The Best Woodwind VSTs: Orchestral Elegance For All Budgets

Are you chomping at the bit to get regal oboes, the warmth of clarinets, floating flutes, and more into your music compositions and productions? Whether you’re looking to get great sounding demos before recording orchestral musicians, or if you don’t have the budget for that and need the most realistic woodwind virtual instruments, this Headliner guide to the top woodwind plugins has you covered.

If you’re looking for full orchestra VSTs, you can find our buyer’s guide here: The Best Orchestral VSTs: Professional Symphonic Sounds

Get your reeds ready, and make sure you’re warmed up and tuned, as the conductor is signalling it’s time to dive into the best woodwind VSTs out there, starting with the most affordable and working our way up to the more premium pricing. And stay tuned to the end for a composition technique used on woodwinds by the likes of Mozart and Beethoven.

Originals Epic Brass and Woodwinds (Spitfire Audio)

One of the most affordable woodwind VSTs from one of the very biggest names in orchestral sampling? Spitfire offer the biggest range of woodwind virtual instruments out of all the names on this list, to the point where you could just choose whichever one suits your budget and you’ll likely go away happy, as this is a company that knows what they’re doing.

This sample library is our most wallet-friendly at approximately £/$30 and sounds far too good for that price point. It helps when it's recorded by world-class musicians in the famous AIR Studios in London — and you get fantastic brass sounds also. The tradeoff for spending low is this pack only has three presets, three of which are brass. There’s not much versatility as you can only play grouped woodwind sounds rather than soloing a flute or oboe etc.

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Hollywood Fantasy Winds (EastWest)

Let’s kick things off with something niche — Fantasy Winds from orchestra VST big wigs EastWest is a little different from some of the more classical instrumentation-based woodwind VSTs here. It focuses on instruments to suit fantasy film and game scoring, for example, recorders, Irish flutes, pipes, and the good old ocarina. These things, it does extremely well. If you are set on the more traditional orchestra woodwind instruments such as clarinet and oboe without elves and goblins in mind, this might not be what you’re after.

If this particular use case is for you, then the great news is Fantasy Winds is one of the more affordable woodwind VST on this list: if you buy the Winds pack alone, it’s currently priced at $79, and only $20 more if you buy the full Fantasy Orchestrator pack. EastWest do also offer brilliant woodwind VSTs in the award-winning Hollywood Orchestrator, but that is a case of spending more for a full orchestra VST library.

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Woodwinds Ensembles (Sonokinetic)

If you’re likely to go for one of the most affordable woodwind VSTs, it doesn’t mean you’re particularly compromising on quality. Woodwinds Ensembles from Sonokinetic sound excellent, and casual listeners probably wouldn’t guess they’re hearing virtual woodwind instruments. Like many of the libraries featured here, you can either buy the woodwinds alone or buy the full orchestra pack and then solo the woodwind sounds as you need them. The clarinets, bassoons, flutes, and oboes sound fantastic considering they come at a fraction of the price of some of our later entries here.

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CineWinds Pro (Cinesamples)

If you were hoping the next entry would be the next best affordable woodwind VSTs option, well, that depends on whether you consider $399 to be affordable or not. Perhaps woodwinds having that regal vibe is why there aren’t many cheap-as-chips options.

Thankfully, CineWinds Pro provides a big bang for your buck — the samples were recorded at Sony’s Scoring Stage and goes beyond the classic quartet of the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon. On top of the wee piccolo, have fun with the alto flute and contrabassoon for those deeper sounds. Cinesamples also enlisted William Lyons to bring loads of international wind instruments for you to peruse — he’s the man who recorded said instruments for The Hobbit, so you’re in good hands.

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Symphony Series Woodwind (Native Instruments)

You can always count on Native Instruments to rock up in any VST list, whether it be orchestral, synth, or otherwise. And here they stake their best woodwind VSTs claim with Symphony Series Woodwind. Created by recording a 36-piece woodwind section and top soloists in the Montclair Presbyterian Church, Oakland, this top woodwind plugin is dynamic and is a useful friend for film scoring, classical demoing, and other music production scenarios. The recorded arpeggios, which is essentially a woodwind arpeggiator, are very fun to mess around with.

There are quite a few price options to ponder — the Essentials gives you a streamlined version for around £/$180, ranging up to Native Instruments upselling you the full orchestral package.

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Spitfire Symphonic Woodwinds Professional (Spitfire Audio)

As mentioned earlier, you could almost write a best woodwind VSTs list with just all of Spitfire Audio’s options alone. However, to help whittle down the company’s choices for you, one to definitely check out is the Symphonic Woodwinds Professional. These woodwinds sound fantastic, recorded at AIR Studio One to offer impressive levels of detail. Some of the less famous instruments are shown extra love here, such as the cor anglais and the contrabass clarinet. As with many Spitfire libraries, you are given the power to choose different mic positions so you can edit and mix to perfection.

