Best strings/orchestral libraries - not Kontakt based?

[Nip]

So a lot of artikulations and could be full Orchestral stuff too.

If money is no object - what would it be?

I have Magix Independence which is fairly good, if keeping in the octave a note was sampled - but cheaped down it seems and a lot of stretching pitchshifting going on and start to sound off very soon.

Kontakt was a bugfest for me, so anything else but NI stuff really could work - if sample library makers did not make their own plugin.

Heard a lot of good reviews about Vienna Ensemble Pro as a host - but no clue how good their libraries are?

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Products/Product_List

Thanks.

[mschnell]

Of course there are glitches with Kontakt, but there is no reason to assume that other sample hosts should provide less glitches,,,
-Michael

[Sambo Rouge]

I'm partial to Spitfire, you may want to check out some of their interesting and helpful videos and new product.

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/

[peter5992]

I'm a big fan of East West, their Hollywood Strings is quite something (and huge, and requires a powerful computer).

[xpander]

Originally Posted by Nip

So a lot of artikulations and could be full Orchestral stuff too.
If money is no object - what would it be?

For me that would be the Vienna Synchron Series packages. I own currently only the Smart Orchestra, but could easily see myself going for the Synchronized Special Editions later on and maybe even adding single instruments if needed. Must warn about the catch though, eLicenser system requires some attention. It works fine here, but you would never want to lose or break your key. They have a specific hardware warranty for the accidents, but users must acknowledge the possible danger with this system.

[zookthespook]

Unfortunately some of the most deeply sampled libraries are sampled for Kontakt, no escape from it. The vienna engine is fantastic so as xpander suggested, synchron is something to look into.
if you give kontakt a second chance,
my favorites are,

Berlin Strings - for ensemble patches ,
Kirk hunter solo strings - for first chair.
Lass 2.5 - for ensemble and FC, especially it is the best when it comes to divisi patches, sonically it may not be the best , but by setting up a kontakt Bank, with all articulations loaded up , you can get to making some realistic mockups as well.


zook

[zookthespook]

The problem with earlier Vienna libraries were , they were too dead, trying to beat the S/N ratio, they never had a character. But then that is very preferential, if you like to control a very static sound with your own set of eqs and reverbs, then it is definitely a winning horse

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by zookthespook

if you give kontakt a second chance,
my favorites are,
Berlin Strings - for ensemble patches ,
Kirk hunter solo strings - for first chair.
Lass 2.5 -

For ensemble and Solo usage, classics and Jazz, Live playable (seems amazing). "Coming Soon" -> https://samplemodeling.com/en/teaser_strings.php
-Michael

[Sambo Rouge]

Yes, but it is Kontakt based.

[nait]

I haven't used it in quite a while, but I liked Miroslav Philharmonik. Version 2 is currently on sale, although I bought version 1 a while ago and I think it was at a much cheaper price point back then (accounting for inflation, even). Still pretty good value at the sale price right now though, especially considering there have been significant improvements since the version 1.x I have. At least take a look at some videos or something as an idea.

[Nip]

Massive thanks for so many suggestions - really helpful.

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Sambo Rouge

Yes, but it is Kontakt based.

With sample libraries that decently do articulations, it’s hard to avoid Kontakt.
Kontakt is the most versatile – or at least one of the most versatile – scriptable Sample Players for Windows and Mac.
Moreover, Kontakt offers a decent development system to the library creators.
Moreover, Native Instruments offers the service to do the technical license management for the library creators to allow them to protect their valuable work. (It’s close to impossible to do technical license management with something that is not software.)
The downside is that there is no Kontakt for Linux.
Moreover, it’s not possible to create/get completely free libraries for Kontakt. Either the user needs to pay for the full Kontakt version, or the library provider needs to pay NI for the technical license management service, while the user can use the free Kontakt Player. This of course is perfectly incompatible with the usual Linux licensing scheme (GPL).
-Michael

[EvilDragon]

Originally Posted by Nip

Kontakt was a bugfest for me,

How about some more info regarding this? What specifically were you experiencing?

[Nip]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

How about some more info regarding this? What specifically were you experiencing?

We were over this a couple of years ago - but repeat in short.

I bought a VIR Mojo Horn section - and got some strange results when reloading a project - fluttering samples and sounding not right.

Over time they acknowledged this - fixed it - and I was happy for a bit.

Then I found a library in gig format - and loaded in Kontakt. Sounding not right, very harsch on certain notes in middle velocity, and I started to investigate. Looking inside - I could see that samples overlapped in velocity that were to be fully separate. Around 40-60 in velocity there were many samples and why there were frequency cancellation stuff. You could see also playing one note - triggered two samples on some velocities.

I loaded the same library in Vsampler and there this gig-file loaded perfectly.

They would not acknowledge this at all as their problem, and referred to library maker. Like they did something wrong?

I told them how a 7 year older Vsampler did it right. They would not acknowledge.

