Well, I've only had my Extended Library license since Friday night (and have spent most of the weekend fighting system integration problems, as reported in another thread), but I too was blown away by the saxes, which simply came along for the ride and contributed nothing to my decision to complete my Special Edition.
I normally use physical modeling for monophonic wind instruments (woodwinds and brass), but saxaphones have often eluded even physical modeling approaches. I own and play alto sax (and have at one point or another owned, rented, and/or played tenor and soprano sax), but when I work with sax sounds I tend to like a full section and so a sample library is the logical solution. Up until now, all have let me down.
The saxes in Vienna Special Edition are both realistic and expressive, and would lend themselves well to more formal big band jazz, I believe. Maybe not for be bop, chamber jazz, soloing, etc. But just the little bit of playing around that I have done today with the sax samples has left me gasping in disbelief that anyone could have done such a good job with such a notoriously difficult instrument to reproduce.
I normally use physical modeling for monophonic wind instruments (woodwinds and brass), but saxaphones have often eluded even physical modeling approaches. I own and play alto sax (and have at one point or another owned, rented, and/or played tenor and soprano sax), but when I work with sax sounds I tend to like a full section and so a sample library is the logical solution. Up until now, all have let me down.
The saxes in Vienna Special Edition are both realistic and expressive, and would lend themselves well to more formal big band jazz, I believe. Maybe not for be bop, chamber jazz, soloing, etc. But just the little bit of playing around that I have done today with the sax samples has left me gasping in disbelief that anyone could have done such a good job with such a notoriously difficult instrument to reproduce.
