柏林木管 Orchestral Tools - Berlin Woodwinds v2.5 KONTAKT

Berlin Woodwinds' flute ensemble: (L-R) Yasuko Fuchs, Klaus Schöpp, Silvia Careddu.

An often overlooked part of the orchestra gets the royal treatment in a new sample library.

The German company Orchestral Tools first came to our attention in 2011 with their Orchestral String Runs library. Recorded by a large contingent of players from the Belarus Philharmonic, OSR (now expanded to 33.4GB) remains a go-to solution for those who need the dramatic effect of fast string section runs and figures but lack the dexterity, time or inclination to program them with single-note samples. (Read the SOS review of OSR at /sos/sep11/articles/orchestral-string-runs.htm.)

Strings and brass being the meat and potatoes of most media composers' orchestral arrangements, one might have guessed Orchestral Tools' next major sampling project would be a brass collection. Confounding expectation, the company have instead turned the spotlight on a less favoured section of the orchestra, namely the woodwinds (they're the guys sitting in the middle, being drowned out by the brass, percussion and strings). Entitled Berlin Woodwinds, the new library has created quite a stir on forums: in fact, such is the level of online speculation that it's essential for it to go under the SOS microscope without delay.

Whereas recording OSR's string samples entailed producer Hendrik Schwarzer periodically boarding a plane to Minsk, the new library was recorded much closer to home at Berlin's Teldex Studio. The location for hundreds of legendary Teldec Classics recordings down the years, the studio has become a leading international facility for classical music, film score and pop recording since its modernisation in 2002.

Berlin Woodwinds (BWW for short) runs on Kontakt 5 and also on the free Kontakt 5 player, which can be downloaded from Native Instruments' site, www.native-instruments.com. Minimum system requirements and supported interfaces for Kontakt are also listed there. This large library (100GB of samples, which compress to 53.2GB on your hard drive) is available only as a download direct from Orchestral Tools' site, in the form of 54 compressed RAR files. Buyers should be prepared for a lengthy download session!