So I tried to remedy this by creating a new library from samples now on disk separately. The automatic loading and mapping should work fine - but there were a bug regarding reading the sample names - if a number started with a zero - it could not be a name _05_ it had to be _5_. If started with a zero, like _05_ - all were mapped on midi note zero - so unusable.

I contacted them and they would not acknowledge this either. I gav up - I would not go an load every single sample manually if I could avoid it. If it was 600 samples or so.

I later made a library in Magix Independence Pro in two hours and done. And this was four layers and first time using it - it would be done in 30 minutes now that I know Independence. I read automatic mapping to notes as it should.

So I bought a Kontakt product library and used player at first and found bugs, and then upgraded to full version Kontakt to use as I've done a couple of libraries in Vsampler before.

And NI staff would not recognize problems I got - which I felt was unacceptable. Obvious bugs should be acknowledged and on todo list so further down the line it is fixed after some upgrades years later or so - but no hope of this. This is showstopper things in my world - also using it making my own stuff.

I made a bunch of libraries for brass and drums before in Vsampler and was much easier to use than Kontakt also - in my view. So overall Kontakt was a disappointment.

Why support a vendor that screw you over....and crap, I thought I was going to be short....

[Nip]

Originally Posted by mschnell

With sample libraries that decently do articulations, it’s hard to avoid Kontakt.

Spitfire has 8 libraries with their own player, not Kontakt.

I think I will get Hans Zimmer Strings and Eric Whitacre Choir as a start. And they have a really nice hdd service - so I get those on a hdd for install - about 400 GB - just €80 extra as I recall.


Both Spitfire and VSL above at least I investigated today. They do this articulations nicely as far as I could tell.

You get like I get in Independence Pro, switch keys clearly visible on screen keyboard and you see notes flash as you play them to find switch keys for various articulations.

In contact with VSL support they also confirmed that continous controllers where appropriate. Attack times is common on mod wheel as I have on Dimension Pro strings I use. Some parameters are suited and some not for CC.

[EvilDragon]

Originally Posted by Nip

Then I found a library in gig format - and loaded in Kontakt. Sounding not right, very harsch on certain notes in middle velocity, and I started to investigate. Looking inside - I could see that samples overlapped in velocity that were to be fully separate. Around 40-60 in velocity there were many samples and why there were frequency cancellation stuff. You could see also playing one note - triggered two samples on some velocities.

I loaded the same library in Vsampler and there this gig-file loaded perfectly.

They would not acknowledge this at all as their problem, and referred to library maker. Like they did something wrong?

Here's a bit of background info for you. The 3rd party sample format import in Kontakt was done entirely NOT by NI, but by Chicken Systems. It is buggy. I assume this was one of the reasons why they actually completely removed the 3rd party sample format import in Kontakt 6. It's something they couldn't maintain, the whole conversion was handled entirely by Chickensys, not by them.

Originally Posted by Nip

So I tried to remedy this by creating a new library from samples now on disk separately. The automatic loading and mapping should work fine - but there were a bug regarding reading the sample names - if a number started with a zero - it could not be a name _05_ it had to be _5_. If started with a zero, like _05_ - all were mapped on midi note zero - so unusable.

So in this case you rename the samples so that there are no leading zeroes. There are a lot of ways you can do this...

(I will agree that automapping should be smarter about this, but this is technically not a bug, more of a missing feature in understanding certain numbering methods.)



By the way, if you bought a Kontakt library that is not from NI but from a 3rd party, and it had bugs, you cannot hold NI responsible for the content they didn't create.

[Nip]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

Here's a bit of background info for you. The 3rd party sample format import in Kontakt was done entirely NOT by NI, but by Chicken Systems. It is buggy. I assume this was one of the reasons why they actually completely removed the 3rd party sample format import in Kontakt 6.



So in this case you rename the samples so that there are no leading zeroes. There are a lot of ways you can do this...

(I will agree that automapping should be smarter about this.)

Yes, I remember you saying that, if it was 5-6 years ago or so.
I read Chickensys had some issues with their sample library converter - their own product. I was more hot on getting Extreme Sample Converter that people had better experience with.

https://www.extranslator.com/

I found Independence rather decent sampler to work with. But no import formats either - or they referred to - yes, ChickenSys.

[Nip]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

So in this case you rename the samples so that there are no leading zeroes. There are a lot of ways you can do this...

(I will agree that automapping should be smarter about this, but this is technically not a bug, more of a missing feature in understanding certain numbering methods.)

I think you go too easy on that.

You should go by the usuall separators which are underscores between numbers. I don't remember if they had you can set what separator to use - it's too long ago.

A normal atoi() function call only stops when finding non-digit numbers - so they overcomplicated something it seems to me - as now retired programmer.

By the way, if you bought a Kontakt library that is not from NI but from a 3rd party, and it had bugs, you cannot hold NI responsible for the content they didn't create.

That was not the case - they updated Kontakt - not my library.
At this time it was v4.05 of Kontakt and I kept it until 4.3.

