Hi and welcome back to Music Nation. This week we’re pleased to present our in-depth review of Majestic Brass Soloists by Fracture Sounds – a company I must admit I knew very little about until now. A regrettable position indeed, if this library is anything to go by.
Majestic Brass Soloists is the orchestral companion to Brass Band Soloists, which focused on traditional band instruments like cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn, and euphonium. This time around, Fracture Sounds brings us the core orchestral brass section: trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba. If you’ve used the earlier title, you’ll feel right at home here, as the layout and workflow are virtually identical.
First Impressions
Installation is quick and painless through Native Access, after which the library appears neatly in your collection. The GUI greets you with a bold, deep-red interface that’s large, beautifully designed, and easy to navigate.
I had to doulbe check the pricing of this library while it was downloading, $169 USD RRP (launch price of $135) sounds like amazing value, things are looking good.
Once fired up I was presented with a nice balance of controls: not overwhelming, not stripped down. Everything is clearly laid out on a single page – no hidden tabs or cryptic menus. Click the Fracture Sounds logo and you’ll even get a credits popup that includes the actual musicians recorded for the library – a classy nod to their artistry.
All four solo instruments are identical in workflow and articulations. The fifth ensemble patch matches this design but excludes legato, making it best suited for sketching. This continuity makes it easy to switch between instruments without relearning controls.
One neat feature is the “Performance Shorts” articulation, a hybrid mix of staccato and tenuto controlled by both velocity and mod wheel position. Strike the keys harder and you’ll get a more accented attack; play softer and it stretches naturally into a longer tenuto. A clever addition.
Layout and Features
At the top of the interface sit four core controls: Dynamics, Colour, Stereo Width, and Reverb. Dynamics are mapped to CC1 by default, while the others can be freely assigned. Below these are the articulation switches, which are key-switch controlled.
Unfortunately, you can’t layer articulations, nor can you remap them to descrete MIDI channels. That means if you need multiple instances of Kontakt at once if you are to use MIDI note channels like I do, a little frustrating.
A microphone mixer and perspective slider let you choose between close, room, and ambient positions – or disable mics entirely to save RAM. This flexibility is particularly useful if you prefer running external reverb.
Along the bottom you’ll find placement controls, legato settings, and dynamic range adjustments. Everything is intuitive; I never once had to consult the manual or trawl YouTube for walkthroughs.
The Sound
What struck me immediately was the overall warmth of the recordings. Despite the title “Majestic,” this isn’t a bombastic, cinematic brass library. Instead, it has a refined, almost mellow character – smooth, rounded, and intimate. Push the dynamics hard and you can coax a little bite, but it never veers into harsh or brash territory.
The most impressive aspect is the tonal consistency across articulations. Swapping between legato, staccato, and sustains produces virtually no timbral shifts. This is rare – most libraries exhibit noticeable character changes that force you to EQ or massage your mix to achieve continuity.
Here, everything feels cohesive and natural. There is a creamy texture to the sound, a lot due to the excellent recordings, but I think mostly due to the excellent legato playability and read-ahead functionality. Notes really sing, expecially when playing quick shorts into long notes or coming out of fast runs into smooth sustains, the legato does incredibly well to detect these transition.
As solo instruments, there’s a wonderful human quality: subtle wavering, breaths implied through velocity dips, and a sense of physical realism you don’t often hear in sample libraries.
The ensemble patch is surprisingly close to layering all four solo instruments together. While ensemble realism always has limitations (like play a five-finger chord means you’re triggering 25 brass players!), it’s a very usable tool for sketching before splitting parts into solos later.
On the downside, there aren’t many articulations to choose from – just sustains, staccato, tenuto, and the hybrid “Performance Short.” It’s enough for most use cases, but if you’re after hyper-detailed specialty techniques, you may find it limiting.
Performance
Majestic Brass Soloists is fairly heavy on resources, particularly if you run multiple instances with full mic positions. Load times on an SSD were noticeably long, but not out of character for such a library.
Each patch can run around 1 GB with the full mic setup, though RAM usage drops significantly if you use the placement controls. “In Situ” mode presents instruments as recorded in the studio for maximum realism. Alternatively, you can opt for a centred stereo mix and pan within your DAW, or use the “Custom Position” control to virtually place players in the orchestral soundstage. The latter is less realistic but halves RAM demands – perfect for sketching.
Legato is the crown jewel here. The “Smart” mode uses a look-ahead algorithm to select the correct transition samples in real time. The result is incredibly fluid, allowing you to seamlessly blend longs, shorts, and runs with lifelike realism. There is latency – up to 300ms at higher settings – which can feel unplayable for live performance, but recording at low latency and then raising it during playback solves this.
A “Classic” legato option is also available, functioning more like velocity-based legato in other libraries, but the Smart mode is easily the standout. Combined with the smooth articulation blending, it delivers some of the most natural-sounding brass phrasing I’ve used to date.
In the Studio
How does it sit with other libraries? Mixed results.
Against larger, more dynamic ensembles such as Spitfire Audio’s Chamber Strings or even BBCSO, Majestic Brass Soloists tends to get buried. It simply isn’t designed to roar over a 60-piece string section.
However, paired with more intimate libraries – Spitfire’s Abbey Road Two, for example – it fits better. The tonal balance feels natural, provided you manage dynamics carefully. It seems clear the library was designed to blend with Fracture Sounds’ own “Soloist” catalogue (Brass Band Soloists, Soft String Soloists & Emotive Woodwind Soloists), all of which share the same soft-edged, cinematic chamber aesthetic.
While it can sit within orchestral bands, that may not be the main reason to choose this library. Its strength lies in the beautifully nuanced dynamics at mid-to-low velocities, making it especially effective in more minimal setups—solo piano, light winds, or string quartets. And of course, the standout feature is the superb legato, which you’ll want to showcase as much as possible
Conclusion
After a week with Majestic Brass Soloists, I’ve come away impressed – and a little enlightened. Brass doesn’t always need to be shouty and overpowering; in the right context, warmth and subtlety can be far more effective.
Yes, it’s a demanding library if you run everything at full resolution, but the included tools for scaling down make it manageable even on modest systems. The articulation set is limited, but the consistency of tone and the astonishingly fluid legato transitions more than make up for it.
Majestic Brass Soloists looks gorgeous, feels wonderful to play, and delivers a unique character that sets it apart from the usual “epic” brass offerings. It’s $135 introduction price it’s a genuine bargain, and should absolutely be on your radar.
Highly recommended.
For full details and purchasing options, head on over to www.fracturesounds.com
