BBC SO or Abbey Road One ?

Iustin

Hey guys,

I finally decided to get my first Spitfire Library, so ... My question is BBC SO or Abbey Road One? I am doing Epic and Symphonic music, and I'm interested in a drier sound. I own other libraries (from other companies) like Jaeger and Cremona Quartet, Symphonic Series for example. Curious if I can use them together with BBC or Abbey Road, any advice will be amazing, thanks! Either way on Monday I will buy one of them, just will be great to hear some advice from you guys.

Faizan

I assume based on the pricing that you are comparing the Core edition of BBCSO to Abbey RoadOne. These are the main differences to me:

BBCSO Core gives you individual instrument sections, so you can do your own detailed orchestration and write for each instrument and write parts in its range. Abbey Road's patches are made of instruments of similar type grouped together, so you don't control each individual instrument section for each part, but these groupings were recorded playing together in the studio, not layered individual recordings, so there's added cohesion there.

BBCSO has true legato patches (sampled transitions between notes) for any instrument where that applies, whereas Abbey Road One does not. However you can add on the Selections products which add some specific instruments that do have true legato, if you buy those.

Abbey Road One gives you a bunch of mic signal options so you can tailor perspective and recorded reverberance of the output. BBSCO core only gives you one finished mix option of the signals, which then you can tailor with the release setting and onboard reverb. However you can later buy the upgrade to Pro and get a bunch of mic signals with all the different perspectives you'd need.

Abbey Road One has a max of 5 dynamic layers to fade between when using dynamics, whereas BBCSO only has a max of 3. BBCSO's instruments have many more of the different techniques and articulations to make use of in your performance.

Also take a look at system requirements like disk space, memory usage, in case you have limitations there. These are the objective pros and cons which should guide your decision. For your type of music, either library would work... I'm sure you've listened to demos already. Whether you can layer certain things together, I don't have much experience with the libraries you mentioned but typically the answer is always yes, so I wouldn't decide based on that. I tried not to show bias but I'll mention I do own and love BBCSO Pro. Doing your own orchestration and experimenting with your own combi's and mults is a big part of the workflow, and that's how I like it. Lastly if you haven't watched the video on Spitfire's YouTube channel about the differences beween these, check that out.

gregoryd

Everything Faizan said is correct.

They really are two very different tools. One is all of the essentials for detailed orchestration, and one is a high quality broad stroke to fill your mix with the AR Hall. What do you need from your next library purchase, or what do you want from it?

Iustin

I totally agree with everything you guys said. It would have been amazing if we can get some individual instruments on Abbey Rood One, is like everybody what the sound of AR hall, but after reading a lot of reviews and listening to demo, etc, I think my goal is the BBC Pro, starting with the Core.

gregoryd

https://community.spitfireaudio.com/discussion/comment/2780#Comment_2780

That sounds like a great plan. And I agree, I would have much rather had individual instruments in Abbey Road haha. Individual instruments with legatos and all that (it probably would have cost a fortune to record though). Core is a great library. I personally, haven't found the need to "graduate" up to Pro yet so I'm getting some other libraries to fill other needs :) I hope you like it!