The basic Cubase 4.0 package came with a rather large number of free virtual instruments and five synthesizers. The virtual instruments are part of a package that Steinberg calls their HALion One Collection which includes instruments from 18 different categories like Drum & Perc(ussion), Guitar Plucked, Keyboard, Piano, Strings, Woodwinds, Sound FX, etc. Each category offers a number of sample collections (each collection being mapped to the keyboard). As one would expect, some categories like the Accordion have only a few collections in them. But most have anywhere from around 40 to well over 100 sounds included. For example Drum & Perc contains over 70 sample collections. The grand total was over 800 separate collections! Some are preset variations rather than completely new sets, but still a large collection.

The sheer number of collections, and the wonderful quality of most of the included virtual instruments is actually staggering. We have spent hours going through them but after months have yet to scratch the surface. Would you ever need to buy more virtual instruments or synths? Depending on your needs, yes.

For example, while Cubase includes 28 collections and presets in the Piano category (plus more in the Organ and Keyboard ones), the best piano sounds are still not quite as good as those offered in other packages like Modartt’s Pianoteq. Similarly, should you need a violin, there are only two included in the package. Should you need more you would want to look into a package like Steinberg’s HALion Symphonic Orchestra which includes some of the most breathtaking sound samples we have heard.

STEINBERG’S FULL ORCHESTRATIONS

To give you an example of just how good most of Steinberg’s HALion Symphonic Orchestra (HSO, www.steinberg.net) samples are, we spent the afternoon listening to the very well regarded Brentano String Quartet perform live in Rockerfeller University’s intimate Caspary Auditorium—one of NYC’s most acoustically perfect venues. We then returned to the studio and played with the HALion Symphony’s Solo Violin (legato) and we were stunned. The virtual instrument sounded more real than the live concert did. As Michael put it, “it sounds like there is a violinist in the room with us”.

HSO comes with samplings for a full orchestra, full brass, percussion, strings, and woodwinds. An example of how thoroughly fleshed out the collection is, under the strings section they have violin, viola, cello, bass and ensemble collections. And in the violin subsection alone it includes over 500 sample collections to choose from. Yes, let me spell that out for you so you don’t think it a typo: over five-hundred. By comparison, the tuba section only offered about 40 options, so they vary, with a total of 1250 samples collections in the package.

Five-hundred violin collections is an insane number, but realize that half of them are part of an “ECO” set sampled at 16 bit instead of the full 24 bit. The ECO puts less demand on your computer system, though at a slight (but audible!) loss of quality.

Then both 16 and 24 bit sets are further divided into the style of play, legato, pizzicato, staccato, expressivo, tremolo, and others. And finally each of these is further divided into technical playback program options of Vel, Xfade, Xswitch, etc. Vel, which stands for Velocity based program is the one we used. This is a less sophisticated solution than the Xfade and Xswitch, but is one that more musicians are familiar with. We found the Vel family to have a nice punchy/direct sound, and the VelPB variant seemed to offer a decidedly warmer rendition, perhaps even more so for the woodwinds and brass.

Within a day of setup we were creating what amounted to full sounding orchestrations using anywhere from 7 to 15 tracks. We ran our tests using some of Michael’s original compositions arranged for a 33 piece orchestra. The idea was to see what was needed to make it sound like the live performance produced the year earlier.

How could 7-15 tracks sound like a 33 member orchestra? Well in some ways it did and in other it didn’t actually need to. For example, there are many instrument families that offer “Ensemble” collections which include multiple instruments playing at the same time. The obvious candidates for such treatment are the strings which offer everything from very intimate violin quartet sample sets to full-string ensembles which include the full string ensemble already in stereo position. Adding one of these sets is like adding a whole section of musicians. The only downside is that on their own some of these larger sets begin to sound a bit organ-like. The addition of a front solo instrument largely takes care of this issue.

Be warned, packages like Steinberg’s HSO occupy tremendous space on your hard drives: 27 GIGS! Yes, you read that right. So it is not uncommon for pro shops to have separate dedicated servers of hard drives to store all of their samples.

With a street price of about $500, HSO is a competitively priced orchestra package

PIANOTEQ

Modartt’s Pianoteq product (www.pianoteq.com, $279) came very highly recommended for us to look at. One of the first things that impressed us about Pianoteq was that it synthesizes its samples via software rather than relying on a huge library of sampled sounds. Well in truth, at first this fact probably had us thinking it would sound like many other synthetic sounding pianos, but we wanted to give it a try.

Because of its lack of library and thus small size, Pianoteq can be a downloaded purchase. So we were up and running with it very quickly. We were also quickly impressed. It did not sound like any synthesized piano we had ever heard, and was either on par with or a short step away from some of the best sampled collections available. But unlike pre-sampled collections, Pianoteq produces all of its sound in read time and allows a tremendous range of control of settings.

The manufacturer called what it does audio “modeling” of the sounds, rather than simply synthesizing them. By this they mean that the sound is a product of all of its parts interacting to produce the final sound. This is something pre-recorded libraries cannot do, and something a piano needs more than most.

Just how much affect those additional attributes add to the mix is hard to say, but we can tell you that the sounds were rather spectacular and the controls offered within the software were very empowering for the musician and producer. We can also tell you that the sounds we got out of this VST plugin were far superior to the piano sounds that came in Cubase’s collection and it is well worth the additional investment.