Compiling a general survey of orchestral sample libraries available becomes more and more difficult every year. The sheer number of companies producing top-quality software for orchestral sampling has increased substantially of late, and there are more options now for the digital composer than ever before in this ever-expanding ecosystem. We in the audio tech world revel in choice and variety, not least so when it comes to virtual instruments. The quantity and quality of libraries available is frankly staggering.

This list is by no means complete, but we at S1E feel that these 30 plugins represent the latest and greatest Orchestral VIs currently available. The list is in no particular order.

The 30 Best Sample Libraries For Orchestral Scoring

e-instruments: Session Strings Pro

e-instruments Session Strings Pro is described as 'Session Strings Pro is the new gold standard for contemporary studio strings.
Take control of an 11-piece ensemble, recorded with the utmost precision in four different settings for maximum flexibility and realism.' Session Strings Pro offers the user a great sound combined with an intutive animator player, this offers not only the sound but the performance of a string section - it's not as complete as some of the others listed here, but well worth looking at if you want to put some great strings on pop tracks.

'Recorded by 11-time Grammy nominated classical recording engineer Prof. Keith O. Johnson, the EastWest: Symphonic Orchestra is the most awarded orchestral collection ever, including winning Sound On Sound's Reader's Choice Award an unprecedented 3-times, and the first orchestral collection to be recorded in a 'state of the art' concert hall where orchestras mainly perform.'

'Symphobia is not your traditional orchestral sample library. Instead of focusing on individual instrument multi-samples, Symphobia offers ensemble multi-samples in various orchestrations and orchestral groups. These playable ensembles cover different sections and groups from the orchestra as well as the entire orchestra playing together.'

'Miroslav Philharmonik is a powerful, integrated Orchestral Workstation incorporating the legendary Miroslav Vitous Symphonic Orchestra and Choir Sample collections into a dedicated plug-in instrument specifically tailored for classical sounds and arrangements.'

“Garritan Personal Orchestra gives you a complete orchestra – strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, and keyboards – with over 200 instrument choices, along with the techniques and control to hear your music with breathtaking realism. This award-winning collection has set the standard for orchestra sample libraries.”

'Spitfire Audio: Albion is everything you need to make epic modern music in ONE box. At its heart is a 109 piece orchestra accompanied by a thunderous cinematic percussion section, dynamically layered loops designed by award winning music makers, an enormous steam synthesiser and many more surprises. '

'Complete Orchestral Collection is a brand new compilation of all Peter Siedlaczek libraries ever released by Best Service. This new product combines Peter Siedlaczek´s String Essentials 2nd Edition as well as the well-known Complete Classical Collection 2nd Edition in one Kontakt Player 5 instrument with 26 GB of uncompressed sample content and more than 2800 Kontakt instruments.'

'With the Vienna Symphonic Library, the huge quantity and variety of articulations with nuanced details, enhanced by the seamless integration with the Vienna Instruments sample player helps you create the most realistic renderings of your composition.'

'Produced by Academy Award, TEC and G.A.N.G Award Winning Composer, Troels Folmann and Emmy Nominated Composer and Orchestrator, Colin O’Malley, the 8Dio Adagio String Series is a new-generation orchestral sample library and the most expressive collection of deep-sampled strings ever created.'

'HOLLYWOOD STRINGS has many groundbreaking features not found in any other collection. Finger position is, for the first time, controllable by the user, so you can play as far up the strings as you want, and get a fuller more romantic Hollywood sound. Vibrato intensity and extensive dynamics are controllable by the user. Extensive multi-dynamic true legato has been sampled for all sections in three different categories: slurred, portamento, and bow change. This results in unsurpassed legato performance that has never been available.'

'Berlin Strings is the first True Adaptive Legato(including 4 legato types: Slurred, Agile (scripted), Fast Runs and Portamento), Smaller Sections for more definition and detail, 129 GB of samplesin NCW format (268 GB uncompressed'

'CineStrings is revolutionary in its power and simplicity for recreating the sound of the orchestral string section. The library was designed by composers, for composers, with direct feedback from the film music community during its development. The result is a string library that is easy to use, composer-friendly, with unparalleled recording quality.'

'LA Scoring Strings 2.5 (LASS) brings you a whole new set of tools and revised sonic profiles providing a new level of expressiveness, realism, real-time playability and program-ability to sampled strings.'

'Cinematic Strings 2 is a completely redesigned and updated version of the original orchestral strings sample library. Whilst retaining the warm luscious tones produced in the world class Verbrugghen Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium, the new version features a sleek new interface and even smoother legato.'

'Hollywood Brass is the most powerful, realistic and extensive brass library ever created. There is a focus and ease of use in this Virtual Instrument that is unprecedented. Hollywood Brass runs flawlessly in the completely revamped PLAY 3 engine and has 10 times the content and detail than its closest competitor, without any additional complexity or clutter.'