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Cinematic Studio Woodwinds (Cinematic Studio Series)

The interesting thing about Cinematic Studio Series is you don’t need to decide whether to go for the woodwind VSTs or to pay more and get the instruments embedded in a full orchestra VST — this is a sampling company that instead offers woodwinds, strings, brass, piano, and percussion in separate packages also. And the great news is, this means they poured all the necessary love and care into this professional woodwind library.

These are some gorgeous-sounding VSTs that will banish the days when you felt the need to hide your woodwind virtual instruments in the mix due to them not sounding up to par. Instead, you’ll want to write solo parts for the oboe, clarinet, flute, and even the ol’ underrated bassoon. The interface is a lovely experience and works in conjunction with Kontakt.

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Chris Hein Winds Complete

It’s time to salute Chris Hein for creating one of the top woodwind virtual instruments bundles with Orchestral Winds, a lovingly crafted winds sample pack with excellent realism and accuracy. It brings you Winds Solo Vol.1-5 of all the woodwind releases so far. Besides the usual fare, lovely additions are different types of instruments, for example, bass and Eb clarinets, baroque and contrabassoons (to really get ‘dat bass’), piccolo flutes, and more. The function of playing solo instruments as well as ensembles is very handy, and you can combine both. The website states that these instruments were recorded using state-of-the-art technology, and it shows when you listen to these authentic instruments.

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Synchron Woodwinds (Vienna Symphonic Libray)

Ah, Vienna. The veritable home of classical music. It’s also home to one of the top woodwind plugins, from orchestral VST head honchos Vienna Symphonic Library. Synchron Woodwinds are named after the Synchron Stage recording stage in the Austrian capital, and you can decide for yourself when listening to the highly impressive audio demos on the website with VST versions of John Williams’ Harry Potter and Star Wars music (it’s notably rare for the audio demos to use such famous music).

With Vienna in the title, you’d hope for classy and elegant-sounding woodwinds, and this VST does not disappoint in that regard. Choose from 13 solo instruments and seven ensembles, seven microphone positions and mixer presets, and VSL’s famed lyrical legato for smooth realism in the instruments.

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Berlin Woodwinds (Orchestral Tools)

Next, we’re heading to the German capital as we enter the premium-priced best woodwind VSTs territory. The downside to Berlin Woodwinds from Orchestral Tools is parting with a big chunk of cash. Thankfully, this is enormously outweighed by the positives — the woodwind sounds are outrageously good, and this woodwind plugin is one of the most feature-heavy also: you can edit multiple individual soloists for each section, lots of performance articulations to choose from, six mic positions, and pre-recorded runs you can add in without needing to be a piano prodigy to get all those notes in yourself. Recorded on the famous Teldex Scoring Stage in Berlin, this is an all-powerful woodwind VST.

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SWAM Solo Woodwinds (Audio Modelling)

Last but not least, we take a detour into the world of audio modelling. The above woodwind VSTs largely rely on sampling to create their wind sounds, whereas SWAM Solo Woodwinds, using audio modelling, not only gives you highly realistic sounding instruments, but incredible control over expressiveness, playing techniques, breathiness, and other nuances not often found in a woodwind virtual instrument. It’s also nice to see saxophones included, which isn’t always the case. This is why the full woodwinds bundle is so pricey, but you can keep costs down by buying the instruments you want most individually.

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Should I buy woodwind VSTs or a full orchestra VST?

This really comes down to what you’re after and what your specific needs are. If it’s a project where woodwinds are really prominent and you’ll need solo clarinet and bassoon parts, for example, you will get huge value out of the specialist best woodwind VSTs.

The above woodwind virtual instruments have gone out of their way to ensure the wind instruments sound as realistic and high quality as possible. Perhaps more than when the goal is to deliver a great overall orchestra VST. That said, this is subjective, so take a moment to listen to the woodwinds in The Best Orchestral VSTs and see how much they differ to your ear.

If you think you will also need strings, brass, and orchestral percussion, and woodwinds aren’t your top priority, then the greatest value for you will likely come from a full orchestra pack, some of which aren’t priced that differently to those above, they come at almost all budgets (even free!). Many of the names above also offer the top virtual orchestras.

A top woodwind composition technique used by Mozart, Beethoven etc

There’s a wonderful composition hack for making your woodwinds sound beautiful in unison and like the classical greats themselves. It’s quite simple, you just divide the harmonies between instruments in a way that makes the woodwind section sound like a gorgeous and harmonious choir.

A typical way to do this is to give the top harmony to, say, the first flute. Then, instead of giving the next harmony down to the second flute player, give it to the first clarinet. Give the next lower part to the second flute, and the next to the second clarinet. If it’s a large bit of music with lots of harmony and octaves, you can do this across the full woodwind section with the oboes, bassoons, and other wind instruments you’re writing for. This way, the instruments all blend together in stunning fashion.

Hopefully, you now have the wind in your sails and feel ready to choose the best woodwind VST for your musical needs. All the best to you as you enter the concert hall.