Which library is the best for composing?

Hmmm,
I have purchased MANY, many, orchestral sample libraries.
Unfortunately, I NEVER bothered to actually LEARN how to play idiomatically, I never bothered to even try 'key switching', stacking, etc.
I ended up making a TON of 'well, this sounds like a demo song'.
However, over the past year and 1/2, I STOPPED buying new libraries and took on the task of LEARNING the limits, and details of all of the sample libraries I bought.
I discovered a simple fact. Samples are great.
However, learning the ins and outs of even a few properly done sample libraries is very much like learning the ins and outs of a physical instruments.
It takes time and practice to understand 'sample libraries' and get GUD with them.
I guess, my point is pretty simple. There is no 'BEST' sample library for composing.
It all boils down to the musician that is MAKING the music and how well you understand your instruments.
Kinda funny how that is the core concept behinds 'being good'.

You remind me of Jim Carrey. Thanks for the review.

You definitely need more space. 😄

If you could only buy one library, which would it be? I just bought Spitfire Choir and Nexus but I feel the need for more orchestra sounds. Spitfire Core is one option, but would it be the best one?

Berlin series and CineSamples have great sound but less than ideal tech. The absolute best orchestral series I found are Cinematic Studio and Spitfire Symphonic. There's also the Spitfire Studio series, which is more complete, but the sound is extremely dry and thin and you need to fix that, which in practice is really problematic. So the Symphonic series is really much better I think, gorgeous sound right out of the box that you can't fake with EQs and reverbs and such. The best probably, you get a wide variety of everything, best sound design, best sound balance, best tech. Only a bit of oddity about some of their patches, like no proper staccato strings, uneven oboes.. Cinematic Studio on the other hand treats things a bit differently and, in a sense, is even better. There are no individual patches sadly, and the muted sounds are designed rather than recorded. But I found their instruments to be the most flexible, best balance, most versatile. I found no weird quirks, no uneveness, no odd surprises, no lacking functionality, like in all of the other libraries, including all the Spitfire series I've tried. But.. while they have solid, really nice, clean sound, they don't have the best sound. It's the Spitfire Symphonic strings that have the best strings sound for instance, absolutely gorgeous, natural, symphonic strings. I think it's really impossible to find just one library that is perfect though. And mixing instruments from different libraries is definitely doable, and done a lot, but can be problematic, depending on what you need to achieve. Using only Spitfire Symphonic for example gives you a unified recording space and a carefully balanced orchestra that is designed to be natural. If you add Cinematic Studio woodwinds to Spitfire Symphonic strings tho, you might have a better orchestra, but you have to rebalance the instruments, and you pair up clean studio recordings with lush hall recordings.. you have to redesign the sound, so on.

Hahaha bro that was subjective

Complaining about Steinberg Libraries, do you mean the iconica? Maybe I have to listen again to this one. It came out 2018. To me it sounds good.
About Pianos... I'm Pianist. I didn't like the Garritan, it's not a Steinway D. I always play, believe it or not, the cheap Native Instruments The Grandure. Live and in recordings. It has the brighter tone in higher velocity range. That's so important.
This is exactly what I'm missing with Noir. I bet, if the owner of this Piano, Nils Fram, would have finally checked out the result of this plugin, he would not have allowed to bring it on the market. It is not expressive enough. I would not go to a live gig with this under my fingers.
It's really hard to find out, if a library does work well just by listening to demos. It has also always been very difficult to judging a Software Piano just by listening to demos. So maybe it's a great idea to rent a library for a month, and if you like it, by it, or if not delete it. Every company shoul offer this model.

Great job, love it!

Thanks for such a comprehensive review of top instrument libraries. It’s comforting for me to know there are great alternatives to Spitfire. I’m transgender, and Spitfire’s Christian Henson has recently shown a transphobic side, and I’d prefer not to buy from them unless they address this. So far, they haven’t, from what I can see. I have quite a lot invested in their libraries, but it’s good to know there are good alternatives.

What and where did you get that computer keyboard????

