Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover and More! – Sounds and Presets
4,5 / 5,0 | 
This week, Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover allows you to explore composing for an orchestra for free, whilst we have some rhythmic patches for some Arturia synths and an Enigma revival for the Iridium!
- Amazing quality Spitfire orchestral sounds for free
- Brilliant arps and sequences for the MiniFreak
- Relive classic raves with the JUP-8000 V
- Celebrate the music of Michael Cretu with Enigmatic
Sounds and Presets – Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover and More
Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover for Kontakt/Kontakt Free Player
When Spitfire Audio released their spectacular BBC Symphony Orchestra package, they didn’t just set a new high benchmark for orchestral libraries. They created an entry point for everyone to dive into scoring with a top-quality orchestra.
What they did was unprecedented and a genius move. Instead of just one mega library with everything in it for a large chunk of change, they released three different versions: Pro, Core and Discover. The groundbreaking part was Discover. It was free.
Yes, you too could start playing the BBC SO for zero pounds/dollars/euros. To have even just a cut-down version of such a respected orchestra, put together by a hugely respected sample library developer, was unprecedented. And now they’ve done it again.
This time round we have the Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover, its largest ever free sample library, featuring 44 curated instruments and 73 techniques from their best-selling Spitfire Symphony Orchestra. These instruments cover all aspects of the orchestra.
The SSO, and by extension the Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover package, was recorded at the world-famous AIR Lyndhurst Studios in London. And just like its BBC SO stablemate, Spitfire are providing educational support via a companion course provided by ThinkSpace Education.
Entitled “Introduction to Writing for Orchestra”, this free course helps users explore the art of orchestral composition, specifically using SSO Discover. Unlike BBC SO, Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover is a Kontakt instrument, but can be used with the Kontakt Free Player as well as the main version of the application.
The library will occupy just over 5.5GB of drive space and will require registration via NI’s Native Access app. It’s a bit sad that Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover doesn’t come with the same player as BBC SO, and you will quickly have to get used to the missing techniques, which are labelled as ‘Demo Notes’ and have a single note to tease you into what you’re missing in the full version.
Those niggles aside, which are really nit-picky if I am honest, this is an incredible way to get quality orchestral sounds in your productions, whether you’re dipping your toe in the water or simply low on budget. Bravo, Spitfire. Encore!
All you have to do to get Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover is log in to your Spitfire account and add it! Follow the instructions in the subsequent email, and you will be away!
Plexus for Arturia MiniFreak by LFO.store
LFO.store are banging out some quality sound libraries of late, and their latest is for the absolutely brilliant Arturia MiniFreak, pound for pound, one of the best hardware synths available today. Better still, these patches work with both the hardware and software versions of MiniFreak.
Plexus gives us 40 new arpeggios and sequences that really show off the MiniFreak in a great light. They’re instantly musical and very inspirational, no matter what genre of music you make. Use them as a basis for your next composition or let them inspire your live jam!
If you haven’t had a chance to check out the MiniFreak, now is a great time, with some good Black Friday prices doing the rounds. And if you want to check out Plexus, you can grab it for just €15 from the LFO.store website now!
Arpeggio Line for Arturia JUP-8000 V by KAV
When Arturia debuted V Collection 11, one of the standout additions, at least in my book, was the JUP-8000 V. I don’t think anyone had a JP8000 clone on their V Collection bingo card, so it was a hugely pleasant surprise!
And as soon as I loaded it up, it was like firing up the Delorean, setting the time circuits to 1996, and fluxxing the capacitor to classic trance and rave sequences and pads! This classic VA synth, along with the Nord Lead and Yamaha AN1x, took the music world by storm and ended up being used everywhere.
And in a similar vein to Plexus above, KAV has released a collection of rhythmic presets for the JUP-8000 V, 42 to be precise. And like that last bank, these are inspirational patches for jamming to and/or creating your next recording.
Whilst the JUP-8000 V will always invoke trance and techno feelings in much that it does, such was its inextricable link with those genres, there’s plenty of scope to be had with this bank, so grabbing it for a mere €12 from their website is a no-brainer, really!
Enigmatica for Waldorf Iridium/Quantum by OttO K. Schwarz
Finally, we have another bank from the clever collective behind LFO.store, namely OttO K. Schwarz. This one is quite unique as it is inspired by another 90s legend, Michael Cretu, and his Enigma project. If you’re old enough to remember, Enigma made their name by setting Gregorian chants to chilled beats.
These chants were supplemented by a plethora of other evocative sounds, such as flutes, shakuhachis, classical sounds and more. For a while, his music was everywhere. On the radio, in the elevators at work, on the in-store play-out systems in the supermarket.
It seemed, for a while, that the world was obsessed, but it was, thankfully, a passing fad. Now, with the passage of time, it’s not so hard to listen to anymore and with this bank, it may well be making a comeback, for better or worse!
OttO has crafted 50 presets for the Waldorf Iridium and Quantum, taking more than a chunk of inspiration from Cretu’s work. But it would be doing OttO a disservice to say it was an enigma rip-off. There are some amazing sounds in here that would work in any number of places.
They really take advantage of and demonstrate how flexible and powerful the Iridium and Quantum are, and if you own one of these amazing machines, you’d be silly to ignore these. They’re also compatible with the Iridium Core! At only €20, you can grab them now from OttO’s page.
In Conclusion
Another cracking week of great sounds for some great synths. We shouldn’t underestimate how important a release Spitfire Symphony Orchestra Discover is. Products and programs like this can serve to encourage and empower young people to become more engaged with making music, whatever the genre.
Orchestral sounds are used everywhere, and to have a library of this quality available to all for free is simply brilliant. I hope to hear some amazing compositions with it soon. If you’ve made one, why not share it with us in the comments below!
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