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Better Late Than Never - Spitfire Studio Strings (Standard)

I mean, personally, I like wet libraries, and find them easier to work with than dry ones, but I didn't find anything you said in the first minute especially controversial. And certainly the most common complaints about SCS and SSS do center on the difficulty of working with the wet room.
 
I mean, personally, I like wet libraries, and find them easier to work with than dry ones, but I didn't find anything you said in the first minute especially controversial. And certainly the most common complaints about SCS and SSS do center on the difficulty of working with the wet room.
well I've always said I prefer dry libraries. I'm pretty sure I've said that multiple times on this forum. To each his own. I've been doing this for 40-something years and have developed a lot of opinions.
 
I don't think that's the only thing that's dry. :dancer:

A good perspective. And some real stuff with impulse responses that made me reconsider some recently formed opinions. The cheaper library didn't sound half bad with some good environment added.

I used to get annoyed at Paul for going on about the different mic mixes. For keerissake, just play the sounds! Then I saw the value in having these different recordings. I suppose I'd rather engage the mic mixes than mess with post processing to make the hall sound right. It's for reeeeal and without delay.

Different parts of brain.

Reaper's Reaverb is great. I've plugged in a lot of free IR's. The Speakers and Telephones guy. A lot of the IR's are in SD2 format, and I haven't been able to figure out how to deal.

Churches and Lexicon historic stuff sounds great, but only for playback. Too much latency on RT playing.

TL/DR: Good job on the video.

And oh so dry. Keep dry, brother. Something is working for you.


Greg
 
It's a real chameleon. Fits in well in so many situations and with so many different libraries. The mic choices in the pro version are more flexible than I first thought.

In fact, the whole Studio Orchestra has grown on me over time. I know a fair few people don't seem to like the brass but I think there are a lot of really useful instruments and patches in there. If they'd just work a bit on some decent performance legatos...
 
Thanks for the review Rob. I have this (and the rest of the 'core' studio orchestra) and really like it, partly for the dry sound. I really like how it doesn't sound like a large orchestra in a great hall with lots of room ambience. It suits what I want to use it for brilliantly and I'm finding it blends with the other libraries I want to mix it with (Heavyocity's Intimate Textures, Orchestral Swarm etc.)
 
By the way, what's the hall reverb you use in the video?
It's the Bricasti M7 - Rear of Chapel IR available with the free Halls of Fame convolution reverb from Best Service. I've played with the settings a bit.
 
Apparently I've already upset someone with this review.... ;)

YouTube comment section is my favourite place. Always find comedy gold there!
Great video, agree with everything.

btw, didn’t you previously have Kontakt tweaking videos? They were great
 
I did, and will be uploading better versions in the future. Thanks.
I find a real lack of videos that address how to make simple tweaks and scripts and multiscripts for Kontakt that help you modify commercial libraries. There's more content on how to build your own instrument but a lot of that doesn't apply in the same ways to modifications (especially what you can do under the hood that won't mess with the basic functionality of the instrument).
 
well I've always said I prefer dry libraries. I'm pretty sure I've said that multiple times on this forum. To each his own. I've been doing this for 40-something years and have developed a lot of opinions.
Hey I can totally confirm that! Really now, when I see your profile photo or nickname I immediately think: "that's the guy who adores bone-dry libraries"! :)

Nice review by the way, straight to the point! I had never realized how many articulation this library offers (even the "core" version)! Excellent value-for-money!
 
(...) Always find comedy gold there! (...)

Actually, that ‘comedy guy’ on YouTube is much more right than wrong with most of what he says. The Studio Strings, particularly the core version, isn’t a dry library. It is in fact pretty wet. It’s not because the room it was recorded in doesn’t generate a lush 3 sec. reverb, that it is a dry library. Dry or wet has got nothing to do with the kind of reverb or its length, it refers to the balance between the direct source sound and the presence of the room’s response. The more that balance favours the room (even if that room generates only a 0,5 sec. response), the wetter a library, and the Tree recordings with which the core version of the Studio Strings is assembled, definitely have plenty of room in them. Wet, alors.

You can hear the consequences of that baked-in wetness quite well in Rob’s video: even if you add a longish reverb to these samples, they still have that characteristic confined sound of samples recorded in a smaller space. That is what the comedy guy heard as well, and why he’s also right when he says: there’s no getting rid of that. There isn't.

In my opinion/experience, the Studio Strings (and the two other libraries that make up the Studio Series) are at their singular best either without any additional reverb or, if you really must, with a tasteful bit of nice chamber reverb. But as soon as you cross into ‘hall’-territory with the core versions of these libraries, the mismatch between the small baked-in space of the samples, on the one hand, and the suggestion of largeness from the added reverb, on the other, becomes rather off-putting, I find.
It’s perhaps not that insurmountable a problem with the long samples, but the shorts certainly don’t provide the ideal source material if you want to suggest a string ensemble in a large space. (Which is something I don’t understand anyone would want to do anyway. Why not buy a string library that has no such strong suggestion of ‘small space’ instead? I bought the Studio Series Pro specifically for chamber- and studio-type work, so it’s not a thing I have to worry about.)

_
 
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The Studio Strings, particularly the core version, isn’t a dry library.
I believe in the video I say it's a "drier" library than the usual Spitfire offering and allows you more control. I hope no one thinks I'm suggesting it's bone dry or even close to it. That said, my feeling is that anyone trying to replicate the sound of a live (or even recorded) orchestra has a lot more problems to deal with than room reflections and added reverb.
 
In my opinion/experience, the Studio Strings (and the two other libraries that make up the Studio Series) are at their singular best either without any additional reverb or, if you really must, with a tasteful bit of nice chamber reverb. But as soon as you cross into ‘hall’-territory with the core versions of these libraries, the mismatch between the small baked-in space of the samples, on the one hand, and the suggestion of largeness from the added reverb, on the other, becomes rather off-putting, I find.

Interesting. How would you critique this mix:






@robgb - curious to know how this would sit with your sense of the library's strengths also.
 
I like it, use it daily. I agree with the comments above, having spent some time fitting the library into a template I found I preferred just a smidge of reverb. Unless you’re blatantly going for the 80’s swamped in ‘verb thing.

I use the library as a string section for R&B and Neo-Soul stuff and for this, the sound “out of the box” works great.
 
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