Pacific – Ensemble Strings is a symphonic string library featuring 16 violins, 12 violas, 10 cellos, 8 basses, a solo harp, and a 3-violin FFF overlay. It is one part of the full PACIFIC orchestra (ensemble strings, solo strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion). The library – featuring up to 14 dynamics – offers an ambient, classical-leaning sound in standard orchestral seating position, and was recorded in the same room as Fluid Shorts 2, as well as the Con Moto series, Caspian, and the original Fluid Shorts.
$249 loyalty intro (if you own Vista and/or any Con Moto module), $399 normal intro, and $599 full. Please see the Pricing / Loyalty tab for the loyalty intro code and more information. Intro period lasts through March 30th, 2023.
Instruments
16 Violins (no 2nd violins)
12 Violas
10 Cellos
8 Basses
Bonus Content
3 Violins FFF Overlay
Lite Full Strings Patches
Solo Harp
Noise Floor WAVs
Articulations
16 Violins / 12 Violas / 10 Cellos / 8 Basses
Legato (monophonic) Sustains with Same-Note Repetitions – up to 5 dynamics (on both sustains and intervals, matching)
Sordino Sustains (no legato) – up to 11 dynamics
Whisper Sustains (not on basses) – up to 5 dynamics
Trills (not on basses) – up to 8 dynamics
Tremolos – up to 9 dynamics
Spiccatos – up to 14 dynamics
Pizzicatos – up to 9 dynamics
Marcatos – up to 5 dynamics
FX – Cluster Risers
FX – Cluster Shorts
Bonus Content
3 Violins
FFF Overlay Legato Sustains
Lite Full Strings Patches
Sustains
Sordino Sustains
Whisper Sustains (no basses included)
Trills (no basses included)
Tremolos
Spiccatos
Pizzicatos
Marcatos
Solo Harp
Normale – 8 dynamics
Harmonics – 4 dynamics
Noise Floor WAVs
Recorded in an ambient hall with close and AB (main/far) mics
48kHz / 24bit
NCW-compressed, ~32 GB total
Built for Kontakt 6.6.0 and above – full, retail version of Kontakt required
Temme posted on Vi-C that you still can buy the Con Moto Basses for 69$ and then get the discount on Pacific Strings. You'd also get the Pacific Solo Strings on top for free when they are released.
What i have heard from the library so far sounds rather nice. Especially the lower dynamics seem to have been captured very nicely. Also the same note repetitions are great. It's often overlooked in libraries, yet it's so important.
The library is quite noisy though.
If you are looking for a strings library with large sections, this seems like one of the top contenders. It's not something I need very often. I am rather always looking for chamber sized strings libraries. Still, this is a tempting package.
Hi Linos. I did post that, but I said that one day before the library was released. I can imagine it no longer works and a customer can’t become eligible for loyalty discount now? Not sure, but just a warning there!
I like the sound of the library. It is a bit over the top maybe? I does sound like the legatos really want to go into portamento territory. I gather this happens at higher velocities, and there is no off switch. This to me leads to a bit of a portamento fatigue, listening to some of the demos I’ve heard. Overall this one seems to be suited for very romantic string writing, no?
This library ticks so many boxes for me. It's very much like Vista, but more controlled and less over the top vibrato. It has some of the best con sord, soft, and pizzicato samples I've ever heard! I can produce some demos if you guys want to hear anything specific from the library.
Here's a random thing I wrote when I was messing around with it. Mostly keeping to lower dynamics (it never goes above 100 on CC1). All strings are Pacific apart from a violin line from Vista at 1:09, and the full Vista sections at 1:50 - 2:10. Using the EQ settings Blakus suggested as well as some tail from Relab LX480L. Choir is Chorus by Audio Imperia, Woodwinds are Solo by Audio Imperia. Brass is a mixture of Solo, Caspian, and Spitfire Symphonic Brass.
That is a lovely piece of music. The Pacific aesthetic truly is a very romantic expressive one, it seems. Reminds me of Vista, but with more articulations. Would that be a fair assessment?
doctoremmet wrote: ↑Dec 23, 2022 5:53 pm
That is a lovely piece of music. The Pacific aesthetic truly is a very romantic expressive one, it seems. Reminds me of Vista, but with more articulations. Would that be a fair assessment?
Defiantly. It feels (and plays) like an evolution of the Vista concept, with the playing being more restrained and homogeneous.
Something at the opposite end of the spectrum: I dropped Pacific into an older song of mine to replace what I had been using Vista and Fluid Shorts for. It certainly does loud very well!
