Spitfire introduces their Studio Series with Spitfire Studio Strings

[Muziksculp]

@Daryl,

Her playing ? Hmmm.... Well, she is just showing the bowing technique to beginner Violin Students, she is not showing off her playing abilities, so I wouldn't use that video to judge her as a player.

Anyways... I would rather we go back to discuss the library, and stick to the topic of this thread.

[givemenoughrope]

Here’s a quick comparison between, first, the Sable Cellos Spicc followed by the StudioStrings 6 Cellos Spicc, the latter displaying, to my ears anyway, a degree of ugliness I never thought I’d ever encounter in a Spitfire library. (Both use the same midi data.)


_

Piet, which mic positions are we hearing here? It sounds like Close mics for Sable...

And thanks for the review.

[Piet De Ridder]

A blend of Close and Tree (using the VC- Short Spic patch from the 'Main Mics' folder).

_

[givemenoughrope]

Ok thanks.

Hmm...just off the top of your head can you think of any situations when SStS would be vastly preferable to Sable/SCS? It seems like leaning on the Close mics in the latter and adding reverb would be preferable to what I'm hearing here and in much of the walkthrough. Maybe I'm just so used to the sound of Sable and how forgiving it can be.

[Jack Weaver]

Hi Piet,

So the StudioStrings 6 Cellos Spicc sounds like hash. You do mention that the others sections/groupings don't sound as bad. Would it be reasonable to have you show us a short example of something like Vln or Vla doing the same sort of comparison test with Sable/SCS?

You seem to be the best resource for producing effective comparisons. Everywhere else it seems that people simply write a short piece with a variety of section sizes and mics - making it really difficult to separate writing quality from the sound of the lib.

My sincerest apologies for the imposition. I just don't know where else to turn.

Thanks

.

[paoling]

About Spiccato/Staccato I can confirm that most of professional Italian musicians don't know what "Spiccato" is. String players use the term Balzato (or I believe the French Saute) for the bouncing type of articulation. The fact is that the bouncing is not something that's written on paper, but mostly the result of playing very fast notes at a certain dynamic.

[KyleJudkins]

About Spiccato/Staccato I can confirm that most of professional Italian musicians don't know what "Spiccato" is. String players use the term Balzato (or I believe the French Saute) for the bouncing type of articulation. The fact is that the bouncing is not something that's written on paper, but mostly the result of playing very fast notes at a certain dynamic.

let me introduce you to my family recipe; Spicarri Calamari

[Piet De Ridder]

The more I use it, the more disappointed and displeased I am with this. In fact, I’m now ready to declare this, without any hesitation (but with rapidly increasing anger), The Worst Thing Spitfire Has Ever Released, and also one of the weakest string libraries of the past 10 years. The Synchrons, which are pretty bad too, are pure gold compared to this.

The three main legato patches, for example — Vlns1 (16) Legato Slurred, Violas (12) Legato Slurred and Celli (12) Legato Slurred — are abysmally bad. All three of them. Have a listen:

(1) Violins 1 (16) Legato Slurred
(2) Violas (12) Legato Slurred
(3) Cellos (12) Legato Slurred

(Please listen all the way through every example; if you're interested, that is. I know that it is an assault on the ears and all one’s finer senses, and that it requires inordinate amounts of strength and stamina to sit it out — deeply sorry for that — but I sometimes land on problematic legato intervals halfway through or towards the end of these improvisations.)

I am — quite seriously — of the opinion that with patches such as these, Spitfire have sunk to depths where hitherto only Kirk Hunter dwelt: that scandalous combination of awful sound, sloppy programming and, in Spitfire’s case, a baffling disdain for their customers by calling this substandard crap “pro-end” and daring to ask money for it.

Anyway.

Jack, I’ll do some more examples in the coming days — but I have some other work to do, so things might arrive irregularly and in small portions — and I hope to be able to also make one or two examples that show that these Studio Strings can also sound quite decent. Because, again, not everything in this library is as bad as the above might suggest.

Rope, On paper, Studio Strings, being a larger band, have the bigger, lusher sound. So if, for whatever reason, you want to get away from that occasionaly penetrating chamber strings timbre that’s very much a part of Sable, these Studio Strings should have been a great choice. Sadly, they aren’t.
Another reason to consider these new strings might be the smaller and drier space in which they were recorded. Great though Sable may be, the space in which it exists can sometimes be a bit too much and it is also at odds with the concept of ‘chamber music’. Such spatial issues would never have been a problem with the Studio Strings, if only …
But no, with the quality of this new library being what it is, I can’t think of a single situation where SStS would be preferable to Sable/SCS. ‘Sable’ to me is the zenith of Spitfire’s art and craft, these Studio Strings their nadir.

_

[KyleJudkins]

that's actually the first example I've listened to piet, thanks for confirming everything I've already assumed about spitfire releases.

basically, if it's an instrument that produces legato - theres no reason I should pay attention to it.

