String Studio VS-2

When trying the demo edition of this plugin, i was astonished by the reality of sound this plugin can produce.
After purchasing the plug and having the opportunity to fully work with it, the disadvantages came out as well.

This plugin is designed to emulate different caliber string instruments from guitars to violins and even pianos, but aside from string instruments, this plugin is capable of producing some very nice pad sounds too (i even found some percussion instruments). (this versatility persuaded me to register this baby)
It comes with a library containing 12 sets of instruments, actually 11 since the "tour" set is a selection of various instruments out of the lower sets.
When you register, you can download (and share your own designs) more sets on the user-board at Applied Acoustics.

What makes this plugin really beautiful is the excitator.
You can define the behavior of your "string" sets with it along with it's behavior through midi velocity rates.

Creating instruments that behave fully natural however are not that easy and sometimes the randomness of some of the options make an instrument unpredictable on moments you desire the instrument to be predictable.
This happens amongst others with the violin, the same velocity rate creates a genuine strike the first time, the second time you get a harmonized sound along with it.

Another problem is that the excitator and the damper do not support a full range punch for the body mass and string range you define it's values for.
This is clearly noticeable when trying the piano sets.
Once you go beyond or above a certain note-range, you don't hear a piano anymore. Actually none of the piano sets sound real at any octave, so if you would like to have a real piano synth, better skip this plug.
Every synth consumes a certain amount of CPU resources, this one doesn't save too much either,depending on your CPU and how many cores it have it can consume a reasonable amount of your cpu resources (one instance regular polyphonic performance consumed 26% measured on a 2,8Ghz Intel single core with 533Mhz FSB)

Next to the known instruments you are free to create your own personal fantasy string instruments and this baby can produce quite some extraordinary sounds.
Also for the electric guitar department, String Studio does what it takes to get this genuine feel of having real electric guitar power underneath your fingertips.
If you need something that is capable of producing a variable range of electric guitars but takes less than 10MB on your harddisk, look no further, this synth does this all particularly well.

This plugin has two configuration panels to design your instrument and set it's ambience.
The A-panel comes with a few general in-housed effects like chorus, delay and reverb, next to it also the more instrument related options like vibrato, portamento and even an arpeggiator.
The arpeggiator is not usable in polyphonic mode. The tempo of this feature of the plugin can be synchronised to the speed of it's host exactly (even if the host applies odd bpm rates like 150.042).
When designing your own sounds using one of the library's instruments as a base you can compare it to the original by using the compare button so you can check wether your changes give the twitch you actually desire.
The plugin has an option implemented to export sounds to wave-files for import in a sample library.

The B-panel has as explained above the excitator in the geometry panel which is really important to set the basic type of your string instrument. Though i would have expected the body configuration board to be found under the same geometry panel, but as it seems there was not enough room to place it there.
Also the other configuration boards like the damper, string behaviour and termination are there to be found so you can design your instrument behaviour fully from start till finish.
The last two panels set the filter and distortion level you can apply to your instrument to give it the final touch.

The plugin has a few downsides but against the advantages i never regret to have registered this plugin, it's worth every penny even if it doesn't create *every* string instrument right. It has many roads to explore and may surprise you even weeks later when doing some new exploration.
If you need some great guitars and great pads and the freedom to design exotic string instruments, this thing is a great add-on to your collection just do prepare to read the manual, because you will need it if you want to go for specific string-designs. That you need the manual does not even guarantee you success:The manual is being written from a scientifical perspective, which makes it pretty hard to understand for musicians what the actual blahblah means if they don't have experience with the type of instrument they wish to design.
Even if you have experience with the type of instrument i doubt the documentation gives you a clear idea of how you can create a certain design right from start.