How do you setup your orchestra?

Percivale

I always feel that Orchestral music require many voices. Even sampled voices will sound good. A collision of various instruments so my tendency is to use a VST.

anzbert

You could use physical modelling VSTs instead, which require a lot less sample loading and RAM. I think NI only has Prism. But there are a lot of others out there.

What I found useful to make wind and string instruments more realistic is a breath controller. I built one with a pressure sensor and an Arduino. But there are commercial ones out there. It's surprisingly intuitive.

vatsalmandaliya24

Hello,

I usually use the Orchestral Snapshots of the Native Instruments Session Strings Pro 2. I use Basses and Chellos for Stecato / Spicato Sections and Violins for Legato Sections. I've the Komplete 14 Ultimate and i got allmost everything for the genres i'm working for. I use that on my Macbook Pro 13inch 2020.

vatsalmandaliya24

BTW, i forgot to tell, I usually use my Komplete 14 Ultimate's Libraries on an external SSD because my Macbook Pro has only 8gb RAM and 256gb of SSD!

malkhouly

Looking forward to it

psyh0x

thanks good luck!

Fredz

I hope my new Mac Studio M2 Max woth 96gb ram will do the most of the work :) Also using Samsung T9 fast SSDs.

Thanks, good luck everyone!

Nayah9

Even the most extensive orchestral template won't reach 64GB, so that's how much RAM I recommend.

Of course, use only NVMe SSDs if you can and at minimum use SATA SSDs. Do NOT use HDDs for anything in your system. Just don't. I mean it. DON'T!

If your system still struggles with opening/running your project, then you need a CPU upgrade. For serious music production tasks, I recommend a modern CPU with a minimum of 20 threads.

That's it, you should be all set!

Chrisland

Pan and reverb

Zemmo

Mac pro 5.1,nvme 2tb,128gb ram,komplete kontrol,maschine mikro,audio 2,ultimate 14….winner…..

Milos

I started setting up any kind of mix (including orchestra) by simply combining panning, reverb, and mid/side settings.

Here is how I do it:

For background instruments and sounds, I would increase the side volume and decrease the mid volume, and I would use a bit more reverb and panning for them to make more space for more upfront-y instruments.

For main instruments (piano, solo violin or solo flute etc.) I would either balance the mid/side volume equally or simply increase the mid volume and decrease the side volume, depends on the frequency and the color of the main instrument.

Of course, I would pan these more important and once again, upfront-y instruments, but not as much...

For percussive instruments, I would practicaly delete the side volume and completly increase the mid volume, to grab attention.

For panning and reverb-ing the percussion, it depends...just like for the main instruments.

stancualbertstefan

Where for the big surprise reveal

Bats8043

Im facing the same issue

owdez

Offloading some of the processing to a networked PC can indeed be a good idea to ease the load on your main machine. Setting up a dedicated machine, like a Mac Mini, and utilizing OSC (Open Sound Control) for communication between the machines can be a stable solution. Make sure both machines are connected via a stable network and consider optimizing your template project by freezing tracks or using track presets to reduce loading times in Live.

StianDH

You should purge all samples from every instance of Kontakt in your template. That way the samples are not loaded into your project until you actually need them.