I’m sure that to many people, Pacific may be the ideal stringslibrary, or close to it, for any number of very good and totally sensible reasons — which I don’t want to take anything away from —, but there’s something in the Performance Samples’ sampling recipe that makes for a result which, sonically, doesn’t agree with me very well. I have two or three older Performance Samples libraries and it’s the same thing. Can’t really describe it, but there’s a kind of, I don’t know, clotted stickyness in the sound of these things that produces something I just can’t warm to.
I watched a few totally randomly chosen moments of the Blakus video yesterday and I immediately heard it in all of them. It’s also *very* much in evidence in that Gardini-rendering of the Dunbar theme. Those strings sound to me as if treated with wallpaper glue or something. There’s no airy openess, I find. Everything sticks to everything else. Much prefer the Linos’ CSS version from a stringslibrary evaluation perspective: nicer dynamics, better separation and overal much more expressive timbre. Comparing CSS to Pacific in these two examples and using a sauce metaphor, the former has a just the right liquid quality whereas the latter sounds overly thickened with flour or cornstarch.
Mind you, I have some recordings of real strings that sound very much like Pacific does, so I’m not necessarily saying the library sounds unrealistic or bad. Not at all. It’s just not the type of strings sound that I enjoy. Strictly personal thing of course. Fully understand the enthusiam as well with which this library is being received and discussed. For certain type of things (none of which fall into the category of music I make or want to make) , it is no doubt close to ideal.
This just sounds like neither fish nor fowl to me, certainly not bad, but nothing I need.
For my pop stuff, Strezov’s Afflatus Chapter 1 Scene d’Amour strings con sordinos just have that Grusinesque sound I want (thanks Craig Sharmat aka Scoredog).
If I want lush, it’s Hollywood Strings all the way.
For pairing or everything in between, it’s CSS, which sandwiches nicely between the other two.
So if someone were to gift me these, I just don’t hear when I would choose them, the same as several other good strings libraries I have.
Linos wrote: ↑Dec 24, 2022 3:42 am
If anybody is interested in a comparison with Cinematic Studio Strings, I made a mockup of the John Dunbar theme with them a few years ago:
This is lovely, really nice. I definitely prefer this to Leo’s and he is very skilled at using samples, so it is the inherent qualities of the library I am sure.
Piet De Ridder wrote: ↑Dec 24, 2022 4:32 am
I’m sure that to many people, Pacific may be the ideal stringslibrary, or close to it, for any number of very good and totally sensible reasons — which I don’t want to take anything away from —, but there’s something in the Performance Samples’ sampling recipe that makes for a result which, sonically, doesn’t agree with me very well. I have two or three older Performance Samples libraries and it’s the same thing. Can’t really describe it, but there’s a kind of, I don’t know, clotted stickyness in the sound of these things that produces something I just can’t warm to.
I watched a few totally randomly chosen moments of the Blakus video yesterday and I immediately heard it in all of them. It’s also *very* much in evidence in that Gardini-rendering of the Dunbar theme. Those strings sound to me as if treated with wallpaper glue or something. There’s no airy openess, I find. Everything sticks to everything else. Much prefer the Linos’ CSS version from a stringslibrary evaluation perspective: nicer dynamics, better separation and overal much more expressive timbre. Comparing CSS to Pacific in these two examples and using a sauce metaphor, the former has a just the right liquid quality whereas the latter sounds overly thickened with flour or cornstarch.
Mind you, I have some recordings of real strings that sound very much like Pacific does, so I’m not necessarily saying the library sounds unrealistic or bad. Not at all. It’s just not the type of strings sound that I enjoy. Strictly personal thing of course. Fully understand the enthusiam as well with which this library is being received and discussed. For certain type of things (none of which fall into the category of music I make or want to make) , it is no doubt close to ideal.
__
Perhaps a different way of putting it is that this library, despite being sold as a meat-and-potatoes library, still seems to pigeonhole itself into a very specific sonic corner. It's a very beautiful sound but also a sound that can get tiring and stale pretty fast. A part of that, I think, has to do with what Jasper calls Active Bow Sustains, here's how he describes it on his site:
However, the best results came from aligning the players bowing, and then relying on the post-production process to make it work. In essence, this is the active-bow sustain approach. The players bow back and forth (to score) at a moderate speed, keeping the volume consistent and the bowings connected. Then in edits, I separate each bowing, truncate the beginnings and ends (to get rid of the rhythmic bow-change sound), and then graft/x-fade the bowings together.
The result is a continuous, cohesive “fast bowing” that breathes, creating a feeling of constant “re-phrasing,” musical restlessness, and emotive adjustment.
Pacific does sound good but I've been around long enough now to know how wild people get over string libraries and how quickly the honeymoon phase ends.
