Fundamental British Orchestral Package
Spitfire Audio released BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA — the most fundamental orchestral package the sound specializing British music technology company has ever created.
Spitfire Audio partnering with BBC
Spitfire Audio working in partnership with BBC Studios, the British television production and distribution company that is the commercial arm of the oldest entertainment organization in the world, and in close collaboration with one of the world’s most renowned orchestras (to which it obviously owes its notable name) at one of the world’s most renowned recording venues (London’s legendary Maida Vale Studios) to realise a new standard in orchestral composition as a landmark library.
“To suddenly have all I need at my fingertips is a game-changer.” comments Christian Henson
Cutting to the creative core of what makes BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA so special is Spitfire Audio co-founder and composer Christian Henson. He has every right to be so musically moved since this is the most essential orchestral package the sound specializing — sample library-, virtual instruments, and other useful software-creating. Collaborating with the best composers, artists, and engineers in the world to build musical tools that sound great and are exciting to use. Clearly, Ivor Norvello Lifetime Achievement Award-winning British-Indian composer, musician, and producer Nitin Sawhney (Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle) concurs when stating, “Incredible and revolutionary; this is an epiphany for every composer with access to a computer — the stuff of childhood dreams for musicians.” As does Los Angeles-based, GRAMMY® Award-winning Canadian composer, musician, and producer Greg Wells (The Greatest Showman, Adele): “Exquisite, exquisite stuff; I’ve dreamt about being able to use technology like this.” Technology definitely doesn’t get greater or musically more exciting than BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, a new standard in orchestral composition.
Orchestral samples have become an essential component of modern scoring, and the range of libraries available is vast, what if a single product could become the universal starting point for a generation of composers? Clearly, this is the taxing compositional question that Spitfire Audio has successfully sought to address with BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA.
A Decade of Sampling Experience and publishing leading Orchestral Kontakt Libraries
On the face of it, Spitfire Audio has taken over a decade of sampling experience to bring this comprehensive orchestral library of epic proportions — comprising over 200 hours of recordings resulting in 1,000,000-plus samples, all available at anyone’s fingertips — to the likes of Nitin Sawhney and Greg Wells, which sound exactly as they would if its world-renowned BBC Symphonic Orchestra namesake was performing right there in the same room as any (computer-based) composer, top-tier or otherwise.
Orchestral Instrument
Spitfire Audio recorded 55 different instruments on world-class Millennia pre-amps, including groups and soloists, with 418 techniques, including 33 legatos, for each melodic instrument. It also includes a staggering 20 signals, including 11 microphone positions, two stereo mixes, a set of signals designed for use in Dolby Atmos mixing, plus five spill signals, for added realism and ultimate control. This is, indeed, the definitive orchestra, made accessible through cutting-edge technology, all in one perfectly-produced package.
With BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, Spitfire Audio has finally been able to capture what no other sample library has hitherto achieved — a family of astoundingly accomplished players that have shared the stage for thousands of hours, whose musical telepathy and the 90-year heritage of performances and recordings is a national and international treasure.
Recording Sessions
The BBC Symphony Orchestra to which BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA obviously owes its hallowed name has been expertly recorded by the talented and trusted team that is Spitfire Audio at home in London’s legendary Maida Vale studios, host to The Beatles, Hendrix, and Bowie as a complex of seven BBC sound studios sited in one of the BBC’s earliest premises, pre-dating Broadcasting House, and the centre of the BBC News operation during World War II, before being used to record thousands of classical music, popular music, and drama sessions for BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, and BBC Radio 6 Music from 1946 to the present. Musically, Maida Vale has also been home to the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 1934.
Not a Kontakt Library
85 years later, BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA is comfortably housed in Spitfire Audio’s award-winning standalone — AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible, NKS- ready — plug-in, developed primarily for composers, by composers. easy to use, intuitive, and inspiring. But BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA is so much more than a sample-based virtual instrument library alone — albeit an outstanding one like no other on earth, as Spitfire Audio admirably continues to work on new ways to encourage composers and music-makers to work together and share using BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA itself, learning from each other to gain more knowledge and help everyone improve their compositional skills for the better.
Spitfire Audio’s own plugin is constantly evolving with new features and optimizations that aren’t possible in Kontakt. They can do more in-depth sampling, and offer all 20 signal options without any risk of crashing. BBC Symphony Orchestra was originally 1.4TB, but we have compressed it to ~600GB in a lossless format, which compresses the data further than Kontakt sample files for perfect sample quality at smaller download sizes. Spitfire Audio also give you Global Memory Sharing, meaning you’ll only ever load one version of a sample in to RAM, and the modulators react much more quickly.
Availability and Pricing
BBC Symphony Orchestra is available to buy and download now. Order BBC Symphony Orchestra with our external SSD drive for instant playability.
Spitfire Audio recommends you buy the library on our 1TB External Solid State Drive, as the library is ~600GB. You can add this to your cart on the BBC Symphony Orchestra product page. The library will run directly from the external drive for instant playability, saving space on your internal hard drive. The library is also available on our standard external hard drive which you can add to your cart at checkout, but it can be slower to load given the size of the library.
BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA is available as an AAX-, AU-, VST2-, and VST3-compatible, NKS-ready plug-in that loads directly into a DAW(Digital Audio Workstation) for a time-limited introductory promo price of £679.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$749.00 USD/€749.00 EUR (inc. VAT) until November 7, 2019 — rising thereafter to an RRP (Recommended Retail Price) of £899.00 GBP (inc. VAT)/$899.00 USD/€899.00 EUR (inc. VAT) — from here: https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a-z/bbc-symphony-orchestra/
