A model of elegant simplicity — the Nucleus GUI's 'Basic' view contains four knobs controlling reverb amount, dynamics, expression and vibrato amount.
Audio Imperia's new orchestral library brings together a complete set of cinematic symphonic essentials in one creative toolset.
Though their name may not be immediately familiar to Sound On Sound readers, Audio Imperia have been steadily building support amongst the orchestral sample community over the last few years. The San Diego-based company is the brainchild of Jan Hoeglund, a man with an impressively varied CV: formal classical guitar training from the age of six, added electric guitar at age 10, achieved a linguistics graduate degree in Chinese and English then lived in Taiwan before moving to the US in 2010. After a stint in artist management representing metal bands, he helped produce 8Dio's 'Progressive Metal' djent (love that word) phrase library, subsequently became an 8Dio producer and worked at Soundiron for a while before starting Audio Imperia in 2016.
From a starting point of creating simple sample packs for composer friends, the company (who we'll call AI for short, no artificiality implied) blossomed into a full–time sample library operation based around the creative team of Hoeglund, Tomás Lobos Kunstmann and Simon Dalzell. The company's first orchestral collection, entitled Jaeger, was released in November 2017; others quickly followed (details in 'Imperial Progress' below). AI's latest orchestral venture is Nucleus, a full, entry-level orchestral library for Kontakt and Kontakt Player 6.1.1 and up.
Contents
Nucleus (20.4GB installed) consists of roughly 50 percent samples derived from existing AI libraries (mainly Jaeger, with a few additional samples from Cerberus and Talos Vol. 2) and 50 percent newly recorded material. Designed to give users the essential orchestral sounds required for modern cinematic-style productions in an easy-to-use toolset, it comprises string, woodwind and brass ensembles and solo instruments, tuned and unpitched percussion, drum kit, a small SATB choir and sound-design drones and pads.
In order to keep the footprint at around 20GB and preserve system resources, Nucleus bucks the current trend for copious multi-miking and offers just two microphone mixes (more on which later). In the same spirit, the library's full and 'pre-orchestrated' mixed-instrument ensembles were created by blending individual sections into single playable patches. The major benefit of this is that patches load almost instantly — while I'll never get back the weeks of my life spent waiting for instruments to load into some sampler or other, seeing Nucleus's patches leap into Kontakt in a matter of seconds makes me feel better about it.
The samples were recorded in the Czech Republic with members of the Capellen Orchestra and Choir, using a recording stage which offers, in the makers' words, "that perfect dry-but-not-too-dry sound". The absence of an overpowering room ambience allows composers to apply their own favourite reverbs, and makes it easier to layer the Nucleus patches with instruments from other libraries.
The Advanced view. Mapped samples are shown in blue, extended range keys (if used) are shown in yellow, with keyswitches marked red.
Strings
Nucleus's 16/10/6/4 strings line-up equates to the section sizes often used in modern productions. Though on a smaller scale than the full symphonic sections used for James Bond movie soundtracks and big-budget pop recordings, a string ensemble of this size is well capable of producing a rich, full-toned sound, and that's what you hear in this collection.
String articulations are limited to sustain, spiccato, pizzicato and tremolo, with additional true legato patches supplied for the violins and cellos. The latter style is one of the library's strengths: the inter-note transitions are as smooth as silk and sing out quickly and eloquently, sounding equally at home playing soaring, lyrical melodies and fast trills.
The tags 'cinematic' and 'epic' pop up frequently in AI's publicity, and I have to say the string sections' spiccatos are exactly what's needed for those genres: they have a wonderfully tight, strong, positive attack and leap smartly out of the blocks, relentlessly urging the rhythm along — it sounds like the players were enjoying themselves, and I certainly enjoyed joining in with them.
I found all articulations to be highly playable. The high strings' pizzicatos are great, and I particularly enjoyed the violas' vibrant tremolo performances, a great, stirring source of musical energy at the heart of the strings section. 'Pre-orchestrated' patches feature respectively cellos/basses and violins/violas layered in octaves: the former creates the classic thunderous low-strings sonority, while the latter is ideal for searing single-line melodies — though it can end up sounding like a theatre organ if you play chords!
