# Best small scale Spitfire library?



## joelkeo (Sep 29, 2019)

Hello! I make electronic music, but mostly fairly intimate stuff (no EDM). I am a big fan of Spitfire products, but I don't actually own any besides the Labs. I was wondering what the best bang-for-my-buck, non orchestral string library (optionally including other instruments as well) would be? I believe I get 40% off with my student discount, but the chamber strings are still quite expensive. Are the studio strings a decent alternative? Or would albion V or an Olafur library be better? 

P.S. I make a decently wide variety of music, which is one reason why I'm having trouble deciding myself. Would something like Albion V also come with some more "traditional" articulations? Because as well as experimental articulations, I would really like to have access to the tried and true ones. Thank you.


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## Sears Poncho (Sep 29, 2019)

LCO Strings has a decent amount of traditional and non-traditional. It lacks a legato patch, which is a bit baffling, but has nice longs, shorts, harmonics etc.


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## joelkeo (Sep 29, 2019)

Sears Poncho said:


> LCO Strings has a decent amount of traditional and non-traditional. It lacks a legato patch, which is a bit baffling, but has nice longs, shorts, harmonics etc.


Thank you for pointing LCO out, that wasn't really on my radar for some reason.


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## porrasm (Sep 29, 2019)

I don't have LCO but I'd also recommend it since you probably don't have the need for legato which afaik the LCO does not have.


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## ism (Oct 1, 2019)

First - if you can possibly stretch your budget to the chamber strings, seriously consider that. It has a huge range of textures and possibilities.

Otherwise, my personal favourite is the Olafur Chamber Evo. Which you can use as an evo, as a collection of 26 variations of sul tasto-esque articulations. And then there's the waves, which are just amazing.


Most importantly, I think, in the context of *intimate* electronic music, the sound has that very particular quality of ... whatever it is ... partly about being recorded in AIR, partly about the amazingness of the musicians ... and who know what else is in the secret sauce.


LCO is great also. It's dryer, and can go harsher of you want it to. Half the demos show that it's also good for horror, but I use it for its warmth and textures, which are amazing. There's also an unexpected warmth that comes from the dryness and even the micro tuning, which someone once theorized is a bit like a 'detune' knob on a synth, which can give a patch a bit of warmth or richness via a kind of phasyness - its hard to describe exactly how this works until you actually play with it. In fact one way to think about LCO is as kind of an orchestral 'hyper-organic-synth' (as opposed to the way Heavocity approach string libraries from the other side of the coin, more like hyper-orchestral sound-design engines)


Albion V - is also once of my favourite libraries of all time. It's got its own very particular notion of intimacy, I'd be curious how that would work with intimate electronic music. But its very hard to describe how great it is. So definitely worth considering. It also has a few legato patches, which none of these other do, although it's not a focus of the library.


Then there's Orchestral Swarm .... can't say I know of anyone using it in intimate electronic music (unless you count the Radiohead-Zimmer track). But I'd love to know what such music might sound like.



These are my gold standards, any of which would give you a real foundation, of sorts. But also maybe worth thinking about might be Heavocity Intimate Textures, Orchestral tools Time Marco (particularly the sound design patches), and maybe even Audio Imperia Mystic, which is also fun. None of these have the 'spitfire' quality of whatever-it-is to them, but they have their own very substantial merits in their own right.


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## ism (Oct 1, 2019)

Oh, and the Studio strings are great also, here's a noodle that, though very rough in a cat-walking-arcoss-a-midi-keyboard kind of way does give a quick sense of what I particularly love about its sonic texture - although note that the trems and such are from the Olafur Chamber evo.




Not really in the same league as SCS (not so good for fast legato, for instance), but they have an excellent range of articuations and textures, and makes for excellent value as a kind of SCS-lite.


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## TomislavEP (Oct 2, 2019)

@joelkeo, although you're looking for non-orchestral strings library suitable for non-EDM electronic music, I would still think about getting Albion One first if you don't have other Spitfire libraries for the time being. Not only it has great all-around value, sound quality and usability, there is extensive additional content included which could be very handy to have for any style. And it also features all the most commonly used articulations. Personally I don't have Albion One at the moment, but as the Albion Legacy, Loegria and Tundra user, I would still recommend getting Albion One for all new Spitfire Audio customers. It can certainly cover most of the bases by itself and it will blend perfectly with the other products from the same range should one get these in the future. Some would probably say that Albion One isn't about intimacy; this may be true in its basic philosophy, but it can still be used for more intimate music quite adequately. Recently, I've watched a detailed YouTube comparison between Albion One and Metropolis Ark and was quite surprised to hear how much is One more delicate and lush sounding in comparison to the latter, despite being dubbed as the "epic" library.


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## Reid Rosefelt (Oct 2, 2019)

If your music is intimate, I would strongly recommend Albion V Tundra as your first Spitfire library. 40% off during their Christmas Wish List sale. 

