Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed it!

I'm sorry about that and I'm sorry you were uncomfortable, I've since stopped doing reviews such as this but I'll make note of your feedback for the future.

This got recommended to you? That’s insane, thanks for the support!

@@ArkturusMusic anytime, wonderful song by the way :) Wish you much success

Thank you Michael! It's great to be back.

I own both and I can give you a bit of insight (if you don't mind the slightly long read!) The Cinematic Soft Piano has more customisation and you can sort of fine tune it to make it sound a little more unique. You can't have that with OA's felt piano. In terms of sound, I greatly prefer OA's, it feels like it has been captured much more true-to-life than the soft piano. It has more life than the CSP, which makes it my usual go-to. But, the OA felt piano is part of a bundle which is much more expensive (unless you can buy it separately now) and comes with a lot of really cool stuff. As such, it's not meant to be the centre piece of the library, it has limited samples and round robins. It sounds great, but I find it really difficult to use for multiple projects because of that reason. The CSP is relatively inexpensive and is really REALLY good for the price, I find I can use it in many different projects with little hassle. My only quarrel is it is the fact is doesn't sound that grand at higher velocities, it's limited to, at most, an mf. The CSP is also modelled from a Yamaha U3, I am quite biased here as I don't really like Yamaha pianos all too much, so that's probably why I prefer OA's. In terms of functionality and value, I'd say the CSP is better. It's all a matter of opinion and personal preference, I'd give a few reviews a look to see which is best for you, but you can't really go wrong with either. Now if you want my vote for the best piano VST then it's Pianoteq by far, but they don't really have anything for that felted sound as far as I am aware, which is unfortunate. Hope that helps! Happy to answer any questions.

@@ArkturusMusic Hello. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply in such an extensive and informative way; i don't mind the long read at all. I will eventually get both because i'm a sucker for pianos ( have way too many if there´s even a thing as too many pianos lol ) and i have always loved the OA libraries but as you mentioned, the price on the CSP is just too good. I should have took a chance to buy them both in this past 50% sale Spitfire did some days/weeks ago. I have also been torn between getting Keyscape ( i also have Omnisphere so the extra patches that combine keyscape and omnisphere would be a good addition ) and Pianoteq but at the moment both cost way too much. There are so many great libraries that it's hard to pick one. It's one of the reasons why companies should have full demos. That way we could try them all and buy what suits our style/genre/taste. Thank you very much for your time once again and keep writing great music.

Hi, I’m sorry that’s how you feel, I’m sure there are other reviews you can watch with less talking. I talk during my reviews, if that’s not for you then that’s fine, but I’m not going to change my format.

Hey! Thank you for your comment, it's very much appreciated, although I rarely do things like this anymore! The bass I've used here were the bass patches included in the Alex Epton: Entropy Library, I can't remember off the top of my head but you can see them named on the side, so there's the Distorted Sub Bass, Looping Bass Drone and Sub Bass They've got a pretty cool sound on them, but from what I remember I had to had each bass note trigger per beat, as the loop was a little strange.

In case anyone is unsure - this is from the manual - St - Stereo. An RCA 44 BX stereo pair set up at the front of the string band

Thank you - I never realised someone left a comment, and a kind one at that!

Audio is fine. Check your speakers on whatever you’re using mate

I know! Lol. My exact same thoughts.

You ought to check out their bohemian violin vst. I thought the Joshua bell one was really good but man, their violin one is really S tier

They have already moved the Violin to a new engine, and it loads instantly now. For the Cello, it should be released VERY soon, they are already a little late due to technical issues.

Hello Adam, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! Sadly, I've yet to find anything close to the Bohemian Cello, although I've moved much more to the side of electronic music in the past year or so. What makes the bohemian cello so great is the fact they've got the closest (at least in my opinion) to replicating an actual cello's playability within the confines of MIDI whilst using real samples Sadly, there's not really anyone else I'm aware of that has that same character to it, the virharmonic series just oozes out character and emotion. The next best thing in my view would be the Emotional series, so Emotional Violin etc, those seem to be exceptionally detailed also, but I've not actually purchased them, only heard them in reviews. As for other instruments, I can't say there's anything quite like the Virharmonic stuff, Cinematic Studio Brass is decent for brass, I use that quite a lot in my cinematic writing. As for saxophone, I've been searching for months for a decent saxophone library, but I can't find anything! I'll let you know if I come across anything!

@@ArkturusMusic thanks for the kind and helpful reply, even if you didn't have a magical silver-bullet answer :p. I have and love the Bohemian Violin and just keep hoping either Virharmonic will branch out to other instrument families (seems unlikely) or some other scrappy startup or big established player will be inspired by Virharmonic's approach. I'm frankly pretty gobsmacked that at least the latter hasn't happened. Given how much playability contributes both to musical joy and also composing efficiency, it just seems odd that this isn't seen as a strong & important market differentiator when there are, like, at least half a dozen major brass libraries, quite a few sax libraries, and so on. Oh well :\

Thank you Andrew, your words have made my day that much brighter!

Ive yet to see a sale for this product, I have the Violin and will be most likely updating to cello also.

Update: I emailed them and they gave me a 15% discount today. Ask for a coupon deal

Hi David, I initially bought the evolutions library to act as a solo string library, so I feel I can actually give some advice here! After a long time using this (and the regular evolutions) in some capacity, I can say I would not recommend it as a flexible solo library, the samples are designed to be played at length and are quite frustrating to use for melody-writing. The regular evolutions suffer from this more, and some individual evolutions can be usable, but I wouldn't use this as a solo string library. It's more for textural applications and world-building in some respect. I don't currently have a recommendation in terms of solo strings, I've never really used a solo string library before, I find they're too unreliable and inconsistent to be believable. I will say however that these are good places to start: Cinematic Studio Solo Strings Berlin 1st Chairs Emotional Violin (and Viola etc) Virharmonic Violin/Cello I've mainly used the 1st chairs on the BBCSO Professional, but they have no real substance to them and it's tough to find inspiration from them, Virharmonic's stuff is incredible, but it's a bit too show-boaty for the sound Olafur has. I believe Olafur uses Cinematic Studio Solo Strings to demo out his songs, but I'm not 100% sure, I know that a few high-profile composers like to sketch and demo with CSSS Berlin 1st Chairs is probably the best in terms of raw sound, but they're designed to go over the top of Berlin Strings, so keep that in mind The Emotional violin stuff I've only heard in reviews, but what I've seen has wildly impressed me, maybe check a few reviews out? Sorry for the lengthy reply, I've spent an unfortunate amount of time messing around with these things! TL;DR No, I wouldn't recommend OACE or OAE for what you need it to do! (I also found this comparison which goes over a lot of the solo stuff, hope this helps! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppWuiKGge6-Dh7M)

@@ArkturusMusic Wow, that was a very clarifying response. 👍🏼