Miroslav Philharmonik from IK Multimedia

[Richie Witch]

Got the e-mail this morning from IK Multimedia telling me that they put Total Studio 3 on sale. I looked through the list of features, and nothing particularly caught my eye (since I already own several of their plugins) until I saw that Miroslav Philharmonik is included, at a price lower than buying this feature by itself.

I don't write classical music or soundtracks, but I do like to include classical instruments in my tracks. So my question is--has anyone worked with this "workstation"? Sound quality of the samples? If I wanted to add timpani to a track, is it easy to add a single instrument and are there enough articulations included to create something realistic?

Inquiring minds want to know...

[kitekrazy]

The only downside to this offer is the virtual instruments are 32 bit if you are running a 64 bit DAW. Miroslav is still a great library. You would need Sampletank 3 to run 64 bit.

[Schmidi]

Miroslav is decent, although I've had mixed luck with IK plugin stability in Live (sample tank 3 works pretty well though)

One thing to consider: if you own Live Suite, there is a large, free orchestral pack available through Ableton. It's not great, but if you just want some classical instruments it might do the trick.

[timothyallan]

It works great JBridged in 64 bit Live.

[Richie Witch]

Thanks for the responses!

I'm running Win 7, 32 bit, and Live Standard (with Sampler added). So 64-bit isn't an issue but I don't have the free Ableton orchestral pack.

I find Ableton's packs to be fairly decent, although a bit behind Kontact (which alas, I only have the player for). I'm not much of a fan of SampleTank, which seems to me to be slightly behind the free Ableton packs in sound quality, but I hoped maybe this pack would be better.

My most immediate need is a better sample of timpani for the ending phrase of a New Age piece. It has a timpani roll followed by several hits, with harp runs and swelling strings, brass, and synths. I've chopped up some free timpani sample I found on the web, but when the volume is turned up, you can hear this vague pumping sound where the drums have been stitched together to create the roll. And that bugs me. If I had a really good sample, I'd add some flourishes to the middle of the song as well.

The entire song has been months in the making and is only missing one last Native American flute solo and a proper sounding timpani.

This isn't my usual style of music, so I'm trying not to spend a hundreds of dollars just to get this song completed.

Maybe I'll take a look at that Ableton pack and see what they're charging for it.

If you think of anything else, let me know.