This library takes its name from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, one of the most renowned orchestras globally.
With a performance legacy nearly a century old, it boasts Arturo Toscanini, Sir Adrian Boult e Sir Colin Davis among its historic directors, and promotes classical music and new composers ai BBC Proms (an eight-week concert season during which one or more concerts are performed per day), as well as performing in concert halls around the world.
La BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBCO hereinafter) is a project in which Spitfire Audio has for the first time captured a full orchestra and chosen one whose players have a definite musical affinity, rehearsing and performing some of the most demanding orchestral works, week after week over 200 hours of recordings and counting 1.000.000 samples.
It contains strings, winds, brass and percussion sections and is suitable for those who write music taking care of each part of the orchestra, which we will see in detail later.
BBCO includes 20 mic types, including some left open from other sections to add depth and fullness.
Let's analyze the library starting from the strings.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Each note has been carefully sampled at i Maida Vale Studios, a world-class recording space with a rich musical history.
Built in 1909, it was one of the BBC's first venues: the center of operations for BBC News during the Second World War and the home of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1934.
PECULIARITY
switch mode
With the Switch Mode you can share your work and collaborate with other composers, collaborators and directors, whatever edition of BBCSO you own.
So, for example, you start writing a piece of music using the Discover edition and can finish it in the Core or Professional edition, with a fuller range of tools, capabilities and versatility.
Or it's the other way around: you write a song in the Professional edition, and a collaborator can open it in Discover, play what's written (with sounds intelligently replaced), and add.
When you reopen the edited version, you will hear their additions alongside your original composition, with your full selection of instruments, articulations and cues.
Discover is free to download, Core is free for BBC Symphony Orchestra Professional owners.
INTERFACE
The interface is very simple and straightforward. We start from the choice of the preset, we start from String and then we have all the instruments that are part of this family
MAIN CONTROL
The main controls are volume (often also called Expression) and dynamics. The joint use of these two controls allows you to achieve a much more musical realism than before.
SIGNAL MIXER
The BBC Symphony Orchestra includes 20 cues, with the opportunity to tailor each sound to what is needed for the production. The eleven microphone positions offer much more than the standard Close, Tree, Ambient and Outriggers.
- Suit, used by the BBC since the 30s, for a vintage sound
- leaders, placed above the leader in each section for a more intimate sound;
- Stereo Section, two Coles 4038s for a punchy, vibrant sound that highlights a particular section,
- Close Wide, to characterize a section as it occupies the full width of the stereo field;
- Balcony, from the balconies of the hall for an even greater distance;
- From, two omnidirectional microphones at the extreme sides of the orchestra
- Atmos, front and rear for use in Dolby Atmos mixing.
- Ambient, two omnidirectional microphones placed towards the rear of the room but higher than the outtriggers
- Close, each section's standard microphones placed close together
- Game there are five signals from the soloists of each section.
The tipping point atop these are five spill cues – mics left open by other sections to add depth, fullness, and a three-dimensional sound. With version Professional of the library there are the "OutTriggers" which are nothing more than lateral extensions of the Decca Tree.
I Decca Tree are located behind the conductor and above his head and consists of three microphones to capture the entire stage of the orchestra.
Many sound engineers add the “OutTrigger” at the Decca Tree, here they have been kept separate because their use is also a matter of taste. In fact what you get is a wider stereo field and is known as an "extra" dimension to the sound. For those who work with scores of tv movies and video games, there are a couple of reasons why it is often convenient to use an orchestra sound that is not exactly faithful, i.e. how it would appear if we were sitting next to the conductor:
- you want to increase the “width” of the sound and sometimes increase the kind of liveliness and immediacy of the sound to create a dramatic effect
- when there are dialogues that are in the center of the soundstage you can keep the music so that it is slightly more "wide", i.e. on the sides, avoiding the area in the center will improve the intelligibility of the actor's words
TECHNIQUE SELECTOR
In this panel we choose one or more techniques to use. It is possible to change technique in various ways: with the keyboard, control changes, note velocity, midi channel or playing speed. Here we can also activate round robins to ensure that repeated notes don't always sound the same, creating an unnatural effect.
There are several options and we can choose the one we like best.
TECHNIQUE EDITOR
The Technique Editor allows you to add and remove techniques from the current preset, as well as rearrange the order of the techniques to suit your personal preferences. We have the left panel that allows you to view all the available techniques. The central panel shows all the techniques available for each preset. Finally in the right panel are the articulations in use. By clicking it is possible to transport them and rearrange the order in which they appear, as well as to eliminate them completely or in part.
ARTICULATIONS
Just open the legato patch of the first violin to be able to experience the realism of the patches. The Spitfire Audio plugin is designed so that we can play and react to the notes we play on the keyboard providing a realistic performance. There are obviously controls where you can control the vibrato and dynamics on this patch. We find the long notes in a polyphonic patch (Long), i.e. with which several notes can be played simultaneously. It has a nice, very dynamic and intense sound. We also find a muted version (Long CS).
Proceeding with the available articulations we have staccato, then staccato, pizzicato, with wood, dynamically controllable tremolo, major and minor trills, on the key, harmonics (long and short), pizzicato Bartok, marcato, tremolo with sordino, long notes , marked with the deaf.
Legato
When a passage contains expression slurs, all notes below the slur are played in a single bow, i.e. in the same bow direction. To get a good realism we have to play monophonic lines and to get the legato hold the note while playing the next one. This way the plugin will understand that we want to get a legato.
Carriage
PORTAMENTO is the technique of 'gliding' from one note to another without defining the notes in between, resulting in a smooth glide between two tones. It is usually used on large intervals and is triggered when we move to another note with lower velocity.
Slurred
SLURRED or 'Fingered' is the simplest type of transition, where the player will simply add or remove their finger as the arc continues unchanged. This articulation will trigger on transition values with higher velocities.
EFFECTS
As for the effects section of the plugin we note the possibility of:
- Release callows you to change the amount of release, only applies to Long techniques.
- Speed controls the speed of specific intervals
- Variation on some patches this will trigger a different variation of the same technique.
- vibrato where it is needed, it fades from without to very vibrato.
- TIGHTNESS, the beginning of a short note is often not the beginning of the instrument's “sound”. This cuts the start of the note further forward to make it tighter, but decreases its realism.
- Reverb additional reverb can be added to the sound
PLUGIN
Unlike many Spitfire libraries, Kontakt Player is not required o Contact complete to run this library. BBCO has its own standalone plugin built for VST, AU and AAX; so once downloaded and installed it is ready to use.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
The library total consists of 630.3 GB for download and is divided into four parts: strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion. The version on SSD or Hard Disk is also available. 632.00 GB of free space is required for installation.
Windows
Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Packs, 64-bit)
Minimum configuration: Intel 2.8 GHz i5 (quad-core) or AMD Ryzen 5.
Recommended: Intel 2.8 GHz i7 (six-core) or AMD R7 2700.
Mac
Mac OS X 10.10 – Mac OS 12
Minimum configuration: 2.8GHz i5 minimum (quad-core), 8GB RAM.
Recommended: 2.8GHz I7 (six-core), 16GB RAM.
Apple Silicon supported (v.1.4.0 and later)
Internet connection is required during installation
DEMO
Useful Information
Product: Spitfire – BBC Symphony Orchestraa
Price: € 990
sale: Online only
