Hi Kingsley,

Thanks for your interest in our products!

With your list of instruments that you'll need, I'd rather go for one of our Vienna Special Edition Volumes, since they're our entry-level products that also have a smaller price tag. Here's a list of which instruments are included in which Special Edition Volume.

With the instruments you listed I would probably go for the Special Edition Volume 1 (€310), Volume 3 (€365) and add the Fanfare Trumpets Standard Library as a Single Instrument (€95), as well as the Vienna Ensemble PRO 5 (€235, not part of any sample bundle) and the ViennaKey (€24). With shipping, the total would then be just a little over one thousand Euros, €1.062 to be exact.
If you want to get more Special Edition Volumes I'd check out our specially priced Special Edition bundles.

Hope that helps!

Best,

Stefan

If you do eventually decide to purchase full libraries, if at all possible, try to get both the standard and the extended portions.  The additional articulations of the extended portion can be most helpful when seeking to achieve more realistic results.  When just starting out, the SE libraries are a good option, though most users do eventually seem to migrate to the full collections.

 Noldar I agree with you, but what if budget is a question? You can't do anything about that? That is why I dislike the SE so much. I think the best way instead of migrating for full collections. Single Instruments, collecting one by one, slow process but effective.

Honestly, I do not quite understand, how Stefan comes from "your list of instruments that you'll need" to the SE suggestion. You mention Solo Strings, Harp and the Fanfare Trumpets, to me, this seems to be very specific.

When I understand you right, you are happy with the overall sound of your EW lib, so for the orchestral body you are willing to continue to use it. Just for some solo instruments you want to move to VSL, right?

So why should you invest in the SE lib, which gives you many instruments, but only some basic articulations? Compare the sample content of the solo strings collection to the portion of solo strings that are included in the SE and you might get an idea of what i mean. 

I totally second the Idea of buying single instruments, alas, with solo strings this is not possible. But, as you probably noticed, until the end of the month you get a free single instrument for every instrument collection you buy. Did you see, that the Harps collection consists of actually 2 Harps? Do you really need both of them? Each one is available as single instrument as well.

So considering the current free single instrument offer, I would calculate as this:

Solo Strings Bundle: 490EUR - this counts as 2 collections, so you get 2 single instruments std. lib, or 1 single instrument Full lib (or you buy the std. lib and get the ext. lib free - whatever is cheaper)

Harp I: 80EUR

VE PRO: 235EUR

Key + Shipping: 57

TOTAL: 862EUR

Then you choose Harp I ext. lib. and Fanfare Trumpets Std. lib. as your free single instruments (saves you 190EUR)

If you like you can upgrade the Fanfare Tpts to Full by buying the ext. libr. for 75EUR afterwards, so for 937EUR you would have more than you planned to buy, and still got 585EUR left - considering your sum 1522 from the 1st post. So you even could get the ext. lib for the solo strings for another 490EUR - and still be under your original amount.

 EDIT: I overlooked that you also hat percussion complete in your list. You could, of course, have a look at the sample contents of Special Edition Vol. 1 - Percussion and more (55EUR). If you really need the big collection, good thing is, this also counts as 2 collections, so in total you would get 4 single instruments, sou you could get both Harp I and Fanfare Trumpets for free for a total sum of 1272EUR

Sorry to hear that you ran into a notorious "feature" of our forum engine, which always chooses the most basic settings as the default values.

Please open your User Profile and apply the following changes:

In general, Special Edition and Special Edition + give you a lot.  You may not need it all now, but it is way less expensive that buying individual things and adding on.  But, of course, it all depends on your need.

For the record, I have SE and SE+ from Vienna, plus Dimension Strings.  (When I bought SE and SE+ things were packaged a little differently, but the same principle applies.)  I also have Hollywood Strings Diamond from EastWest but I don't use it much.

Hi Kingsley,

I think skiping over the SE and going straight into the full libraries is the way to go. If you were new to classical midi instruments and on a much tighter budget then SE would be a good place to start.

I'll just add that once you get the Solo Strings, or which ever libaries you decided to get first, you should check out the Vienna Suite effects bundle. You can demo it for free. What really sets it apart, from say Waves products, is besides being really good effects, the compressor has presets for EVERY VSL instrument. It is amazing how the compressor actually makes the instruments "pop out" of my speakers and sound like actual performes are playing in front of me. And, to get that sound all you have to do is adjust the threshold.

MIR is worth looking into too. Once you get all of the sounds you want, you might want to try it out and possibly pick it up down the road.

Michael