Two Amazing Freebies!

[DivoFST]

Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra
Its Orchestral and includes (Strings,Brass,Woodwinds,Percussion)
Downloadable Size:440MB Actual Size:501MB
Description given by them:
Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra is a free orchestral sample library. While not as advanced or ambitious in scope as commercial offerings, SSO contains all the basic building blocks for creating real virtual orchestrations. It's primarily aimed at beginners, but also more experienced composers looking for something lightweight and/or portable might find it useful.

Maestro Concert Grand by Mats Helgesson
Downloadable Size:337MB Actual Size:962MB
Description given by them:
The Maestro Concert Grand v2 is a big giga bank using 792 stereo samples of a concert piano, a Yamaha CF3, recorded with two Neumann KM84 microphones, disposed in X/Y, with 5 velocity layers, and weighs 932 MB ! The piano alone, without release samples, weighs 887 Mb and 440 samples. The release samples are 352 and weigh 45 MB. You can play with or without them.

These 2 are awesome and you guys should try them out, i think that this Piano is relatively unknown so it was the main reason i made this topic.
Have fun!

[Back-From-Purgatory]

At 2/14/13 08:29 PM, DivoFST wrote: Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra

You don't say...

The piano sounds pretty decent though.

[DivoFST]

At 2/14/13 08:33 PM, Back-From-Purgatory wrote:

At 2/14/13 08:29 PM, DivoFST wrote: Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra

You don't say...

The piano sounds pretty decent though.

I know that Sonatina is well known but its still worth having here....i made it mostly for the piano.

[deadlyfishes]

Some really awesome SF2 have silly licensing issues.

Do you know what the license on these are for commercial use?

[ErikMcClure]

Except this is in .gig format and I don't know anything that can use it.

[DivoFST]

At 2/14/13 08:58 PM, deadlyfishes wrote: Some really awesome SF2 have silly licensing issues.

Do you know what the license on these are for commercial use?

This readme comes with the file:
All samples are Copyright © Mats Helgesson, 2003.
All rights reserved.
You may not sell this sound set or any of the samples
provided with it. You may not modify and spread this
soundfont without the author´s written permission.
You are however allowed to send/give it for free to
any friends of yours, with this readme file included.
If you want to publish this soundfont, please contact
the author, Mats Helgesson, on the following e-mail
address: [e-mail]

For what i understand it is pretty regular.

[DivoFST]

At 2/14/13 09:04 PM, Blackhole12 wrote: Except this is in .gig format and I don't know anything that can use it.

I dindnt as well and spent about 2 hours around it xD
I downloaded 3 demo converters to make the GIG into SFZ im not sure which one worked to be honest but one did xD
Chicken Systems Translator 6 and Extreme Sample Converter 3 had issues i think.
Awave Studio confused me a bit but it ended up doing the Job turning the Gig into and SFZ.

[Ragamuffin]

At 2/14/13 11:03 PM, Elitistinen wrote:

At 2/14/13 09:04 PM, Blackhole12 wrote: Except this is in .gig format and I don't know anything that can use it.

Kontakt can open GIG and convert it to NKI.

Would someone please do that, and give me the NKI file?
Because my Sampler can Convert NKI to ALN, which is my ideal format.

[ErikMcClure]

Ok so after a LOT of wrangling I did manage to convert this to an sf2 file after splitting out its duplicate instruments and actually got it to load into FL Studio. It sounds SO BEAUTIFUL but I don't actually see how I could possibly use such a ridiculously huge sample in any real song without crashing my computer. I mean just loading that one soundfont is RAPING my poor computer as it struggles to breath under all the memory usage.

This could be made slightly more usable by stripping out the piano and super load forte-forte samples that no one ever uses, but I'm pretty sure the resulting soundfont would just flat out crash all the editors too. Someone can give it a shot, though: Maestro Concert Grand.7z

However, I noticed that the website mentioned Kontact 5 could play the gig file. The thing is, there's a free version of Kontact 5 called the Kontact 5 Player. While it wouldn't play the gig file directly, it did offer to convert it to a Kontact instrument, but it seemed to convert it in a way that made it try to crossfade between the samples, with disastrous results. Also it still counted itself as being in demo mode so it was pretty useless.

[DavidOrr]

At 2/14/13 11:03 PM, Elitistinen wrote:

At 2/14/13 09:04 PM, Blackhole12 wrote: Except this is in .gig format and I don't know anything that can use it.

Kontakt can open GIG and convert it to NKI.

Kontakt FTW!

From the sound of the demo, I'd say Sonatina is on par with GPO. The demo is adequately orchestrated to showcases each instrument family, but lacks a lot of expressive fine-tuning that could add a lot to the realism factor.

Personally, I see less value in the pianos. While the demos sound like direct midi imports without any tweaking (so real applications should be better), the change in velocity layers really jump out, plus the articulations are a bit mushy. Granted, it is free -- which is awesome -- but a lot of DAWs that I know of now have stock pianos that are roughly on par or exceed it. On the flipside, it does have a pretty full tone (many stock pianos sound really brittle) -- YMMV.

[DivoFST]

:At 2/15/13 12:26 AM, DavidOrr wrote:
:Personally, I see less value in the pianos. While the demos sound like direct midi imports without any tweaking (so real applications should be better), the change in velocity layers really jump out, plus the articulations are a bit mushy. Granted, it is free -- which is awesome -- but a lot of DAWs that I know of now have stock pianos that are roughly on par or exceed it. On the flipside, it does have a pretty full tone (many stock pianos sound really brittle) -- YMMV.

I actually never found any free piano that could be called a rival to Maestro Concert Grand...maybe i didn't try the right ones..
:WOW you were hired by Aeria??!? i used to play AVA all the time.. that's awesome!

