Review: Spitfire Audio Abbey Road Orchestra – Low Percussion Professional

Spitfire Audio are known for many of their detailed and meticulously sampled orchestral libraries, including the ongoing flagship Abbey Road Orchestra series. The series includes dedicated strings libraries alongside individual woodwind sections such as Flutes a due, Oboes a due, Clarinets a due, and Bassoons a due. Percussion is also well represented, with High Percussion, Metal Percussion, and Low Percussion available.

Not to be overlooked is the complementary Abbey Road One series, with libraries including Sparkling Woodwinds, Grand Brass, and Orchestral Foundations.

Today, we are taking an in-depth look at one of Spitfire’s flagship Abbey Road percussion libraries: the floor-thumping Abbey Road Orchestra – Low Percussion Professional by Spitfire Audio.

To Buy or to DIY?

Practising low percussion is not a hobby that will endear you to your downstairs neighbours. Nevertheless, it plays an important role in the orchestra, and not only because trailer music has focused on earth-shattering thumps and rolls.

It’s also not something you can easily record at home. I once tried to record my own “epic” bass drum by banging on a laundry hamper with a frozen baguette. Even after pitching the recording down by three octaves, the results were… stale. The Abbey Road low percussion library, on the other hand, promises a depth and quality of content unparalleled in today’s market. Let’s see if it delivers.

Low Percussion: The Bass-ic Facts

Abbey Road Orchestra – Low Percussion features more than 166,500 samples, captured in over 1,800 hours of recording and editing. The download size is an impressive 95.3 GB. The library runs in Spitfire’s dedicated plugin (available in VST2, VST3, AU, and AAX formats), rather than Native Instruments’ Kontakt.

Thirteen instrument patches are included, offering up to seven beater options. The instruments were played by renowned percussionist Joby Burgess and recorded by Simon Rhodes in the hallowed Abbey Road Studio One. The library offers 16 mic signals, including two mixes by Simon Rhodes. The included instruments are:

• Gran Cassa
• Bass Drum (Alt)
• Bombo
• Buffalo Drum
• Dhol Drum
• Djuns
• Dragon Drums (Dagus)
• Epic Toms
• Giant Taiko
• Gong Bass Drum
• Surdo
• Taikos
• Toms

Did you count? Yes, it’s thirteen instrument patches.

The instruments offer up to ten dynamic layers and up to twelve round robins. As with all Abbey Road Orchestra project libraries, no corners were cut. These instruments are sampled at great depth. (Please pardon the pun.)

Special features include a tightness control that allows you to cut into the sample start for precise timing, a soft takeover feature that makes the key velocity sensitivity (the modwheel takes over once the velocity threshold is reached), and left-right mapping that provides control over right-hand and left-hand hits. When deactivated, the round robins alternate between left- and right-hand hits. When active, you can trigger them separately.

(Unfortunately, this feature doesn’t work in the current plugin version 1.4.7. The switch is greyed out for all patches. Spitfire Audio is aware of this issue.)

The Low Percussion Lowdown

When it comes to drums, the two main articulations are hits and rolls. Programming either of these is not as complex as legato transitions. Therefore, the underlying recordings are particularly important. This library was recorded in Abbey Road Studio One by Simon Rhodes, senior audio engineer at Abbey Road Studios. The results are of outstanding quality. It is impossible to find percussion that is better recorded than this, and it is amazing that we can use these recordings to create our own music.

This does not mean that all other percussion libraries have suddenly become obsolete. Abbey Road Studio One is the largest purpose-built recording studio, capable of hosting a hundred-piece orchestra and choir. For large-scale orchestral and cinematic work, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a better option than Abbey Road Low Percussion.

For smaller, more intimate pieces, however, you will need different percussion libraries. You could use the close mics of Abbey Road Orchestra Low Percussion only. However, even these suggest a large room around the instruments. This can work in a mix. Still, drier percussion libraries would be more suitable for this kind of music.

The dynamic crossfades on the rolls are very smooth. There are no jumps between dynamic layers. And there are enough round robins to prevent a “machine-gun effect”, even when repeating a hit at the same volume several times. This, again, is very well done.

Another thing to mention is the sampling depth. With this library, you can mock up all but the most outlandish parts. For example, the Gran Cassa offers hits and rolls with sticks, hard felt, medium felt, a poly beater, a super soft beater, brushes, and a rute on rim. There is also an “All in One” patch with all these options spread across the keyboard, allowing you to access them without using keyswitches. There is really nothing left to be desired.

The Spitfire interface is clean and functional with a logical and intuitive layout. If you have worked with another library in the Spitfire Player before, you will find your way around immediately. One particularly useful feature is the tooltips. When you hover over the “information” icon next to an instrument’s name, you see a description of the instrument and how it sounds. The same is true for the articulations. Hover your mouse over any articulation to view a short description. This is interesting and useful.

There is perhaps room for a small improvement in the mixer window. The sixteen signals are split across three pages. There just might be enough blank space in the plugin to have all signals on one page. It might look a bit cramped, but it would save users from having to switch pages when browsing through the signals. It’s no big deal, though; it works fine as it is.

The Gran (Cassa) Finale

We have come to expect the highest quality recordings and unparalleled depth of sampling from Spitfire Audio’s Abbey Road Orchestra. Low Percussion delivers on both counts. If you want just one library for low percussion, this is the one for you. It’s huge and, at the time of writing, the Professional version costs €449 (though a Core version, with only one mix, is available for €99). Add to that the High Percussion and Metal modules, plus the as yet unreleased Melodic Percussion, and that’s quite an investment for the percussion section. But, as the proverb goes, “buy the best, cry once”.

The library’s strong points are sound quality, depth of sampling, and playability. That leaves very little room for improvement. The only enhancement I can think of is that it would have been useful to have pre-layered patches. For example, the Bass Drums and Epic Toms could have been combined and used for earth-shattering low hits. Patches of this sort could provide further inspiration for Low Percussion users.

In all the important areas, however, this library scores top marks. As it stands, Abbey Road Orchestra – Low Percussion is one of the best-sounding and most comprehensive low percussion libraries on the market.

Learn more about Abbey Road Orchestra – Low Percussion on the Spitfire Audio site.