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New from Strezov Sampling: Afflatus Chapter - Part one: Strings

Been playing around with it now for a while. Definitely impressed. The variety of shorts alone makes it worth the price. Pulls off a lot of passages that aren't easily done with more traditional libraries and that is worth a lot.
And the polylegato and divisi are worth the price.
 
Been playing around with it now for a while. Definitely impressed. The variety of shorts alone makes it worth the price. Pulls off a lot of passages that aren't easily done with more traditional libraries and that is worth a lot.
How is the dynamic range of the legato patches with modulation wheel? Is it possible to use breath controller instead mod. wheel?
 
"I Have a Dream"
and now I have one good news and one bad news.
good news - Strezov realizing a great library..................
 
bad news: again I will be poor
ME too but i must buy this because of the sound and the polylegato. Apart from LAss and SSStrings , no lib had poly legatos. Now THIS one has it and the auto divisi.
I've been waiting for that for years (didn't want to buy LAss or SSstrings....cause of .....).
But i will go for this one. New concept. And fabulous sound.
 
Just a couple questions for the ones who pulled the trigger :)

Can anybody say how does it deal with the delayed legato response? I mean...can we quantize and just delay the whole track and the begginings and mid-legato sections will sound more or less on place?. CSS and the rest will have a much bigger delay in the transitions than the begginings, and for us that record real orch after and we need starts and ends of notes quantized for later orchestration it's an issue if not.

I believe very fast legato melodies still are not possible.

And also...what about the quiet parts?. I hear a lot of loud stuff, but do the really subtle ppp things work nice?.

And last one...can the spicattos work very fast? I hear more of a heavier stac feel in the demos than really agile spic lines. Maybe I am mistaken and missed some of them...

Thank you very much! I'm very much looking forward to it :)
 
Well the price is pretty steep indeed. In the end I've given up trying to understand this. The market itself is way too confusing lately. First you have all these sales where you get a lot of things for a fraction of the original price, and even then you realize some of it is way too overpriced to begin with. Then you have releases of libraries which are amazing and seem to be more than reasonably priced (Genesis? How did that price even happen?). And then you have libraries where the price point is way too high to be attractive, and you can only hope that the developer actually makes their money back. Well sound is great, so I wish them the very best, but just looking at my list of string libraries.....Guess I'll just use those
 
Putting the price aside for one moment, one thing I am struggling with is how you could manage using this library practically?

It seems generally many of the patches are standalone with little switching between articulations and it generally seems to consist of Sustain/Legato variations.

To me it seems lacking some way of creating a master patch (think Capsule) and I worry that with so much material (first world problems...) writing with this would require deep knowledge of what is in there and some kind of idea of the approach you want to ensure you pick the right patch.

Especially as many are named as themes, which on the surface sounds clever but relies on getting the meanings.

It sounds very good, the price is high but only if you are comparing against what you have. Adding First Chairs does improve the value a lot however.

I suspect the main cause of discomfort for many was the reference to pricing being on par with other titles by them. BTW the crossgrade only saves about €15 from what I can see (but maybe that is a permanent saving vs just during intro).
 
I looked at the articulation list and the legatos/sustains mostly have two dynamics at best and no legato repetition samples either? That's somewhat of a disappointment for me at least to be honest.
 
I suspect the main cause of discomfort for many was the reference to pricing being on par with other titles by them. BTW the crossgrade only saves about €15 from what I can see (but maybe that is a permanent saving vs just during intro).

It's a permanent discount. The more products you own from us the less it costs. We think this is a fair approach and way better than regular sales. Same thing when you own Wotan and want to buy Freyja for example. It will automatically reduce the price if you are logged into your account.
 
It's a permanent discount. The more products you own from us the less it costs. We think this is a fair approach and way better than regular sales. Same thing when you own Wotan and want to buy Freyja for example. It will automatically reduce the price if you are logged into your account.

On the subject of articulations/styles, is there any likelihood of some way to group bowings? I appreciate there may be scripting/sample group technicalities, but making Kontakt multis can be as much of a pain.

I am still on the fence, but more from a usefulness perspective. There is a lot of great features and some lovely stuff in here. But it does come across like the majority is in the Legato realm.

That makes i more niche somehow and makes the cost more relevant. Especially for those with many strings libraries already. But its a tough one as it is still an amazing sounding library!
 