Ok.After watching your whole video very carefully....1st)...You forgot to mention Impact Soundworks,Red Room Audio,Orange Tree samples,Ample Sound and Strezov sampling,Sonicouture and Sonuscore....2nd)... Also 8dio and Soundiron are under the same company,which was called Tonehammer in the past....3rd)...The best acoustic guitars out there is made by Orange Tree samples,and the best electric is by Vi2....4th)...Steinberg's Iconica Orchestra is a colaboration with Orchestral Tools,and thats why it sounds extremely powerfull,and Steinberg does make very high quality sample libraries especially last decade...5th)..In free staff you should mention Project sam free orchestra,Sonuscore free orchestra,Red room audio free orchestra,which are outstanding sounds for free staf,which if you combine with LABS,pianobook and the rest of HQ free libraries...6th)...There is no other company that is worth mentioning.Dont tell me Sample Logic is worthing.Last thing i would like to mention is the Eduardo Tarilonte's ethnic libraries,the best out there.Thats all :-)

8dio's webdesign makes me think it's a scam or at least bad quality. So glad to see this review.

Sooo intelligent! Brilliant job, Sam! Bravo!

Hey, which choir library is your favorite?
Is there any choir libraries like Hollywood Choirs Diamond? I'm aware of metropolis ark choirs,
but these are made for more intense projects. I looking for the one that can do it all kind.

Thank you

Should just note since this video was created, Symphobia 1 and 2 got a MAJOR update, for free to existing users as well. East West also took a great leap forward with their OPUS player. Also should note that Audio Imperia's Nucleus is actually a very good orchestral library. Jaeger is great for trailers, but since it is focused on that it lacks woodwinds. VSL and especially the Synchron Series and their BigBang series are amazing orchestral libraries with perhaps the best player on the market. RedRoomAudio is another company that mainly focuses on phrase based similarly to Sonokinetic. Also check out Sample Modeling, and Audio Modeling SWAM who both have released some great modeled (rather than sampled) orchestral libraries. In a similar vein, Aaron Venture does sort of a hybrid with his Infinite series of really great sounding orchestral libraries. Lastly, UJAM is a pretty neat company delivering orchestral, piano and more contemporary instruments but somewhat of a hybrid between something like Sonokinetic and a more traditional library. Very playable and quick to get results, plus they had access to some of Hans Zimmers custom sound libraries that they sampled from, so their sound is generally very good.

Very nice comparison thanks. A comment that is not here or there but for me a very big factor is also the lib size. I am not a professional I do this as a hobby (but only recently have started looking into orchestral music) and I can understand if you are serious about it that you would want the wav file lossless format. I honestly would buy some libs in an instant if they gave me the option to download, instead of 1TB, the same files in AAC or even MP3 320kbps for 100GB or however big they will be (and leave the wav option for anyone that wants it ofc). The vast majority of listeners will not be able to differentiate wav vs mp3 320 especially in the mix imho (i for sure cannot) and a bigger factor will be your playing skills, your mix (even the listeners' speakers which honestly most of the time are below average). Even if someone disagrees, which is fine ofc, I am only arguing that it would be nice to also have this option so you can use w.e suits you best. As it is a new library almost feels like it also requires a new ssd if you have not planned ahead for it. Anyway rant over. Cheers.

How does Vir2 compare to AmpleSound or Ilya Efimov?

Bravo! Great review!

The Steinberg comment made me laugh. So true. Great DAW terrible orchestral Instruments. That said, "The Grand II" is great for a dense mix where you need the piano to cut through.

Hallo Sam, I´d choosen The sonuscore "the Orchestra" I´m a little diappointed, that you dosn´t mentioned it. Is there something wrong with it your oppinion? Ralf

Do you know "Sonuscore-The Orchestra"? I have this library but i found nothing about this.

kontakt it's not a sampler it's a player. The application cannot sample. The application cannot record anything

I know Vienna Symphonic Library was mentioned, and while it's not a library of samples, I'd also like to suggest SWAM's line of physical modeling VSTs. specifically, their woodwinds, strings, and some of their brass.

what is your most sincere reason for not including Vienna Symphonic Library?

This review is so valuable. Your ear is clearly attuned to subtleties that other composers may not recognize, or in fact be unable to perceive. I think that, as in any field, the practitioner that is able to recognize that which is subtly different than what is natural, is decidedly uncommon. That being the case, I would suspect that more than a few professionals who develop these libraries do not possess such a talent themselves.