But they were really good about this - it was fixed in a month or so. They were even greatful I brought their attention to this.

If it was a 32/64 bit issue or something - structures different size. When saved multiinstrument it later could not load correctly.

So really surprised how they went about other things I reported.

[EvilDragon]

Originally Posted by Nip

At this time it was v4.05 of Kontakt and I kept it until 4.3.

Last version of Kontakt 4 was 4.2.4 btw (And arguably one of the most stable versions of Kontakt EVER, along with 5.5.2!)

Originally Posted by Nip

so they overcomplicated something it seems to me

That seems entirely plausible!

[Nip]

Originally Posted by Sambo Rouge

I'm partial to Spitfire, you may want to check out some of their interesting and helpful videos and new product.

https://www.spitfireaudio.com/

I guess you have some history with spitfire.

Are they like Waves - you never buy at full price, you wait for a campaign?

Yesterday price on Choirs I wanted was standard - today it's on sale 30% off for a week?

Did you ever see discount on Hans Zimmer Strings - looking back the last year?

I held back that order for now and just did Choirs.

Really good tip on Spitfire - special thank you - they also have samples from start at 48k - so no need for SRC taking extra cpu doing video. At least these I asked about. First I ever saw that did anything but 44k samples.

[Sambo Rouge]

Yes Nip, its always good to wait for the tasty discount to turn up.

I don't recall Zimmer being on sale but I may have missed it and if not, I'm sure it will come along.

Spitfire may not be cheap but they do things in a rather special way.

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Sambo Rouge

Yes Nip, its always good to wait for the tasty discount to turn up.

"Sale" (and inflationary advertising) means "this thing is not good enough to find as many customers as intended".
-Michael

[EvilDragon]

Not necessarily always, though. Spitfire has absolutely no problems in selling their products even at base price.

[Nip]

Originally Posted by Sambo Rouge

Yes Nip, its always good to wait for the tasty discount to turn up.

I don't recall Zimmer being on sale but I may have missed it and if not, I'm sure it will come along.

Spitfire may not be cheap but they do things in a rather special way.

Again - many thanks for input.

Their whole site breath quality - clearly stating everything you need to know, just about. And a responsive support system filling possible holes - like I wanted to know about 48k samples or not.

Guessing that Hans Zimmer stuff might be the last on any sale, but some kind if discount maybe. But in no immediate rush either.

It was actually studying Hans Zimmer music to the film Inception that gave so many new ways to use strings.

[Nip]

Originally Posted by mschnell

"Sale" (and inflationary advertising) means "this thing is not good enough to find as many customers as intended".
-Michael

The psychology is probably that everybody loves to make a great deal - so you are reeling in customers in a time of year where business is low due to vacations etc.

I agree with you on if 50% or more discount - that is rather desperate.

[zookthespook]

Bohemian Violin and Cello are fantastic.
do give it a look. But tehy are solo instruments.

ziij

[Sambo Rouge]

If you wish to see something totally impressive, check out their new violin virtuoso total performance patch video. About the most realistic thing I've heard.



https://www.spitfireaudio.com/shop/a...talperformance

[EvilDragon]

It's excellent, but IMHO doesn't compare to Bohemian. They're neck to neck, but small things decide on this one.

[Nip]

I find it really hard to make a believable solo performance on a sampler library - piano/synth/organ probably an exception.

If I didn't play guitar as main instrument - I would not even think about having guitar as solo instrument.

I would not try with horn/brass instruments - other than s brass section. Even soloing a saxophone - it's so expressive stuff that a real player do.

Even making a brass section takes a lot of excercise how trumpets and trombone can be played - not too lengthy notes etc. Players do breathe and things like that.

Maybe with solo violin doing dissonant stuff to raise tension in a scene etc. But hardly need 100+ GB library for that.

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by EvilDragon

Not necessarily always, though

Yep.

But did you ever see a Reaper sales action ?

Reaper can (illegally) be used for free, but most very happily shell out the proposed donation to get a license
-Michael

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Nip

I find it really hard to make a believable solo performance on a sampler library - piano/synth/organ probably an exception.

This obviously depends on the controller you use for playng / recording.

I use Sample Modeling "Trumpet" for live playing with a TEC BBCv2.

This is a heavily scripted Kontakt library and feels very realistic.

Looking forward to playing their upcoming Violin (and viola, Cello, and Bass, see Video above) with the Seaboard.

-Michael

[Sambo Rouge]

Originally Posted by mschnell

---- most very happily shell out the proposed donation to get a license
-Michael

Be careful with the word "donation". It is not a donation -- its the purchase price of the license.

A lot of people are under the impression that Reaper is a freebie or a "give as much as you can afford" sort of thing.

With its discounted license of 60 bucks, its a great bargain and 225 for a commercial license is also very fair for the product that you get.

[mschnell]

Sorry, I am not a native English speaker (but mind the ). I just wanted to state the obvious.

-Michael

[Sambo Rouge]

I understand Michael. No reflection on you at all.