Strings, brass, woodwind and Mixed Orchestra are all available and then go on to include a further variety of per patch keyswitched articulations such as legato, staccato and pizzicato to provide a full compliment of natural and realistic sounding musical playing styles and effects. Project Sam are one of the pioneers of orchestral ensemble sample library recording, believing that rather than composers having to build their orchestral projects from the ground up using individual solo nstruments, Symphobia instead features high quality samples of complete orchestra sections playing together. Installation was satisfyingly simple with dedicated download application software being available, or as was my choice, the option for a direct browser download via links in your Project Sam account, a facility I wish more vendors would adopt. You will find 142 preset snapshots present in the Komplete Kontrol browser, and a generous 64 Kontakt multi’s with which to score your musical universe. All the content remains consistent having been recorded throughout in the same concert hall in Budapest. The library will occupy 14.6Gb on your hard drive (Kontakt compressed format), with the samples being recorded at 44.1Khz 24bit quality. This Kontakt based product has received several major updates during it’s lifetime since it’s inception in 2009, the last of which being version 1.6 in December 2017, Our focus for this review is on Symphobia 1, the original library and one that has been used in countless TV, game and Cenematic music compositions, despite it’s age, thanks to several updates in both content and scripting, it remains as fresh and viable as a serious scoring tool today as many newly released products, some of which still fail to achieve the same level of instant out of the box playability and dynamicism. The Symphobia series consist of three libraries, Symphobia 1, Symphobia 2 and Symphobia 3 LUMINA (the latter could perhaps be considered a subtle or more toned down orchestral scoring tool compared with the upfront scene stealing sounds present in the first two outings).

ok no more indulging in creative writing, or making plant based comparisons I promise! To apply a botanical analogy, Project Sam libraries and in particular the legendary Symphobia series of libraries are among the hardy perennials which continue to blossom year after year, provide outstanding results and hours of pleasure….

If there is one orchestral sample library developer whose products computer based composers can’t fail to have heard of then Project Sam would certainly be at the top of the tree.

Project sam symphobia 3