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Help me choose, or I will die

The ONE Solo Strings library?

  • Cinematic Studio Solo Strings

    Votes: 50 37.0%
  • Spitfire Solo Strings

    Votes: 25 18.5%
  • Berlin EXP D Soloists

    Votes: 2 1.5%
  • CineSamples CineStrings Solo

    Votes: 9 6.7%
  • 8Dio Deep Solo Strings

    Votes: 8 5.9%
  • Other (I'm all ears)

    Votes: 41 30.4%

  • Total voters
    135
For solo strings in my very humble opinion nothing is more flexible and realistic of Samplemodeling Solo Strings.

Some sample libraries may have some nice shorts or some good sustain, but as soon as you start building a phrase, the magics are lost and just frustration and disappointment start... you are forced to write for the samples, instead of using the samples for your ideas, and still final result will be questionable.

Samplemodeling are the only instruments providing you with almost the same features and playability of the phisical-modeling products, but keeping the real sound of real Strings solo samples, because they are sample libraries VI and not synth.
As with pianos, I'm sure modelling is the future, but we are not there yet with the sound. (I think the strings are further behind than the pianos.) But of course it depends on one's priorities.
 
As with pianos, I'm sure modelling is the future, but we are not there yet with the sound. (I think the strings are further behind than the pianos.) But of course it depends on one's priorities.
Frequent misunderstanding: you are referring to Audiomodeling not to Samplemodeling.

They are different companies with totally different technologies, and different products with radically different sound.

What you say is perfectly in line with the physical-modeling of companies like Pianoteq or Audiomodeling.

Samplemodeling is instead using AI scripting for managing in real time sample library articulation, and a proprietary tecnology to enable perfect merge and perfect cross-fading of samples and articulations. Nothing to do with "modeling" as synthesis technic.
 
Frequent misunderstanding: you are referring to Audiomodeling not to Samplemodeling.

They are different companies with totally different technologies, and different products with radically different sound.

What you say is perfectly in line with the physical-modeling of companies like Pianoteq or Audiomodeling.

Samplemodeling is instead using AI scripting for managing in real time sample library articulation, and a proprietary tecnology to enable perfect merge and perfect cross-fading of samples and articulations. Nothing to do with "modeling" as synthesis technic.
Sure, I don't think Samplemodeling sounds right either. 💁‍♀️
 
Those sound really really nice, but way too ambient for what I want to use them for. Do you know if there's a demo/walkthrough somewhere that shows only the close mics with no added verb?
I don’t. But this is a wet library. close mics are there to add detail to the tree, and sound kind of uncanny and wrong on their own.

Note, however, in all of my noodles, I’m additionally adding lots of long tail Valhalla Room cathedral reverb. To me, it’s the best of all worlds - the detail of the close, the spatiality of the tree, and the size of the Cathedral (with the early reflections turned off so as not to muddy the spatiality of the tree or blur the detail of the close).

I would’t call this an ‘ambient’ mix, myself, incidentally. To me it’s got lots of clarity of detail and spatial embodiment. Ambient, in my use of the word, would be what you’d get if you removed the close mic details, cranked up the tree (it’s as low as you can go to keep the spatialization without being muddy), or kept the early reflections in the external reverb.

Anyway, my point is : a mix built around the close mic to simulate dryness is probably going to sound terrible. I would never go below ~45% tree, otherwise you'd be better with Chris Hein or some such.
 
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I don’t. But this is a wet library. close mics are there to add detail to the tree, and sound kind of uncanny and wrong on their own.

Note, however, in all of my noodles, I’m additionally adding lots of long tail Valhalla Room cathedral reverb. To me, it’s the best of all worlds - the detail of the close, the spatiality of the tree, and the size of the Cathedral (with the early reflections turned off so as not to muddy the spatiality of the tree or blur the detail of the close).

I would’t call this an ‘ambient’ mix, myself, incidentally. To me it’s got lots of clarity of detail and spatial embodiment. Ambient, in my use of the world, would be what you’d get if you removed the close mic details, cranked up the tree (it’s as low as you can go to keep the spatialization without being muddy), or kept the early reflections in the external reverb.

Anyway, my point is : a mix built around the close mic to simulate dryness is probably going to sound terrible. I would never go below ~45% tree, otherwise you be better with Chris Hein or some such.
Haha yes OK it's not "ambient" in that sense. Thanks for the explanation!
 
