Looking for a set of very high quality VST instruments to add to RealBand band-in-a-box. Any recommendations?

Thanks!

You may want to be a little more specific about what instruments you're seeking; such as piano, synth, guitar, drums, choral, vocals, trumpet, horn section. Any price constraint?

Look at the selections +++ Big Fish Audio +++ offers. +++ Plugin 4 Free +++ is another good source.

Thanks Jim,

My goal is to augment my hard synthesizers (Roland Sc88 & JV2080) with top quality soft syns. Most interested in tenor sax, trumpets, keyboards, & electric guitars. Am willing to pay for quality as I am musician & audiophile.

You should find the links I provided informative. One thing to watch out for.

Instruments depend on the musician to provide expression and emotion. The musician is going to play the instrument based on the music played. For example you'll find trumpet virtual instruments tend to favor genre or a certain use. A trumpet playing jazz is different from a trumpet used in a soul ensemble which differs from a trumpet used in big band jive which differs from an orchestral trumpet. A virtual instrument developed to favor one setting maybe much more difficult to use outside it's intended setting.

With that in mind you may find you'll want multiple trumpet virtual instruments if you play a wide variety of music.

Another thing is many virtual instruments are created to work with a particular player such as Halion, SampleTank, Sforzando or Kontakt.

Two more links to check out: +++ Indiginus +++ and +++ Amplesound +++. Indiginus requires Kontakt while Amplesound uses a built-in player.

Finally, remember PG Music products do not support VST3 virtual instruments.

Thanks, seems like this is turning out to be more complicated then I thought, but I will pursue.

+1 for Indiginus. Their Blue Street Brass is good, as well as their range of guitars and the like.
SWAM saxophones: https://audiomodeling.com/swam-engine/solo-woodwinds/swam-saxophones/
Pianoteq for acoustic & electric pianos. https://www.modartt.com/pianoteq
Spitfire Audio do some really nice stuff, though they lean fairly heavily towards cinematic. https://www.spitfireaudio.com/
They have some good free instruments in "LABS". https://labs.spitfireaudio.com/?sortBy=prod_products_labs_latest

YMMV.

Are you using mostly GM sounds?
If you are doing so currently, then yes, VST will be a bit of a learning curve.

I'd suggest you replace (or augment) the older SC88 with a newer hardware synth containing a newer GM soundset.
They have progressed a long way.
For GM based VST, the TTS-1 synth from Cakewalk is often suggested as a softsynth alternative.

The reason I suggest an upgrade to the SC88 is that (for instance) the Juno-DS has much better sounding GM sounds, plus besides the better GM trumpets, it has dozens of other trumpet sounds .. so your choices expand, plus it is still a hardware synth like you are used to working with

The world of Virtual Instruments (VI) is a universe unto its own. Go spend a little time and immerse yourself in the forum at :

https://vi-control.net/community/

Friendly environment for VI newbees to get the lay of the land.

Dan

OK here is my two cents worth of suggestions:

1-for the best sounding sax and trumpets AudioModeling are the best:

https://audiomodeling.com/swam-saxophones/

https://audiomodeling.com/solo-brass/trumpets/

Another good sounding sax and trumpet are https://vgtrumpet.com/
but these need the full version of Kontakt while Audiomodeling does not.
But if you really want to get serious you should consider the full versions of either Kontakt or Sampltank:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontakt-7/

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/st4/

But wait for a sale, I know that Kontakt does have half off sales from time to time. I don't have Sampletank so other will have to advise you on that.

Keyboards are wide open arena. What type of keyboard sounds are you looking for, pianos, synths, FM, etc?

The above is from my experience. Others may or may not agree.

Alcarms.

in addition to marios and previous posters great suggestions..i use plug ins from computer music mag uk...80 instruments n' fx for a charge of 20 buks for the magazine.
dont underestimate these plug ins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo1LBm8L600&list=PLE90EC6DE32E81D76

on the right hand sound youll find a list of all cm plug ins//vids etc.


heres just ONE synth plugin of the many.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7egZxFJwKVw

best

om

Thanks I will pursue

Thanks I will pursue.

Thanks looks interesting