Ik Multimedia Miroslav Philharmonik St2 Reg User Presets

Product Overview:

Features:

A powerful integrated Orchestral Workstation combining the legendary Miroslav Orchestra and Choir sample collection masterpieces with a dedicated plug-in instrument. Miroslav Vitous — composer, virtuoso bassist and founding member of Weather Report — can probably be credited with inventing the idea of a sample library that covers every instrument in the orchestra. Wanting just such a collection for his own use, he found nothing that would do the trick, and in 1993, started doing the job himself. State-of-the-art recording and digitising technology was used: initial sessions were recorded at 20-bit, with 24-bit technology used later in the process. The players of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra — solo or ensemble, playing with various articulations and expressions — were recorded on stage in Prague's Dvorak Symphony Hall, sitting where they would normally appear in most orchestral situations. The resulting stereo samples required no further panning: instrumental groups added to a mix instantly fit, naturally filling up the stereo field, with the concert hall's ambience adding to the illusion. Despite being huge and expensive, the collection became the mainstay of many media composers, and was eventually released for Roland and Emu samplers as well as the original Akai. Rather later, it was also converted to Giga format for Nemesys/Tascam's software sampler. Now, however, the trend is for sample libraries to be built into plug-ins, and so the next step on the road for the Miroslav Vitous library is Miroslav Philharmonik, driven by the same plug-in technology that also powers IK Multimedia's Sampletank 2 and Sonik Synth 2. Remake, Remodel Sonik Synth 2 was created in partnership with Sonic Reality, and it's SR who have developed Miroslav Philharmonik from the original sessions, including material not previously released. The resulting plug-in crams 7GB of sample data, totalling more than 1300 instruments, onto two DVDs (the plug-in installer is on its own CD). And the best part? The plug-in costs a fraction of the price of the original library. Miroslav Philharmonik running in Cakewalk Sonar 5 Producer Edition. Note the keyboard display showing off key split zones. Strings, brass and woodwind instruments form the core of the collection, along with a full range of orchestral percussion (tuned and untuned), male and female choirs, pipe organ, Steinway piano, concert harp, classical guitar and harpsichord and even ambient noises — page rustling, musician chat and tuning up noodles. With Philharmonik, you can simulate the complete orchestral experience. The Philharmonik box contains everything, including a full printed manual and a poster illustrating instrumental ranges and where on the stage of the Dvorak Hall the musicians were placed during recording. One document that isn't provided in print is the detailed sound manual. But this isn't surprising: comparing IKM's pre-release publicity (and even the user manual) with the final product seems to indicate that Philharmonik is equipped with a lot more instruments than were initially planned. The timely PDF on the installation CD reflects this, although it doesn't list every patch: you're provided with the data — stylistic abbreviations and Instrument types — to work out what a given patch will sound like. The box's one surprise, a USB copy-protection key, is a first for IKM; their other software will follow in due course. Hardware dongles are a real bummer, but I appreciate software developers' need to combat piracy. At least the chosen Syncrosoft system is used by several other software houses, most notably Steinberg, and authorisations from various programs can be consolidated onto one key. Doing so is a bit of a faff but at least you only have to do it once, and at least it means you can install the software on more than one machine (though you can only work on one copy at a time!). Installation and authorisation also seemed to be a bit convoluted, but again needs to be done once only. It wasn't entirely clear from the documentation what the user is meant to do with the sound library: sticking the sound DVDs in your drive reveals separate installers. There's no further help or info, such as whether this large library can be placed on a disk that's not your main drive. (It can.) Being based on tried and tested Sampletank technology, it's no surprises that Miroslav Philharmonik is instantly compatible with any software that supports VST, RTAS, DXi and Audio Units under Mac OS X or Windows 2000/XP. Such comprehensiveness might seem obvious, but not every commercial plug-in developer has grasped the concept. However, there's currently no stand-alone mode. This option is almost essential for anyone wishing to use the plug-in as an audio proof source with a scoring package (few have the audio and plug-in hosting capabilities of full-blown sequencers), or for those of use who wish to offload plug-ins to a separate computer. IK say that stand-alone operation is coming to the Sampletank 2 family soon