[paoling]

Some of the problems I hear in these transitions are fixable in RX, so I believe they'll release some sort of fix. The only doubt is that they don't seem very slurred, they mostly seem like a variation on the fingered legato style.

[Piet De Ridder]

The legato, or what has to pass for it, is actually the least of the problems I have with the above examples. It's the sound which I find unbearable and impardonnable.

_

[Guy Rowland]

I wonder, paoling if the clicks and pops are more bad transitions between samples than within samples? My hunch (though of course I'm far less experienced than yourself) is its Kontakt editing / crossfading more than RX on the samples territory.

Piet - from those three examples its not all that near Kirk Hunter territory to me, but it is clearly a) slapdash in places and b) the overall tone isn't especially pleasing.

I won't say who or where, I but I was once part of a private beta from a developer for a product due to be released in something like 3 weeks. I couldn't believe how rough it was. It made the above examples sound like creme de la creme. I honestly thought the product was a dead dog, beyond hope. But to my wonderment, in that staggeringly short space of time it became completely transformed. The skill and speed of good developers is amazing. Anyway, point of mentioning it is that all this roughness we hear I don't think should be that big a problem for Spitfire to solve. They needed another week or two on QC. And that seems to be a common problem with some developers - 8dio most definitely guilty there. There seems to be such a rush to get things out the door.

It would be asking a lot of you, a paying customer, to make notes of literally every transition with a problem and feed it back. Here's hoping that collectively some in the community do so, or Spitifire themselves pull their collective fingers out. Of course that still leaves StaccatoGate, but it doesn't sound like a totally irredeemable product to me.

EDIT - cross-posted with you Piet. Yes, I'm none to keen on the sound, but don't hate it as such. Trouble is, one keeps coming back to Sable, right? Why have something new that just sounds worse when that loveliness is just sat right there? That product took a long time to really lick into shape mind, but I absolutely get the point that the raw sound difference between the two is the bigger deal.

[Piet De Ridder]

In case it was less obvious than I think it was in the previous examples, here's a more telling illustration of the sort of sound that immediately awakens my Dark Passenger (and he's in a bad mood): http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be ... ed_ex2.mp3
I am sorry, but when I hear a so-called professional strings library (from one of the leading companies in the industry) produce sounds like these, I have all the difficulty in the world not to revert to a far more primitive version of myself.

And I don't believe this library can be saved. Not with fundamentally flawed sounds such as these.
_

[woodrose]

In case it was less obvious than I think it was in the previous examples, here's a more telling illustration of the sort of sound that immediately awakens my Dark Passenger (and he's in a bad mood): http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be ... ed_ex2.mp3
I am sorry, but when I hear a so-called professional strings library (from one of the leading companies in the industry) produce sounds like these, I have all the difficulty in the world not to revert to a far more primitive version of myself.

And I don't believe this library can be saved. Not with fundamentally flawed sounds such as these.
_

It's funny when you mentioned Synchron, the sound actually keeps reminding me of the lifeless Synchron Strings sustain samples.
But I don't find it to be as bad as the Synchron examples.

[Arbee]

As others have noted, we are now in the upside down world of Spitfire doing dry and VSL doing wet, and to my ears both obviously way out of their comfort zone and far, far away from their core competence. Oh well, nothing to see here, my money is safe (for a while anyway I guess...)

[Guy Rowland]

Good lord, the Dark Passenger has stirred. I still don't quite hear the same level of awfulness here that you do Piet.

What other dry chamber libraries are out there to compare with?

[Linos]

Dimension Strings, Light & Sound Chamber Strings, and Century Strings come to mind.

To my ears the sound in Piet's demos is not in the least appealing. It's not kirk-hunterishly bad, but bad. If I had recorded top string players in a top studio, with a high class audio engineer at the helm, and the resulting sound was this, I'd be properly disappointed and puzzled.
What is going on in the sustains (audible, for example, from 0:16 to 0:18 in Piet's last example, but recurring in other places as well)? Sounds almost like phasing. Maybe a combination of unfortunate vibrato and timbre change?
All in all it sounds like a missed opportunity, unfortunately.

[paoling]

The sound at 0:45 in the Violin passages demos is a string touched accidentally by some of the violinists. This is fixable with some care in RX, the pop at 1:13 seems either a Melodyne artifact or a booming noise cut with the legato. They are fixable. In the latest Piet example I hear some ADSR smoothing on the attack which is not always ideal. I don't dislike the sound of this library, but in general I'm not a fan of dryness in samples (since we moved to another hall on our Rinascimento library I would not go back to the Trio Broz type of studio very easily).

[Piet De Ridder]

(...) Sounds almost like phasing (...)

It’s that ‘never far from phasing’ element in the sound that bothers me so much. As I suggested earlier, I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if it transpires that we’re dealing here with stacked samples rather than with actual recordings of full sections. I mean, I hear the exact same sort of problems in these samples as I do when I (or someone else) stacks samples: that near-constant borderline phasing, those whiney resonances, that strange unpleasant auto-filtering that is going on … (and it’s those things, together with some very sloppy editing and careless programming that I associate first and foremost with KH, hence me mentioning that name).