Two solo instruments offer a respite from the epic onslaught: the solo cello sounds passably lyrical, but the tone of the solo violin (a notoriously difficult instrument to sample) is disappointingly thin.
Woodwinds
Adopting an approach used in recent years by Spitfire Audio and others, Nucleus provides two-player flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon sections. Their tuning is, without exception, excellent: the two flutes' clear, breathy tone is a treat, and (as with the string ensembles), you can use MIDI CC#21 commands to introduce an expressive played vibrato to the sustains. The oboes' vibrato is more understated, and their incisive delivery and perky tone are delightful.
Played with no vibrato, the clarinets sound cool and controlled at quiet dynamics and engagingly bright when played loud. The bassoons are, in a word, fabulous. There's also a handy five-octave woodwinds full ensemble, and pre-orchestrated octave layerings of flutes/clarinets and clarinets/bassoons. Though their articulation menu is limited, the woodwinds are consistently well played and cover the basic performance essentials with aplomb.
The two most important solo woodwinds, flute and oboe, are provided in Nucleus. Both perform immaculate legatos: the flute has a lovely, attractive tone and an impressively perfect set of top notes that could be mistaken for a piccolo. On the downside, the solo woodwinds' 'progressive' vibrato takes between two and three seconds to develop. While this can be effective for very slow melodies, for faster material I'd prefer instant vibrato, or better still a facility to introduce the vibrato manually (as offered in the string and woodwind ensemble patches).
Brass
Nucleus's brass instruments tick the 'epic' box. Displaying superb control and tuning right up to top C, a trio of trumpets whips out beautifully played, bright-sounding legatos, sustains and staccatissimos for those obligatory imperial fanfares and martial rhythmic motifs, while the six French horns sound strong, steady and dignified, whether playing rousing legato melody lines or soft supportive pads.
In the lower register, a powerful trombone quartet and solid pair of tubas show similar tight control — these tubas sound great playing melodies as well as low bass notes. Dynamic cross-fades between the trombones' warm-sounding quiet samples and brighter loud notes can sound abrupt, but that probably won't worry composers striving for a big cinematic sound! In that vein, Nucleus's massive 12-piece low brass section sounds great playing ominous, brooding War Of The Worlds low chords, and its loud bass samples are perfect for the so-called 'braam' racket, a hugely powerful End-Of-Days fanfare sound — though I do feel the makers missed a trick by not implementing pitch-bend in this patch.
The library's brass line-up is completed by a pleasant, soft-toned, thoughtful-sounding solo horn and a decent solo trumpet, both played in the classic no-vibrato orchestral style. Also provided are layered trumpets/horns and trombones/tubas, and a useful full brass ensemble.
Percussion & Drum Kit
There's some great material in Nucleus's percussion wardrobe. The timpani are brilliant, offering slamming resonant hits of the highest order, wheel-controlled sustained rolls and played crescendo rolls, the latter performed in three different lengths. Though offering only single hits, the tuned percussion is uniformly excellent: played with medium mallets which preserve a distinct attack at all dynamics, the marimba is a lovely, characterful instrument, while the typically harder-sounding xylophone sounds super-bright here. At the top end, the high-pitched chimes of the exquisitely ethereal and pure-sounding glockenspiel will add a beautiful stellar twinkle to your arrangements.
Orchestral bass drums, snares and toms performed by two players apiece mirror the timps' articulations and are suitably explosive — I'll definitely be dialling up the snares and pair of high toms, though the piatti crash cymbals and tam tam gong aren't as cataclysmic as I hoped. In addition to the orchestral percussion is a useful single-hit drum kit sampled at nine dynamics — though very strong, its toms are a bit over-damped for my taste (it's an American thing), but for what it's worth, the ride cymbal is one of the nicest I've heard!
I'm happy to say Nucleus ticks all my 'like' boxes while avoiding my list of gripes, and its neat presentation, well chosen menu of instruments, uncluttered interface and fast loading times are a pleasure to work with.
