Library Spotlight - Symphony Series Strings

Avoid this one if you value your money.
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[@PasoTheBrave]

I love your videos, they are delight to hear, but in this only case I have to strongly disagree. I couldn't replicate the legato issue you seemed to produce. After comparing to London Symphonic Strings, Cinematic Strings 2, Cinematic Studio Strings, Cinestrings, Spitfire Symphonic Strings, Berlin Strings 2 Violins I True Legato, Kirk Hunter Front Row Violins, Chris Hein Ensemble Strings, Afflatus Strings, Venice Modern Strings, USE First Violins for hours and I've found this might be one of the best sounding library I've ever had. LSS does have legato transitions, both bow and fingered legato. But I'm not sure I'd like to hear them between the notes, like ever. Cinematic Strings 2 Is really fine. I love it. If you don't start going between two notes moderately slowly, when deep sampling is just gone. The repetitive click and volume down-up due to the legato transition is getting a bit unlike violins and robotic. Cinematic Studio Strings is really fine too. Lovely renditions, that are so long, that you'll have difficulty to do anything that fast or faster. It starts missing notes when a triad has a 7th note and you just go up and down on them. Still one of my favorite. Cinestrings seems to be using a normal short legato transition and a kind of short portamento for larger distances. Easily done in Symphony Series, since the portamento speed can be set to fastest. Still perfect for my taste. Spitfire Violins I Performance legato is having trouble with fast passages. But vibrato non vibrato transitions are nicer than most libraries. I easily set Symphony series strings to spitfire-like with one of its' reverb and leaving portamento on fastest speed and let half of the notes have it. I can't replicate that vibrato. Berlin Strings The version I have is pretty much useless, they might have a perfectly working newer version. But this one fails to render the notes I'm playing due to the own choice of legato renditions. Weird sounds, missing sounds etc. Kirk Hunter Front Row Violins. Unique voice I don't really like, but it definitely is doing nice legatos with different bow styles and they can't be simulated by any of these libraries. Afflatus Strings I Probably my top choice and favorite along-side with USE First violins and Chris Hein. It still can fail me on simple d' - g' - d'' - g' - d' - g' - d''... notes. Which Symphony series is playing flawlessly. Who knows, maybe that is something that cannot be played by violinists either and Afflatus is right. Venice Modern Strings may be better than all previously mentioned. Not sure yet. Though it fails on fast passages too. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. It's new to me. USE First violins seems to be using shortened portamentos for close notes. That's my best settings for Symphony series strings too. Velocity dependent portamento or legato. I haven't even tried to use the non-vibrato legato at all. USE is always so realistic to me. I'm loving it. Chris Hein is very special. Probably they are the closest to reality. But it really doesn't sound good, if you start playing d' - g' - d'' - g' - d' - g' - d''... it is squeaking on top. My top 3 library it is still. So it is likely that longer legato transitions can sound better when playing slow, but they most likely fail on anything faster. Vica versa. Short legato transitions can sound weird when playing slow. Symphony Series strings you easily can call in some fastest portamentos, to sound naturally long legatos. You can't deny that fast portamento as a legato is there as an option. It doesn't squeak or click. And most of the cases I'm not sure I want to hear those clicking and squeaking that other libraries offer. Whether it is for your "Basic" needs? If Dvorak Symphony No.8 is considered to be "Basic", of course it is for your basic needs. You can write a symphony just like that with this library, but we modern people, who hardly understand what happened in that Symphony No 8, we definitely need more than just "Basic"... I'd love to see more articulations for this library of course. Let's just say all libraries on Earth are "Basic" for someone who once own a full VSL library. So after this long test I realized I can use Symphony Series Ensemble Strings pretty much to the level of Afflatus, USE, Venice Modern or Spitfire, not to speak about Cinematic Strings, Cinestrings, Cinematic Studio Strings. Symphony Series Ensemble Strings sounds fantastic to me. Of course I'm not willing to give up any of the other libraries either. :)

[@CoryPelizzari]

God tier comment.

[@neuneru]

Zeus level of comment

[@cesmcmyth]

@@CoryPelizzari Haaaa! I read 1/4 and was like: What Cory had to say of this? ...... hahaha

[@citizenworld8094]

@@CoryPelizzari now if you're gonna gripe, this is the way to do it.

[@LucasBurnMusic]

Great demonstration!

[@DS-fi4hf]

Easily one of my favorite reviews from you. Well done Cory!

