Spitfire / Appassionata ("Impulse Legato" Strings)

[Lawrence]

Listening over at VI-C, I have to say I’ve rarely heard so many fine sounding user demos. There are some very good writers writing them, but still-through a number of variations in settings and layering with other libraries, SAS still sounds pretty great. I think I’m in.

[Guy Rowland]

Listening over at VI-C, I have to say I’ve rarely heard so many fine sounding user demos. There are some very good writers writing them, but still-through a number of variations in settings and layering with other libraries, SAS still sounds pretty great. I think I’m in.

That's good to hear, and I think speaks to the reality that they've broadly done a good job. It sounds good, it's easy to play without massaging (if you can avoid fast and shorts).

Though I'm critical of aspects and so so wary of the marketing, I'm still wavering a bit myself. Price is great. It's mostly that I do so little orchestral these days that is keeping me from pulling the trigger.

[Lawrence]

Listening over at VI-C, I have to say I’ve rarely heard so many fine sounding user demos. There are some very good writers writing them, but still-through a number of variations in settings and layering with other libraries, SAS still sounds pretty great. I think I’m in.

That's good to hear, and I think speaks to the reality that they've broadly done a good job. It sounds good, it's easy to play without massaging (if you can avoid fast and shorts).

Though I'm critical of aspects and so so wary of the marketing, I'm still wavering a bit myself. Price is great. It's mostly that I do so little orchestral these days that is keeping me from pulling the trigger.

And most of my orch writing, which I’ve done a lot of recently, has concentrated on dynamic shorts! Still, the combo of price and beauty make this too attractive to pass up, so I’ll indulge myself and hope it will blend well with SCS shorts.

[ComposerGuy]

I’m in. I just wish I had the time to really try them out! But they sound lovely from the walk throughs/demos.

[Linos]

Joined the masses who bought the library and shared a user demo.

Sunt lacrimae rerum for String Orchestra

https://app.box.com/file/912235656499?s ... pe9z2ayhz6

The library has a very polished sound. I don't know if I'd describe it as classical. It's almost too 'high-gloss' for that for me. It fills a gap in my arsenal for an emotional wide-screen kind of sound. Definitely not a library for everything. But what it does, it does really well.

[Lawrence]

Having listened to some user demos, I’m VERY surprised by its apparent agility and am happy to be proven wrong. I’ll be buying it towards the end of its sale because I’m waiting for a credit card that will give me an additional 30% off up to $1000 worth of purchases. Spending spree! (Those Musical Sampling saxes are on my list too and am looking for more to spend money on.)

I’ve been messing around with Soaring Strings to try to convince myself I don’t need these. I had forgotten how lovely they are. However, that “gloss” in SAS is the difference for me and has pushed me over the edge. I could see using Soaring as an extra layer for a more Molto vibrato, which I think SAS lacks.

[FriFlo]

Having listened to some user demos, I’m VERY surprised by its apparent agility and am happy to be proven wrong. I’ll be buying it towards the end of its sale because I’m waiting for a credit card that will give me an additional 30% off up to $1000 worth of purchases. Spending spree! (Those Musical Sampling saxes are on my list too and am looking for more to spend money on.)

I’ve been messing around with Soaring Strings to try to convince myself I don’t need these. I had forgotten how lovely they are. However, that “gloss” in SAS is the difference for me and has pushed me over the edge. I could see using Soaring as an extra layer for a more Molto vibrato, which I think SAS lacks.

Yes. I might be turned as well, as I found out on Modernity Sucks that the legato of these strings seems to have 4 round robins, which is in itself a rare feature and I do not have any library that is able to do slow to medium repetitive figures well. I think I will buy it in spite of the horrible player.

And I just purchased the Musical Sampling Saxes! Seems like our shopping baskets match today.

[Lawrence]

Great minds

[Malachistos]

Yes. I might be turned as well, as I found out on Modernity Sucks that the legato of these strings seems to have 4 round robins, which is in itself a rare feature and I do not have any library that is able to do slow to medium repetitive figures well. I think I will buy it in spite of the horrible player.

And I just purchased the Musical Sampling Saxes! Seems like our shopping baskets match today.

There are only round robins on the repeated note attack when playing single notes, not on the legato bowing.

But still very playable!

[FriFlo]

Yes. I might be turned as well, as I found out on Modernity Sucks that the legato of these strings seems to have 4 round robins, which is in itself a rare feature and I do not have any library that is able to do slow to medium repetitive figures well. I think I will buy it in spite of the horrible player.

And I just purchased the Musical Sampling Saxes! Seems like our shopping baskets match today.