'Bravura Scoring Brass is a complete collection of orchestral brass ensembles, soloists, and aleatoric FX recorded with stunning depth in a large scoring studio. Featuring three mic positions, extensive articulations, and incredibly powerful scripting, BSB is an ideal tool for film, TV & game scoring.'

Session Horns Pro gives you 30 GB of authentic contemporary horns: three saxophones, two trombones, three trumpets, tuba and flugelhorn.
It features 38 pre-arranged section presets across all popular styles to get you started, and is suited to every type of contemporary music.

'CineBrass is the expansion to the popular CineBrass Core library. CineBrass is comprised of entirely new orchestral brass sample content, using the first-call Los Angeles musicians at the SONY Scoring Stage, mixed by Dennis Sands. Our CineBrass core library, released in June 2011, covers the essentials of the orchestral brass section, and functions as a solid foundation in our composing templates.'

'Orchestral Brass Classic is the re-issue of the most respected symphonic brass series on the sample market: SAM Horns, SAM Trombones, SAM Trumpets and SAM Solo Sessions. known for its ambient, cinematic sound, orchestral brass classic is the only brass library that no film, tv or game composer can afford to be without.'

'Berlin Woodwinds has True Legato (interval sampling) for all instruments and sections! To achieve the highest level of realism and detail, we have recorded every interval up to an octave. That means you will hear the natural transitions from one note to another. Every true legato patch is sampled with three dynamic crossfade layers!'

'The Claire Woodwind Bundle 10 contains Alto-Flute, Bassoon Virtuoso, Clarinet Virtuoso, English Horn Virtuoso, Flute Virtuoso, Oboe Virtuoso and Piccolo Flute. All the libraries contains advanced legato and articulations to cover all your compositional needs'

'Hollywoodwinds is Cinesamples’ award-winning orchestral woodwind library developed exclusively for Kontakt. Featuring wonderfully organic recordings, and groundbreaking programming, HWW is quickly becoming the leading woodwind solution for composers around the world.'

'CineWinds PRO is the long-awaited expansion to the next-generation orchestral CineWinds CORE library. CineWinds PRO expansion fills out the remainder of the orchestral woodwind section, and also offers an eclectic choice of ethnic, Renaissance, and period wind instruments most often used in film scoring.'

Percussion

Impact Soundworks: Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion

'Rhapsody Orchestral Percussion is an exquisite symphonic collection for KONTAKT features a comprehensive collection of 50 traditional & extended percussive instruments recorded through three mic positions.'

'ProjectSAM's acclaimed True Strike series holds the percussion libraries of choice for film, tv and game composers requiring cinematic, powerful percussion samples. True Strike, the first volume in the series, focuses on orchestral percussion. Offering 51 orchestral percussion instruments in multiple concert hall mic positions, True Strike is the only orchestral percussion library you will ever need.'

'Spitfire Percussion is a comprehensive orchestral percussion library featuring the renowned Joby Burgess in Lyndhurst Hall at Air Studios. Alongside a huge array of large and small percussion, timpani, bass drums and cymbals lie a collection of mallet instruments described by Sound On Sound magazine as 'to die for'.'

'CinePerc PRO is an extremely useful part of our large CinePerc library; the next installment of our popular orchestral series that includes CineBrass and CineWinds. Like those libraries, CinePerc was recorded at the SONY Scoring Stage in Los Angeles, and mixed by master engineer Dennis Sands. This package includes many more percussion instruments for your template'

'Stormdrum 3 is the first virtual instrument to include EastWest's new PLAY 4 software. In PLAY 4, EastWest replaced some third party components; added Avid's new AAX format that will allow Pro Tools 11 users to use EastWest's virtual instruments 64-bit, greatly improving performance; added new time-stretch software optimized for loops (with sync to sequencer); added a new mixer page (with sub-channels for mic positions), added background loading, and other new features.'

'Hans Zimmer Percussion Series is the definitive collection of Hybrid Cinematic Widescreen percussion ensembles, produced by the man who created the idiom; Hans Zimmer. Recorded by Geoff Foster at Air Studios and mixed by 4 Grammy winning composer/ producers'

Imperfect Samples' EBONY Concert Grand is the World's Largest* sampled grand piano. Commanding a powerful and magnificent sound, the piano behind this sample library is an imposing hand-made FAZIOLI ten foot Grand Piano, created by the makers of world's most expensive grand pianos, and is considered by many to be the Elite of all grands.

Addictive Keys isn't just a collection of sampled keyboards. That's easy. Anyone can do that. What Addictive Keys does is to capture the soul and essence of great instruments from multiple angles. That's hard, but Addictive Keys instruments pull
it off and make it look effortless.