Reply To: What are the BEST/WORST sample library & plugin purchases you’ve made & why?

[Peter Woods]

My favorite sample libraries, my go-tos:

PIANO
– NI Noire
– Orange Tree Samples Evolution Rosewood
– 8Dio The 1928 Piano (yes, 8Dio gives this away free, but I love it)
– Emertone Walker 1955 Concert D Lite (I feel guilty because I love this library I bought for $10 and never upgraded, because I’m really happy with the lite version)
– EZKEYS Standard and Vintage Upright Pianos – I don’t see a lot of people mentioning Toontrack’s piano libraries when they list their favorite piano sample libraries, but these are my go tos for uprights, and I grew up with a baby grand piano, then an upright piano, and I love both for rock music.

ELECTRIC PIANO
Skybox Audio Hammer + Waves Wurly 145B – I am in love with the Wurly, as anyone who knows me is well aware. This developer did a fantastic job with this library. I love the Wurly 145B — although I never played the real thing (my mother owned a Wurly 200), this sounds beautiful to my ears.
Orange Tree Samples Famous E – If you love the sound of the Rhodes, this is a must. It’s like having the real thing with your controller.

GUITAR and BASS
– Everything from Orange Tree Samples Evolution lines [okay, I’ve consulted on the line, and a lot of my recommendations went into the Evolution guitar line, so it’s pretty much my dream guitar sample library.]

ACOUSTIC DRUMS
– Superior Drummer 3 – it’s fantastic, for me, pretty much the perfect drum plugin. The only thing I don’t love is the pricing.
– XLN Addictive Drums 2 – SD3 is my go to, but since version 2.5, I’ve been using this a lot, and it takes up a lot less resources than SD3, the pricing is much lower, and the company is far more customer-centric than Toontrack, which I haven’t found to be customer-centric at all. They did a short-time upgrade pricing for SD3 for SD2 owners and then pulled it away and forced us to buy at the same prices as new customers.

STRINGS
– Spitfire Abbey Road Iconic Strings 2 – Let me clear, I really don’t like the Spitfire player at all. It is far, far inferior to Kontakt. So that part of this library is really disappointing. But the samples themselves sound great. It is basically George Martin strings in a sample library. I waited for a library like this for decades, and the only disappointment is the player, not the samples or patches.

SYNTHS
– M-TRON PRO – My go-to for Tron samples, and I am, admittedly, obsessed with the Tron and the Chamberlin.
– Dave Kerzner put out a Kontakt library version of what became SampleTron more than a decade ago that I continue to use.
– Synthmaster 3 – Love it!

ORGAN
– IK B3X – I grew up taking piano, organ, and drum lessons. My mother was a music teacher and working musician. We didn’t own a B3 — I wish we did — but we owned a Leslie, and man, IK just nailed the B3 and Leslie with this. I love it!

TUNED PERCUSSION
– Sound Dust Dulcitone – Okay, Sound Dust has two Dulcitones and they both sound great. I own the 1900, but I know that I’d be very happy with either version.

ORCHESTRAL / BUNDLE
Musio 1 Perpetual License – I love this package so much. The sound of the samples is really just lovely and for my needs — as I don’t attempt to perform classical, orchestral, or anything too complex (between my tendinitis and 20+ years without practice due to tendinitis making that impossible, I don’t have the physical ability to play anything complex — it would literally be painful). Consequently, my use is limited to using these instruments for rock arrangements, and they’re perfect for my use. Considering the bang for the buck, the only thing that comes close is SoundPaint.

SoundPaint – Now, I’ve consulted to 8Dio (as well as more than 3 dozen other sample and plugin developers and MOST aren’t on this list, because I don’t shill for anyone, I am not an influencer, I’m a hobbyist musician). SoundPaint’s player has allowed me to learn to program sounds for the first time — that was before I started consulting to them. It’s pretty similar to how I feel about Musio 1 when it comes to great-sounding sample libraries that are affordably priced.   But SoundPaint’s sampler / plugin is leaps and bounds more sophisticated than Musio’s. It’s not even close. So that’s the big differentiator for me.

There are a ton of other developers’ libraries I love that I don’t have on this list. They include SonicCoture, SoundIron, Majetone… I’ll update this when I think of more, because I know there are at least two dozen sample developers I’ve long patronized who make libraries and sample-based plugins I love.

WORST
Fluffy Audio – Someone recently started a thread at KVR about issues with Fluffy Audio libraries and customer support never responding to their requests. That was what happened to me a few years ago and when I posted about it at VI-Control the developer lied and personally attacked me. It was off-the-rails craziness. One of his contractors private messaged me and told me that Paolo, the owner, has a reputation for bad behavior that people who know him are very familiar with. Avoid this developer at all costs. His libraries generally sound pretty good, but when they have issues — and they do — they don’t get fixed and the developer is not an ethical person. Cory Pellizari had told me that he had issues with two developers who released libraries with issues and didn’t resolve them — Impact Soundworks and Fluffy Audio.

Muze – Artificially bloated libraries. A complete waste of money no matter how cheap.

ARIA – Now, I actually didn’t purchase any ARIA libraries, but I have two friends, both industry professionals. They both told me that ARIA’s main string library was an unsuable mess in terms of the way the samples were recorded, the velocity layering, and programming. When I asked one if it was redeemable through Kontakt scripting improvements, he told me that the problems were far deeper than that. So, I’m sharing this as a PSA for our community, as these libraries often are sold very cheap and I’ve never seen a single post from a happy customer, only very unhappy ones.

LinkedMusicians Founder. Your friend who keeps the beat.

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