What's new

Most Disappointing Library Purchase?

Wow! Surprised at the Spitfire Solo String reviews. I almost went with them after missing the sale on Chris Hein Solo Strings.

I'm fairly new to VIs, so some of my recent purchases are older products. My biggest disappointments are:

Thrill: Cool sounds but I haven't used it once. More atonal and less playable than I thought.
MusicLab RealGuitar/Strat/LPC/Rick: Group sale from Orange Tree put these in the garage.
I like the Spitfire Solo Strings, except the vibrato remains very hard to get right, and harder than is the case for the string ensemble libraries. (The vibrato is a much bigger problem for this library than the legato, imho.) They sit well in a section for added detail and sound nice for momentary spot solos in orchestral works or single strings in small chamber groups not dominated by strings (an ensemble like the one in British Drama Toolkit). I don't think they would work especially well for string trios, quartets, or quintets or the various derivatives of those (e.g., piano quintet) or for extended solo work like a concerto or sonata, though I haven't actually tried the library for these things yet, so I'm not speaking from experience. I think people would have been happier with this library, even at the same price point, if they had been called something like "first chairs," just as I think people would have been happier with the HZ Strings if they'd called it something like "HZ 'Dunkirk' Strings."
 
I think people would have been happier with this library, even at the same price point, if they had been called something like "first chairs," just as I think people would have been happier with the HZ Strings if they'd called it something like "HZ 'Dunkirk' Strings."
I suspect you're right, although it flies in the face of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. ("A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.")

Then again, if one were to try to sell roses as hammer substitutes, a lot of customers might be disappointed—despite the lovely smell.

(Not suggesting Spitfire was that far off the mark.)

Best,

Geoff
 
Last edited:
It’s not so much “what is N?” as “how is N?”.
N is more a state of mind; a journey rather than a destination.

Well put. As N dev rep, we would like to extent our thanks to you for your continuous support and believe in N-the first and last library you ll ever need. As thanks, you ll re eive upgrade to N 2.0 for FREE.kindly Please visit the N forum to see what's new. :2thumbs:. Have a 'N' ice day!
 
I agree. There was so much hype around N, but when I actually played it, I was immediately forced to file a credit card chargeback.

We sorry to hear about this but N already have a full demo of N before purchase, which is really really.rare in the world of sample libraries.You only have yourself to blame if you don't like it for whatever reason
 
My biggest problem with the ONE strings are the short articulations in the higher register. They sound really fake to me. Everything else ounds pretty good though.

Btw, good to see you around Guy! :thumbsup:

(N is an ongoing joke for a library that doesn't exist. There was a thread in the Commercial Accouncements area that just said "N". It snowballed from there.)

But the real joke is when you said 'n' doesn't exist
 
Well put. As N dev rep, we would like to extent our thanks to you for your continuous support and believe in N-the first and last library you ll ever need. As thanks, you ll re eive upgrade to N 2.0 for FREE.kindly Please visit the N forum to see what's new. :2thumbs:. Have a 'N' ice day!

b7ce2ff72f79320e77f0dcc3141e3add19c609a9.gif
 
Biggest disappointment has to be Spitfire Audio's Hans Zimmer Strings. Whilst the samples are pretty good and definately worth the investment, there are 2 BIG technical issues:
1) Unlike most of SA's other professional libraries, there is no facility to route the many different Mic positions to different Mic outputs. So if you want each seprate Mic routed to a separate buss, then the only option is to stack them up, and pray there is enough memory and CPU power to handle it;

2) Every time we launch either Cubase 9.5 or Nuendo8 with HZ Strings in a project, we have to use SA's App to 'locate' the library, or, more often than not 'Repair' the library. It doesn't happen every time, but probably near 1 in every 5 times, and contacting SA for support to reset the 'Repair' and 'Locate' counters on their system is becoming a time waster. Its an obvious bug either with HZ Strings or possibly Windows10, but of the hundreds of libraries we have in our studio, this is (for us) the only library with this issue - so we think Spitfire Audio need to sort this one.

Thanks,
Jon
 
For me, it was Aria Sounds release of the London Symphony Strings - Violins. It was so bad that they don't even sell them anymore. I got zero response from support after purchase and still have zero clue what the hell happened to that series.

Issues I had were a few things. Odd GUI functionality that didn't make sense. Required side ways mouse movements to move faders up and down. The sound of the library was not great. They included a playable Glissando legato which was a total gimmick that I feel for so that's on me but still, it was so badly programmed that I pretty much deleted the library after a day or two and haven't looked back. It's ashamed because there were some pretty cool articulations that hadn't been done before but the quality of the recordings and sample editing was so atrocious that is ruined any hope of it being a usable library for me. I think I spent 49 euros on it but still, it ruined any chances of me ever buying another one of their products. I've not had that experience with a library since.
 
8dioboe in the flash sale. Not a nice thing at all imo.

However, considering $8 was all it cost me to learn the lesson, I guess I actually have to remove it from the "disappointing" category - reading some of the stories in here, people spent WAY WAY more on libraries they don't like, I got off really lightly.

The oboe can actually be made to sound very good and is worth way more than 8 USD. Try a little harder.
 
Cinestrings Solo. I actually think it sounds quite good, and the ensemble is good too, but I had trouble with its playability from the beginning and therefore did not use it. After a while I got the amazing Joshua Bell Violin, so now I regret buying Cinestrings Solo even more, because I think I will never use it, given the sound quality AND very good playability of ''the Bell'.
After buying the Joshua Bell Violin, it's easy to regret purchasing previous libraries that feature solo violin. :)
 
Top Bottom