Cuban Dance n2

I don't mind at all

Thanks Jamsession, I don't mind it either, the sound capture seems good to me... here I used "close" and "room" microphones which provide detail and ambience, but then I added a little reverb to tie everything together. It always leaves me amazed how a series of notes recorded individually can recompose themselves to form phrases endowed with a certain musicality...

I haven't listened on studio monitors yet; I'll do it tonight when I get back from work. Listening to it here on the Mac speakers, it doesn't seem like much of a library to me; it sounds blatantly fake. In any case, when I get back tonight, I'll be able to give you a more serious opinion.

TheSimon wrote:

I haven't listened on studio monitors yet; I'll do it tonight when I get back from work. Listening to it here on the Mac speakers, it doesn't seem like much of a library to me; it sounds blatantly fake. In any case, when I get back tonight, I'll be able to give you a more serious opinion.

bah, the Mac speakers really don't forgive... listen to it with a good pair of headphones or monitors, it doesn't seem that bad to me. I tried rendering with VSL and EWQLSO but I like this one more... then obviously, de gustibus...

In the studio I listen to Genelec, but I believe they will confirm what I said above.

I listened in the studio. Effectively, it improves on monitors, but my opinion remains unchanged. You can tell they are clearly fake, certainly from the sound envelope and the dynamics. Even the capture itself doesn't blow me away. For strings, LASS (LA Scoring Strings) are also very beautiful.

I'll leave you with these listens... Obviously, this is the Vienna [library] that costs several thousand euros, but nowadays, for an orchestra, it's the only one that has a semblance of reality. It is also used in professional film music contexts for "low-cost" productions, but even in this case, in some parts, you can hear something fake. At the end of the day, they are libraries; they cannot replace, at least for the moment, an orchestra.

Rather, is the website www.robertosoggetti.com yours? The background song on the homepage is very beautiful, and the mix is also very nice.

Barber_Adagio_For_Strings.mp3

Open content (youtube)

If you are interested in the Vsl I have something (but not the Dimension strings).

I still have to listen to the piece.

Simon, I knew that version of Barber's adagio, but sincerely it is such a different piece from what I posted... here I wanted a dry sound, very articulated, where the phrasing was clearly evident (perhaps even too much)

Last year I made this demo for Kirk Hunter: http://www.kirkhunterstudios.com/demos/spotlight/SpotlightS-Dvorak.mp3 which is perhaps more similar to Barber...

I have the Special Edition of Vienna... but even if the sound is beautiful, it fails to move me, there is no way to make the strings sing... even my friend Guy Bacos, who is also very skilled at handling VSL, never fully convinced me.

All in all, I like the sound of this library (LSS) too and I find that each has something special... besides Vienna, I have EastWest Diamond, Cinematic Strings, all of Kirk Hunter's libraries, Miroslav, Garritan Orchestral Strings (GOS, not GPO), Hollywood Strings Silver, Strezov strings, and others, and each has its own qualities and defects... I like being able to go from a raw sound as if I were a step away from the orchestra to one that is more distant and blurred. I find Spitfire libraries to be very beautiful, but they have such an ambient sound that those who compose are quite conditioned in my opinion

PS Dimension Strings are interesting, even if the idea of obtaining the sound of the ensemble by summing the various parts has its limits...

Guy Bacos is truly a great professional. I have heard some of his mixes with libraries that give you chills (in a positive sense, obviously). It certainly always pays to have good control starting from scratch. I don't like pre-packaged things either... I prefer to treat the mix as one does with recorded orchestral stems, where you decide where to position the instruments, the distance, the ambient reverb, etc., etc. I also spoke about this with Geppino last year. There are libraries that come pre-packaged, like those from EW, but they offer little control in recreating something that sounds at least reasonably close to the sound of a real orchestra. Certainly, libraries do not take into account many physical variables that exist in reality and which, for one reason or another, including technological reasons, cannot be recreated.

In my graduation thesis, I programmed a sampled piano library (The Steinway B from Pianoexpert). It turned out quite well, being a project for a thesis and not a commercial product, so it had few layers, a lack of release samples, round-robin, etc., despite all the aforementioned limitations.

One must try to reach a compromise that satisfies the ear, and it is never easy.

The topic of string libraries is always current and interesting: based on my experience, which has been growing over the years, I believe that before comparing various libraries and making certain choices, one should understand the philosophy of the producing company: what are they looking for—realism, epicness, or a middle ground to satisfy everyone? And then: do they want to provide a product that is ready "out of the box" (as is fashionable to say...) or a product with which to recreate positioning and environments? These choices are fundamental for deciding which direction to take.

