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Thoughts on Venice Modern Strings?

The tone of the long notes is just gorgeous, so this library has my attention. Not at all convinced by the legato transitions nor the shorts, though. Keeping my eyes and ears open!
 
And next you're going to tell me that those FFFFF horns in trailers are impossible to play 8 bars in a row? Nonsense!!!!

Nah, in all seriousness, try to play any moderate tempo (and upwardws) string section (not only one line) having attached notes with Spitfire Symphonic Strings sustain patch and you'll notice quite fast what I'm meaning. :(
 
I believe that a string library should be able to do whatever the user wants to make. But in the end we use libraries for the things that they do at their best. Super fast stuff with Venice may sound less appealing than, for example, legato phrasing and emotional phrasing. This may be a truth for many of our libraries. Derived from my concept of the music I like, I tend to be more in love with the expressive "emotional" side of the spectrum, than trailer/action stuff. What amazed me the first time I got in contact with sample libraries years ago, is the ability to create something emotional and living with just a creative mind and a computer. As much as I am amazed by the trailer of the next Lion King movie. Seems like a BBC documentary, but it's made with some computers.

Most developers talk about "living" "open" libraries and then they end in a closet and rarely touched anymore. In this case, Venice is our library, the one we'll use to make the demos for upcoming products. That's why we are implementing a system where we keep a copy of the library shared among me and my colleagues and when we are working with it we may rapidly implement little changes here and there, fixes, new features. After a while, when the number of changes has been significant, we'll easily package this into an update for our users.
For eexample the polylegato is present in this library, but I find it a bit silly, you often need a precise control over each line of a legato passage. But it is a nicer sounding alternative to the typical sustain.

I'd like to talk freely and honestly about this library and how it compares with other libraries. But I feel that's not elegant for me to do direct comparisons (even if in some areas I may give a point to my colleagues).
 
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I believe that a string library should be able to do whatever the user wants to make. But in the end we use libraries for the things that they do at their best. Super fast stuff with Venice may sound less appealing than, for example, legato phrasing and emotional phrasing. This may be a truth for many of our libraries. Derived from my concept of the music I like, I tend to be more in love with the expressive "emotional" side of the spectrum, than trailer/action stuff. .

Me too.
 
I was really interested & hooked by the sound when the teaser came out at first. But then when those couple of walkthrough videos came out, I honestly began to lose interest and even started to have some doubts about the library! Frankly I did not like those legato lines nor the shorts at all as they sounded too Midi & robotic to me. Now I don't own the library so I definetly could be (hope to be) wrong while these could just be some poorly massaged/programmed midi lines in those demos. But then I say is that really a possibility if these are official demos made by those who know the library best?!
Anyhow, still keeping an eye/hoping for more musical/naked demos to come that can prove me wrong...

I agree with everything you mentioned. Hopefully we'll hear some user reviews soon.
 
Here is a little comparison of the tone of some libraries.
It is much too early to do a full review, this is not meant to be one.
I hope one can hear the difference in tone/timbre of Venice Modern Strings in comparison to the others quite good.

I know I know: This small snippet you hear, is a mediocre composition at its best :rolleyes:. I took all efforts to create parallel fifths and octaves whereever I could :). I even sucessfully managed to let the Celli line cross the Violas :laugh:. It only uses a tiny fraction of articulations/mic positions of what's available.
I apologize: every inconsistency in timing the only one to blame for are my playing skills :unsure:.
I hope it is still interesting for you :)

I have slightly adjusted velocities, note positions/lengths, dynamic CC to accomodate for the different libraries. And adjusted the overall volume to be roughly equal.
Otherwise no reverb or external processing (except for the two mentioned below).

You hear a small snippet consisting of: Violins 1 Legato, Violins 2 Legato, Violas Sustain, Celli Legato + Staccato, Basses Staccato.

The following are the 7 runs you can hear in correct order:
1: Venice Modern Strings (Close + Far Mics, this is how it loads per default).
2: Venice Modern Strings (Spot + Close + Far Mics, added Spot Mic gives more presence/edge)
3: Venice Modern Strings (Spot + Mid Mic, kind of more intimate setting)
4: Spitfire Chamber Strings "SCS" (Mics as loads up per default)
5: Cinematic Studio Strings "CSS" (also as loads up per default)
6: Adagietto with a little bit of Valhalla Room Reverb and panned to my liking
7: Century Strings with a little bit of Valhalla Room Reverb and panned to my liking

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/s1001_v000_3xvenicemodernstrings_scs_css_adg_cty-mp3.20622/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

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  • S1001_V000_3xVeniceModernStrings_SCS_CSS_ADG_CTY.mp3
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Venice sounds a bit like Century. quite beautifully sampled. Century has quite a nice sound as well but just their scripting turns me off from getting it (based on experience with Adagio series)
 
I just got it. I swore I would not review another strings library but because Paolo always gets the tone right, I changed my mind. And darned if he hasn’t done it again! It sounds gorgeous. Looking forward to learning how best to use it.

Looking forward to the review...
 
Hello guys.

We are in a sampling session at the moment. But I wanted to chime in to say a few things:
1) The staccatissimo articulation in Venice is designed, we have cut small snippets from a measured tremolo, to create a snappier staccato. The reason the "quick" stuff doesn't sound right to some of you may be because they are usually done with a spiccato. On the other end the staccatissimo it's quite useful to create quick repetitions on the same notes. I also like how they perform when playing runs. We are obviously looking to fix and improve the fast behaviour of Venice in the future. As usual we strive to put our most efforts in expressive and lyrical playing and I think that it's where Venice shines the most. Sure we could have done a 200 $ library with only the legato patch, but we actually think that Venice, if not now, in a short future, can be a complete solution for any kind of string sound (of that specific size). The thing that I cared the most, the sound, is something we are proud of and that alone is something refreshing from the current offerings. Manuel example, to me shows it pretty well. I hear untuned notes, some lowpassed sound or the obvious addition of an external reverb in some of the examples, not in Venice. Maybe this is a slightly misreprentation of some nice libraries like CSS, but there's an overall idea of how these libraries sounds like. I liked the adagietto example, sounds nice.

So the future is long for Venice (as I hope it will be for the actual city, despite the threat of climate change and the tourism) :)

Also! The offer ends in 24h, just to say :)
 
Hello guys.

We are in a sampling session at the moment. But I wanted to chime in to say a few things:
1) The staccatissimo articulation in Venice is designed, we have cut small snippets from a measured tremolo, to create a snappier staccato. The reason the "quick" stuff doesn't sound right to some of you may be because they are usually done with a spiccato. On the other end the staccatissimo it's quite useful to create quick repetitions on the same notes. I also like how they perform when playing runs. We are obviously looking to fix and improve the fast behaviour of Venice in the future. As usual we strive to put our most efforts in expressive and lyrical playing and I think that it's where Venice shines the most. Sure we could have done a 200 $ library with only the legato patch, but we actually think that Venice, if not now, in a short future, can be a complete solution for any kind of string sound (of that specific size). The thing that I cared the most, the sound, is something we are proud of and that alone is something refreshing from the current offerings. Manuel example, to me shows it pretty well. I hear untuned notes, some lowpassed sound or the obvious addition of an external reverb in some of the examples, not in Venice. Maybe this is a slightly misreprentation of some nice libraries like CSS, but there's an overall idea of how these libraries sounds like. I liked the adagietto example, sounds nice.

So the future is long for Venice (as I hope it will be for the actual city, despite the threat of climate change and the tourism) :)

Also! The offer ends in 24h, just to say :)

Thank you. Will wait for the short future and hopefully some more review before making a purchase decision.
 
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