marks than a dedicated high-end sampler.


So there you have it...believe the hype or not.

Hi digiboy,

Well, IMHO, GigaXXX and a dedicated sampler are slightly different. Buying an Akai, Emu or Kurzweil allows you certain synthesis capabilities not present in Gigasampler. Where Gigasampler kicks butt is that you can load up a 1.5 GB patch (ie with all notes of the scale multi-sampled) and still load up more. This is especially important when dealing with Orchestral libraries.

There are many people who have tons of samplers just to be able to play back something realistic without having to record to hard disk or tape first. Things are changing and those very same people are beginning to use Gigasampler to ease the need for so many samplers.

Anyone who uses GS for playing back drum samples is better off to use something like one of the softsamplers like Emagic's EXS24 which can play back with sample accuracy or a dedicated rackmount like an Akai or Emu.

Just because Nemesys does not have a demo online does *not* mean that they aren't confident in it. Rather, there are so many cracks out there (including for GS) that they don't want to make it so easy for people to download a demo version and then modify the code so that GS thinks it is registered.

GS is a very powerful sampler in terms of the sheer number and size of the samples that can be loaded. It is pretty much for playing back samples as they were recorded so you're not going to be able to do some of the things you could do with an E4XT and z-plane filters. If you want to play back a great piano or load in a high quality horn section with all of the nuances of horn playing (ie blats, falls, shakes, swells, etc.) and don't want to own a rack full of samplers, GS is a great product and quite stable.

In regards to the mp3's, have you listened to them? Most of them are encoded at least at 128 kB. That should give usable results in order to hear how good/lousy Gigasampler sounds. Sure it ain't wav samples but it's not as bad as you say it is.

Furthermore, if it were such a lousy product and the mp3's were not created with GS, you'd have a lot of Nemesys customers smearing their name all over the internet.

Go to www.nemesysmusic.com/news/endorse.html and see what some of the pros are saying about the product for your confirmation about whether GS sucks or not. While not all of the names are familiar to me there are some which are reputable.

I suggest you go to a Nemesys dealer and check it out. It really is a great program. Not for everyone and typically requires its own computer, but particularly for people who do orchestral scoring and whatnot, it is excellent.

fv

There are many interesting points made by all of you. I must first ask why a module? In working with many film composers and doing a few "B" films myself, I have learned that what creates
realism in orchestration is "expression".
Why do you think static samples require
5 CD ROMs? It's because each expression requires a new sample.
If you have a very powerful synth engine that can add expression to high quality samples in "real time" with ribbons and breath controllers and after touch and release control , etc. (I think I made the point)., then you begin to be a "synthesist" rather than one who plays pretty sample from a keyboard. Therein lies the beauty and passion of traditional instruments.

Now racks are great and I suggest them when live performances demand large amounts of polyphony.

One such rack was not mentioned and it has the best dynamic range and 64 notes of polyphony expandable to 128.
This is the PC2R from Kurzweil. the list price is about $1,000.00 US. the Orchestra expansion board will be released very soon and the expression
for real time controllers is already built in.

I use a K2600SX (88 Key w/ sampler) for 99% of all I do. It has 88 real time controllers, It can resample it's self with
FX and has a built in sequencer.

So if I'm in the studio or on the road,
I can write and Play by resampling,
I can have unlimited polyphony and unlimited effects without losing dynamics or clipping because there is 256db of headroom.

My 2 cents. I have had all brands and endorsements from most. Kurzweil is the one product that consistently gets me work and a paycheck