Simple word….breathtaking. Didnt know they could all fit in my tiny living room so easily!
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Product details
Brand: Spitfire Audio
Now with 36GB of extra content.
An industry standard, universal starting point for composers and music creators of every level, this all-in-one sample library features strings, brass, woodwind and percussion performed by the world-renowned BBC Symphony Orchestra — captured at London’s famous Maida Vale Studios — host to The Beatles, Hendrix and Bowie, and countless film scores.
This definitive collection of orchestral instruments captures a musical synergy from a collective of astoundingly accomplished players with over 90 years of heritage – made playable by all via our award-winning plugin designed by UsTwo. Start scoring with a wide range of articulations for each instrument, captured at the highest quality with a stunning selection of professionally mixed signals.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra series has something for everyone, available in three editions ( Discover, Core and Professional).
Now available through Rent-to-Own on Splice’s platform. Learn more
All reviews
Love this library - super playable orchestra in a box. And upgrading to pro was definitely worth it for the extra sounds, solos and amazing mic options - it's now a super versatile library! Possibly all I need plus a few synths, sounds and effects...
Good Vintage Orchestral package to have, a beautiful different sound.
Wonderful. Smooth, lush and coherent.
Great. I just say 2 words: french horns…OMG…with legato on, and eyes closed, I felt like being John Williams directing Marion’s theme.
Phenomenal sound, great for everything from classical to pop. This gives you a complete starting point to build soundtracks or layer on realistic sounding orchestral elements to your tracks. The samples sit very well with most other instruments and the whole is easy to play. Downsides are : The soloists have a tendency to sound more like small ensembles than truly solo instruments (something about the sample layering has them out of alignment so it sounds like two instruments going at once). Also I wish there were better scripting on the legato for soloists to include auto vibrato as otherwise you're really going to spend a lot of time manually drawing in automation.. Upsides are : Everything else. It sounds lush, brash, subtle, dark and light all when you want, the space is excellent and the players do a phenomenal job. This gives you a modern classical orchestra which can stretch to some romantic sounds. Load times are decent for an instrument of this size. UI is slick and fun to use.
First test gives a good idea of the samples and quality of the sampled instruments. I use Studio One Artist and it recognizes BBSO Pro instantly! CPU usage is very low! Hope to upload some music soon to SoundCloud ...
This thing is phenomenal! It works great with my M1 Max, no Rosetta, natively! The sounds are killer, but at the same time sweet, romantic, and heartwarming. All-round champ! Great upgrade from CineSamples for me!
The sounds are wonderful, the GUI is impossible! White on black--always too difficult to read. GUI does not render well (is not enlargeable) on Mac.
The professional package for everyone. I’m not a professional and even though I’ve been writing music my whole life I’m still quite new to writing for orchestras. I started a little over a year ago with the BBCSO Discover. I later updated to BBCSO Core and now, finally, to BBCSO Professional. I was absolutely blown away by all the new content in the library (then again, it’s around 600 gb’s bigger). All the mic signals (20 per patch, as opposed to the 1 in core) makes for exceptional customization. If you want it to sound like an orchestra recorded in a room (oh, and the room sounds lovely) it’s easy. If you want a clean signal to alter in any way you want (after ability) to maybe fit your pop/rock production; it’s easy. There’s a whole bunch of extra instruments. The lower woodwinds is an exceptional sounding and very warm welcome that is my new favourite. The section leaders (strings) is absolutely brilliant and can be used to give the section that nice shimmer I often missed in bbcso core. With some tweaking they’re also perfectly viable as soloists. All in all it’s the perfect package! Worth every penny! I’m not a professional and this library is way better than I am. I expect to use this for the rest of my life, in every step of progress.
UNBELIEVABLE.
The sound is fantastic and the plugin is very easy to use. I am very happy with the BBCSO Pro but there are some little issues: - I'm more a musician than a sound engineer and it seems to me that a product is missing between Core and Pro edition. I need the extra instruments (cor anglais, string leaders) but I'm pretty sure I will never need 20 different microphone signals. And a library of 20GB instead of 600 would also have been nice for me. - For the string instruments I can't get a light vibrato; it seems to me, it is "with" or "without". Am I missing something? For strings in general it would be pretty good to be able to combine ALL articulations (short, long, legato, pizz., tremolo) with techniques (with / without mute, Sul tasto, Sul ponticello). And I definitely miss harp harmonics! It is quite a common technique, intensively used by Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky... maybe in a next update? It seems this product is often updated and always with a lot of great new features. I'm looking forward to the next versions!
Absolutely fantastic, every sound inspires me to create something new every time I open the VST, It’s just that great.
the spitfire team did an incredible well job with this library, so many opportunities, i love it
Working on some JW Midi Mockups to improve orchestration and using the majority of BBCSO to achieve what I am after. Loving this purchase!
Fair sounds for the price with some flaws All in all a a good choice, offering you a nearly complete Orchestra for a rather low price. However, as a downside, important things are flawed imho. Offering only 3 dynamic levels which sometimes don't even work (esp. referring to the wood section) and a few inconsistencies resulting in a heterogeneous overall experience. Download takes forever and external discs offered are way overpriced. The strings in their clarity however are a big plus, esp. if you want something different than the smoothed standard indifferent huge orchestra melting pot Hollywood sound flooding the movie market.
My only disappointment thus far is the limited number of tracks I am able to run on my (admittedly) older iMac. When I bought my machine in late 2013 it was absolutely the fastest Apple had available — 3.4GHz Core i5 with 24MB of 1600MHz RAM. I had hoped that my old iMac would be able to run around 10-12 tracks plus effects, but it appears roughly seven tracks is the upper limit, even with all other apps closed. Really, only solution is a new iMac, which I was rather hoping to avoid but is pretty much inevitable now. Perhaps the information exists somewhere, but it would have helpful to know in advance how many tracks I could be expected to run given my configuration. Perhaps a small calculator charting tracks available v processor clock speed and installed RAM.
Incredible sound, very nice and intuitive UI. Love the way you manage the KS. In all instruments all of them begin at C-2, so it’s quite easy to program all of them by using Stream Deci or any other controller. The use of CPU and RAM has also impressed me, quite efficient, I was sceptical about using single instances by instrument, but I haven’t appreciated any problem compared to multi instances like Kontakt. So far I’m in love with BBC SO PRO. Thanks for your nice work
I absolutely love this product. The plugin design is sleek and utilitarian. The quality of the samples are exceptional, and the wide variety of microphones positions offers alot of creative freedom.
This library is HUGE and sounds INCREDIBLE!!! The BBC Orchestra players are ridiculously good, this plugin is well worth the money!! As someone who is hesitant on paying money for plugins, I was not disappointed at all. If youve been wondering if its worth it, IT IS!!! You wont regret getting this.