[@kingslaphappy1533]

Nice to see someone review a product and also understands the context of how it should be played. How many times have i seen reviews with people playing block chords on strings as though its was a piano. I have to agree with some of your comments here…i like the sound of these strings, UI looks slick and if you can get them at the right price it would be a good addition to many composers. To each his/her own!

[@VoidloniXaarii]

Thank you very much for the honest review. I was borderline to upgrading to it a couple of times but I'm now happy I stuck with spitfire symphony strings

[@parrat8589]

Thanks Cory! would love to see you do one of these for Spitfire chamber strings or any of the Orchestral Tools stuff

[@citizenworld8094]

Unfortunately the hypnotic hypos at SA have their sheep convinced that theirs is the best. Just try their brass swells on their celebrated Abbey Road Foundations and you will hear appalling intonation coupled with worse - harmonic artefacts. Send those to a director and you're off the job. Spitfire are as good and as bad as the rest, no better.

[@jarednewman5966]

Thank you! I'd be curious to see a review of Heavyocity's Novo, Frozo and such

[@MustacheVerra]

Yea, had similar feelings when i heard it as well.

[@trollingprophet]

What's the best string library from Native instruments?

[@sayandas27]

13:00 😬 Since you are planning on doing spotlight videos on string libraries, the chamber strings library from Light and Sound Samples is something that I have just come across and I think it has the potential to give stiff competition to Spitfire's Chamber Strings. The last I checked, it was on sale for about $150 (half price).

[@snarf1504]

L&S Chamber Strings are great (and cheap)! Would love to see this too :)

[@TerenceKearns]

Excellent review. I am new to orchestral libraries but one of the reasons i got Komplete Ultimate was to get a taste of it with this symphony series. I guess it was a classic n00b mistake but there were some other nice things about Komplete Ultimate that we contributed to the price increase - I just can't remember what they were LOL. Anyway, stuck with it now. Considering the east west yearly subscription. Would be interesting to get your thoughts on that.

[@CoryPelizzari]

It's an alright investment, however I found that after a year or two I'd just rather own my libraries rather than rent them - plus EW libraries are stupidly huge because they don't use a decent compression method for their libraries. Your hard drive will be crying. Ultimately I chose to stick with the Cinematic Studio Series because they have proven themselves year after year to be solid libraries for professional work.

[@TerenceKearns]

@@CoryPelizzari yeah I guess renting can get old quick. I suppose they do offer a buy outright option for those who can afford it - and a dedicated SSD drive...

[@muhammedadel9673]

I'd be curious to hear your opinion on Kirk Hunter string offerings

[@CoryPelizzari]

They're a scam. Most of the Spotlight volumes have identical samples that are named identically in the samples folder.

[@nandoflorestan]

Yeah those don't sound good at all

[@paul.j.diwiak]

interresting! I like your videos and most of the time i agree with you, but not in this case! (ok, if you buy just the strings, they are pretty overpriced!) I do like the Symphony Series Strings! Even if i got CineStrings, Sessions Strings 2 and Spitfire Studio Strings, i always return to the Symphony Series Strings! (even as a strings player myself! Learned violin/viola for 10 years as a kid, now I 'm a music teacher and play double bass in orchestras) I get the sound i want from Symphony Series Strings way faster than from any other library and for me they are the easiest to play! But hey, everyone has a diffrent taste, i guess! And i think, that is a good thing ;)

[@johankvastad3738]

Love the reviews! I have a copy of this library so I loaded it up when watching to play along. I could not however replicate the lack of legato with maxed out vibrato (listening for the "cut-in" sound at e.g. 14:28). I did get significant cut-in sounds if I pulled the vibrato knob to 0, especially at higher mod wheel values (80% and up). When playing legato with the Legato patch there are no cut-ins and the legato seems to work fine to me.

[@CoryPelizzari]

I might just re-download it and see if they've made any improvements. I think overall the legato is just stiff. Compare it to the legato from libraries like CSS, Chamber Strings, Afflatus and Soaring Strings and it's like night and day - if I'm paying big bucks for a string library I want the legato to sound like real life movement and expression, so Symphony Series Strings should really be in the $200-$300 range, especially considering its lack of round robins (and the fact that LASS is better anyway).

