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Sessions Strings Pro 2

I am trying to learn to listen better for these issues. Surely NI choice of musicians, halls, mics, tech individuals is not lacking in serious ways ? Where do they fall down so badly ?
Are there some specific instruments, sections, articulations, etc., to compare with popular SF versions for example.

BTW … my senior ears may be a major barrier here, with notable fall-off above ~4-5 KHz. :crying:
Even so. I still prefer to listen closely for these shortcomings.
 
I am trying to learn to listen better for these issues. Surely NI choice of musicians, halls, mics, tech individuals is not lacking in serious ways ? Where do they fall down so badly ?
Are there some specific instruments, sections, articulations, etc., to compare with popular SF versions for example.

BTW … my senior ears may be a major barrier here, with notable fall-off above ~4-5 KHz. :crying:
Even so. I still prefer to listen closely for these shortcomings.
It sounds very robotic and flat, no emotion and sounds very inexpressive. Knowing NI, the legato is probably bowed, and also it has that gross "super responsive legato" sound. Great for fast passages, bad for everything else. Compared to something like CSS where it has the least responsive legato, but gives the attack time the legato needs to sound good with samples. Generally, the slower the legato, the more expressive and emotive it sounds.

The articulations here don't flow well at all and it just sounds gross. Really the only thing they have going for them here is the sliding articulation which their session stuff all has. Their session horns sampling technique is not doing these strings justice.

Just have a listen at this timestamp. Honestly I would say just pick up chamber strings and ignore this marketing based money grab NI library.



Edit: Had a quick listen to the demos. It resembles a worse version of LASS to me, minus the shorts which have a nicer slow attack which are the only seemingly the redeeming factor. My opinion still stands, chamber strings trashes it.
 
It sounds very robotic and flat, no emotion and sounds very inexpressive. ...*** .... Generally, the slower the legato, the more expressive and emotive it sounds. ............
The articulations here don't flow well at all and it just sounds gross. Really the only thing they have going for them here is the sliding articulation which their session stuff all has. Their session horns sampling technique is not doing these strings justice.

Just have a listen at this timestamp. Honestly I would say just pick up chamber strings and ignore this marketing based money grab NI library.

Edit: Had a quick listen to the demos. It resembles a worse version of LASS to me, minus the shorts which have a nicer slow attack which are the only seemingly the redeeming factor. My opinion still stands, chamber strings trashes it.

Your comments are truly appreciated. They help me focus where I have not done so.
Your LASS reference made me smile as I have had several messages with Audiobro re. their current product(s) and content in my NI K11U .....

As pianist, I will always struggle with orchestral nuances (even 'not-so-nuanced').
I also struggle with sorting these same factors .... when going from DAW with powered monitors and headphones, to other DAW with 'decent' stereo amp and passive speakers.

Thanks for helping the learning. :thumbsup:
 
Where do they fall down so badly ?
one word.."staticness"
This is what I hear with every note/articulation being played by this product..this could be due to trimming off notes attack/notes release/limited dynamic range etc...which could actually all be intended by NI for what the product is aimed for...."pop production" mainly.

From another side, pop not being my favourite style and my taste being heavily influenced by orchestral music, this makes me repel the product even more. But that's just me.

Other pop composers have found good use of the product from what I've read here and there...So I respect the product afterall in terms of how it still fulfils the needs of other fellow composers
 
Compared to something like CSS where it has the least responsive legato, but gives the attack time the legato needs to sound good with samples.
Amen, Amen, Amen... but it's actually unfair to put CSS in comparison with any other major library when it comes to these slow expressive legatos. CSS has truly set a new standard in this regard.
 
one word.."staticness"
This is what I hear with every note/articulation being played by this product..this could be due to trimming off notes attack/notes release/limited dynamic range etc...which could actually all be intended by NI for what the product is aimed for...."pop production" mainly.

From another side, pop not being my favourite style and my taste being heavily influenced by orchestral music, this makes me repel the product even more. But that's just me.

Other pop composers have found good use of the product from what I've read here and there...So I respect the product afterall in terms of how it still fulfils the needs of other fellow composers

Got it.
NI product emphasis is obvious, and you immediately react to these specifics, which I miss given recent move into orch/cine/hybrid/….
This help is key in setting my expectations when adding new Libraries. Just a few hours left on SF_Wishlist promo and I am still adding 'fundamentals' for now.
CSS comments have been noted as well.
THX and regards
 
So actually good for Pop music?!;)
Actually, the pop I occasionally hear on the radio sounds quite expressive... It might just be a coincidence though that the only pop I've happen to have heard had such soaring emotive lines.
 