I mostly use NI Komplete stuff, Spitfire BBCSO Core and EW Opus Orchestra. I use Cubase Pro 11 as my DAW. I would to know how you mix and produce orchestral work. I used to do it with Cubase mixer and plugins, etc. However, with multi mics setup and all the midi controls of more recent libraries Such as EW Opus and BBCSO, I wonder if it would be preferable to « mix » within the libraries with midi CC’s and multi microphones. That would be closer to what a conductor would do with an orchestra. Maybe an interesting subject for a future video.

I do like the Bohemian Violin but decided to go with the Emotional violin and cello it sounds more versatile when mixed with other sounds. All are great though

Great video.

Hey Sam, great rundown. Your take on 8Dio was bang on: the older stuff is harsh and stiff and requires way too much programming to compete with modern libs and the old orchestral should probably be retired or put out as free bait. However the newer stuff is gorgeous and Troels is incredibly generous with the sales. Yesterday (Nov 21, 2021), I sniped the combo I had been waiting for: Century Brass 2.0 + Century Brass Lite + Century Solo Brass, + Warm Clarinet for $209 US and they gave me Insolidus Choir for free! FOR FREE! All that for about $200! That choir is astonishing and the both brass libraries are soft, tuneful, practical, lyrical and sweet. And very very real sounding. Don’t get it for massive trailer projects, get it for everything else. I’m still shaking my head at this sale. Love you Troels!

merci magnifique

I can't tell the difference between Spitfire's Albion One and BBC SO? Is one better in terms of performance or is one older than the other?

Thank you

I think you missed a big player in the market: VSL Vienna Symphonic Library. They have some really good sounding libraries out there. I like your videos, in this one you show me some companies I do not know until now. I will check them out. Thanks for this.

Great review, thank you. If you are interested in a good piano please check out Pianoteq by Modartt. It's my favorite and it doesn't use samples. Hope you will find it interesting.

No LASS ?

A library producer that is frequently overlooked in broad surveys like this is Chris Hein. I have Hollywood Orchestra, BBCSO (and several other Spitfire Libraries), Cinematic Studio Strings and Brass, a few 8Dio items, and a smattering of others, but often find myself borrowing from the Chris Hein Brass and Woodwinds for solo passages. Do you have any experience with them and what do you think? Really enjoy your presentations.

A lot of precious informations , many thanks

I'm kinda new to Orchestration and absolutely happy with my libraries: Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra Core and Albion III, Native Instruments Session Strings Pro 2 and East West's Hollywood Choir (but I hate the "Play" Software of EastWest :D ).
I've also got Audio Imperia's Nucleus (lite) and you are right. It's not that good.
Love your channel. You deserve much more subscribers.
Greetings from Germany!

Thanks from France !

Love your videos man, thanks a lot, they have helped me so much!

I'm using EastWest Composer Cloud on a 10 year old standard hard disc drive and I confirm I'm having lost of playback issues. Just with 4 instruments loaded (Violin 1, Violin 2, Cello and BaSS), when I was playing back my composition (which was only 4 bars at that point) some of the sounds would suddenly just drop out during playback, which had the sound of an old electronic keyboard when it only had a small number of polyphony, so it seemed like to play the next notes, it had to drop some of those played already.

I'm waiting now for the Black Friday sales but looking at buying a 2TB NVMe SSD to put in an external enclosure and connect via Thunderbolt. I would swap this with my internal SSD (which is 512GB) however my laptop is only 6 months old and I don't want to invalidate the warranty so the external option seems a good one, plus if I expand my system in the future it seems a good idea to have my sample library on something that is portable which will make transferring to another system much easier.

As I had chosen the monthly subscription from EastWest, I chose to download the instruments. The downloads were really slow from EastWest Sounds Installer. I have a 80Mbps broadband connection and I even tried a 500Mbps 5G WiFi connection but I didn't reach much beyond a download speed of 10MB/s (80Mpbs). So that equates to about 36GB per hour and I picked around 1.5TB worth of instruments to download so that is about 41 Hours of constant downloading, which I had to mostly spread over a few nights so that my network speed wasn't to badly impacted when other family members wanted stream movies etc. I did contact EastWest support and they were going to raise the issue with their technical team.


The EastWest Composer Cloud subscription is a really good one for someone like me who is new to this because it allows for a lot of experimenting with different instruments without the initial outlay of a lot of money.

Thanks for the honest views and opinions Sam, very useful.

Very good and honest review.

Loved the guitar