There are only round robins on the repeated note attack when playing single notes, not on the legato bowing.

But still very playable!

You are right! I just finished downloading and the legato sounds machine-gun-like with trills, but repeated notes do not. The RR=4 is probably regarding the sustains or note attacks as you say. Well, it is to late! I actually bought it because of wrong information, but it is what it is ... the library still sounds good, but actually more mellow and dark then even CSS.

One question regarding spitfire in general: With Berlin Series I route the surround mike to my surround speakers in 5.1 or Quad. In this library there aren't any surround mikes, neither in their Kontakt libraries (the so called "pro"-versions). Are the ambient mikes supposed to be that? I wouldn't consider it very "pro", if there weren't any surround mikes for an orchestral library. But probably I am just a hater!

[Guy Rowland]

Only just noticed there's a 50% off sale finishing today I think, which now includes Appassionata. £99. Any quick thoughts from users, a year on?

(This was a really good thread btw).

[Lawrence]

Very nice soaring tone with good legato. I would have wished vibrato had gone to molto.

[Linos]

For legato lines with a rich, dark, woody sound, Appassionata Strings are ideal. They are playable, reasonably easy to program and mix, and they sound great. I don't have any other library with that sound signature, so I do use them from time to time. Obviously, the lack of articulations make it a specialist library. For short notes you have the glancing attack, and the hairpin articulations. They cover the most basic needs in terms of shorts. But think of it as a legato library. If you like the sound and have use for that in your projects, it's a very good buy.

[Geoff Grace]

I use it frequently for legato passages. It’s easy to get good results with when I need something that works in a hurry, which makes it one of my most used Spitfire libraries.

Best,

Geoff

[Guy Rowland]

Thanks everyone, glad to hear it’s holding up well.

With the deadline on me, I think I’m still going to pass, but it was a very close thing. I don’t do much orchestral these days, and the differences here compared to what I have - CineStrings and Soaring Strings in particular - are just a bit too marginal.

I know what would have swung it for me - to have the ability to do a lite install on the laptop with one basic mic position. For the life of me I cannot understand why developers never offer this. Even today in 2023, hard drive space is at a premium, especially on those lovely Apple silicon models. Nothing is more logical to me to have one version on the road taking 1/11th of the drive space (7.5gb in this case), then when you’re at your full rig you can load the project to get access to tweak the details. Hardly anyone does this, not just Spitfire, and I think everyone is crazy.

[Ashermusic]

Even today in 2023, hard drive space is at a premium, especially on those lovely Apple silicon models.

Portable external SSDs are now small, plug and play, and affordable, and HDs even more so. The developers know that.

[Guy Rowland]

Even today in 2023, hard drive space is at a premium, especially on those lovely Apple silicon models.

Portable external SSDs are now small, plug and play, and affordable, and HDs even more so. The developers know that.

Yeaaah, but it’s messy. I just want a good lightweight set of tools that is always available whenever I have the laptop, never having to think about bringing other drives and cables. I’d trade the subtlety of 11 mic positions for the convenience of 10 other libraries all on the internal drive in the same space. It should be a piece of cake to design, and offer it as an install option.

Spectrasonics offer a lite laptop install option for Keyscape, but imo they did it wrong, offering a cut down set of instruments. I’d rather they offered a version based on that lite sample thinning - just have it all pre-baked as the subset of lite samples themselves only. Then when you load up the project in the full version, you just get more detail, and keep the full range of instruments and patches.

(I seem to have derailed the thread - sorry).

[Guy Rowland]

It's £150 for the next coupla days and I thought "oooh". Looked up and saw I resisted it at £99 last year.

(Linos, a year late but your demo linked above is gorgeous).

[Linos]

Thank you Guy. I still use Appassionata from time to time when I want a dark, woody romantic sound. I also own the Abbey Road Orchestra Violins 1 (got a review copy). And while Appassionata was a proof of concept, the two libraries are vastly different in sound. If you can get Appassionata for under £100, that's a great deal. If you have use for a dark, widescreen sound.

[Lawrence]

Lino’s-do you, like myself, wish for a molto vibrato at times?

[Linos]

Yes, an additional molto vibrato layer would be very welcome. Ideally a non-vibrato as well. Spitfire did a good job at finding the right balance for the one vibrato layer in this library. It works unconspicously in many situations. Still, some form of control over vibrato would make the library more flexible. The one layer covers quite a bit of ground. But not all, of course. If it was possible to crossfade from no-vibrato through the vib it has up to molto vibrato, that would be an improvement.