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What sounds best for Hollywood emotive style : 60 piece orchestra or mix of 40 + 20 ?

Jean Phi

aquacoustique
Hi everybody, lots of sales at the moment (Lass, agitato 70% off, VSL Cine Strings 25%off ...) and I decide to buy my firt strings full orchestral librairy, I'm listening to every demos and reading every forum and well boy.... Now I can't choose anything and I spent days studying this !!! At this state, external thougts of experienced users would be welcome !!

My first wish would be to score in old hollywood type with extreme vibrato and nice soaring portamento strings. Would like to use it to score songs, broadway romantic Gershwing style, or eventually for more agile classical music style. (And I'd love not to spend more than 500 coins, and I think I can live without divisis I'm not trained with that writing style).
I owe Embertone solo strings bundle and spitfire evo grid 3 and olafur chamber evolutions, 2 great one poney libs to meditate ;), and native session strings with the complete (never used it sounds weak and robotic).

For the moment i'm considering either VSL appasionnata , but it's expensive for a one pony librairy (lacks of numerous articulations and demos makes me think not intended to play agile parts), or a layering : Cine Strings core (but vibrato is not very intense) + a solist with good vibrato from my embertone ? maybe he will fill a bit alone to add the extra vibrato.
or Studio Strings Cinestrings (nice intense evibrato) + a chamber library to add player ? and SSC on the top to benefit extreme vibrato ? This would be more versatile than VSL appasionnata .
Witch combinaison ?
Or can I simply fake 80 on piece by doubling an detuning all the parts on Cinematic Studio Strings, or simply add an unisson patch over the separate parts ?
Or can it be layered with 8dio Agitato sordiono Strings (great deal 88 dollars at the moment) for the emotive hoolywood sound.

Looking forward to hear your point of view and happy chrismas !!


For those who are interested , there are my considerations over a fiew libs , hearing the demos :

I like the warm and clean sound of Appassionata VSL strings (best sounding on my genelec 1030A, no pain for my hears at hi volume) , but the ease of use seems a bit confusing. And there are 2 products to chose from : VI or Synchronised. What's best sounding ? Does the VI version requires VI pro software or the VI player is good enough ? Much articulations losed in synchronised version. Does the synchron has adaptive legato speed ? Is it programmable on the VI player with convincing result ?

I like the intense vibrato and clean soft sound of Cinematic Studio Strings . The ease of use looks great also, and is it the only one that features controlable rebowing , but the ensemble is to smal. Volume adjustment of portamentos is a nice feature too.

I Like cinesample Cine Strings core sound too, but vibrato is not that intense and I heard someone saying that one sample out of 2 is not clean at all espacialy on the tails (lots of noises and bass hums as it been fixed ?) Sounds quite fat for 45 pieces orchestra.

I love the demo of eastwest HS but I've tried the product years ago and the playability is a mess with the player, does it still have no keyswitch on that bank , and no adaptive légatos ? Samples are not that clean too (lots of lopped noises). wouls love to have that sound with more ease of use.

I heard LASS and I find it a bit Harsch and makes pain to my ears in hi mid frequencys , and vibrato not strong enough for me. Same for spitfire SSS. Can it be tweaked with EQ ?

I heard 8dio Agitato series (70% off at the moment great deal), good strong vibrato and much legatos and portamentos but the sound is a bit tiersome in mid frequencys (mix can solve ?) and the ensemble is to small.

Native Instrument Symphonic series : vibrato not strong enought, I'm not convinced by the sound of the demos...

Chris Heins ensemble strings , large ensemble setting doen't soud very natural to me (pain for my hears at hi volume on violins too).
 
for expressive, warm old fashioned phrasing I think 8dio Adagio series is among the best there is...
 
You might want to check out Musical Sampling's Soaring Strings (the legato library) and Adventure Strings (basically all the other articulations). They are two of my desert island libraries.

I made a bunch of tracks with them, check this one out:


Also, as @Rob said, it might be worth to check out the 8Dio Adagio series. 8Dio is having a one-day-one-sales advent calendar, it might be worth to check it out every day until december 25th. If they happened to go on sale, that would be a great move :)
 
Just start a collection of articulations.
I’ve got 24 articulations using 5 String libraries like NI, LASS, PLAY, etc.
There’s really no best library, but a collection of artics works great for me.
 
based on what you described I would take another look at CSS. It can sound big enough. Besides, the classic Hollywood sound from the 40s, 50s and even a lot later were achieved with pretty small string sections.

Part of it was the cost, but it was also the sound they went for then.
 
My first wish would be to score in old hollywood type with extreme vibrato and nice soaring portamento strings. Would like to use it to score songs, broadway romantic Gershwing style, or eventually for more agile classical music style.

Honestly, the best move you could make here is use pretty much any of the libraries mentioned in this thread and overdub a few takes from a real string player and mix them in with the samples.

Also, more players doesn't really mean a "bigger sound"
 
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