Actually, the pop I occasionally hear on the radio sounds quite expressive... It might just be a coincidence though that the only pop I've happen to have heard had such soaring emotive lines.
There are lots of great string parts in pop. It was more a joke in the direction of pop often being stamped as simple, 4-chords songs with no complexity.
Though the production quality and layering in some of these songs gets to surprise me from time to time (in a good way):)
 
I think its quite obvious that NI have a focus on the Hip Hop/Dance/R&B markets. Most of their energy is on the Maschine/Traktor end.

You just have to look at the expansions for Maschine or the "Producers" they like to feature on their site to see this.

I reckon to this market these probably sound great. I mean take a look at the "Construction Kits" people like Producer Loops and Loopmasters sell in the "Cinematic" and "Orchestral" genres – serious cack loops obviously sampled off low end GPO libraries with bad midi editing.

I mean the use of a Coldplay ripoff as one of the demo tracks demonstrates what some think great strings sound like. Even the original version of Viva La Vida sounded like a bad rompler strings patch from the early 90s (I should know I had them).
 
SSP is actually made by e-Instruments. I have their pianos and love them, they aren't offered by NI. There is a certain "ideology" with the e-Instruments libraries, they share a lot of characteristics.

I love SSP, but I can understand if/why some people don't like them. They don't have much character or emotion, the grand pianos don't either (The upright has a ton though). They are as clean and dry as it gets. But the shorts are great, and the violas are excellent.
 
I was hopeful when I saw the ad at the top of Explorer, then I watched the videos and thought "Not bad."
It looked worthwhile, until I checked out the manual and all the rhythm and pattern generator options are only for the ensemble patches, not the individual instruments.
I honestly don't get this kind of shit. Also, why the hell don't most libraries come with full divisi programming? LASS came up with that so many years ago that it should be expected every time. I'll likely pick up the NI String Ensemble crossgrade during the summer sale in a month, but I was hoping to find something useful with a smaller section size for music I make, which is r & b, hip-hop and other pop genres. I don't like the robotic stuff in the mix though. It works fine sin small doses on up tempo tracks, but if you want a more acoustic sounding track it simply doesn't hold up.

I'll keep an eye out for surprising reviews and also to see if there's a workaround to the lack of options in the single instrument patches. Most likely it would just involve muting instruments in the mixer, but perhaps that would affect the patterns.

This just seems like a missed opportunity. Only 36 gigs of samples and the same number of articulations, limited section patch options.... Get your act together Native Instruments and E Instruments.
 
Actually, judging by the demos, it sounds like strings patches from a good keyboard, or a Yamaha\Roland Hardware sound module, no?

Could be nice for someone who look for that particular sound.
Many classical pop\rock songs used those old sounds...
 
Actually, judging by the demos, it sounds like strings patches from a good keyboard, or a Yamaha\Roland Hardware sound module, no?
IMO, no. SSP 1 has excellent shorts. It can't do legato/singing lines at all, but it's good at what it does. It's an odd duck compared to what's out there. It was recorded very dry and very clean, with a minimum of vibrato. It's a sound that most people aren't used to.

It's a good example of "size matters". :) It's what a small, dry string section sounds like in a non-hall. People are used to these 60 piece, rich string sections in big movies. 11 string players playing non-vibrato in my living room sounds like SSP, I've done it. For something like baroque with small sections, players are digging in and playing differently, and the gigs are usually in a boomy cathedral. If they were playing footballs in a dry space, it sounds like SSP.
 
Here's a little clip of SSP (original recipe) doing what it was made to do: Rock out. It has one real violinist (me) overdubbed, obviously that's going to change things a lot, But for articulate, dry, aggressive rock (which is my thing), it's a Godsend for me. Check it out.

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/odndemossp-mp3.13880/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

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Sears Poncho, thank you very much!!!
Actually metal is my thing too(among other things).
And I really wanted SSP2 to be good for that stuff, because if so, I will buy it in the next sale.
Unfortunately I didn't found any demo that proofs that SSP could work for that genre, until now.

If you have more demos of SSP in that context I would be glad to hear.
And if you have some SSP demos in context of a bit more epic kind of metal(Nightwish, Dimmu Borgir, for example) I would be twice as glad to hear, because SSP is a small\mid size sections, and therefore I'm afraid it won't work for epic metal, however I understand it can be tweaked to sound bigger, but I don't know how well it works without a demo.
 
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