[@evenios2831]

good review i am glad i got it with komplete ultatime ce....the winds have some nice stuff but yeah..its so so........i def am looking for an upgrade lol

[@CoryPelizzari]

You can pick up Areia Lite right now for under a hundred bucks. Full deep sampled string library with legatos and all, it just doesn't have portamento. Unbelievable quality for the price though.

[@aleksamrkela831]

I'd be really curious about your thoughts on AudioBro's LA Scoring Strings.

[@CoryPelizzari]

Stiff legato, very bold sound. It was great when it came out but now the legatos and sound overall just pales in comparison to things like CS2 or CSS (which is cheaper). The advantage it offers is the divisi and solos but they're not the best quality samples so it's a trade off. Spitfire's Studio Strings Pro is an alternative that I like better but it still has its own imperfections and limitations. When it comes to divisi stuff there's not much on offer that has the same quality as libraries like CSS or Chamber Strings, although Afflatus has different section size legatos and half decent soloists (but it's expensive).

[@TwstedTV]

Thank you :)

[@citizenworld8094]

Cory, have you reconsidered your opinion on the NI Woodwind libraries from the same series? You made the videos for NI. KZbinrs would be wondering about quality control from a general level. Thank you.

[@Wourghk]

Always found these NI symphony entries disappointing, thanks for covering this one! Still using LASS and Symphobia. ARC makes things easy when you know how to use it and Symphobia 1 for when I just need a beefy string section ex nihilo is still my favorite. Close 2nd for speed is Adventure Strings, but could well be my go-to if I didn't have my habits. Still searching for the unicorn - a playable and detailed strings library with no manual key switches or program changes.

[@TheSnowLeopard]

The unicorn "no key switch" library would presumably be Adam Venture's Infinite strings, if it is ever released of course. Cinesamples try to do no-key switch patches too (controlled with sustain pedal, CCs), but with variable success.

[@nandoflorestan]

Sample Modeling can sound better than their demos.

[@batelgroun]

When I was starting to look at orchestral libraries the first one that I looked into was this. At that moment I didn't know any other and I thought that it was really cool and I wanted to buy it. I've just seen your video and now I consider myself lucky because I didn't buy it. Instead, I waited, I shearched more and I discovered Spitfire BBC.

[@citizenworld8094]

Do you believe all you read or all you hear? Or both? Spitfire are the best marketers ever, but not the best library makers. Far from it. Listen to what Hans Zimmer said (or rather didn't say) about them.

[@batelgroun]

@@citizenworld8094 I know that spitfire is not the best at making libraries, but IHMO BBC Core is pretty good for starters, much better than these libraries. And I'm talking about begginners. If you ask me about libraries for non-begginers but still not super priced I would suggest CS Seires. So fucking relax bro.

[@yuggothproductions]

I use the long sus’s on this as a sketching tool, but I agree the legatos are pretty bad and for the money I expected much more from AudioBro. Thanks for your great and honest review. For legatos my go to’s are CSS and Spitfire Chamber. Cheers!

[@nickpouwels7282]

Man, I wish I knew this before i got the upgrade from komplete 12 to the Collectors edition. I already had ComposerCloud and wanted to upgrade and altough i didn't like the Play engine, i think the Hollywood Orchestra is way better than the Symphony Series. Later i got the Century Strings... so yea... maybe the "promised update" will make it better. Anyway... You sir, you make great content! Love your videos, much demoing, the right amount of talking and some serieusly good advice! This is how you do a proper sample library review, yes i said it.

[@MustacheVerra]

Seems to me(and others i bet) that the Brass and percs. are worth having. Especially if you got the upgrade at 50% off during the hollyday sales. So you shouldn't feel so bad about it imo.

[@poulwinther]

I feel you, sorry. If not for the Symphony Series I see nothing interesting between std. Komplete and Collectors. Don't think I will go above std.

[@nickpouwels7282]

@@MustacheVerra they are fine libraries, but i found them a bit basic and disappointing. Think there are better libraries for the same price.

[@nickpouwels7282]

@@poulwinther well there are some really usefull libraries in ultimate, like damage, session strings pro, rise and hit and thrill. But Collectors Edition was not worth it for me. Really hope it will benefit me when there is a new Komplete bundle, their new products seem really interesting

[@mrvad-up8cc]

Thank you again for another informative and indepth review Cory, I just wanted ask your opinion about Century Strings by 8Dio? Also which is your go to library for all things cinematic and orchestral? I own both Metropolis Ark 1 and 2, but was also wondering about Albion One in comparison to those libraries where it concerns versatility? Have you also tried the Spitfire Bernard Hermann library also?