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I find SF Solo Strings very flexible and very programmable, but they are not very playable out of the box, even the total performance patch, and they are not at all plonkable. @ism has a Logic script that makes them much more playable. The vibrato, though on or off, is more controllable then initially seems to be the case, because you can turn it on and off to model progressive vibrato and in the context it works much better than it should.

Yes, it's in the nature of solo string libraries to need something more. I think I now have something like a dozen solo violins and I use them all.
I somehow agree, and then I want to be more specific:
- sound is simply lovable, was 1 of the best in class for long time and still is. Articulation set is nice and easy to manage.

But...

- Pitch bend inhibited, vibrato in and out, pretty wet recording even in close mic... this is what I call "low flexibility" to ambience, phrasing and style.
 
If Spitfire is currently sitting on an upcoming "Ólafur Arnalds Solo Strings" recorded in Abbey Road 2 and just reading this thread and laughing, I wish they would give us a sign. ;)
 
Sure, I don't think Samplemodeling sounds right either. 💁‍♀️
Just curious to know if you own it or you based your opinion on demos.

(I ask because I discussed the topic with the producers, being often demos focusing on the exclusive and hyper-realistic phrasing the VI can do, instead of the sound, and probably this is definitely misleading. The amount of supporters is dramatically increasing in the user base instead, because once you start playing it, you love it and you discover that you can make your own sound, whatever it is).
 
I somehow agree, and then I want to be more specific:
- sound is simply lovable, was 1 of the best in class for long time and still is. Articulation set is nice and easy to manage.

But...

- Pitch bend inhibited, vibrato in and out, pretty wet recording even in close mic... this is what I call "low flexibility" to ambience, phrasing and style.
Pitch bend has to be inhibited in a wet library unless you want to bend the room. Which can be an interesting effect and as such I wish it was easier to do. But it's not realistic. Yes, you are dealing with a wet library and that has consequences. But dry libraries have their own inflexibilities, and I can't ever get them to sound the way I like. That's likely partially user error, but it's also partially in the nature of the kind of information that dry signals lack.

In terms of phrasing I find the SF instruments very flexible, more so then those with high plonkability. And as for vibrato, there are only compromises, no good solutions, when it comes to solo strings...
 
Just curious to know if you own it or you based your opinion on demos.

(I ask because I discussed the topic with the producers, being often demos focusing on the exclusive and hyper-realistic phrasing the VI can do, instead of the sound, and probably this is definitely misleading. The amount of supporters and is dramatically increasing in the user base instead, because once you start playing it, you love it and you discover that you can make your own sound, whatever it is).
Just demos.
 
Haha yes OK it's not "ambient" in that sense. Thanks for the explanation!
As ism said, it's a wet library and the close mics are more for definition in combi with the tree.
But it's a great library. I would surely buy it again.

I also have 8Dio Adagio 2.0, and the close mics in some short articulations sounding gorgeous You could use them for Intimate String Sound, but!
Not all articulations are that good. It's a hit and miss.
 
Pitch bend has to be inhibited in a wet library unless you want to bend the room. Which can be an interesting effect and as such I wish it was easier to do. But it's not realistic. Yes, you are dealing with a wet library and that has consequences. But dry libraries have their own inflexibilities, and I can't ever get them to sound the way I like. That's likely partially user error, but it's also partially in the nature of the kind of information that dry signals lack.

In terms of phrasing I find the SF instruments very flexible, more so then those with high plonkability. And as for vibrato, there are only compromises, no good solutions, when it comes to solo strings...
Obviously you can't bend the room, as you can't modulate a recorded vibrato.
Definitely a matter of opinions and personal preference, but one point is pretty objective:
you perfectly described 2 limitations (pitch bend and vibrato out of control) that should suggest you are missing 2 of the most important components of a solo strings phrase. If you don't think so, well no problem, we just have different parameters in prioritisation of the musical elements.

I didn't say the SF solos are bad. They just share common limitations of traditional libraries... believe me, once you played one of the new VI, you will never step back to traditional solo libs again. Technology is fast evolving, and sooner or later all the producers will move to the new virtual-instrument concept.
 
Obviously you can't bend the room, as you can't modulate a recorded vibrato.

Note quite true - SsS lets you:

- via time machine, modulate the speed of the recorded vibrato. This is of course limited, but very convincing for intensifying the vibrato at the end of a phrase.

- approximate a progressive vibrato first by crossfading from non-vib to vib as you craft your phrase, but also in a (crossfading) crescendo arc, but also, you effectively modulate the vibrato when you crossfade between the layers - hight dynamics have more intense vibrato.

