Hi pVo,

And I'd say the great news for you is the special offer on Appassionata Strings and Orchestral Strings in this very month!

Best,
Paul

@Another User said:

Hi pVo, 

And I'd say  the great news for you is the special offer on Appassionata Strings and Orchestral Strings in this very month!

Best, 
Paul

I was looking into that, I really like the versatility of dimension strings but I also think Orchestral Strings are essential to have for articulations. But then I face the choice of appassionata because of the cinematic sound I need in my scores.

They really are gorgeous sounding. Great job Jay!

@pVo said:

I was looking into that, I really like the versatility of dimension strings but I also think Orchestral Strings are essential to have for articulations. But then I face the choice of appassionata because of the cinematic sound I need in my scores.

So get them all.  

You said before that you didn't like the sound from the Orchestral Strings and App. Strings demos.  That's probably because you heard those libraries by themselves but in order to bring out the magic of the VSL strings you have to layer them.  And it's how you layer them that matters.

If you can buy one of the string bundle packages then great but if your budget doesn't allow this then, in your situation, I would at least get the App. Strings with Solo Strings.  If you can afford to get the chamber Strings then get them too.  Then get the rest as sales and offers come up over time and don't forget the mutes.

@pVo said:

I was looking into that, I really like the versatility of dimension strings but I also think Orchestral Strings are essential to have for articulations. But then I face the choice of appassionata because of the cinematic sound I need in my scores.

So get them all.  

You said before that you didn't like the sound from the Orchestral Strings and App. Strings demos.  That's probably because you heard those libraries by themselves but in order to bring out the magic of the VSL strings you have to layer them.  And it's how you layer them that matters.

If you can buy one of the string bundle packages then great but if your budget doesn't allow this then, in your situation, I would at least get the App. Strings with Solo Strings.  If you can afford to get the chamber Strings then get them too.  Then get the rest as sales and offers come up over time and don't forget the mutes.

I was thinking about Orchestral I-II and App I. Why do you suggest solo and appassionata?

@pVo said:

I was looking into that, I really like the versatility of dimension strings but I also think Orchestral Strings are essential to have for articulations. But then I face the choice of appassionata because of the cinematic sound I need in my scores.

So get them all.  

You said before that you didn't like the sound from the Orchestral Strings and App. Strings demos.  That's probably because you heard those libraries by themselves but in order to bring out the magic of the VSL strings you have to layer them.  And it's how you layer them that matters.

If you can buy one of the string bundle packages then great but if your budget doesn't allow this then, in your situation, I would at least get the App. Strings with Solo Strings.  If you can afford to get the chamber Strings then get them too.  Then get the rest as sales and offers come up over time and don't forget the mutes.

I was thinking about Orchestral I-II and App I. Why do you suggest solo and appassionata?

If you're going to get three I would suggest App 1, Chamber 1 and Solo 1.

Orch. Strings and App. are not that far apart sonically so you don't have the detail you would get with the chamber and solo strings.  This detail is important when layering the strings.

@PaoloT said:

I read that Appassionata Strings are sampled whole-tone. Il so, are the Standard Edition all that different from the Special Edition? Apart for two or three articulations, and maybe an additional velocity layer in some articulations, they should be the same.

No.  My understanding is that the bigger collections, whether standard or full, are sampled at half tone.  Only the Special Editions are sampled at whole tone.

In addition to more articulations, and velocity layers you also get more variations with repetitions.

By comparing the manuals for the SE and Full versions of the Appassionata Strings, I would say that both may be recorded at each whole tone. Detaché are the same in both collections, while other articulations are only slightly different. For example, there are 198 Violins sustain sample in SE (with 3 velocity layers), and 242 sus_Vib samples in the Full Violins (with 4 velocity layers).

Somewhere else in the forum, Paul confirmed that Appassionata were a particular case, due to the need of reducing the time needed to record so many musicians at once.

The number of articulations is very different, and there are more layers in some common patches. The Full version is particularly strong in expressivity (vibrato) and legato modes (various types of legato and portamento, legato with more layers).

Paolo