But hey, I'm relieved to discover that I hopefully needn't make much more audio examples — I will happily do so though, if anyone wants to hear somethin specific —-, as Spitfire themselves show, in a way I can't improve upon, how problematic this library sounds. Listen to this (and pay particular attention to the legato bits that start at 5'49", it's again that phasing or near-phasing sound):
.


Again, in a blind test, the last name I would put to these sounds is Spitfire.

_

[Jack Weaver]

Thanks for taking the time, Piet. I appreciate it.

.

[Jaap]

Fully agree, thank you Piet. When I first saw the announcement I thought that it might have been a nice thing to look into to add as the dryer approach is something I like, but today I listened to all the demos, your demo, the walkthroughs and such and I value your opinion deeply and you put out some good things to take into consideration.

[Linos]

If anybody is interested in the sound of competitors Studio Strings, here is a phrase rendered with various Studio Strings libraries, each to the best of my abilities (meaning individually tailored midi data for every library).

Light & Sound Chamber Strings, with reverb added but no other processing:

https://app.box.com/s/985ltv0pomza1o6l9ksez5ktvim3cddb

Century Strings, with reverb and panning added but no other processing:

https://app.box.com/s/9tnu0whndbtc49d5a12lk276b89f1sx2

Dimension Strings, heavily processed (eq, panning, reverb etc.) :

https://app.box.com/s/4u758cn1b45al0vi3xt45lwrgmqgfke4

Cinematic Studio Strings, out of the box:

https://app.box.com/s/tq84bwx3mard258tvlt0jvqfcp0jzpmz


Gosh, I am a fan of Light & Sound's sound signature. In this case I even prefer it over CSS, which I originally used to mockup this piece.

I'll probably rather not hear this phrase rendered with Spitfire Studio Strings, but if anybody wants to have a go I'll happily provide the score and/or the midi file.

Piet, yes, there is that phasing-ey sound again in Homay's video. I must say that whole part you highlighted does not live up to Spitfire's usual standards in my opinion.

[Guy Rowland]

The NV in that video example does sound odd, agreed, a very hollow and not pleasing sound. The run sounded pretty good though.

Thanks Linos, that is indeed a lovely tone for L&S, though the last section did take me out of it as the notes didn't connect as I'd hope, and sounded a bit keyboardy, but I'm guessing the intent here is a tonal comparison anyway.

Century is nice too - the very first note sounded strange - something odd in the highs - but after that really nice.

You've got a pretty nice tone out of Dimension too, though here I here that lack of connectedness somehow.

CSS terrific.

Thanks for taking the time Linos and Piet. I don't think my ear is as susceptible to all those phasey things some of you hear in it, or perhaps I just wouldn't describe it as phasey... the tone is pretty poor, there's no air or life and there have now been too many examples of real oddities. Still not KH for me, but there's just no reason to buy it.

[NoamL]

The absence of a versatile collection of quality short bowings is the big problem though.

This is the single factor that made it easy for me to pass on both SStS and HZS. It's really difficult to break out of any style of writing other than "trailer spiccatos" and "lovely legatos" when you only have one length of short note!

There's something subtly off about the design doc of this library. Recording smaller groups of musicians, in drier spaces, with closer mics, is Spitfire's ideal opportunity to really dive into deep-sampled legato. Yet instead of that they sampled a lot of one shots. The unique articulations are cool but I don't get how they fit with "studio" strings. The legato doesn't sound half bad to me Piet - I think there is a LASS-like factor here where people don't like the sound of close dry strings - although there are certainly some badly edited samples in there. The main thing is, the legato is practically 2012 vintage. Fingered and portamento, velocity controlled, one round robin, one speed (with a speed 'controller' that actually chops the sample). It's like they're not even trying to compete with CSS, much less what Performance Samples is doing.

On VI-C I noted that Spitfire has delivered over 400GB of samples to us this year, which is several multiples of what any other developer has released. I wonder if there is an editing skill dimension to their business plan. Editing legato samples is hard, obviously. Editing staccato samples is also hard because they have to be timed exactly and have to be consistent across the instrument and between sections. By contrast "artsy longs" samples are, I guess, easier to edit? Especially if they have soft attacks.

[tack]

Recording smaller groups of musicians, in drier spaces, with closer mics, is Spitfire's ideal opportunity to really dive into deep-sampled legato. Yet instead of that they sampled a lot of one shots.

Emphatically agree (and I made this same point in the first post). Given we have Sable, I don't feel much is lost here with SStS, but if they don't really seize the opportunity presented by the drier studio in their upcoming woodwinds and brass, where their symphonic counterparts commonly struggle with legato (especially the brass), it will be really unfortunate.

You mentioned editing legato samples is hard, and I think this must be true. It has to be painstakingly tedious. This is where Alex Wallbank seems to have a history of driving quality, and so I'm really quite looking forward to seeing what he's able to deliver for Cinematic Studio Brass.