OT-Berlin Symphonic Strings. Your Thoughts?

VST & Plugins
#1

Another week another new string library to consider. This time it’s Orchestral Tools’ new Berlin Symphonic Strings. This is a new library that is run on the OT SINE player and is, at least advertised as, the most realistic string library out there as far as their legato articulations which make for smoother and more realistic melodic playing and fast legato runs and ostinatos. Of course there are more articulations than just legatos.

Another new aspect of this library is running on OT’s SINE player with a novel scripting that allows this huge and detailed sample library to run with a very small amount of your computer’s resources.

So far, with the demos and samples pieces I’ve heard, this sounds extremely realistic and has a great “film score” sound as it was recorded at Berlin’s Teldex studio. As if I need MORE string libraries, but this might be the one that has the closest sound to what I want and I’ve been slowly buying individual instruments from OT’s other libraries and so far, I’ve found them to be among the best sounding I have.

What are your thoughts? Would you consider this library?
https://www.orchestraltools.com/store/collections/berlin-symphonic-strings

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#2

I’ve been considering BS for a while… I think the low end sound awesome but the upper strings do sound very thin to my ears. I think Everett thinks the same? I was talking to him about it not too long ago. I decided to buy Berlin Inspire which gives you a master mix of the whole library. Have to say I love it, but it still has those same issues with thin strings at the top end…

I will say this though, there’s always going to be trade offs for orchestral writing, and for this style of sampling I think OT decided the brass were a little more rich which actually fills out what the strings don’t give. So I’d say in that respect it makes the libraries a touch harder to mix (with other libraries that is), but does give you a better overall sound when just using the one library, so trade offs can just lead to stylistic differences.

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#3

That’s what I’ve come across as well, that the low strings sound great, especially the cellos but the violins sound a little thin. I was considering either this library or Spitfire Studio, but I liked the realism of BSS legatos and I also prefer the OT Teldex studio’s ambiance to Spitfire’s. In the end though, I’m going to complete the Spitfire Studio Orchestra and continue to get OT’s a la carte instruments. I’ve been using them more and more and the just sound really good.

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#4

To be honest I recon the sound of Cista trumps both right now… and that is ALL legato too. Don’t know what it is about those libraries but PS get it so right!