Ableton Forum

What are you guys using for really good strings? Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT interested in any sample set that exceeds 20gb!

I like Garritan Personal Orchestra. What else do you guys think is really good and easy to use?

If you think GPO is acceptable, the you should probably stick with that.. its probably the best sounding library for that price. Anything more and you're talking about the top tier products in the space (EWQLSO, VSL, SISS, etc)

So stay away from the Kirk Hunters and the East West Silver or any of the lower-end versions of the high-end libraries?

Vienna Symphonic Library ?

VSL Strings is 25GB.. Also, i'm not sure if you're aware of this (from the sound of your post) but Garritan has an Orchestral String Library that's seperate from Personal Orchestra. You could also try Miroslav Philharmonic.

I didn't know that about Garritan's String Library...will look into it. From the demos, it sounds like Garritan is a lot smoother sounding...not so "stringy" if that makes sense.

Miroslav demos didn't sound as lifelike to me, but I'll check them out again. Thanks.

Looks like Garritan's Strings only is a GigaStudio sample set. It sounds great, but I don't like having to translate even with CDXtract...seems like stuff like velocity layers and little nuances get lost in translation.

I have no experience with kirk hunters strings, I do own qlso silver, and if you want to write orchestral only pieces, I think it *may* serve you better then GPO, but its purely a preference thing.

If you want drier samples that can be manipulated easier then stick with GPO.

QLSO Silver orchestral mockups sound on the whole better then GPOs to my ears, but QLSO samples don't work in non-orchestral contexts as well as GPO's does.

(For the record I have QLSO Gold + XP)

Thanks for all the replies. I do mainly electronic rock and prog house and trance, and where I use strings, I like it to sound natural but not necessarily orchestral. So I think GPO is probably going to fit the bill. Thanks again, everyone. As usual, y'all are a wealth of information.