[@CoryPelizzari]

In regards to 8Dio you can check my recent post under the "community" section of my KZbin channel. I like to mix libraries when it comes to orchestral stuff. My favourite go-tos are always the Cinematic Studio Series, but I also use things like True Strike, Afflatus, Chamber Strings, Studio Strings Pro, Infinite Brass & Woodwinds, The Giant, Union Chapel Organ... The list goes on. I've used Albion One and it's a great all-rounder for general orchestral work.

[@mrvad-up8cc]

@@CoryPelizzari Thank you once again Cory, for taking the time to answer my questions and going into detail of the libraries you use for your compositions. I really do value and appreciate it, and am proud to be a subscriber of your channel. What separates you from the rest, is just the way your so down to earth, honest and transparent when doing your sample library reviews, without all the hype like the rest that just do it for all the attention and the money. Thank you and please continue to keep up the good work. You are most definitely my go to channel for all things sample library!

[@VoidloniXaarii]

More strings yeayyy! People likey!

[@yasseralbanna7102]

Cory ,, I love your video and your reviews ,, but we need to know your personal thoughts of which you will pick if it’s comes to your taste .. strings ?? Brass ?? Pick one . Tnx ..

[@CoryPelizzari]

Cinematic Studio Series.

[@giannic.8091]

Can you review Auddict's Angel strings 1 & 2? There's little to no content on these libraries, especially chapter 2.

[@CoryPelizzari]

They're alright but only on deep sale. They have some bugs and the CPU usage is through the roof.

[@robotcoffin]

Man... I got the whole Symphony Series with a crossgrade for $300. I could not imagine paying that for just the strings.... Good God. I am curious on your opinion on the rest of the collection. Honestly the brass and percussion have served me well.

[@CoryPelizzari]

Yeah the brass and percussion are much better volumes.

[@AGAU1022]

@@CoryPelizzari Yeah I'm wondering if it is worth the 300 AUD extra to get the complete Series instead of just all the Essentials (which come with the Ultimate bundle that I'm considering mostly because it comes with Damage).

[@CaptJackAubreyOfTheRoyalNavy]

Eh, I crossgraded to the full version for $150 3 years ago (from Komplete Ultimate). It was a good library to learn on. The raw sound is very nice too. I am starting to notice the lack of articulations now, though, and I agree it's totally overpriced at full price. What do you think would be a good next step? Cinematic Studio Strings? That seems like almost the default recommendation these days. Mostly doing "epic" trailer type stuff here.

[@kurttomlinsoncompositions1067]

Is Century Strings not good?

[@CoryPelizzari]

If you check my post in the community section of my KZbin page you'll understand. Basically I don't cover 8Dio's libraries on this channel (or use their libraries) since they threatened to sue me for posting a negative opinion on the forum that they run on their site.

[@kurttomlinsoncompositions1067]

Cory Pelizzari wow. Didn’t know that

[@bikesnbeerz]

@@CoryPelizzari I keep reading some jacked up stuff about 8Dio. That is just sad.

[@gordonwilliams6942]

Great review Cory. Unfortunately for me 2 years to late. i do like the general tone of the strings but there are far to many bugs that have failed to be sorted out. Native instruments should be ashamed of themselves for still promoting this library and stringing customers along with promised fixes which fail to materialize . I will say a good word for the brass though. Also for anyone looking at the woodwinds i would say don't bother. No major bugs but the ensemble sections seem to go out of phase, unusable. Would be very interested what your take on more VSL stuff.

[@maxtofone]

Thanks for this video demonstration and effort... I personally don't like this library at all and completely agree with your opinion... Cheers, Max T.

[@TwinsunianT]

I purchased the whole Symphony Series for 299 EUR, there was some good summer crossgrade price. I must say that I don't like this library. I only use the Percussion library sometimes.

[@jetlag1488]

Oof.

[@CoryPelizzari]

Read that one and immediately pictured Roblox. Memes have killed me.

[@JamesTaylorMain]

The mediocrity (aside from it not being as deep-sampled as other strings libraries) could be due to Native Instruments collaborating with Audiobro for this sound library instead of Soundiron or Sonuscore. Just a wild guess, but I don't know the real reason why.

[@TheSnowLeopard]

Not a fan of Cen*** Strings? LOL

[@poulwinther]

I believe it is more for other reasons than the library itself.