Lushest Orchestral String Instrument?

[Tidwells@aol.com]

I'm looking for the lushest-sounding orchestral string instrument to "sweeten up" some piano ballads I've written with authentic-sounding string counter-melodies. Just to be clear: I'm not looking for "dramatic" strings for suspenseful-sounding movie scores. I'm looking for sweet and beautiful strings like Bing, Sinatra, or Streisand would use on a ballad. I currently have Garritan's Instant Orchestra, but want to take a "step up". Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions!

Doug

[mikehalloran]

What’s your budget?

If under $500, buy IK’s Total Studio 2 for $249 through tomorrow (upgrade pricing is less if you own certain IK products). You get Miroslav Philharmonik 2 ($499) plus a couple hundred gigs of other VIs. You can click through the banner to Sweetwater. It uses SampleTank 3 but you can upgrade to SampleTank 4 for free by downloading the CS version. Unlike Kontakt, the free version and the paid versions use the same engine—the difference is the number of libraries you get.

NI Symphony Series is on sale $499 / Symphony String Ensemble only — $249 through tomorrow or as part of Komplete Ultimate Collector’s Edition for $1,599 (not on sale). If you have any paid versions of Kontakt or Komplete, upgrade pricing is available. Again, you can get Symphony Series from Sweetwater. I think String Ensemble is available from NI only.

There are a number of other libraries out there, of course. These are just a couple of the hot deals out there that I know.

[dix]

I have NI SS strings. It's very good, but CineSamples (50% off currently) remains the preferred string library among what I own. Junkie XL's YouTube tutorials that use Cinematic Strings (25% off currently) are breathtaking. The word "lush" would be exactly how I'd describe them. I'm seriously considering picking that up.

[mhschmieder]

If you don't mind spending time with articulation mapping, you could consider VSL's newer Synchron Strings offerings ("Pro" is the latest in the series) or even some of the derived subsets and alternatives that are in their Big Bang series and that require less work but have fewer articulations. Very sweet and lush sounding, but also quite articulate.