Mr. Squids tell all

[nexussynth]

The price was ALWAYS the strong point of GPO though. Garritan was responsible for making the low price breakthrough in orchestral libraries and I respect him greatly for doing that. He even caught hell from a couple (nameless) competing developers who called him to complain about his low price!

Hmmm, is that a 100% sure statement of s.th. that happend truely or is it more like gossip?

tele

Yup..it's true (if Gary is to be believed).

Actually he told me that in a phone conversation last year...

[Squids]

i liked that interview with dave. i love all the interviews with him. all i can say is he's an incredible person and it was THE highlight of my year to get to meet him for the first time. the reason SR's products are so good is because they are made by solid personalities who value music production more than other manufacturers who only care about the dollas.

when they announce something i always know it's going to be good and the early version of Philharmonik was sounding great at namm.

i can never have enough praise for them because i make music everyday and if it werent for their sounds i wouldnt feel as great about my music as i do. however, lately it's pretty hard to write an orchestral score knowing about this product on the horizon.

anxious,

mr. tunes.

Thanks Tunesy.

[harmony gardens]

Just curious, since I haven't tried GPO, how does it compair in the strings, to the Symphony Stings Expansion Tank,,, there's some real gems in there.

[telebunke]

Just curious, since I haven't tried GPO, how does it compair in the strings, to the Symphony Stings Expansion Tank,,, there's some real gems in there.

havent't compared these 2, but I have compared 1 and the same string arrangement of mine, using staccato and marcato patches. I compared VSL Chamber Strings with GPO strings and GPO heavily sucks compared to VSL - day and night to me.
What I am wondering about is whether Symphony strings will allow me to play differenct articualtions following each other while giving the impression that it's still the same instruments playing. It looks like Symphony strings are not made with that in mind, but it sure looks to me like it's gonna be great for many pop tune situations. And looking at the patch list you got separate sections for cello, viola and violin which is nice.

tele

[telebunke]

This is what I would need to give me basic freedom in my songs using string sections:

Staccato
Marcato
Legato
Pizzacato
Slow Strings (could be achieved by slowing down attack of the marcato patch)

That for every single string instrument, e.g. contra bass, cello, viola and violin.
All this with diffent section sizes in a logical relation.
Example with Violin
Solo
Chamber size (6 violin)
Large section (11)
larger section not really necessary for me, since I can combine 6+11 = 17

I'm sure that MV has all this, so wouldn't it be cool to release a string section like this for, lets say $100?

tele

[Kim Lajoie]

it sure looks to me like it's gonna be great for many pop tune situations. And looking at the patch list you got separate sections for cello, viola and violin which is nice.

That's right. It doesn't have a lot of articulations, but on the other hand it's not trying to compete with VSL or GOS. Symphony Strings, however, it so playable. I'm working on a little four-part for you guys to hear Symphony strings in action, and I just keep playing - and enjoying playing and not getting enough actual recording happening! Sonic Reality are all about sounds that are fun and inspirational to play, and Symphony Strings are a good example of that.

And as you said, it's great for pop or other music styles where the strings are there to add flavour and colour. The ensembles are really good though, and I imagine they'd be useful for working in the early stages of orchestration because they sound so good and are so fun to play!

I'm doing a quick four-part Symphony Strings demo so you can hear it for yourselves in the context of an actual piece.

Forever,




Kim.

[Kim Lajoie]

This is what I would need to give me basic freedom in my songs using string sections:

Staccato
Marcato
Legato
Pizzacato
Slow Strings (could be achieved by slowing down attack of the marcato patch)

That for every single string instrument, e.g. contra bass, cello, viola and violin.
All this with diffent section sizes in a logical relation.
Example with Violin
Solo
Chamber size (6 violin)
Large section (11)
larger section not really necessary for me, since I can combine 6+11 = 17

I'm sure that MV has all this, so wouldn't it be cool to release a string section like this for, lets say $100?

tele

Symphony Strings is close actually. It doesn't have a complete matrix of articulations vs sections vs size ... but it's got a bit of everything that you've listed. Some of the articulations are only available as ensembles (not separate sections), but in a lot of situations (for me at least) it still works quite well.

Oh, and it's less than $100.

Damn, gotta stop typing and finish this demo!

Forever,




Kim.

[Kim Lajoie]

Ok, for anyone who's interested in hearing a bit of Symphony Strings, check this out. I probably should have demonstrated a bigger variety of the different sounds in the pack... but I got carried away playing just the sounds I had loaded!

Specially composed for you guys.

In case you missed the link, here it is:

http://audioshots.com/auditorium/viewto ... 1828#11828

Forever,




Kim.

[Rellik]

The composition is REALLY nice - very cool stuff, and the drums really work well too. Really strong thematic music!

But ouch - I'd have to say that free soundfonts can sound much more realistic and appealing than those strings. It's not so much that they sound so bad, but why would you pay money for a product that doesn't sound better than free soundfonts?

