The Sound Board

The Untied Strings of Europe? Damn, tripped again....

Piet De Ridder wrote:

NoamL wrote:(...) but this lib might have me diving back in.

I would advice against it, Noam, if I may. Very average and inconsistent library. While the sound is fairly decent (never great though), there are a couple of things which, to my mind, makes this very difficult to recommend:

● Only the regular sustains (and legato) respond to the mod wheel. Tremolo's, trills and harmonics don't. Rather disappointing. (They do respond to #CC11 though.)
● Plenty of very noisy samples, especially in the lower dynamics and the pizzicati. Also quite a few samples which I would never have allowed in, to begin with.
● The room's response in the sautillé samples (which, by themselves sound quite good, I have to say) is truncated very drastically. Incomprehensible, I find ...
● ... all the more so because no such drastic truncation has been applied to the pizzicati ...
● ... which means that, if you switch from a sautillé to a pizzicato, the spatial suggestion changes completely.
● Key-switching between articulations (while playing notes) often results in hanging notes, especially when switching from monophonic articulations (portamento and legato) to something else. And I say 'often', but it actually happens 'always' on my system.

Still, £50 isn't an awful lot of money — at worst, resulting in only a minor feeling of annoyance for having bought yet another mediocre product —, so don't let me stop you, or anyone else, from making the same mistake as I made a couple of hours ago.

If anyone's interested, I could make a few audio examples to illustrate some of the above.

_

Auddict has stated on vicontrol that most of this will be fixed in an update. Hopefuly they will do some de-noising as well as adding the mod wheel and other fixes stated. Seems to me most of it can be fixed except:

● The room's response in the sautillé samples (which, by themselves sound quite good, I have to say) is truncated very drastically. Incomprehensible, I find ...

Which is a shame, since that's the most unique articulation (and why I would want the library)I have to speculate the recordings were done closer together to keep energy up, but then each tail is cut off by the following note, if they have enough last note tails they may be able to fix it, but I have to believe they thought of that. Probably a rerecording is the only solution. Like I said, real shame.

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As is probably already known, Auddict have released a major update for these violins, with an all new GUI, customizable legato settings and plenty of other tweaks.
You have to email them to get the download link though (which is a bit odd, no?), and I haven't done that yet.

_

The USE Cellos have meanwhile been released as well.

● Over 12GB of content
● 7 microphone positions replicating a film scoring setup, so you can craft your own sound to taste. Separate desk spot mics can be used to simulate divisi.
● Recorded at the world-renowned Cadogan Hall
● Over 22,000 samples+
● Multiple True Legato sets including normal and portamento, at different dynamics (cross-fade-able with MIDI CC1)
● 7RR Staccato, Pizzicato and Sautille/Spiccato, multiplied by multiple dynamic layers
● Tremolo, Harmonics and Trills

Introductory sale: £50 (Reg. price: £100)

cant imagine they will fix the fundamental issues with the library - I'll be passing while my USE violins collect dust.

Im with you there Kyle. I think USE vilons will be layering only.

trumpoz wrote:Im with you there Kyle. I think USE vilons will be layering only.

I cant even justify that... the lower dynamic is so noisy that it's not worth the effort for me to clean it up, especially since the thing is a resource hog.

Just wanted to chime in here and let everyone know that the first violins were updated to include many user-requested features, as well as fix the bugs mentioned. From the GUI now you can fully control legato and portamento length, as well as legato volume.

Regarding the background noise - bear in mind this is a relatively small orchestra, so when using the most quiet dynamic - turning that up will of course bring up the hall noise. The samples in the instrument are the de-noised natural samples that were recorded without any extra processing that would cause an increase in noise.

About lack of spiccato - in hindsight, the Sautille articulation probably should have been called "Sautille/Spiccato", as the louder layers will of course be "spiccato", and the quieter layers will be "sautille"

Happy to help with any other questions on the library!

Hey auddict! Welcome to TSB

With all due respect, I love other libraries by you guys, but I'll risk speaking for others in this thread when I say that our feedback shouldn't be confused for questions.

Maybe we might be the vocal minority with these criticism, or you might simply disagree with them - but it doesnt help you or us to treat them as a question.

Saut samples aren't spiccato, and can't be interchanged freely, just like many libraries' spiccato patches can't be used for convincing sautille... It's kind of like needing a flathead and getting a Phillips, then told both tools can loosen Phillips screws, but sometimes you need an actual flathead, as a Phillips screwdriver can't loosen those.

Regarding noise, you might disagree, but the noise levels come off as unnatural. I've never listened to a chamber/quartet/quintet or larger that had such distracting noise at lower dynamics. Again, maybe I'm 1 guy that it bothers and 99 others don't notice it or care - but that's not a question, it's not something I'm not unsure of - It's entirely possible for someone to dislike something without being tied to lack of information.

Criticism is one of the most useful things you can receive if you learn to embrace it. No doubt string libraries are insanely hard(hence sooooo many string libraries, none of which is completely satisfactory, and has weaknesses)

Im sure it's presented you guys with some challenges you didn't expect, but use the criticism as a chance to reflect on. Maybe adding a "noise reduction" knob that eq's out some of the noise with eq would please those who dislike the sound while leaving the raw sound there for those who like it. Maybe using the start of the tremelo and crossfading it into the sautille sample to create a makeshift spiccato articulation.

Hope this helps.

I've really enjoyed working with these lately.
Here's something short I made to showcase the violins & celli together.
https://soundcloud.com/woodrose/times-up