Review: Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds by Spitfire Audio

The classic “Who done it?” is back and Mysterious Reeds is providing the ambience. Very rarely do you get an out-of-the-box library that embodies the sound of iconic cinema and pop music itself . . .  enter the Abbey Road One series.

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Review: Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds by Spitfire Audio

MAIN INTERFACE

Spitfire continues to add to their Abbey Road Foundation line with, Mysterious Reeds. It’s perfect for
adding extra tension, mystery or that classic Hollywood spin to your compositions. This ensemble library of Clarinets, Oboes, and Bassoons will add dramatic legatos, nerve-racking shorts, and uncertain longs giving you an edge in scoring to mood.

Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds normally sells for $49 from Spitfire Audio

Thoughts

First off, there is a lot to like about this library, one of which is the sound and that’s where I will start. Very rarely do you get an out-of-the-box library that embodies the sound of iconic cinema and pop music itself, enter Abbey Road One. When we sit down to write music we tend to forget that mixing is just as important as orchestration and that’s why this library is fantastic. It’s already done for you! Mysterious Reeds comes with 6 microphone signals, 5 round robins, and 6 of the most common and essential articulations. The library is broken into two different sections: Standard and Mysterious. Two Oboes and Two Clarinets make up the Standard articulations of legato, long, and staccato.

The second section, Mysterious, contains Two Clarinets and Two Bassoons playing legato, longs, and staccato in octaves. The content and interface are easily accessed with Spitfire‘s proprietary GUI that allows re-sizing and in a non-Kontakt required plugin.

The GUI is re-sizable

You can also purge samples by using the edit button (shown below) to free up resources when writing. In addition to speeding up your writing process, all standard articulations are arranged to easily lead into the Mysterious articulations for melodic payoff. Both arrangements and instruments blend well with Abbey Road Foundations, obviously, but other Spitfire libraries as well such as Albion 4 and Bernard Herrmann’s tool kit.

Articulations add_purge section

There are, however, always some drawbacks to sample libraries and Mysterious Reeds is no different. Here is what stood out the most. All instrument patches only come in a Two octaves range with no extended techniques. They are, however, in the perspective octave sweet spot, so writing across octaves will be limited.

FX section

There is no specific ADSR control, but there is a tightness control that varies from full attack to no attack and a release for dialing in your tail. I would’ve liked to see the capability of loading multiple tracks in one instance of the Plugin, but that is not available yet perhaps in the future. Logic users can enable this feature shown in the picture below to click through tracks without returning to the daw to open the player. Just press the arrow down or up.

Articulation edit button

Lastly, the Memory consumption can be enormous if you want to dial in a personal mix outside the pre-mixed ones. Having all patches loaded up with all microphones on is a whopping 26.7 GB of RAM usage. This makes it harder to write, post-process, and enable other tracks on CPU’s less than 2.8GHz with less than 32GBS of RAM.

Preset signal mixes

In summation, Mysterious Reeds delivers as advertised. The sound is beautiful, full-bodied, and captures a very classic Hollywood sound with little to no mixing required. Your CPU and RAM can be tested with this library, especially if you are running other resource-demanding plugins in your DAW. My suggestions for this library are, write your music to the pre-mixed signals. Use only the necessary articulations and purge the rest. When sound-shaping, use the maximum tightness for fast staccato passages or combine articulations to cut through the mix. You will not find another stage as epic, intimate, or as well known as Abbey Road. Just having that room and feel pumping through your track will take your compositions to the next level.

Facts

7.6 GB DOWNLOAD SIZE
7.60 GB DISK SPACE REQUIRED DURING INSTALL
Mac OS X 10.10 to OS X 11 or Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10
SPITFIRE AUDIO‘S DEDICATED PLUGIN

Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds normally sells for $49 from Spitfire Audio

Demos of Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds by Spitfire Audio

Videos of Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds by Spitfire Audio

Contributor Nick Rivera reviews Abbey Road One Selections Mysterious Reeds by Spitfire Audio
“The classic “Who done it?” is back and Mysterious Reeds is providing the ambience.”