If I Started Orchestral Composing in 2024, I’d Buy These Sample Libraries

Keepforest and Heavyocity for the win.

Hey Kevin, where did you find Breakout Pro for 199? It's saying breakout pro is 259 for me and the core version is 209 😕

Kudos man, cool and useful video for everybody! If a beginner has got the full Kontakt I would recommend some 8dio libraries like Anthology, Century brass, Insolidus currently on sale too.

Bro, just forget every library you mentioned in this video. I've got Albion One, Nucleus and 16 gigs of Ram.
I recently bought Musio by Cinesamples which is their complete collection for 299$ in an own plugin which is 100× less RAM/CPU intensive as Kontakt. The only disadvantage is that you have no mic pisitions yet, but I wouldn't care as a beginner. There is nothing out there which nearly comes close to this deal.

Dude...eastwest and musio subscription. 20 and 10 bucks a month. Lots of liraries inside.

If I were starting now and only had $300 to spend, I'd go to Sonoscore TODAY and get:

1) Hollywood Orchestra Opus Edition
2) Forbidden Planet
3) Orchestral Essentials
4) Warhorns

ALL for $299!! But the deal ends today.

If only this vid would have bene there for me just 2 years ago....

The dollar sign comes before the numbers, as in $179.00

I understand that Strezov is the most well known developer for choirs, but honestly - Nucleus Lite for shorts + Originals Epic Choir for sustains and you are covered.

Nucleus is by far the best purchase you can make. The sound quality, workflow and content is second to none.

Wow - best overview ever! Thanks a lot!

Hi Kevin, thanks a lot for your quite good video, very interesting! 🙂👍🏼
But please, the next time please don’t talk that fast, instead take your time to explain. Otherwise it makes me somehow incredibly restless. 🤪

Thank you, Kevin! Very useful 👍

One thing i would add, is the OPUS subscription from East West fro 20 dollars a month. It has helped me alot over the years, especially on specific projects. Plus you can cancel it if your budget gets tight.

I can recommend a few ones that did not go into your list but that you may have heard of; Scaler 2 (for finding new chords), Zenith (epic soundscape / percussion), Spire (synth), Nexus (but not the orchestral packs) and Amy + Maggie voices from Musical Sampling. I can also recommend Analog Labs which is a free soundscape/analog synth.

The full orchestra libraries are so expensive that I went all in on cheaper libraries. I now have Musio subscription, EastWest subscription, Nucleus Lite. Now I can't make up my mind if I should upgrade to Nucleus Full for $150 or not (sale + discount). It's hard for me to see what I miss. In the end I want to close subscription services as they are cheap now but are more expensive for each month.

I bought way too many cheap choir libraries instead of one large, like Spitfire Originals Choir, Olympus Micro Choir, Dixons Choir and Oceania 2. Many of them sounds almost the same but I like Oceania 2 and Spitfire Originals Choir best. I should probaby just bought Chorus Lite today and upgraded from there.

Devastator Breakout Pro is so much fun just to play around and feel like you are killing demons in hell haha.. In my last track I used it hell a lot also with Areia/Nucleus.

Great vid Kevin! My only question is where can I get the goose in the background? I feel like it would greatly improve my compositions 😛

Nice and helpful video Kevin, thanks

I suprised you didnt mention Vital in your 300 budget. It can do SO MUCh that the "cinematic atmospheric" sample libraries does.

$2 just to pee?!?! I'm from a 3rd world country and most public toilets are free :O besides that, great content man! last week I grabbed Industry Brass, LA Modern Percussion and Nashville Scoring Strings, in march I will start a music composition degree in college so I know how to compose but my mock ups sound like what's coming out from those German public toilets, do you have any suggestion or tips to use my new libraries to the fullest?

How about subscriptions like EastWest Composer Cloud+ and Musio?

Big props to Kevin for providing everyone with an amazing guide to buying sample libraries. And also thank you Kevin for showing care. Great video!

And save some $$$ for external SDD. :) I'd go for build your own or Samsung T series.

Hi Kevin, What about Sound Online, East West ?

About to get the Berlin Strings bundle from OT to upgrade my strings... couldn't be happier with my decision, I particularly love the sound that the Berlin series has - I was very torn between CSS and Berlin (my top two decisions), but opted for the latter since there's just so much more to work with, and the opportunity for so MANY compositional directions and ideas. CSS is beautiful, don't get me wrong.

The buying part is so true 😢

What would you buy if you started again from scratch?

I have a lot : Spitfire, Orchestraltools….big fan of those
But i started to buy the Cinematic Studio Series.
Woods… already this.
I go on on. Love it