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SF Studio Strings V CSS??? - Opinions

Not throwing shade at Paul Thomson who’s done fantastic tracks in the past but his demo for the studio strings professsional really does not present the legato in a flattering light; it sounds clunky and unnatural which is strange coming from Spitfire.

I hope this isn't going to be another Synchron. Have these developers forgotten how to do legato?
 
omg.dude..chill..:D

It can make one nervous, right? Wow. (cracking up)

I have to admit, a dry library from Spitfire might be even more tempting than Hein.

The baked in reverb thing was my main gripe against many of the SF products. This is indeed a new frontier. I can't help but experience the GAS-iest affliction right now.
 
I hope this isn't going to be another Synchron. Have these developers forgotten how to do legato?

Imo most of them dont think about how to make libraries so that the user has an efficient workflow. What do you have from millions of articulations when you can´t connect them to a cohesive musical line. Sometimes I think this whole puzzle box of quadrillions of articulations are nice to play around but once you mock up something with musical intention most of that falls apart sorry to say but I speak of ..my daily experience working with all this libraries.. I wish in general developers would concentrate on fewer articulation but useable content and more in depth scripting so that you are able to make some music with it and not just a collection of samples in a row. But thats not a spitfire specific thing. But watching at the walkthough this one makes no exception in that regards too.
 
There's also such a thing as over-articulating. A good self-test is to see how few articulations you can get away with for a specific composition.

I've written things where there was sul tasto, sul pont, Bartok, eight different kinds of shorts...you name it I threw it all in there. At some point I realized there were more articulations than good composition there lol!
 
Two areas where SF studio strings clearly has the advantage is in terms of flexibility and extended articulations. I believe this could go all the way from a quartet like feel to a huge ensemble feel. Pretty insane.

The legato though doesn't sound as good as CSS yet.

Perhaps this could make a good layer library?
 
Youse experienced, talented, creative wizards …. (seriously) pull this back to 'reality' so quickly … :P

LASS and CSS were sooo tempting, but with my diminished skills, those String choices quickly tossed me into even more challenging research with Brass and Woodwinds. Especially not having necessary abilities to sort how well disparate Libs can work together. This inherently brought String choices back to SFA, OT, VSL.

SStS seems so exciting for my needs, but with miniscule exposure this morning. Now defused slightly and will read, watch and learn for a few days .

Really appreciate the amazing perspectives and education. :thumbsup:
 
Something is very off about Demos 2 and 3....

Yeh, i actually genuinely found them difficult to listen to. They are actually quite horrible ( not compositionally, sound wise).

I will definitely be waiting on more demos and user demos (demonstrations of the legato etc) before even considering this.
 
CSS sounds much warmer, more "romantic", based on the walkthroughs posted.... And the legato is pretty impeccable, as is the programming in general. Unfortunately Spitfire Audio's libraries often tend to have sloppy programming with a lot of release samples too loud, legatos sounding weird and such. The initial demos don't sound too convincing either, especially the long notes... Never thought I would say that about an SF library but... they sound borderline synthy. And especially the cellos have that nasal sounding tendency.

On the other hand Spitfire Studio Strings has a ton of additional articulations that I am sure will come in handy.

But I still am 99% sure CSS is still a much more playable library that just works right out of the box with a great sound. It is a little muffled, so you don't get that super bright sound, but some EQ can get you some of the way.
 
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Interesting concept, good price - but I don't really like the sound. Equipped with VSL Dimension Strings and Cinematic Studio Strings I hear nothing in these first demos that would make me buy.
 
Interesting concept, good price - but I don't really like the sound. Equipped with VSL Dimension Strings and Cinematic Studio Strings I hear nothing in these first demos that would make me buy.

Yeh, i think they have got the price right here. Seems fair for what you get.
 
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This is a direct CSS competitor. There's 30 musicians here, compared to 35 in CSS (and 28 in Berlin). The intro price is also exactly the same as CSS's price so... y'know... doesn't seem like coincidence... ;) *****

Except, on the other hand, you get so much more than CSS at the same price. Six mic positions instead of three, extended techniques, true sordinos, sul tasto and sul pont, trills beyond half/whole. ****

Nice detailed comments, but my current ignorance makes me puzzled by CSS ~34GB and SStS Pro ~210GB.
Mics typically raise this number notably, but you mention the Mic info ….
 
Nice detailed comments, but my current ignorance makes me puzzled by CSS ~34GB and SStS Pro ~210GB.
Mics typically raise this number notably, but you mention the Mic info ….

I often look into the numbers myself when buying libraries, but judging by the sounds I'm hearing so far and the fact that I own CSS - I feel pretty confident in saying the numbers don't matter in this comparison.

CSS is beautiful to play and hear. Only a bit painful with the start delay.
 
I’m surprised this comparison is being made versus the much more obvious 8dio Century Strings (6,4,5,4,4). Not only are they both recorded straight away versus in situ, but there is another missing piece of the Spitfire marketing... and I can only assume this happens because of what I am about to say. The midi transpose-pitch shift trick can give you a potential 18,12,15,8,8 section with two “artificial” sections with 8dio Centurty Strings. You can tailor ADSR to better fake the product. And it is quite convincing! You can get the same results with any smaller sized library recorded straight away. So unless specified, I’d bet this is is how this was recorded. However the marketing would allude otherwise. It is probably just packaged so the user doesn’t have to do this trick manually. I absolutely love Spitfire, so this is not a negative hit on them. This is just something I wanted to point that is possibly getting overlooked. I might be entirely off base on it though! If so, I apologize to Christian & Co. I’m a big Spitfire fan. This library included.

But mostly, I don’t see why CSS would be the point of comparison. Good days to be a composer though! That’s for sure!
 
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