Spitfire's Bespoke Strings is not "the mythical, super-deluxe elite library that sounds better than, or is superior to everything else". It is pretty good, unquestionably, and some of it is timbrally still more to my liking than what came later, but if they were to release these strings today — which would require quite a bit of extra work because development of the library was abandonned long before it was finished — I'm pretty sure that most people would be rather underwhelmed. As in: "Is that all it is?".
The Bespokes, when looked at today, are more of a portfolio of first, second and third drafts for greater things to come. A sort of laboratory if you like, which allowed the Spitfire team to fine-tune their craft, and experiment with various techniques regarding recording, editing, implementing legato and crossfading and such. Which is why, like Chris already mentioned, these strings do indeed have their share of little annoyances and crudité. (And yes, the fact that the patches are locked is a bit of a downer as well, especially given the fact that most of the roughness would be very easy to correct if only one had access to the patches’ insides.)
But the library also has that invaluable vibe of passion, vision and complete dedication on the part of its makers, which is something I don’t hear at all in, say, the recent Studio Series. Makes a big difference when it comes to making music with samples.
As I said, it's a pretty good library — not the final word in string libraries, definitely not, but pretty good —, containing plenty of great timbres and some truly excellent ones (still the best pizzicati in existence by some serious distance, as far as I'm concerned, and the Chamber Strings will forever remain a fixture in my mock-orchestrations as well), but if released today, even if it were finished, no one in his/her right mind would consider these strings the equal of, let alone superior to the benchmark libraries of today.
And to confirm: Sable (which was turned into SCS) doesn’t share a single sample with the Bespoke Chamber Strings. To-tal-ly different sound. And neither does Mural (which became SSS) have anything in common, sample-wise, with the Bespoke Symphonic Strings.
(Why they ever went from the poetically beautiful and musically very aptly chosen ‘Sable’ and ‘Mural’ names to the uninspired and accountant-esque SCS and SSS, is beyond my understanding.)
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