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Cinematic Studio Strings v1.7 - Available August 30!

Juulu said:
@Alex W just curious, from the video demonstration you recently uploaded, during the shorts part it looked like the short lengths were being controlled by the length of the note. Am I misunderstanding, or are short lengths no longer determined by CC-level but instead controlled by how long you hold the note? The part I'm referring to is when the cellos and basses are playing short together.
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Hi there, no I think this is just a coincidence - I must subconsciously feel like doing that actually makes a difference while I play, but it doesn't. :) The bowed samples all play out in full, regardless of how long or short the MIDI note is.
 
Petter Rong said:
Thank you for updating this, Alex! Critical post incoming, so I would like to clarify that I'm very happy for this update and appreciate your hard work to make this happen 🙂

With that said, I'm not totally on board with your philosophy regarding the pitch bend questions here. Why isn't this an option in the instruments? Who cares that it didn't sound realistic? Anything using pitch bend rarely sounds realistic anyways. It would not break your back adding a button to turn this on and off. Several of my other libraries also suffers from this over-clean approach, and a lot of others thankfully don't, which are the ones I often end up using, since it allows me freedom to do what I want without having to dive into the Kontakt wrench rabbit hole (which I can't do at all in my current version of CSS). Sometimes sounds like a crappy 80s synth? Sure does, but if that was what I wanted that day, then it's great. Options, that's all I'm asking for.
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It's not about whether or not it sounds realistic, pitch bending breaks the legato system, so it just doesn't fit into the design of the libraries imo, sorry about that but it's the conclusion I've arrived at. I may create a more dedicated strings fx library in the future - I've had many ideas about this over the years, but for now you'll need to use other libraries if you wish to create material with pitch bends.
 
And this is why Alex is one of the best developers out there. Even tho CSS came out years ago he is still committed to improving it by listening to the users feedback, while also going out of his way to offer it for free.
More developers should have the same professionalism and generosity instead of listening only to their egos(although this part is understandable because our projects are our babies), taking their costumers money and abandon updates/improvements all together, even when you make valid points on why certain aspects would improve a library or charge you for what should have been in the library all along.

Thank you, Alex!

Now i just need a less cumbersome way of opening old projects vs making new. By less cumbersome i mean not having to have everything double in my already overfilled ssd´s =)

P.S. Few questions:

1 - Are there plans to update cinematic studio piano one day to give us more control over it? Maybe adding some snapshots (although it might go against the idea of these libraries) with specific names like Bright/Dark, Fantasy, Thriller, Horror, Ballad, Pop, etc?

2 - Are there plans to add control for vib and non vib in CSSS?

3 - Will new track delay suggestions/ms timings be added in a new manual?
 
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For people asking about pitch bending, have you tried assigning Kontakt's tuning knob to MIDI CC? I once had some fun with that, trying to mimic a car engine sound. This was made with CSB by holding one note while riding the tuning knob up and down
 

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Based on the video, it seems like some of the short notes are hard quantized, while others are not - and the low-latency legato has variable grid placement. I hope the third-party KSP script can be updated with the new latency values since it seems there will still be variable latency across articulations?
 
jaketanner said:
I’m hoping this update will finally get me to use CSS. Lol. The over the top vibrato really put me off using them, and not thrilled with tone. So if these two things got an upgrade, I’ll be happy to try them again.
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Same about the vibrato. I'm that and the constant fiddling with the velocity, delay and slurred legato kind of kept this from being my #1 strings library. But maybe this will change after Tuesday.
 
Pier-V said:
@Alex W congratulations on the update, I'm really impressed by what I've been able to hear from the demos so far.

Considering the style I write in, the possibility to write legato lines without vibrato is really huge. And seeing what you were able to achieve with the new marcato version using only clever scripting and no new samples felt incredibly inspiring!

I have a question: will the 1.7 version of CSS occupy around the same amount of room on SSD? Of course I'm not talking about additional MBs, but GBs could matter in my case. Thank you in advance!
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No, sorry - I should have put this in the release notes (I was going to but totally forgot). The new version requires about 13 more GB than the previous version. v1.7 takes ~48GB after installation, but you actually need ~125GB of free space on your target drive during installation - this is a requirement of the Native Access system.

If you have more than 48GB but less than 125GB of free space on your target drive, I believe it's possible to change the target drive in the NA options, then download to that drive, and then move the fully downloaded "Cinematic Studio Strings" folder over to its normal location. So, if you're like me and have a couple of large-yet-slow mechanical external drives for general backup purposes, you could use that to download the library to, and then move the entire CSS folder to where Native Access expects it to be afterwards.