Choir, Pads & Drones
There must be a law somewhere that says epic symphonic productions must contain a choir singing in Latin. Is it a religious thing? I don't know, but this apparent decree has been religiously obeyed in Nucleus. Groups of five sopranos, altos, tenors and basses each solemnly intone the staccatissimo utterances 'cre', 'do', 'mi', 'nus', 'la', 'cri', 'mo', 'san' and 'tus' using short Latin vowel sounds across their respective registers, with keyswitches available to control the syllable order. I searched in vain for a combination sounding like 'come on Chelsea!', but the nearest I could get was 'cri-mo cre-san!', which wouldn't cut much ice on the Stamford Bridge terraces.
Nucleus's pads and drones main interface contains pitch, volume, attack, release, pan, low-pass filter, high-pass filter and stereo-width controls. The user-adjustable vertical line determines the start point of the sample, while the small lower right-hand arrow selects forward or reverse playback.
Latin lesson over, I liked the five sopranos' soft, vibrato-free 'oohs', a soothing, breathy 'above the clouds' timbre which makes a great chord pad. The sopranos' soft 'aahs' are similarly pleasant, and you can use the wheel to fade in a heavy operatic vibrato which gets almost scary on the top notes. The men contribute their own lusty 'aahs', which at their loudest achieve pantomime-villain levels of maniacal intensity which had me hiding behind the sofa.
Nucleus also contains a selection of moody pads and drones featuring very long sustains and samples layered in multiple octaves, which means that a single note often suffices to create a rich, enveloping, evolving soundscape. I enjoyed the breathy, dark, sombre 'alien skies' menace of the 'Subjugation' pad and the vast interstellar rumble of 'To the Stars'. Beethoven wouldn't have got it, but you modern listeners will.
General Comments
There is much to like in this library. The interface design is simple, clean and uncluttered, and the built-in reverb sounds excellent — when judiciously added to patches it imparts a great concert-hall ambience, particularly if you use a long-ish reverb time and 30ms or so of pre-delay! Both stereo mixes sound great: the first ('classic') is fine for general purposes, while the second ('modern') is louder, brighter and harder-sounding, ideal for adding a dose of orchestral aggression to an arrangement.
You can add compression, distortion, lo-fi, rotary speaker, chorus, flanger, phaser, delay and reverb effects to Nucleus's pads and drones.
For more advanced users, articulation keyswitches and percussion keyboard mappings are user-adjustable, and instrument ranges can be artificially extended, allowing you to play (say) the flute down in the alto flute register, or stretch the trumpets' top note up to a high db. There's also a polyphonic legato option which allows you to control two independent legato lines by playing notes in a specific velocity range.
On the musical front, tuning and looping are excellent throughout, and the legatos are commendably realistic. Another big advantage is that the time-honoured ruse of layering a staccato or spiccato articulation over a sustain to increase attack definition works supremely well with Nucleus's strings, woodwind and brass, adding bite to the sustains' note fronts without sounding in the least artificial. This is particularly good news for rock-based players like myself, and will surely be welcomed with open arms by composers who habitually write in a rhythmic style.
Conclusion
As I write this the 2019 UK General Election is looming. Amidst the posturing, empty promises and meaningless slogans, a bit of plain speaking seems in order: having been at this sample reviewing game for a while now, I can say I like products that function properly with no bugs, quick-loading patches and instruments that play in tune. Conversely, I dislike being sent supposedly review-ready products containing glaringly obvious flaws, bugs, missing samples and bad tuning, and I've had it with interminable, convoluted installation procedures and patches that take forever to load. Life's too short.
I'm happy to say Nucleus ticks all my 'like' boxes while avoiding my list of gripes, and its neat presentation, well-chosen menu of instruments, uncluttered interface and fast loading times are a pleasure to work with. More important than satisfying the demands of your grumpy reviewer, it offers first-time users and professionals alike a complete set of easy-to-use orchestral essentials sampled to a top professional standard and sounding great straight out of the box. An impressive collection and a good way to end the decade.
Alternatives
Contemporary all-in-one symphonic essentials packages with a similar instrumentation to Nucleus are thin on the ground. Discounting orchestral collections which lack choir samples, we're left with Red Room Audio Palette Symphonic Sketchpad (which has no solo trumpet and horn) and Sonuscore's The Orchestra, which lacks solo brass and sound design material. If you're not fussed about sound design, can live without the solo instruments and are mainly focused on orchestral size and power, the larger, more expensive Orchestral Tools' Metropolis Ark 1 might float your boat.