From the walkthroughs I gathered that there's so much niche stuff I'd most probably never use, plus I think there will be some special and interesting short articulations in SI's Hyperion Elements that will have intro price like $100-150, and I think even the full version will start around $200-250, so...

More so I believe @Soundiron Team could make a specialized weird articulations strings library accompaniment to their Hyperion line (in case that stuff is not in the full lib already, since in the teaser videos we could hear those Herrmann spiccati already) that could again has the intro prize like, dunno, $100-150 max? I mean Hyperion Micro was $40, 6 articulations with multiple dyn layers and RRs, nuff said...
 
Amen !!! Several other string and other pricey Intros out there recently, with BlkFri couple weeks away.
I applaud the Provider, but this is not a 'simple' offering to sort, much like SF_EWC, and some others.
Still hesitant now, but would have invested -40% Intro, after very early impressions.

SF_ Chamber Strings is in comparable price range, is one of top BlkFri targets, and fully expect something close to 40% promo.
 
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I would take a limited time 40% discount over a permanent 20 euro discount any day to be honest.

Except that is an incorrect statement, sure during intro the discount is fairly small, but when it goes to full price of €799 the crossgrade price will still be somewhere from €580-629 depending what you own of theirs.
 
I would take a limited time 40% discount over a permanent 20 euro discount any day to be honest.
It's about customer loyalty, not just a huge invitation to buy in. Some developers prefer to reward their returning customers whilst others prefer to draw them in. These cross grades stack with the more libraries you own so for those incredibly loyal customers, I think you can end up getting this for 550 euros which would be over 30% off retail which is pretty generous for a new product.

I've been around in the sampling industry long enough to see developers start with this type of program and migrate to another program and in the process, they ended up hurting their loyal customers. So, to avoid that, I would expect Strezov Sampling isn't planning on changing their intro-pricing/cross grading system because they have built up a pretty loyal customer base of composers. I have reviewed and bought libraries from Strezov since they've been around and I can say that their focus has always been about creating something that fills the gaps in this industry and not with sub par software but with something that pushes the envelop of what has been done and they do it better, (re; Polyphonic True Legato, Divisi, their Syllabuilder Engine, etc). They don't release a library and move on. They continue to record and update their libraries with new and free content (re; Wotan's last update with Polyphonic Legato patches. Legato sampling costs a lot of money to make and program. They did this free of charge to existing customers.) So yeah, I'd honestly prefer them to continue on their current loyalty program because their customers will continue to benefit later down the road at any time, not just during an intro sale.

As far as the pricing goes and those who are peeved about how much it costs. Well, too bad I guess. Libraries that deliver playable concepts that have been gimmicks for the majority of the "workhorse" libraries out there has become a reality with Afflatus. Orchestral Tools, CineSamples, Cinematic Sampling, Spitfire Audio, etc have not been able to produce a remotely playable/programmable Polyphonic Legato engine that sounds great with little to no effort. Strezov Sampling HAS! They did it in 2016 with Freyja. Since then they've refined it with what is now in Afflatus. So, for me, Afflatus is in a whole other league since there is literally nothing on a market that comes close to what is offered here. You can't just compare this to Symphobia on the surface. It goes deeper than that. You can't compare it to Berlin Strings or CSS because it goes deeper than that. Sure, it's not a basic, conventional sound set that you'd find from one of the aforementioned developers because that's the point. This is something NEW. It's not been done like this in the past and new things have a cost. I'm certainly lucky enough to have received an NFR for this library but I'd pay the full price if I didn't. The library is going to become a staple in my template over the new few weeks as I reassess my virtual orchestra needs for my job. I'm still working on the review but hope to get it out soon for those interested. If you have any specific questions you'd like me to answer or demonstrate in my review, please let me know asap so that I can include them in the video. I know this is an expensive set of sounds and I'd like to be as informative as I can for ya'lls to make your decisions on whether or not you should get this library.

Cheers,

Chris
 
Except that is an incorrect statement, sure during intro the discount is fairly small, but when it goes to full price of €799 the crossgrade price will still be somewhere from €580-629 depending what you own of theirs.
Is that correct? The cross-grade pricing showing in my account will remain unchanged once intro pricing ends? If so, that changes everything (well, pretty much) and I better understand the pricing decisions now.

Would be good to hear more from those that have taken the plunge. @The Darris I’d like to see some examples of rapid passages (legato and otherwise) if you can. Thanks Chris, always enjoy your walk-through reviews.
 
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