A short musical comparison of sampled Stringquartet-Samplesets

[fahl5]

Being interested in music for Stringquartet I am vividly interested, what is going on on the market of available Stringquartet-Samplelibraries.


With six different Sets (VSL-Solostrings, Spitfire-Sacconi, Embertone Intimate Strings, XSample Solostrings, Miroslav 2, IRCAM Solo Instruments) which I found installed on my Harddisk I tried a little comparison based on a Larghetto and a Fugue by Gregor Joseph Werner (1693-1776) and the first one of the five Pieces for Stringquartet op.5 by Anton Webern (1883-1945).

I must admit that I am quiet well used to work with VSL-Libraries. To be fair it must be stated, that I do not have by far any equal intense expierience to work with the five other Libraries, which nevertheless still do have in my opinion one or another interesting aspects.

The comparison might be not covering every Stringquartet-Sampleset nor everything one might do with Stringquartetsamples, but nevertheless there are some well esteemd Samplesets among the tested and the recorded music is challengin enough for a first impression, what at least the first attempts might sound like.

I am quite curious for the impressions and opinion of those might be interested in.

If you are interested you can find the complete comparison here:
http://klassik.comxa.com/sampled-stringquartets.html

[Torchlight]

Thanks for doing this. This will be very helpful to me as I was thinking of buying Sacconi strings.

I've already listened to it quite a bit but intend to listen more thoroughly and share my impressions later.

[Torchlight]

The X samples and Miroslav versions lack a sense of intimacy and sound more like small string orchestras. This afflicts the VSL too to a lesser degree.

Some libraries are massively unconvincing in certain fast violin passages.

The Embertone strings seem unable to achieve strength and clarity with short, non-staccato notes and something - the viola I think - sounds unpleasantly whiny at times.

Ircam - sounds ridiculous in the first piece of music.

The Spitfire sounds a bit muddy in that same first piece.

I think the VSL and Spitfire libraries come out best overall.

You should post your comparison at http://vi-control.net/ as people there would undoubtedly be interested in it.

[fahl5]

Already done...
http://vi-control.net/community/threads ... st-3981698
Intresting review, as I said it has to be kept in mind, that I am much more used to work with VSL, than with the others, this might at least be the reason for some of your impressions.

[Torchlight]

And here is a Spotify link to a real performance of the second piece of music:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4sH56a4F8iMzp7XYtQjG5X

[fahl5]

.. and? Do you really like that "real" (better called traditional/oldfashioned) version
At least it increased a bit my tolerance for some aspects of the spitfire-sound

[Torchlight]

Does sound a bit dodgy in parts.

What don't you like about the Spitfire library?

[fahl5]

First to be clear: I don't like to dislike anything others has invested pretty much hard work in.

Trying to be as precise as respectful:
1) The "Playable-patch" has its great power when it comes to intuitive direct "playing" on the keyboard. For the work completly based on editing mididata I would like to have legato-patches selectable like other individual articulations
2) I hope Sacconi will sooner or later be extended to the rich variety of articulations/patches other Spitfire Stringlibaries offer.
I am quite convinced that the spitfire-guys are able to do that, and I hope sooner or later they will do so....