Start Me Up
To maintain perfect timing, each recorded sample (top) is shifted earlier or later until it sounds perfectly in time with the click. The point where it sounds in time is referred to as the 'sync point' (middle); the makers then cut the sample 250ms before the sync point (bottom) and provide a sample start control for each patch so users can adjust attack tightness to their taste.A perennial problem with orchestral samples is that they tend to 'speak' late. That's because, unlike a percussive drum hit, the notes of a bowed violin or blown trumpet take a certain amount of time to develop — examine the audio waveform of these instruments' single notes and you'll see a slope rising to a slightly delayed peak, rather than the near-vertical spike of a snare drum strike.
This poses a dilemma for sample companies: whether to preserve the initial tiny scrape or small breathy puff of an instrument, or cut it off so that samples start closer to their peak volume? If you leave the sample untouched it sounds late to the click, but if you trim it you risk losing some of the original performance and making the instruments sound unnatural.
AI have an elegant and effective solution: they listen to every sample in the library and shift it either earlier or later until it sounds perfectly in time with the click. The point where the samples sound in time with the click is referred to as the 'sync point'. Each sample is then cut 250 milliseconds before the sync point, thus preserving the natural attack. To compensate for the 250ms latency, users can adjust the 'Sample Start' control to anything from -250 to zero.
For a fast, immediate response, AI have provided 'Tight' patches where Sample Start is set to 0ms by default, while encouraging users to experiment with different settings (explained in admirable detail in the excellent PDF user manual). I found the zero-latency setting invariably worked best for my purposes, but it's good to know you can relax the samples' attack if required.
Imperial Progress
Audio Imperia's first multi-sampled instrument library came in April 2016 with a pair of piano titles entitled Klavier. Having issued an atmospheric series of Kontakt sound design libraries, the company's first step into orchestral sampling was Jaeger (from the German Jäger, meaning 'hunter') in November 2017. Subtitled 'Essential Modern Orchestra', this 36.2GB collection comprises a 36-piece string section, six French horns, two-player brass ensembles, a powerful percussion section (including taiko drums), sound design patches and a set of solo female vocal samples by Merethe Soltvedt, all recorded from four mic positions.
Six months later, the company announced Cerberus. Borrowing the name of the fearsome three-headed dog of Greek mythology, the 13.3GB library featured a trio of powerhouse drummers attacking a drum kit and cymbals, along with thunderous ensembles of orchestral bass drums, snares and toms. Given the average rock drummer's barely controlled canine tendencies one can only imagine the chaos that ensued, but thankfully the barking and snarling appears to have been noise-gated out at the editing stage.
Maintaining the focus on big-screen grandeur, AI's next orchestral release in August 2018 was Talos Volume 1: Horns — Epic & Cinematic Brass Ensembles, a 3.98GB Kontakt library featuring a 12-horn section performing keyswitchable articulations including true legato, marcato, staccatissimo, multi-tongue and rips ranging from soft and subtle to triumphantly blasting. Talos Volume 2 (4.83GB) followed a few months later, bigging up the bottom end with a low brass ensemble of four tubas, four cimbassos and four bass trombones.
Since Cerberus and Talos Volumes 1 and 2 were recorded on the same recording stage with the same microphone setup as Jaeger (Cerberus features extra mics on the drum kit), the four libraries may be freely mixed and layered with no sonic discontinuity.
Pros
- A complete set of orchestral essentials in one compact package.
- Easy to use, well chosen and presented, technically excellent.
- Patches load quickly.
- It sounds great.
Cons
- It lacks a contrabassoon — but do we really care?
- The solo violin is a bit thin.
Summary
Designed with cinematic and epic productions in mind, this impressive-sounding symphonic essentials collection combines orchestral ensembles and solo instruments with tuned and unpitched percussion, a drum kit, a small choir and sound design patches in one convenient, easy-to-use package. All the technical features we've come to expect from a modern sample library are there, and the producers' musical intelligence and sampling know-how shine through.