I'll look into this some more and report back with further info. This is the first time we've distributed a library via NA, so I'll ask you to bear with me for the first couple of days while we figure it all out together. :) Generally speaking though, as long as you have 125GB free on your target drive, you should be able to just right-click on CSS in NA, click "re-install" and NA should do the rest.
 
Jackal_King said:
This is very exciting and great job on the update! I'm looking forward to the low latency legato which would mean less time tweaking. Will the delay compensation remain the same with the legato and sustains patches?
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Yes the low-latency mode has less of a delay than the previous "Standard" mode which it replaces, so you'll need to account for that in your delay-compensation settings / scripts.
 
ka00 said:
It sounds like the close mic is now split into two separate signals: spot 1 and spot 2. If each of those is stereo that would increase file size. But if they are each mono signals, then I suppose there would be no change in file size from splitting them.

And the non-vib legato transitions are no longer scripted but their own custom transitions. So I would speculate that 1.7 is at least 20% bigger if not more. But let’s see what Alex says.
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Yep, you're right, it's around a third bigger now, the installed size has increased from 35GB to 48GB. (Spot mics are both mono btw)
 
David Chappell said:
So first of all, this sounds absolutely awesome and I'm immensely thankful to get such an update for free. CSS is easily the single best investment I've made and this update is only going to further cement that.

Question, though - can 1.7 coexist in a project alongside other instances of old (present) CSS? Currently deep into a project that would massively benefit from those 1.7 marcatos but I'm not entirely fancying reprogramming the whole thing :rofl:
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No, sorry that just won't work I'm afraid. They each use completely different sample sets (and patches). You'll need to finish off that project first and then move to 1.7 after that (or whenever it's convenient). :)
 
@Alex W : thanks a lot for this fantastic upgrade in advance!

One question: If I save the actual version as "CSS original" does it mean that if I open a recent project (with the older version) that it will ask for the samples? Or does it load the actual version and I have to manually reload the old samples?
 
David Kudell said:
So low latency mode still has variable delay times based on velocity? Or all they all the same time now?

Either way is fine, as long as there’s consistency so there is still the ability to use negative track delay and quantize, once the velocity of the notes is set to a fixed value (ie, set to 70 for medium, 105 for fast, etc).
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Yes that's right, there are still multiple speeds in low-latency mode - Medium and Fast. Medium will cover 90% of your phrasing, but every now n then if you need to add a slightly faster phrase, or even an ornament here or there, "fast" comes in handy for that, because it's a little bit more agile. There's not a huge difference between the two speeds, but you'll appreciate the functionality of having the fast mode there when you need it.

I should point out that generally speaking, the various legato "speeds" are not just about playing speed either - there are times when using fast instead of medium will just sound better for whatever reason, since each speed has a slightly different "feel" when it comes to the "attack" or dynamic curve of the beginning part of the legato transition. In other words, you may be writing a slow phrase, but still find that one note or another may sound slightly better / more pronounced when using a fast transition, which may be totally appropriate for that particular note. This is not something you need to overthink - but what I'm saying is you can think of the various legato speeds as being different "options" to create the most flowing phrase, as each speed has its own vibe, and there's no telling when one might sound better than the other for whatever reason. But again, not something to overthink - just another option to consider while sequencing.
 
Jackal_King said:
This is very exciting and great job on the update! I'm looking forward to the low latency legato which would mean less time tweaking. Will the delay compensation remain the same with the legato and sustains patches?
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micrologus said:
Thank you for the great update! :)
About Native Access: I'm a bit worried about it: the installation always requires a lot of free GB on the main HD, otherwise the library cannot be downloaded.
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antames said:
I agree. You deserve compensation for the hard work you have put in. No one should work for free, even out of goodwill. Please consider placing a price tag on this upgrade.
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I agree - there should be a charge!!!!! But in all reality - the not so bright OTHER half of composers on planet earth (who didn't previously buy in) are going to NOW buy this timeless library. Hopefully that covers 'some' of Alex's 2 years work to put this out. As an owner from day 1, I very much appreciate your painstaking measures to create such a masterpiece and THEN continue to improve it.
 
antames said:
I agree. You deserve compensation for the hard work you have put in. No one should work for free, even out of goodwill. Please consider placing a price tag on this upgrade.
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That's very kind of you, and I appreciate that sentiment, but honestly, I love what I do, and I find it really satisfying to be able to increase the value of the library without increasing the price. Thanks very much for your support! :)
 
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