I have no regrets getting Con Moto and Vista and certainly Jasper is a very talented and unique developer, one who I wouldn't mind seeing more of. Yet, I feel very little sense of urgency in getting Pacific when I already have CM and Vista, which both also have that Performance Sample fingerprint all over them. I'm honestly a bit surprised at my own reluctance to pull the trigger, since I don't think I will come to regret owning Pacific (certainly not for the loyalty intro price), yet also can't entirely justify the purchase.
Part of the objection may be that I'm already drowning in tremolos, trills and pizzes as it is. The legato and sustains I feel I can already get from Vista so that just leaves the repetition sampled spiccatos and the con sords on the table.
Voyage - from the demos that are available - sounds much more attractive to me. There was a violas con sord poco espressivo patch available from Voyage at one point, which is a beautiful and incredibly useful patch, even though it was an alpha freebie and tri-tone sampled.
(It sounds much noisier in this ^ demo than the actual patch)
I’m also not fond of the timbre of the Performance Samples line. I think of it as a boxy sound. I have Con Moto but rarely use it. Nonetheless, I’m tempted by Pacific.
I like Blakus‘s choice of EQ and reverb, and I thought it helped considerably. That would be easy for me to recreate, as I have the same tools. I also like the dynamic range of this library and the way the shorts sound. I qualify for the loyalty discount, so I may pick it up before the introductory pricing ends on March 30. I think it could be very useful as a supplement to the other libraries I have.
Pacific Strings have a vintage sound quality. The noise adds to it, and the somewhat claustrophobic narrowness. 'Sticky' is a good word to describe it, fully agree with Piet here. It's definitely not an all-purpose strings library, but one for a very specific sound. The exaggerated transitions at higher dynamics narrow its usecases even further. Matthias makes a valid point. I wouldn't read too much into the opinions posted on Vi-C for the first several weeks after the release.
I'm sure it's a great library, and hats off to Jasper for his work. It's incredibly that basically a one man developer can offer so much at a very reasonable price. Still, it's not 'the best commercial strings library' as Blakus puts it. It's a library that's probably very good at one kind of sound.
Pacific Strings have a vintage sound quality. The noise adds to it, and the somewhat claustrophobic narrowness. 'Sticky' is a good word to describe it, fully agree with Piet here. It's definitely not an all-purpose strings library, but one for a very specific sound. The exaggerated transitions at higher dynamics narrow its usecases even further. Matthias makes a valid point. I wouldn't read too much into the opinions posted on Vi-C for the first several weeks after the release.
I'm sure it's a great library, and hats off to Jasper for his work. It's incredibly that basically a one man developer can offer so much at a very reasonable price. Still, it's not 'the best commercial strings library' as Blakus puts it. It's a library that's probably very good at one kind of sound.
I guess it depends on how you think of “vintage”. I think Mancini, Bacharach, John Barry, Marty Paich, Hugo Perreti, people like that, and Performance Sample libraries don’t sound like any of those.
Ah yes, different references. I thought of classical recordings from the 60ies and 70ies, which can have the same noisefloor and sometimes a similar sound as well.
Almost any library from Jasper is very useful for composers who dive very deep into programming. It is a collector item and a very useful tool in the kit.
I don’t think any of his libraries have been ‘complete’ solutions. Not until recently anyway as he is expanding into more complete standard libraries.
You need it when you need it. I have never made music using only Performance Samples. I don’t ‘feel’ that’s what it’s designed for.
When you are deep in the programming pit - you are thinking at patch level and trying to find any useful way to present/perform a musical idea - that’s where Jasper’s libraries really shine for me. It makes the difference in many critical situations.
I agree with Piet - I am not always a fan of the sound. It is at times contrived and dark in its character but with some adjustments - it is often ‘the’ layer that makes the difference.
In many situations, there just isn’t anything that will do what performance samples is able to do.
That being said, I am away on holiday but look forward to checking this new library out.
Linos wrote: ↑Dec 24, 2022 3:42 am
If anybody is interested in a comparison with Cinematic Studio Strings, I made a mockup of the John Dunbar theme with them a few years ago:
This is nice. I like CSS in here but I couldn't help but notice there is one frequency somewhere in the mids/low mids that is really poking through hard. Pretty sure it's the horns since I'm hearing it mostly on the left. I checked and the most problematic frequency is between 400 and 500hz, but even with reduced a lot I think there's still a bit of honkiness somewhere further down the frequency spectrum.
I know this is an old mockup from 6 years ago so do with this what you will.
The VSL Exciter seems to be especially nice on CSS, I may have to grab it some day.
