Edirol HQ-OR Orchestral Software Synthesiser

 HQ-OR Orchestral Software Synthesiser
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  • Product Description
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Orchestral instruments come alive with rich ambient piano and stereo sampled string sounds in the new Edirol HQ-OR Software Synthesizer. The premium sounds in this synth are perfectly combined for lush soundtracks and beautiful classical arrangements. And its multiple output compatible with DXi 2.0 and VST 2.0 means you can enjoy your arrangements through several audio devices...simultaneously!

The Orchestral Plug-In Software Synthesizer Orchestral provides premium acoustic sounds, focusing on Strings, Wood winds, and Brass winds, as well as Percussion and Keyboards. These high quality samples include realistic articulations such as vibrato, spiccato, pizzicato, and tremolo. Using ample wave memory, Strings/Brass winds tones are selectable from solo, part section, and full section, making this ideal for the composition of contemporary music, sound tracks, and marching bands. The premium sounds in this synthesizer are perfectly combined for lush soundtracks and beautiful orchestral arrangements.

Main Features

  • Plug-In Software Synthesizers: DXi and VST Instruments (Win/Mac)
  • Premium acoustic sounds, focusing on Strings, Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion and Keyboards
  • Realistic articulations such as vibrato, tremolo, pizzicato, and spiccato
  • Up to 16-part and 128-voice polyphony
  • Up to 24-bit/96kHz sampling resolution
  • Multiple output (compatible with DXi 2.0 and VST 2.0)
  • Fully assignable MIDI control
  • Cakewalk “MusicCreator2002” full version included

Other Key Specifications

  • Preset patches: 141 tones + 3 drum sets
  • User patches: 216 tones + 36 drum sets
  • High quality reverb and chorus/delay
  • 32-bit floating point processing precision
  • Real-time access to various parameters via hardware controller
  • High-speed response and processing optimized using Intel’s SSE, AMD’s Enhanced 3D Now! Technology, FSB 100MHz or higher, and Motorola’s AltiVec on PowerPC G4 native coding

Tone variation

Strings/Section (34 types):
Violin, Viola, Cello, and Contrabass (Full section/Part section), including playing variation: spiccato, pizzicato, and tremolo.

Strings/Solo (30 types):
Violin, Viola, Cello, and Contrabass, including playing variation: vibrato, spiccato, pizzicato, and harmonics. Vibrato can be controlled by velocity and modulation lever/wheel (V-switch/M-switch), Harp.

Brass Winds/Section (20 types):
Trumpet, Trombone and French horn (Full section/Part section), including playing variation: Slide of Trombone, Stop of Horn, and Lip Sound. Also features variety of combination tones.

Brass Winds/Solo (17 types):
Trumpet, Trombone (tenor/alto/bass), French horn, Tuba, Cornet, Mute Trumpet, and Mute Trombone. Includes Flugelhorn and Euphonium for Brass Band or Marching.

Wood Winds (27 types):
Piccolo, Flute (soprano/alto/bass), Oboe, Clarinet, English horn, and Bassoon, including vibrato for Flute and Oboe (M switch)

Percussions (11 types +3 drum sets):
Marimba, Celesta, Xylophone, Glockenspiel, and Tubular bells, Timpani, Concert Bass drum, Cymbals, Snare drum, Wind chime, Bell tree, Wood block, and Triangle, including playing variation: Timpani roll, Bass drum roll, Snare drum roll and Triangle tremolo. 3 drum sets: Orchestra set/Timpani set/Marching kit

Keyboards (2 types):
Concert Grand Piano, Harpsichord

*Music sequencing software that can host DXi or VST Instruments plug-in

Recommended System Requirements

Windows
Microsoft Windows Me/98/2000 Professional/XP, 128 MB RAM or more, 100 MB of free hard disk space, Windows-compatible audio interface (24/16-bit stereo, 96/48/44.1kHz sampling rate), CD-ROM drive.

Recommended PC Processors

 

PIII/IV-Athlon

Celeron-Duron

Win 2000

700 MHz +

800 MHz +

Win 98/98SE/XP

800 MHz +

1.0 GHz +

Macintosh
MacOS 8.6.1, 9.x, 256 MB of RAM or more, 100 MB of free hard drive space, Macintosh-compatible audio interface (24/16-bit stereo, 96/48/44.1 kHz sampling rate), CD-ROM drive.

Recommended Mac Processors

 

G4

MacOS 8.6.1 +

450 MHz +

Review

Mark Taylor
June 26, 2007

Rating: 8/10

I am currently writing an orchestral overture for my book and use this software in conjunction with Cakewalk Producer.

Its getting a little old, and for its price Garritan Personal Orchestra is a much deeper library. However HQ is easier to configure, as you just keep on adding instruments, where I found with GPO it is a bit of a pain, and you have to create sets of instruments in batches.

The Piano in HQ is poor, so I think if you want to add a grand into the mix, you should look to add a Steinberg synth or something. A decent piano should be the staple of any library, and therefore I suggest you get a soundfont rather than a software synth and have the piano permanently set to MIDI channel 0. I've managed to create a nifty rendition of Beehoven's 5th Piano Concerto using such with HQ.

A good synth is not necessarily about how accurate things sounds, but how well they all blend together, and I found they blend well with HQ, with solo strings being easily stands apart in a forest of full strings. The brass section also seem to blend well, and the winds too, so not much to fault it.

A decent CPU, say a core duo 2GHz will allow you to simulate fairly reasonable orchestras in real-time, but if you are really heavy on the instrumentation then you may start getting glitches and it is best to render to a WMA or similar for the final result.

When it was released, 2002 I think, it was really great value and top of the class for its price range, but it is dated a bit now, and £200 is a little steep when competitors are producing libraries 20x the sample size for the same price. On the other hand, all that extra performance takes CPU and memory, and Windows XP 32-bit caps out at 2 gigabyte, so being more compact does have its advantages.

I prefer HQ to Reason as I never write pop music and HQ is optimized for serious music. The gubbins in Reason just gets in the way if all you want to do is render orchestral music.

As with all synths there will always be something in this library that may be better suited to a particular passage than anything else. Using this in conjunction with GPO will be better that GPO on its own.

If you are a student of music more of computers, then HQ is simple and fast and thus productive for musical creativity.

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