Got My Money's Worth

I purchased JABB3 via download from the Garritan website this past Labor Day. It's great that one can purchase something like that nowadays on a holiday.

Overall I'm very pleased with this package. For years I've been looking for a program to add brass arrangements to my original tunes. After trying to piece together sounds from free VSTIs from the net only to yield a sound something like the Salvation Army horns, I finally found a package of samples where the horns have SOUL. I'm not knocking the Salvation Army brass, but I wanted horns the caliber of Tower of Power or Chicago. ie SOULFUL brass and this package gave me what I wanted.

Yes, you can get better, but you'll pay more too. Hundreds more. If you're willing to study the user's guide and work at your MIDI commands you can obtain great results. For the price, you can't go wrong. Just the sound of the Steinway piano sample is worth the money in itself.

Edit on above

A lot of the problem I was having was getting my DAW to see the MIDI CCs on the menu for JABB3. It was driving me crazy. Then suddenly maybe because I opened the VI in a newer version of the DAW the older version now recognizes them. But what can I say, computers.

Straight out of the box it is not a load and play package. The tutorial on the Garritan page for doits, falloffs, and shakes does work. Seriously read as much as you can about setting up MIDI in your DAW. You will need to access these switches and manipulate them to get realistic sounding brass and saxes. You won't get Tower of Power right out of the box. The program is quite deep, and there is a lot you can do with it. For the price it's great. There are better out there, but then they cost three times as much.

Difficult to use the brass

Granted I may have higher than usual expectations. The saxes don't sound that great, IMO. The trumpets and other brass are okay, but they are very difficult to get the effects such as doits, falloffs, and shakes. If you're going to be using these, unless you're very proficient at MIDI programming, you'd be better off with a product like Mojo Horns which have these as keyswitches and those are pretty easy to use. They've got keyswitches for the mutes, so why not for these? Also I'm not impressed with Garritan support. The brass can be made to sound very good IF you are very proficient at MIDI programming. None of them can really stand up to an exposed solo at this time.