LASS 2.0 Lite... demo's?

I don't know much about LASS but EastWest just announce Hollywood Strings Silver for $200.

I haven't heard either one.  I use EWQLSO Platinum which works fine for me.

LASS sounds gorgeous, and it covers a LOT of articulations, and the company is at the very top of the great customer support list.

Cinematic Strings sounds gorgeous, and it covers almost as many articulations, and it is probably a little easier to use, and they are right up there with Audiobro when it comes to taking care of customers.

Adagio Strings from 8Dio represents yet another approach, and it sounds gorgeous, and it covers a LOT of articulations, and after a brief stumble they are as good as anyone at taking care of customers.

Kirk Hunter Concert Strings is another cool library, not as well thought of in some circles as the others, but I like it. It covers all the basic articulations, and some others, and it offers a very flexible way to manage all of that. I will agree that it probably doesn't sound quite as nice "out of the box" - it takes some work to get everything to fall into the mix. I can live with that. And you can usually get an answer from Kirk very quickly.

Stresov Cornicopia is the new kid on the block. It covers a lot of articulations, but it does so in a slightly different way, which may or may not limit you. Support seems to be quite good.

All of these are Kontakt libraries.

Hollywood Strings (any version) sounds gorgeous, has even more articulations than LASS, and comes with it's own player. Some people report great difficulty getting Play to work well. Others don't. Customer service at EW is going through a rough patch. But dang, the library sounds great!

If I were in the market for a big-guns string library I'd narrow the field to LASS and Cinematic Strings. That's purely a personal taste thing, and I already own Concert Strings 2. I'm not interested in wrestling with yet another sample playback tool. This doesn't mean I won't eventually add Play and the Hollywood libraries to my toolkit, but for now I need to focus most of my time on writing and arranging and mixing<G>!

Not sure exactly what you mean by demos... if you are looking for recordings made with LASS Lite there are several on the Audiobro web site. If you mean a demo patch or something like that, well, I'm with you all the way.

It is very difficult to make the investments in some of these higher end libraries because you can't try them first. Trysound is OK, but it still isn't the same as actually using the product for a bit.

Used to be that local music stores provided that service, but they couldn't compete with the on-line stores, who saved at least a little money by not having to offer demos, and the little stores went away. There's an irony there!

The 8Dio Adagio Strings includes Violins, Violas, and Cellos, and the Basses are due to be released the end of this month. It's a really strong library, but it is expensive.

Stresov did try to strike a balance between separate sections and ensemble patches, I'm not sure they hit the mark.

Cinematic Strings does some really graceful glissandos - not sure how much more portamento would buy you. Give a listen to their demos to hear it.

GPO is probably the easiest to use in terms of sequencing, but getting it to sound as good as some of the others is a LOT of work, which is strange, since I still use the original Garritan Orchestral Strings, and they sound amazingly lush. Too bad they were developed for GigaStudio!! Anyway - as the libraries become more capable, and therefore require a lot more in terms of controller messages, cut and paste becomes quite a bit more challenging!

I don't own any of the Albion or Symphobia libraries - that approach to sequencing did not appeal to me. Recently I picked up Orchestral Essentials, and I have to say, adding that to a project provides some really musical glue - makes it sound a lot more like I imagine it should.

As far as the KH interface - I'm surprised more developers haven't taken that same basic approach. It makes life so much easier when dealing with complex instruments.


Please keep us posted as you continue your journey...

hmm... there were LE demos once upon a time, or maybe I'm just imagining it??? I don't think so, but I also think that the demos were not on the Audiobro site, I think I found them elsewhere. I will do some digging when I get a little time (prolly not today - tax time and all that<G>), but I know I heard demos. Now they might be V1 demos - it has been a while.

hellogoodbuy - sounds like you're leaning toward LASS.  I wanted to mention that I originally had GPO and converted to EWSO Gold.  After a bunch of research it ended up to be the best decision for me.  For only a couple hundred bucks (taking advantage of one of their sales) I have a Pro Orchestral package (not just strings) and was able to convert all my projects from GPO to EWSO.  What drew me to EW was that they have a huge selection of products (I also bought Solo Strings which sounds great).  Piano's, Guitars, etc.  And the fact that I could try them out inexpensively with EWSO, with a complete upgrade path to other more advanced packages.  Some day I'll will be upgrading to the Hollywood series.  It's not just Hollywood Strings, but Brass, Woodwinds, etc.

