The longer notes sustain beautifully, with associated dynamic control available via velocity or assignment of MIDI CC. The short notes offer a couple of round-robins, lending themselves far more to occasional stabs, rather than continued repetition. Given the lack of pricing for this library, you do get an awful lot in exchange for basically signing up to some regular newsletters from VSL. These extend from short and long notes, to marcato attacks, swells and runs.
Once product registration and download are out of the way, the 1.5GB of free sample data installs to reveal six free patches. In the case of Big Bang, this is fairly important as its main remit is to sound big and brash, but with dynamic reduction, the rasp of the brass decreases beautifully under control, to reveal a lush pad-like veneer, perfect for orchestral texture. Like other sample playback devices, it allows for simple setup and bespoke handling, offering the assignment of MIDI CC faders with a minimum effort, for perfect control of expression and timbral dynamics. But it’s with a hearty hark back to its initial instrumental calling that it has released the Big Bang Orchestra, which brings us an epic sounding palette – albeit with limited credentials – and with one major difference: it’s entirely free! Vastly, hugely, mind-boggling big!īig Bang Orchestra is designed to run in VSL’s own Syncron player, which offers an impressive degree of control. Since then, VSL has continued to inspire and develop, offering far more than just orchestral instrumentation.
Some years ago, it changed the world of orchestral sample libraries with its Orchestral Cube package, which tantalisingly offered composers and producers an entire orchestra, at a data size that allowed orchestral samples to finally sound like the real McCoy – at least for the most part.