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String Sustains (blind preference fun)(FULLY revealed 12/11)

Blake Ewing

Audionaut
Here's a little play-through of some string libraries. I was gauging my overall feelings for the sounds of each (as I like to do from time to time to update/negate by biases). I tried to do something short so I wouldn't forget one before hearing the others, which I guess is inevitable to an extent.



Continuing the phrase, here's the second half played up an octave. Same library order as before.



I thought I would share here with you guys. It's just for FUN. Please don't fanboi flame me or complain about lack of cc minutia in the examples. :P

I did use cc1 and 11 for quasi-musicality and tried to get all examples to roughly the same volume without affecting relative timbre.

Remember, I was basically trying to update my memories on the basic sound of each. So I invite you to do the same, and see what you like best before I post what's what.

There are 8 libraries used. All are using an Ensemble patch, and all are quite capable given the right setting and manipulation I'm sure.

Which ones do you like/dislike?

You can probably ignore example 3 as its vibrato control out of the box is all the way up and sounds alarmingly close to tremolo. But I'll leave it in for continuity.

EDIT:
AND, one more.



It's a longer, repeating two chord progression throughout the ranges. This time I adjusted #3 vibrato! Same library order as before.

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OK, the reveal! (mostly)

1. Spitfire Audio - Albion 1 (Legacy Redux)
2. Native Instruments - Symphony Series Strings
3. Spitfire Audio - Mural/Symphonic Strings
4. 8dio - Adagio/Adagietto
5. Cinematic Strings 2
6. Spitfire Audio - Albion 2 Loegria
7. Red Room Audio - Palette
8. Spitfire Audio - Sable/Chamber Strings

Pretty interesting stuff, I think!
 
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5 is the best, just sounds most musical; 7 is solid too. 8 and 4 are okay and the rest are less impressive.

As I guessed on the other forum, I'm going to guess here that 5 is CSS and 7 is some kind of Spitfire library...
 
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AND, one more.



It's a longer, repeating two chord progression throughout the ranges. This time I adjusted #3 vibrato! Same library order as before.
 
They all sound pretty dang good... hard to be more discerning due to the variance in reverb settings, but 5 (CSS?) is still my favorite... 1 a close second (SCS?)

Thanks for you efforts!
 
OK, the reveal! (mostly)

1. Spitfire Audio - Albion 1 (Legacy Redux)
2. Native Instruments - Symphony Series Strings
3. Spitfire Audio - Mural/Symphonic Strings
4. 8dio - Adagio/Adagietto
5. Cinematic Strings 2
6. Spitfire Audio - Albion 2 Loegria
7. Red Room Audio - Palette
8. Spitfire Audio - Sable/Chamber Strings

Pretty interesting stuff, I think!
 
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Thanks for doing this Blake!

One of the takeaways for me was how little Mural stands out from this crowd. It is "only" a shootout of ensemble patches and just sustained chords, not technical playing. But the sound of AIR didn't jump out at me.

It's funny because CS2 is the cheapest library in that lineup by some magnitudes - it's less than half the cost of the repackaged Sable or Mural, and less than a THIRD the cost of 8dio Anthology. Yet when playing simple sustained notes, the tone of that library leaps out at me as being attractive & musical. YMMV.
 
Ooh that Albion 2 Loegria sounds good... Just curious, did you use the auto divisi function when using NI SSSE? If not I wonder how it would sound with the auto divisi enabled.

Thank you for doing this comparison.
 
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This was fun! Thanks for putting that together. Gotta say, Loegria does sound good. I should use it more.lol. It would be interesting to do something similar with short notes.
 
Did a very quick listen & assessment without looking at your list. To my ears, #1, 6, and 8 sounded the best. All Spitfire. Hmmm... Thanks for doing this.
 
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