Play got a bad rap early on.  I bought EWSO in December and haven't experienced a single bug.  It is easy to use.  They are only on version 3 so I expect the software to get better and better.  They had specific reasons to go away from Kontact, where Kontact was holding them back on certain things.

The other thing EW has gotten a bad rap about was Customer Service.  This must also be something they have improved on.  They have been excellent to me and VERY quick to respond to any questions.  They have a very sophisticated support ticketing program.  You can view all history of any ticket at any time.  The company - AT THIS TIME - has their act together.

Also, their Forum is very active and is very useful for support questions.

Hollywood Strings is a great library - the samples are huge.  You almost need to go SSD to avoid those long load times.  But the cost of SSD's is coming down fast.  SSD's will make that load time less of an issue.

I'm going to briefly recount my recent experience with SoundsOnline - East West...

I have owned East West Symphonic Orchestra Silver since it originally came out
under Native Instruments...YES...NI...I still own the NI version.

I recently decided to upgrade my NI Silver to the PLAY Silver..it was on sale
for half off....$49.50  so I took the plunge and ordered.

They charged my Credit Card the $49.50 and accepted the order.

I kept waiting for my product to ship/serial number...
After 2 days I contacted East West Customer Service.
They said there was a problem with my order, but that
they said they had it corrected and I would get my product.

Another 2 days goes by and I get an Email from East West
accounting telling me that they could not charge my Credit Card
for the $197.50 for Symphonic Orchestra Gold and that they could
not process my order and that I would get a refund of the $49.50!!

So I contacted them and stated....WHAT?  I didn't order Gold - I ordered
the Silver and THAT is WHY you charged me $49.50 in the first place!!!

I NEVER got a reply to that email...

A week later I got a refund on my CC...

NOT AN APOLOGY FOR SCREWING UP MY ORDER
NOT sending out my ORIGINAL ORDER....NOTHING...not a word...

ALL I got was a refund of the Original $49.50

They'll never get a penny from me again....

If they can't deal with a VERY SIMPLE order...and, at the very least
APOLOGIZE for THEIR mistake, then I most certainly don't want
to deal with them on something that may be complicated...especially with
their " Sorry...even though we screwed up, you're just SH*T out of luck" attitude...

Never buy anything from them again....EVER!

cclarry - I have heard EW horror stories like that.  That sucks.  Apologies and remorse don't seem to be a hallmark of EW customer service.  I will say that my communication with them was very "fact" based. 

I had issues too, like the liscense numbers that came with the original discs were invalid which delayed my installation.  There was no "I'm sorry for your inconvenience" in any of the communication.  However - That's were I got a taste of their ticketing system.  Everything was online like a blog and updatable by me - and they didn't miss a single communication.  Every post had a status - so they couldn't avoid a communication.  Very well organized.  That part of the company that gave me confidence.  Those issues with bad liscence numbers were very short lived.  It's a thing of the past.  The products work very well, and the forum is very good with people that are willing to help.

If I'm going to invest potentially thousands of dollars in a companies products I look at a number of things.  The most important to me is "staying power".  EW breadth of product is very impressive.  And they keep turning out more libraries.

Also - they made a huge investment in Play - which was very risky.  Kontact works great and it is totally stable now (but not in the beginning).  Play is relatively young.  But it is very stable for me.  The company must be healthy enough financially to make that kind of investment.

To me, the Hollywood series sounds fantastic.  And you have the choice to add Woodwinds, Brass and more, and they all use the same type of controller commands and Keyswitching, making the learning curve easier once you learn one of them. 

Their libraries are huge - big files.  And with Hard Drives, the long load times are annoying.  However - 1 Terrabyte SSD drives with incredible transfer rates are now on the market.  SATA is developing new technology to keep up with these transfer rates.  Current SSD drive controllers are now too slow, but that will change in a year.  And RAM is cheap.  So file size will not be an issue in the near future.

I've gotta say I've been going round in circles trying decide what strings to get on a budget. I'm now leaning towards either lass lite plus first chair or just lass lite and KH pop/rock strings as I signed up for group buy. I'm thinking the last combo would be the best all rounder. 
Decisions decisions..... Too much good stuff, not enough £££ 

Bibs