Engine Audio Era II Medieval Legends

Fifteen years back I struggled with the problem how to emulate the sound of old instruments with banks available in various synthesizers. I had to abandon the project yet during the following years from curiosity I've checked web from time to time if some soft synth producers would come with medieval and renaissance library. Everyone was trying to cover world music, but the European music of Middle Ages seemed to be of no interest.
When I stumbled upon ERA II Medieval Legends I first didn't believe it is the library I'm looking for.
Visually it looked like many similar thematic synths which are trying to sell "mood" or "atmosphere" without using sound of authentic instruments. But when I watched one hour long detailed walk-around video on Youtube, all instruments demonstrated one by one, I was caught. Although I play completely different music nowadays I've bought it immediately.

It's really joy even to test-play various instruments and I hope I'll be able to get some of these sounds into my music in the future.

Première fois que j'achète un pack vst, un peu de mal a paramétrer, surement du à mon manque d'expérience.
J'ai eu l'occasion de composer quelques musiques avec et c'est très propre, beaucoup de paramètres pour gérer le son des frets, harmonies etc.. naturelles que l'on peut avoir avec un instruments acoustique.
Beaucoup de choix d'instruments également mais je trouve, qu'il manque un peu d'un bon tambourin.

Pas déçu en tout cas.

ERA II i a fantastic and beautiful collection of medieval, renaissance and baroque instruments. Many of the sounds and timbres are spot on. Especially the wind instruments and some of the lutes are awesome. The UI is beautiful with information and drawn images of each instrument.

Installation was easy enough, but there is not much info on how to do it. You need to figure out for yourself to copy-paste and unpack the files and how to load it up into bestservice engine 2.

My big gripe with this, and the only reason that I don't give the product the full five stars, is that most bowed instruments are monophonic. Instruments like fidule (basically a fiddle) or nyckelharpa should be able to make double stops and drones and the viola da gamba should even get to play full chords (oddly, you can play polyphonic when the gamba in plucked mode, but not bowed). But not with ERA II, unfortunately, What this does is that it becomes hard to play in an authentic way, it makes for a sort of moog-ish quality to the bowed melodies. There are of course ways around it to simulate a real instrument, like doing overdubs, but that makes it much less intuitive and organic while taking more time. It's such an odd choice, it must just be a programming thing right? At least the lutes are polyphonic.

Overall: An amazing product with beautiful sounds and timbres for early music, folk as well as fantasy-style music, that unfortunately looses much of its value for me due to its lack of polyphony in bowed instruments. If Bestservice would update the engine or ERA to deal with this issue I would change this rating to the full five stars in an instance.

In meiner Suche nach einer breit aufgestellten VST Library für mittelalter Compositionen habe ich mich durch einige Foren geangelt, auf Seiten Soundsamples verglichen und mich am Ende für die ERA II entschieden.
Und die Entscheidung war perfekt: die Auswahl und Qualität ist superb, und ich bin absolut zufrieden! Besonders die Whistle mit ihren fantastischen Kontrollmöglichkeiten ist mein absoluter Favorit geworden.

Pros:
- Hohe Audio Qualität
- Breite und gute Auswahl
- Authentischer Klang
- Gute Einstellmöglichkeiten
- Zusätzlich sind einige praktische Soundspaces und Loops mit on-board

Cons:
- Bei dem ein oder anderen Instrument hätte ich mir anstelle von Melodie-Samples eher ein, zwei zusätzliche Kontrollmöglichkeiten gewünscht - aber das ist meckern auf sehr hohem Niveau

Fazit: Meine Anschaffung der ERA II war ein absoluter Volltreffer, und ich kann diese jedem nur wärmstens weiterempfehlen.