Could be the weird compression/limiting applied, though, that's giving me a bad impression of the strings. They're really not terrible, either way! The drum sounds are very punchy - awesome

[Kim Lajoie]

The composition is REALLY nice - very cool stuff, and the drums really work well too. Really strong thematic music!

Cool, thanks!.

But ouch - I'd have to say that free soundfonts can sound much more realistic and appealing than those strings. It's not so much that they sound so bad, but why would you pay money for a product that doesn't sound better than free soundfonts?

Ok, here are a few reasons:

1) Consistant Quality. It'll take you ages to find a whole CD worth of decent strings soundfonts. There are some really good soundfonts out there, I know - I used to use soundfonts. The problem is that there's also so much crap out there as well, that you could easily go through ten or twenty soundfonts to find one good one. There's no quality control. If you've got heaps of time then maybe that's not a problem, but if you're a professional then spending a few weeks hunting through crap soundfonts is not an option.

2) SampleTank2. There's still no fully-integrated 16-part soundfont player with envelope, LFO, filter, and velocity response editing, with EQ and compression on every channel, as well as a chain of four effects (including tube-modelled eq and compression, and fully-featured modular amp modelling) on every channel. All with a fast and easy sound browser, easy layering, and child preset and combination preset saving. Again, you can sort of do it by cobbling together a bunch of free plugins, but you'll spend more time finding the good free plugins (just like soundfonts). Even once you get everything together the workflow is still nowhere near as efficient as ST2 and having everything a click away all in one window. Yes, I know, because I've been there. That's where I came from, and that's why I switched to SampleTank2.

3) Ethics and Legalities. Some soundfonts are public domain. Some are free for non-commercial use. Some have even stranger licences like songware, cardware, etc. No joke. Many soundfonts have vague licences or even no licence. If you've got a gigabyte of soundfonts, maybe a few thousand files - you've got to keep track of the license agreement for each individual file - because it's likely that they're all different. The the problem is that there's no guarantee that the samples in the soundfont were obtained legally. You could be infringing someone else's copyright without even knowing it. I remember coming across a few drumkit soundfonts sampled from Roland's XV synths. The soundfonts themselves didn't have any license or copyright information, but they were obviously infringing on Roland's copyright (the files were later pulled offline). Unfortunately, this is more common than than it should be - there are heaps of soundfonts of sample-based synths. Again, maybe you won't worry about it if you're a hobbyist who just composes for yourself and maybe posts some songs on KVR. However, if you're a professional composer and people are paying you for your music then you have a legal and ethical obligation to operate 100% within the law. You have to have respect for other people who make music, and you have to have respect for people that make musician's tools and instruments.

Forever,




Kim.

[Squids]

Plus, it isn't true that free soundfonts sound better than Symphony Strings.

[zai]

Wow...I have been following some of posts from Kim...WOW! You see, sometimes it is great to have great products. But it is essential that these great products are used by great people...and know what they talk about as well! Cool....

I'm SO looking forward to receiving my ST2 and SS2...ok, Amplitube too (though I don't see me using it much...keyboard player myself).

Anyway, nice tune...and those strings are awsome. Works for me....

Zai

[Kim Lajoie]

Wow...I have been following some of posts from Kim...WOW! You see, sometimes it is great to have great products. But it is essential that these great products are used by great people...and know what they talk about as well! Cool....

Anyway, nice tune...and those strings are awsome. Works for me....

Cool. Glad you enjoyed the demo, and I'm glad you're finding my posts useful (or at least interesting!).

I'm SO looking forward to receiving my ST2 and SS2...ok, Amplitube too (though I don't see me using it much...keyboard player myself).

The Amplitube effects are actually available inside ST2 and SS2 already - so you'll probably be using Ampltube anyway! The Amplitube plugin is really cool for when you've got audio tracks like vocals or guitars (or maybe audio from another synth) that you want to process with the same sort of analogue modelling that's inside ST2 and SS2. It's not just for guitars too - Amplitube has modelled tubes in there, and you can use just the clean tube preamp and eq to add a smooth warm colour to your audio. You can also add in some of the guitar processing for special effects... or even use the reverb and delay on a send bus for a warm coloured ambience send. It's really a multi-effects processor, and to treat it as only a guitar amp simulator is missing out on a lot in my opinion.

Forever,




Kim.

[telebunke]

Guitar amp simulators are also often used to tweak drum loops to the extreme. That's a very common thing these days.

tele

[Rellik]

Very good points, Jeez I agree with basically all of them - I guess there *is* a good reason for some people to buy Symphony Strings over spending time gathering up free soundfonts. Which I do maintain, Squids, can sound better, if used well. I already know for a fact that the results can be MUCH better than those achieved with plain ol' SampleTank 2 XL (since I own it!), but I only have Jeez's demo to draw conclusions about Symphony Strings. I'm sure he used them expertly, though