Opinions on Symphony essentials/series??

What are your opinions on Symphony essentials/series?

Over at VI Control it's not getting a lot of love.
But i'm not a pro composer, and no matter what Ultimate includes so much other stuff I want, so it seems like a no brainer anyway. And then I could upgrade to CE later for series.
But I would like to get some good orchestral stuff first, so could always just upgrade komplete later.

Just thought I would hear some opinons on the symphony series here.
I value the opinion of the community over at VI Control, but thought it would be interresting to hear some opinions over here as well.

 

Well, in my opinion only tools blame their tools. And if some critiques come from one place I also can't help wonder how many people within that place are simply parroting others, something you see happening quite often.

I own both the essentials and symphony series and I plain out love 'm. Though in all fairness I don't have that much comparison material. I basically started out with the Ableton Orchestral Instrument Collection ("OIC") and eventually got my hands on Komplete Ultimate which got me access to the symphony essentials and then during an awesome Holliday season I upgraded to UC which got me the symphony series. I have looked around and demo'd some other sets, I also enhanced my orchestral setup with specific instruments and effects solely aimed for this and well, I'm perfectly happy.

The main thing one could hold against this series is that it takes time & effort ("practice") to learn how to play it, but that's not something that only applies here.

I also think it's an honest setup (but then again, I am a little biased towards NI and SoundIron) because the Essentials series doesn't really sound much different then the Symphony series. Personally I can't help wonder if this isn't something which also got some narrow minded people disappointed in the end, but that's just my opinion. Both are pretty much the same regarding quality yet the big difference lies in the amount of control you get over the individual sections. So it's not so much the sound but the control over that sound which makes the difference.

Honestly? It was the Symphony series which persuaded me to get Komplete UC and I'm still thrilled by the potential of it all. The Maschine controller is said to be a production system for "tracks and beats" yet here I am also using it as my main orchestral controller. It's not always ideal, sure, because it can be easier to do some things on my Push (so basically using a DAW) or just editing the MIDI manually, but man is it worth the experience.

In the mean time I've also had the chance to compare this series to some others and yah, I couldn't help but notice how many other suites heavily rely on specific effects to help boost their sound a bit more. So... the effects would be part of the suite itself and included with the (VST) instruments you play. Talk about unfair comparisons!

Sure, the Symphony series also has some "sound shapers" onboard within Kontakt, so settings where you can mix the channels ("instruments"), where you can apply effects like vibrato, check the envelope settings, etc. But for anything beyond that you're going to have to rely on your own sound environment again (DAW, Maschine, etc.) in order to help 'shape' the sound some more. And if there's one important thing I've learned over the years it's that audio effects from a different brand (so the same effect but from a different developer) can have some dramatically different effects on your score. Which is also something one needs to keep in mind when comparing orchestral suites yet which I think is often easily ignored and/or overlooked (but that's just my impression of course).

IMO this is an excellent series, and pretty much a steal within Komplete Ultimate or UC. Also considering that Komplete provides a ton of specific audio effects of its own, some of which can make a perfect combination with this series.