I know you asked for a Spitfire suggestion, but you should also consider Orchestra Tools' Time Micro, which is still on intro price. OT's Inspire 2 is also intimate (with some solo instruments, like a delicate piano and harps, which Tundra doesn't have) and is now on sale at NI, as is OT's Time Macro.


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## josephspirits (Oct 2, 2019)

I think Tundra, Bernard Hermann Composer Toolkit, or Albion One have best bang for your buck and variety of content, in my experience, (details below). Just depends on what you mean by "non-orchestral string library", but I think any of these can sound orchestral or not, depending on what you do with them. You didn't mention Alternative Solo Strings or the the first Olafur Evo library, which are similar to LCO in that they have a variety of smaller, non-orchestral string techniques. Those two libraries are based on a smaller quartet of strings, so they are capable of an even more fragile sound than than LCO in a lot of ways. Both of those libraries are also more immediately usable compared to LCO for an "intimate" sound, in my experience, but I don't mean that as a negative to LCO, which is a very powerful library, just might be a bit of a noisy surprise when you start playing around with it in intimate music, where as those OA Evos will fit right in.

*Tundra - *I don't think you can ever go wrong investing in this library. You will inherit an unbelievable amount of beautiful and useful sounds, and once you start layering them and warping them in to fit your music you'll be hooked. I honestly feel like I could just use this library the rest of my life (and a piano) and I could be very satisfied. While the Darwin percussion is very powerful, it doesn't have as much percussion content as Albion One. It does have a huge variety of unique and mesmerizing orchestral sounds compared to Albion One's section patches though. 

*Albion One -* The amount of content you get with Albion One won't disappoint either, and the percussion, brunnel loops, and steam band stuff can be tailored to more electronic music. It's definitely more of an intense sound overall though, which made me get Tundra first. It can do intimate for sure, but the other Spitfire options can probably do that better. Get this if you want the option to be able to big orchestral stuff and just a nice big collection of Albion One sounds in your arsenal. The legacy content included is also great and there are a lot of orchestral FX, runs, etc to work with.

*BHCT *- While I love LCO, I think BHCT is a better first choice for getting a wide variety of dry, orchestral sounds. While it can't get quite as freaky as LCO, it can get very intense, and there is just so much in it. The percussion and synth stuff is a great bonus, but the orchestral stuff is really wide ranging and inspiring. You get powerful full orchestra stuff (the chords are so righteous), a good variety of string, brass, and woodwind sounds, and there are even enough legatos in there to probably cover your initial needs. The combination patches can also be really fun to experiment with, and might make get you thinking more about different ways you could bend the orchestral palette to fit your work. It's a bit more expensive, but take a look at this list of patches on the product page and you'll see this is a great backbone to building an orchestral library, if that's what you're looking for. If you pick up LCO, or any other dry libraries, down the line you'll have a great starting place to build from.

You also won't regret the Olafur Arnalds chamber strings, especially if strings is really what you're after. But... if you are talking intimate electronic music, I would also take a look at the walkthroughs for the OA Composer Toolkit. The piano is great, but it's the other content, like the synths, that feel endlessly creative to me. If you take some time to learn the mercury synth engine and map the controls to a controller it really does become a great "toolkit". I like how the collection of sounds in this library is tailored perfectly to fit in it's own little world, but also able to be mixed well with other libraries. I think if you get either the toolkit or chamber strings, by the time Black Friday rolls around you'll be wanting the other one to compliment it.

[My main suggestion would just to be to watch all of the tutorial videos on youtube over and over, to get both a feel for the sound, but also how the different libraries can be used.]


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## gsilbers (Oct 2, 2019)

another vote for albion one. i do electronic music as well and find myself using albion one all the time.


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## Rick McGuire (Oct 2, 2019)

If you can afford chamber strings you won’t regret it. Otherwise I’d personally get LCO (though I don’t own it). Albion V would be a nice library for the music you make, the eDNA patches are an endless source of inspiration


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## storyteller (Oct 2, 2019)

LCO shorts and longs have been my recent go-to for pop/country/mainstream productions. The lack of legato is baffling, but there are scripts for Kontakt that can solve that problem (via faux legato) if really needed.


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## ism (Oct 2, 2019)

storyteller said:


> LCO shorts and longs have been my recent go-to for pop/country/mainstream productions. The lack of legato is baffling, but there are scripts for Kontakt that can solve that problem (via faux legato) if really needed.



Is there anywhere we can go to here this LCO-country vibe?


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## storyteller (Oct 2, 2019)

ism said:


> Is there anywhere we can go to here this LCO-country vibe?


Oh - just to clarify... I wouldn't say that LCO sounds country by any means. I was just saying that I've been using it for the background string parts for the mainstream/pop/country music songs that I've been recently producing.


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## motomotomoto (Oct 4, 2019)

The best advice I can say is listen carefully through the walkthroughs. The libraries pretty much sound like they do in the walkthroughs in your use.


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