The Sound Board

Orchestral Tools have released an update for Berlin Strings which includes a legato update and some new articulations. The bigger announcement however is the release of the Berlin Consordino Strings.

"Tap into a new emotional depth with the gentle, rounded sound of muted—con sordino—strings. The next chapter in our flagship Berlin Series, Con Sordino Strings is a state-of-the-art library. While other libraries artificially simulate string dampening, Berlin Con Sordino Strings delivers the meticulously recorded tones of physically muted instruments and the distinct style and feel produced from con sordino playing.
Featuring section sizes equivalent to Berlin Strings, extensive articulation lists, 3 legato styles, and 6 mic positions all meticulously captured on the Teldex Scoring Stage–Berlin Con Sordino Strings represents a truly unique collection, one that we feel breaks new ground for the industry."

Requires the latest version of SINE which is now at 1.0.10 and includes various UI updates as well as support for VST3 and M1.

The other news is that they’re offering (“all?”) their string collections for €999. 7 collections. Interesting pricing.

Edit-I guess it’s the “Berlin Strings bundle” which is different from “Berlin Symphonic Strings”? Too confusing.

The update is for Berlin Symphonic Strings, I think it is around 5 GB , it offers expressive and molto-vibrato violins 1 options, in addition to legato improvements to the library, they don't have an update for the Berlin Strings (Main) library yet. But I think they plan to release those updates in the coming weeks.

And now SINE has found a new way to annoy me: I start Logic, I load a single instance of SINE and when I want to go to 'Store' or 'My Licenses' (both of which are greyed out) a pop-up text appears saying: "You've already opened a SINE Player instance. To use this feature please proceed to the first instance you opened." Even though I'm in a new Logic document with nothing loaded except the one instance of SINE ... Sigh.

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Piet De Ridder wrote: ↑May 25, 2022 4:58 am And now SINE has found a new way to annoy me: I start Logic, I load a single instance of SINE and when I want to go to 'Store' or 'My Licenses' (both of which are greyed out) a pop-up text appears saying: "You've already opened a SINE Player instance. To use this feature please proceed to the first instance you opened." Even though I'm in a new Logic document with nothing loaded except the one instance of SINE ... Sigh.

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This usually appears when you have the standalone version opened outside your DAW. If that is not the case, a reboot might help.

Yes, I guess a reboot would take care of it (just as it used to when some earlier version of SINE, after failing to connect to the store, insisted that there wasn't an internet connection on your machine) but my computer was busy with something yesterday which I didn't want to interrupt, so rebooting was no option.
By the way, I have never ever loaded up the standalone version of SINE — wasn't even aware there is such a thing — so the reason for SINE thinking there are multiple instances active must lie somewhere else.

But thanks, Fritz.

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I think this library is pretty great! I paid under 200€ for it since I have all other Orchestral Tools string libraries from the bundle. But there is almost nothing within this library that I did not like so far (which is rare)! I wonder why they did not record pizzicato when recording hotel mutes and I wonder why the string runs patch cannot stop on a short note, but that is really the only criticism I can think of any maybe the difference (of pizzicato with/without mutes) is negligible. However, since these mutes are also great for layering with Berlin Strings main library, getting such an essential articulation would have been a good idea IMO.

The legatos are much better than earlier OT legatos, the different sustains seem to be very promising to create very life-like performances and the shorts are to die for (the spiccatos are the best I have ever heard).

Did anyone else buy? What are your impressions then?

I'm considering it. I can get a pretty good deal as I already have everything in the bundle except the Con Sordino and Symphonic Strings. I don't really need another symphonic-sized string library (not that that's ever stopped anyone) but I'm sure I would find uses for it. But the con sordino stuff is really appealing to me as I feel this is a very under-appreciated area in the world of sampling, and the demos sound fantastic to my ears. The only real muted strings I have are the Spitfire BML stuff, which sound good but are very limited articulation-wise, so Berlin CS might be a very useful addition.

The main thing giving me pause is the player. I like OT's libraries but basically stopped using them because Capsule was giving me so many headaches, and SINE has been even worse so far. The worst sample player I've ever used by a long mile. It's been getting better with some of the recent updates, but I still have some very serious reservations.

I'll sleep on it for a couple more nights and we'll see. Hoping to see some more user impressions in the meantime.

(Also curious if anyone has any thoughts on Berlin Symphonic Strings. Flo? )

Sine kind of works for me, now, but I still hate it as well! Contrary to your experience, I quite liked Capsule except for it spending to much computer resources. Sine could still become good, so, there is hope and basically, there is almost no big developer left that doesn't have his own player.

On Symphonic Strings: I have them, I think there are some good aspects to them, but some weak ones. They are not a must-have for sure. I have put them to test in version 1.0 here:



Since then, there are some new samples for the weaker Violins, but I haven't really tested them, so far.

That sounds pretty good overall, I think. First violins could use some more molto vibrato and expressive oomph in some places maybe, but I guess that's what they added in the recent update? Amusingly, I've also been working on a rendering of Anakin's Theme here recently as a technical/template building type exercise, so far with various Spitfires and VSL stuff. It's a pretty brutal piece

I like Capsule in many ways too, but the resource use is pretty ridiculous. I've had many other bugs with it as well over the years, but most were eventually fixed. Then at some point another problem started appearing with patches not being recalled reliably in Cubase, and I think that's where I basically started giving up. But if you stick it in VEP and have memory to spare, it's a pretty good system.

There's stuff I like about SINE as well, like it not bloating project file sizes as much and having far less RAM overhead per patch (on the other hand, no purge). And it has some interesting new feature ideas. But in practice it still feels like beta software in many ways, especially stability-wise. I'm sure it'll get sorted out eventually but it's not quite there yet for me.

I agree about Sine not being ready. However, what other software except Kontakt really is? Spitfire Player certainly not and with this company I do not even have much faith in them drastically improving as they usually put way more effort into marketing and brands. That they mentioned the designer as a specific plus with that dreadful UI says all I need to know. That is why I am more confident with OT on the long run.

True, I'm not loving Spitfire's player either - kinda clunky and inefficient, but at least it's never crashed on me or anything of that sort. But the UI design is... well... let's perhaps not go there

On the other hand, VSL's Synchron Player is really good, I find - it's not my favorite sound in the world but I find myself reaching for it more often lately just because it's relatively painless to work with. Opus is pretty good too. But yes, overall I'm not thrilled with the trend of everyone having their own player (or with the general state of music software tbh). I was fine with Kontakt for almost everything.

Anyhow. I'm gonna try spending some more time with the newest SINE update this week if I can and see how it works out this time. The new muted strings are quite tempting.

You are right! VSL-Player is better than anything else! I forgot about VSL ...