[Ragamuffin]

At 2/15/13 12:55 PM, Elitistinen wrote: Um... Kontakt Player is free.

See:

However, I noticed that the website mentioned Kontact 5 could play the gig file. The thing is, there's a free version of Kontact 5 called the Kontact 5 Player. it seemed to convert it in a way that made it try to crossfade between the samples, with disastrous results. Also it still counted itself as being in demo mode so it was pretty useless.

I would assume that Kontakt 5 non-player would be way better at this.
And I don't think you can export libraries in Demo mode.

[ErikMcClure]

At 2/15/13 01:30 PM, ATTW7-Envy wrote: I would assume that Kontakt 5 non-player would be way better at this.

This is actually highly unlikely. If the player doesn't export it properly, the full version probably won't either, because the player doubles as a time-limited demo of Kontakt 5.

I DID convert it into a working soundfont but it's way too huge.

[SkyeWint]

At 2/15/13 02:21 PM, Blackhole12 wrote:

At 2/15/13 01:30 PM, ATTW7-Envy wrote: I would assume that Kontakt 5 non-player would be way better at this.

This is actually highly unlikely. If the player doesn't export it properly, the full version probably won't either, because the player doubles as a time-limited demo of Kontakt 5.

I DID convert it into a working soundfont but it's way too huge.

381MB? I haven't seen worse, but it's not like it'll kill anyone with a decent computer. For me at least, if I can run two instances of Omnisphere, four of Guitar Rig 5, FL Studio, Reason, Edirol, and a whole bunch of large .wav files all at once, this'll be easy.

[Ragamuffin]

At 2/15/13 02:33 PM, SkyeWintrest wrote: 381MB? I haven't seen worse, but it's not like it'll kill anyone with a decent computer. For me at least, if I can run two instances of Omnisphere, four of Guitar Rig 5, FL Studio, Reason, Edirol, and a whole bunch of large .wav files all at once, this'll be easy.

Maybe he meant for the soundfont format?
It's less than a gig, which is decent for a decent piano.
My multi-sampler converts SF2 to a more modern format anyhow.
It's done downloading, so I'll tell you how it works.

[ErikMcClure]

At 2/15/13 02:33 PM, SkyeWintrest wrote: 381MB? I haven't seen worse, but it's not like it'll kill anyone with a decent computer. For me at least, if I can run two instances of Omnisphere, four of Guitar Rig 5, FL Studio, Reason, Edirol, and a whole bunch of large .wav files all at once, this'll be easy.

No, its 381 MB compressed. its 900 MB uncompressed, which is substantially more absurd.

[SkyeWint]

At 2/15/13 02:52 PM, Blackhole12 wrote: No, its 381 MB compressed. its 900 MB uncompressed, which is substantially more absurd.

...oh. Well shit. That is, as you say, "substantially more absurd". I have the hard disk space, but I hope that it doesn't take up even close to as much RAM (doubt it). ...all the same though, it sounds awesome, so I'll probably use it at some point. That or the .gig.

[Ragamuffin]

At 2/15/13 05:43 PM, SkyeWintrest wrote: ...oh. Well shit. That is, as you say, "substantially more absurd". I have the hard disk space, but I hope that it doesn't take up even close to as much RAM (doubt it). ...all the same though, it sounds awesome, so I'll probably use it at some point. That or the .gig.

Yes. I've tested it. It takes 900mb of ram to use in my sampler instrument.
It loads surprisingly fast, though, and has very detailed articulations.

I just ran the MIDI for a popular Jazz tune through some different Pianos:

Compared to Fruity Loops default Piano, this is better hands down.
Compared to Ableton Live's Grand Piano LE, this is better, if you can afford the ram space.
Compared to Kontakt Alicia's Keys, it's not good enough sounding for how much memory it takes. Village wins, easily.
Compared to Ableton's Downtown 'Series Piano'... There's no competition. This is complete shit.

Considering that it's free, 6/10.

The winning Piano for reference:
https://www.ableton.com/en/packs/studio-grand-downtown/

[Ragamuffin]

At 2/15/13 06:15 PM, ATTW7-Envy wrote: Village wins, easily.

Kontakt*

[ErikMcClure]

I have found a solution to our problem of "These motherfucking samples are almost a gig holy shit this is huge".

Enter sforzando, a free SFZ player that actually streams the damn thing from disk instead of nuking your RAM. I converted the primary instrument from the .gig file to SFZ format and created 2 presets, the standard preset and a "sustain" version that makes all the release trails really long (because sforzando has no options whatsoever). Unzip this into wherever you keep all your samples, making sure the .sfz file is in the same folder as the Maestro Concert Grand folder (which contains all the .wav files). Then, simply install and load the sforzando plugin into your favorite DAW, and either import the file or just drag the SFZ file on to the VSTi window. Be sure you change the volume knob to -0 dB, it starts on -4 dB for some reason.

Maestro Concert Grand SFZ.7z

If you would like to change the release trail, simply create your own copy of the SFZ file and do ctrl-H replace on "ampeg_release=5", which is the release time in seconds.

[NikeTheSword]

At 2/14/13 09:10 PM, DivoFST wrote:

At 2/14/13 08:58 PM, deadlyfishes wrote: Some really awesome SF2 have silly licensing issues.

Do you know what the license on these are for commercial use?

This readme comes with the file:
All samples are Copyright Ã'© Mats Helgesson, 2003.
All rights reserved.

So can I use these in my composing or will it mess up copyrights etc?

total noobie in legal stuff & lingo

[DivoFST]

So can I use these in my composing or will it mess up copyrights etc?

Im pretty sure you can :)
I sent the Readme file that comes with Maestro Concert Piano, check it a few posts above to be sure if you want to use it but i dont see anything that indicates otherwise :)