- starting you phrase with the recorded progressive vibrato articulation. Like CSSS, or OT FC. you obviously can’t control the timing of the progressive vibrato in the arc, but when you throw it in occasionally , and combine it with the above (rather than repeat exactly the same phrasing in every single not), it can really contribute to the overall expressiveness.

Obviously, this isn’t going to compare to simulated vibrato - even the Embertone simulated vibrato lets you control vibrato smoothly in 4 dimension. But for a certain type of musicality - if you’re able to carefully colour in between the lines of the sweet spots, vis crafting your arcs by modulating in some sense the recoded vibrato in your performance in vib/non-vib, dynamics, time machine & the progressive articulation - it sounds great. Very “emotionally realistic”

There’s of course a lot that it can’t do. But this is the price of preserving the sonority of the samples. And not just the sonority, the spatiality, in that modeling techniques typically require dry recording.
 
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Note quite true - SsS lets you:

- via time machine, modulate the speed of the recorded vibrato. This is of course limited, but very convincing for intensifying the vibrato at the end of a phrase.

- approximate a progressive vibrato first by crossfading from non-vib to vib as you craft your phrase, but also in a (crossfading) crescendo arc, but also, you effectively modulate the vibrato when you crossfade between the layers - hight dynamics have more intense vibrato.

- starting you phrase with the recorded progressive vibrato articulation. Like CSSS, or OT FC. you obviously can’t control the timing of the progressive vibrato in the arc, but when you throw it in occasionally , and combine it with the above (rather than repeat exactly the same phrasing in every single not), it can really contribute to the overall expressiveness.

Obviously, this isn’t going to compare to simulated vibrato - even the Embertone simulated vibrato lets you control vibrato smoothly in 4 dimension. But for a certain type of musicality - if you’re able to carefully colour in between the lines of the sweet spots, vis crafting your arcs by modulating in some sense the recoded vibrato in your performance in vib/non-vib, dynamics, time machine & the progressive articulation - it sounds great. Very “emotionally realistic”

There’s of course a lot that it can’t do. But this is the price of preserving the sonority of the samples. And not just the sonority, the spatiality, in that modeling techniques typically require dry recording.
Yes I know, but still I can't get the point of "technology preference":

- we start discussing that wet recording of real expression is preferred because it's "the real thing" it has "pure samples" it provides "real spatialization" etc.

- Then we admit and get excited by warping the samples with any possible digital trick (time stretch, cross fading, volume manipulation etc.) that obviously totally deprivate the reverb and the samples of the original nature, and we mix the result with other different wet samples, and cover them into additional reverb to make them fuse...

That sounds as a contradiction to me, and the evidence that it's really a matter of personal opinions and preferences (hopefully not instinctive bias).

Final result is the objective measure.
In my opinion whatever works well and sound well is welcome: with a wet and expressive sample you get a perfect sound, but always the same. If you accept to start manipulating it, then Samplemodeling technology is actually a patented and proprietary top technology for real time samples manipulation, protecting the pristine sound, doing something similar to what you listed, and a lot more.

Yes it's dry. Due to the fact I use Altiverb and MIR, I would say thanks God it is.
 
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Note quite true - SsS lets you:

- via time machine, modulate the speed of the recorded vibrato. This is of course limited, but very convincing for intensifying the vibrato at the end of a phrase.

- approximate a progressive vibrato first by crossfading from non-vib to vib as you craft your phrase, but also in a (crossfading) crescendo arc, but also, you effectively modulate the vibrato when you crossfade between the layers - hight dynamics have more intense vibrato.

- starting you phrase with the recorded progressive vibrato articulation. Like CSSS, or OT FC. you obviously can’t control the timing of the progressive vibrato in the arc, but when you throw it in occasionally , and combine it with the above (rather than repeat exactly the same phrasing in every single not), it can really contribute to the overall expressiveness.

Obviously, this isn’t going to compare to simulated vibrato - even the Embertone simulated vibrato lets you control vibrato smoothly in 4 dimension. But for a certain type of musicality - if you’re able to carefully colour in between the lines of the sweet spots, vis crafting your arcs by modulating in some sense the recoded vibrato in your performance in vib/non-vib, dynamics, time machine & the progressive articulation - it sounds great. Very “emotionally realistic”

There’s of course a lot that it can’t do. But this is the price of preserving the sonority of the samples. And not just the sonority, the spatiality, in that modeling techniques typically require dry recording.
Great to know! I still have a ton to explore with this lib, just started using it yesterday. Do you perhaps own Spitfire Symphonic Strings? If yes, do you know if Solo Strings blend well with Symphonic Strings? Are they MIDI-consistent?
 
