My son wants to record an album with mainly piano and violins. Now I own Albion but Albion offers too much, if you know what I mean. Too many prefabricated combinations and things like that and it's more for heavy film music imho. I also own Kirk Hunter Concert Strings II but they sound a bit er... old... Not open and clear enough somehow. So once more I am looking at LASS. I noticed version 2 is out by now and there also is a Lite version. I've been looking for demo's but there aren't any... It's all the full LASS version and you have to guess what's not in LASS 2.0 Lite. Anyone knows where I can listen to some LASS 2.0 Lite ONLY demo's...? And is there anyone here who would like to share his or hers view on this plugin? Is it indeed 'the best' or not? EDIT Shoot, is this forum STILL not compatible with Firefox...?!?!?

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

Interesting...! But from what I have heard Hollywood Strings take ages to load and LASS has more detail in the lows. In this video (which isn't Silver but still) you can hear the differences clearly. It's all a matter of taste of course. ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpQszfmdqrY

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

I don't use LASS lite but I did find this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0An3XDvcwMs

It may be of some help.  Worst case, Buy the LASS bundle it's on 30% off sale right now.

Kind regards,
Rick

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>!

Thanks for that detailed reply, Bill!!! There are a few names I never heard of before so I will check them out. Nice! 

I did in the meantime already read about Cinematic Strings and while at first I was enthusiastic (because of the quality and the price) I was turned off by the lack of a few basic options, specially things like portamento, which I am SURE I will miss at a certain point. It's one of those little things that may turn a computerized performance into a humanlike one. Pity, because as I said I liked the prize of it...! 

I will check out Adagio Strings (although that name makes me think it's a lmited library...) and Stresov Cornicopia. 

LASS sounds awesome to my ears but it's a pity it isn't as easy to use as for instance Kirk Huner Concert Strings II. I wonder why LASS doesn't offer you a similar way out of the box, specially since you can create keyswitches in version 2 with ATC (as far as I understand). It's also something that made me stop using Albion (apart from the limited scope). 

In the end GPO is still the easiest to use LOL specially when you have to cut and copy midi clips (that's a problem with Kirk and Albion). I even considered getting something like Sibelius 7 to overcome that problem, but well, that would be another few hundreds of dollars and it's all a hobby, so... I do think that LASS may be easier to edit because you don't need overlapping notes to play legate as you do with for instance Kirk, which makes it hard to cut and copy clips. 

Anyway, I'll check out the others now! 

EDIT Sorry about the lack of formatting of this post... Firefox doesn't like this forum software...

EDIT 2 Downloaded Chrome specially for this forum... 


EDIT 3 Adagio is out: only violins. Strezov is out too because you don't seem to have seperate patches for violins, viola's, cello's and basses, which makes it all a bit uncontrolable (like some of the Albion patches). Pity because the price is great.  


So... I am back to LASS lite... pity there don't seem to be any demo's anywhere!

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...

I meant audio demo's, yes, since demo's patches etc. aren't available. But the Audiobro site has no Lite demo's at all. I even emailed them and they gave me one link of a short tutorial that was done with the first Lite version: all other demo's are done with the full version and hence don't give me an accurate impression of what the Lite version is capable off. Audiobro ensured me there are a lot of Lite users out there... but apparently no one makes music with it that they actually publish online. 

BTW Audiobro reacted VERY fast to my enquiry, which I really like, so I am one stop closer to getting LASS... 

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.