What a great thread!
The tightened-up Time Machine version is a BIG improvement for the Spitfire Strings. But I still hear a "musical intent" advantage for CSS. It's even more prominent in the legato example.
There's something about the phrasing of a melody constructed from samples where you can just
tell the notes are collaged together and not connected by any real musical intent - even when there's plenty of dynamics crossfading... it's like when the GPS voice in your car reads instructions to you. All of the words are OK but they don't add up to the way a human would say a sentence.
Sure it might fool a director or a layperson but
you know it's samples and
you know a real orchestra would play it so much better.
CSS also feels more "together." It doesn't just achieve the "in the same room" effect but goes beyond to some kind of magical "the sounds blend like they WOULD in a room" effect. I first noticed that when I mocked up the Elgar Serenade this fall -
It's weird that I get that sense more from CSS despite it being a drier library. I guess the section sounds have been mixed to glue together very well.
Certainly Mural is a more versatile library in terms of its vibrato and overall tone. it's closer to a platonic ideal string sound. CSS is very specific and "characteristic," could sound quite wrong in some applications.
@Christof (or anyone else with SSS) if you are interested in mocking up a small piece of the Elgar with SSS to compare you can download the Logic and MIDI
here.