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Yes I know, but still I can't get the point of "technology preference":

- we start discussing that wet recording of real expression is preferred because it's "the real thing" it has "pure samples" it provides "real spatialization" etc.

- Then we admit and get excited by warping the samples with any possible digital trick (time stretch, cross fading, volume manipulation etc.) that obviously totally deprivate the reverb and the samples of the original nature, and we mix the result with other different wet samples, and cover them into additional reverb to make them fuse...

That sounds as a contradiction to me, and the evidence that it's really a matter of personal opinions and preferences (hopefully not instinctive bias).

There's more going on here that just "personal preference" or "technology preference"

Starting from the idea that I'd describe the SF approach as "as much expressiveness as possible without damaging the sonority", the point about the array of techniques I describe above that let you add expressiveness in the vibrato - but precisely in a way that works without damaging the sonority.

The time stretching, for instance, is limited to intensifying the vibrato's speed a little bit, and used sparingly, it really does achieves this without any significant damage to the sonority. (Of course, it wouldn't work to modulate the intensity or other dimension of vibrato expressiveness).

Similarly, the (non-phase aligned) crossfades endemically cause a a bit of bumpiness, so again referencing this noodle:





.. if you listen to it with your cognitive hat, you can hear that it's obviously samples. The bumpiness in the crossfade easily gives it away. At least intellectually. And some people report that, aesthetically, this kills it for them.

And sure, you can get mock ups that are more realistic in the cognitive dimension of smoothness of expressinon through phase alignment or other modelling techniques.

But at the same time, the sheer sonority of this noodle demonstrates what I fell is a level of "emotion realism", that trumps the cognitive. I can listen to this "as music" all day.

At least, when I listen to it not as a sound engineer, but "as music", my brain, apparently, is perfectly happy to ignore this bumpiness entirely. And I can really just immerse myself aesthetically in this sonority in a way that (sadly) I just can't with, say VSL or Emotion Cello.


Part of this is the musicality of the composition. If this were a Mozart concerto Spitfire Solo Strings would be *terrible*. The musicality of this kind of composition resides just too fundamentally in the pristine smoothness of the expressiveness. But the musicality I'm actively looking for in the above instead reaches for a beautiful, "fragile materiality" (quoting @jbuhler), and I can really *feel* like I'm really experiencing a really fabulous sounding musical performance, sharing the same, embodied, space of the performer.

With other libraries it might be much harder to *cognitively* determine if I'm listening to a real performance vs samples. But there's an emotional quality of the sheer sonority and nuance of the performance that I simply don't find reproducible with modelling techniques.

And ultimately, when I'm writing with samples, "Emotional realism" is all I care about.


So yes, partly this is about personal preference. But I also think that that we can go deeper than that in understanding what's going on here. For one thing, the musicality. If we're listening for one type of musicality and insensitive to another, this is obviously going to colour our understanding of the sweet spots of a library.


But beyond musicality, there's such a huge difference of polarizing opinions on solo strings, that I think it's also quite plausible that there's a genuinely perceptual dimension involved in our differing preferences.

Sampled instruments are always playing a delicate game to maintain some illusion of "reality" (with an understanding that "emotional" and "cognitive" reality need some texture in their distinction). When I listen to VSL solo strings, one minute it's pristine and delicate and gorgeous ... and then next it completely falls off a cliff into synthyness and the whole illusion comes crashing down forever.

But music is always about perceptual delicacy - witness the perceptual dimension to how multiple countrapuntal lines are separated by the perceptual capacities of our minds into multiple streams. But then if the counterpoint is a bit sloppy for a couple of bars, the distinct perceptual streams might similarly catastrophically collapse into a single stream of harmonic mush. But there's going to be a *lot* of contextual factors involved what pushes it over the edge into collapse for one person vs another.

And note that this is a very specifically human perceptual capacity - dolphins for instance, would apparently experience Bach very differently.

So whether by nature or nurture, there's no reasons all of our brains need to experience solo string libraries in the same ways.

(More on this thread:

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/best-solo-cello.82018/post-4386657 )


Anyway, at the end of the day, there's a great richness of musicalities and perceptual stances, that it really just does go to show that you can never have too many solo string libraries.
 
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