Dreamtonics has released a new flagship for music production: Instrument X, dedicated to the main orchestral instruments, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, violn, viola, violoncello and contrabass. Included also an alto and tenor sax.
I am deeply impressed by the capabilities of this product so far. It is liberating to no longer be solely dependent on sample libraries or current modeled instruments.
Without completely disparaging the latter, I believe it will likely take SWAM years to achieve this level of results, especially considering how little actual development has seemingly gone into their products. No matter how flexible SWAM instruments are, you can always hear the "synth" underneath, particularly in the lower registers of instruments like the viola and cello. Furthermore, the SWAM string sections are essentially unusable due to extremely high CPU usage and very poor results; as a rule, they simply sound strange.
Even with high-quality sample libraries (VSL, various Kontakt libraries), there is always an issue, particularly with solo instruments. As I mentioned here before, it is a massive chore to achieve a truly musical result where a natural, effortless performance is usually just not possible. There is always too much vibrato, too little vibrato, phasing issues during dynamic transitions, mediocre to poor legato connections—the list goes on. At times, it felt like a "Frankenstein moment," trying to forge all those samples into a convincing whole. It almost became a verb: "I’m Frankensteining a bit of Bach together."
Exceptions to purely sampled libraries, such as the VWinds series, have largely resolved this problem, but then you face another issue: the "shorts" are unfortunately not always optimal. For example, if you take Mozart's Clarinet Concerto: you might use VSL (preferably the Studio version) for all the short notes and VWinds for the longer ones.
Simply connecting two notes—a long legato transitioning into a shorter note (take the first movement of Bach’s Concerto for Oboe and Violin)—is impossible with many existing libraries. I cannot count how many times I’ve had to resort to using "longs" or even "détaché" for these kinds of motifs.
Returning to InstrumentX: it took some getting used to. It’s strange—like having a DAW within a DAW. Although many things work reasonably well, you often lose your primary DAW workflow, including all your custom shortcuts (even though InstrumentX has its own vocabulary for certain things!). I work extensively in Studio One and have built a completely custom workflow around it using specific macros. Naturally, none of that exists within InstrumentX.
But then the magic begins! So many pieces I’ve revisited here suddenly start feeling like a genuine musical experience without hours of "Frankensteining." I admit, these were mostly files I had already spent a lot of time on, so the MIDI data was already there. There are so many parameters you can utilize to keep molding the exact sound you want (vibrato, pitch, roughness, dynamics, and even left-hand position for strings). This means that it doesn't always result in a massive time saving—sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't—but the investment generally pays off.
There are complaints here and there about the tone, or even that the performances sound like a high-school student. I can only partially relate to this: if you don’t actually do anything with the available tools, there is a chance that the result indeed won’t be very enchanting. Some of the longer demos on the InstrumentX website definitely could have been better (personally, I wouldn’t have included the Schubert string quartet).
I notice a great deal of appreciation for what is possible on the VI forum, even among die-hard string or brass players. However, I haven't quite solved the issue of sections; it’s very difficult to make them sound less like defined soloists. I made some progress using sordino, but that’s not really how it should be done. For the time being—and there’s nothing wrong with this—I’ll have to make do with all the beautiful options in the sample library world. But wherever possible, I will certainly be using InstrumentX more often.
The price tag—well, it’s steep. But come on: how much do you sometimes have to pay for a single cello or violin library that, after a while, still doesn't quite hit the mark?
Below some sound examples. I'll dedicate a special post to these tracks asap.
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