Furthermore, keeping that premise in mind, there are products that are objectively superior to others; some libraries are now obsolete. Also, another very important thing: you cannot judge a library by how it sounds in Finale or Sibelius; good libraries are made for DAWs (Cubase and similar), because they must be PROGRAMMED based on articulations: the sample used for legato cannot be used for the first note of a phrase, because obviously it starts from nothing rather than from a connected note. Nowadays, simple articulations like legato, staccato, spiccato, pizzicato, tremolo, etc., are no longer enough; there needs to be control over the overall singability of every single phrase, a control that should reflect the real way of playing the instrument.

Currently, most of the development work on string libraries is focused on legato transitions and the agility of the legato itself, because good or decent samples regarding timbre can now be found almost everywhere; after that, it truly becomes a matter of taste. Regarding the aspect I mentioned before, Spitfire strings seem like excellent products to me—a British company that focuses heavily on realism; the samples are not necessarily full of reverb; you can mix the various microphone positions and make them drier.

8Dio is also developing strings that are very agile in legato, since the transitions in the Adagio series were truly too slow. Vienna remains a constant guarantee of quality, and the idea behind the Dimension series—combining smaller sections to form a larger one—is excellent, because each of the small sections has its own timbral characteristics and controls. This system was already present in LASS, which however falls short in vibrato and is overall somewhat dated.

Berlin Strings are also good, although quality decreases across the various string sections; that is, the Violins I are excellent, the Seconds a bit less, the Violas even less, the Cellos are almost crap, and the Double Basses are completely crap..... (it seems unbelievable but it's true; perhaps along the way they have increasingly patched things together...).

Then there is EastWest, which doesn't worry much about realism and prefers a ready-made product for Hollywood productions: it always makes quite an impression, but as usual, it depends on what you are looking for in a library.

I would say that currently these are the best brands; others are clearly inferior: Garritan is unbearable, the same goes for Kirk Hunter (for goodness' sake), LSS (not to be confused with LASS) is a product of a significantly lower level, Cinestrings and Cinematic Strings sit at an intermediate level between the top libraries and the others: Cinestrings is also usable for epic scenarios, while Cinematic Strings, in my opinion, is a somewhat underrated library; it is quite versatile and has a good timbre, especially in the lows, even if overall it is now a bit dated. And then, unbelievable as it may seem, Symphobia, despite being very old, still holds its own, especially if used as support to be doubled by more modern and versatile libraries; it provides a roundness and an overall blend that still works.

In short, one must absolutely not judge a library by how it sounds in standalone or, even worse, how it sounds in a notation program; it must be judged by how it sounds when it is programmed, assuming equal quality of the programmer.

Ugh... the usual things... how boring

Look, you're the one who opened the topic, asking for an opinion on the library; if you then get bored by answers that aren't what you expected, that's not my problem, it will just mean that next time we will avoid wasting time answering you.

No, the error is mine, I expected something else... I withdraw in good order, greetings to all.

I am writing a P.S. for anyone who, like me, happens to resurface and dust off old discussions.

Articulations in notation programs are inserted simply with a MIDI message corresponding to the note. For example, C0 is: ~N24, 127 (pay attention to spaces and capitalization!); C#0 is ~N25, 127, and so on. This applies not only to keyswitches, but to anything else that can be read in MIDI. Sustain or the piano pedal, for example, is activated with ~C64, 127 and dampened with ~C64, 0; if the sample allows it (as with EW's QLPiano), intermediate effects are also available: ~C64, 65 gives the effect of dampers lightly touching the string, i.e., with the pedal halfway depressed. Naturally, the same applies to the "una corda" pedal, which is ~C67. Then there are also messages for bending, for pitch, etc. These can be found in the user manuals. I believe MIDI messages can be used in any notation program; you just need to ensure that the library provides the possibility of the desired effect.

This does not mean that it is advisable to do the mixing directly from the notation program (on the contrary, it is not), but using MIDI messages right from the writing stage is a huge advantage when it comes time to export everything to the DAW (where the only missing information is regarding tempo variations, because MIDI does not read them). Legatos are also not a problem (libraries aside), because you can perform all the messages that are obtained by playing with a keyboard in a DAW. In fact, people often forget that a keyboard does nothing more than send MIDI messages.

Finally, one must not forget that what matters is the type of project you are working on: as far as I am concerned, I have also done orchestral works directly with a keyboard and DAW, but if I were to compose a musically very detailed score with more time available, I would find it indispensable to prepare all the MIDI in my Sibelius, looking at the score instead of getting lost among the ticks.

It should also be said that the latest Logic (which is also inexpensive) now incorporates a good notation program as well, so I imagine that Sibelius, Finale & co. could soon become obsolete in many cases.

P.S. I forgot to write that MIDI does not read tempo variations, it's true, but it reads the micro-position of the notes, which is indispensable for rendering those small anticipations and delays between one note and another (on different staves, I mean, i.e., "vertically") that make the effect more realistic.

I was left enthusiastic about the sound and also the musical idea, unfortunately I am only listening through headphones, I am not in the studio at the moment, but it sounds good like this, there is body and an acceptable depth, beautiful!