Legion Series: 66 Tubas by 8Dio Review
With 66 Tubas 8Dio continues their Legion Series – a range of instruments dedicated to addressing distinct requirements when you are producing epic cinematic music.
8Dio has been very successful in the film score industry. Professional composers and producer use 8Dio libraries for their trailer, advertisement underscore, and film score.
The new brass virtual instrument 66 Tubas which is part of 8Dio’s Legion Series is for you when you need to reach for monumental brass and a substantial element added to their music. 8DIO send a review copy with no strings attached.
Installation
After the purchase, you receive the required codes from 8DIO to download the library to your hard drive. 8DIO offers a tool to transfer all needed files from the cloud to your local hard drive. After you downloaded the library, you do a batch resave in Kontakt. This library requires the full version of Kontakt 5.7 or later. This library is not compatible with free Kontakt Player. 66 Tubas need 9.1GB of Hard Drive Space
Sound
66 Tubas include standard articulations: Sustains, Short Notes, Arcs, Effects, Note-Bends and a large set of new articulations like Dynamic Waves, Tuning Clusters, BPM-based Ostinatos, Bridge FX.
This is the second instance of their legion series. I liked 66 Basses which is an original loud bottom end bass library for epic cinematic scoring. 66 Basses sound enormous, the sound of many of the included patches is big and grand. You can instantly write a big sounding piece (example below) or enhance your score.
Beside the conventual microphone positions, 8Dio included recordings from a binaural stereo microphone allows you to be in a spot where the conductor was located. The idea behind the binaural mic is moving the listener into the scene of the original performance. While using it, I did rarely hear a sound that reminded me of a synthetic sound, which was not expected. Other Microphone Positions are: Mix, Decca, Wide, Far, Trailer Mix, Spot 1 Independent Position, Spot 2 Independent Position, Spot 3, Independent Position, Spot 4 Independent Position, and Spot 5 Independent Position
I do prefer libraries like this one where you can dial in the room through additional mics that captured the sound generated in that location. Keep in mind playing this massive amount of Tubas is supposed to sound epic big and blow the audience away.
The included arc shine and not only since the release of Chamber Evolutions (by Ólafur Arnalds and published by SpitFire Audio). I am a big fan of libraries that support waves and moving sound. This library includes excellent sounding tuba waves.
User interface & Usability
Since the Century Brass and Strings libraries, 8Dio has found a new interface which works for me. The UI allows you to switch articulations fast, the simplified sequencer, effects and mixer pages are well designed. I am thrilled with the changes 8Dio made to the UI overall.
https://soundcloud.com/8dawn/sets/8dio-66-tuba
Rating: Four out of five stars
66 Tubas is notably unusual and unprecedented when it comes to brass libraries. Overall you can produce big sounding tubas timbres lines that are just monstrous, the included ARCs shine and make this library a special one. The library is for composers who are in need of some particular sounding brass sounds and works well with the existing 66 Basses also from 8Dio library.
