Best Orchestral Percussion Libraries 2021 Every band needs a rhythm section, just like every orchestra needs its percussion. Here we are going to take a look at some of the most popular orchestral percussion libraries you can use in your template. When we talk about orchestral percussion we are talking…
Best Orchestral Woodwind Libraries 2021
Now is the time to talk about woodwinds. Many modern composers nowadays tend to overlook woodwinds as an important part of the orchestra, which fills the gap between strings and brass. If you are a fan of John Williams, pay close attention to his Star Wars scores and you’ll see how important woodwinds are. We’ve looked around for some great woodwind sample libraries that will make a great addition to your sample collection.
Orchestral Tools – Berlin Woodwinds Revive
You can’t expect anything short of amazing by Orchestral Tools and many composers swear by Berlin Woodwinds. This is the library that started the Berlin Series for Orchestral tools back in 2012 and it still holds up even today especially with the latest updated version. This one runs in the full version of Kontakt but it would be interesting to see it released in SINE player edition as well.
Featuring almost every instrument from the woodwind section, this collection will surely satisfy all your needs when it comes to woodwind instruments. What’s great about this library is that you actually get two libraries in one. The new revive version contains newly recorded instruments and the legacy version includes the classic collection from 2012.
This is a great library to build divisi section of woodwinds because it features 1st, 2nd and even up to a 3rd player. The adaptive legato system is breeze to work with, you just play and the scripting will deal with note transitions to make them as natural as possible. Agile Runs patches are great for creating fast woodwind runs and Trills Orchestrator is a great tool for creating natural sounding trills.
If you want to own this woodwind powerhouse of a library you’ll have to invest 649 Euros for its 70 GBs of samples. But it’s worth every penny!
Vienna Symphonic Library – Synchron-ized Woodwinds
VSL’s Woodwinds are still going strong even though some may consider them to be outdated. But many composers still use them due to their very natural and clean sound. Now they have been completely revamped and updated to work in VSL’s flagship Synchron Player and the samples have been re-edited and mixed with impulse responses from VSL’s HQ at Synchron Stage. They sounded great before but now they sound even better due to these new IR’s and proper orchestral positioning. The sheer amount of articulations available will blow your mind and the guys from VSL are well-known for their plethora of articulations featured in their products.
As with the Berlin Woodwinds you get 12 solo instruments which enable you to build your own divisi sections and many composers love using these instruments for soloist passages in their compositions. The Vienna oboes are simply legendary. This library comes in at 27.5 GBs and at a price of 345 Euros which is a pretty fair price. Still, if that is too much for you there is a great substitute in the form of Woodwind Ensembles from Big Bang Orchestra collection called Orion at a price of 195 Euros.
Spitfire Audio – Symphonic Woodwinds
You can’t have a “best of” list without Spitfire Audio and for a very good reason. Their symphonic series for Kontakt has always been one of the top three choices for professional composers out there who are looking for THAT cinematic sound of Air Lyndhurst hall. This library brings you the UK’s finest woodwind players to your orchestral sample collection.
You get all the traditional woodwind instruments with the traditional articulations as well as some additional instruments like alto and bass flutes, bass and contrabass clarinets, and many others. All of the instruments are sampled as solo and a2 section but you can blend them together to create a bigger a3 section for bigger sound. This library works best with the rest of the SSO libraries (strings and brass), but it blends pretty well with other sample libraries thanks to multiple mic positions that enable you to create your own custom mixes that will fit into your template.
This library comes in at a 71.3 GBs in size and at a price of $599.
Sonokinetic – Woodwinds Ensembles
This library is strangely overlooked by composers so we want to include it here as it really is an amazing collection of deeply sampled woodwind ensembles. Sonokinetic are highly respected developers of sampled instruments and this collection of woodwinds is not short of amazing.
Featuring flutes, clarinets, oboes and bassoons, this library comes with a huge amount of articulations for each section, all neatly organized in a very clean and intuitive user interface. Aside from that it does sound spectacular. We did notice that there are no English horns included in this collection for some reason.
Some of the features this library has to offer are 4 mic positions for each section, intuitive keyswitching that can be assignable and one thing that we love about it is the Poly Legato feature.
The library comes with 50 GBs of sampled content at a bargain price of 242 Euros.
