Strings (Cello, Violin etc) Free SYnth anyone??

[ESP21]

Whats the best free Synth vst out there that has lots of Strings on it? Mainly Cellos and Violins so you can like build your own or just have the single instruments??? Rammstein esque on Mein Hertz Brent??

Its driving me so mad :zombie:

 

[jacare]

I use soundfonts man. Free, sounds good !

 

[scorpio01169]

when doing stringed parts it's all about how you use it.....i like to do separate tracks for each instrument and pan them to an orchestral layout

 

[Skinny Viking]

+1 to both using Soundfonts and panning to orchestral layout

some great ones here ... you'll have to register (free) and it can be hit or miss sometimes but there is a really wide selection of great sounds that you can either use "as is" or do some extra processing to (personally, I like to find the most dry sounds I can so I have more control over stuff like reverb etc ...)

http://www.sf2midi.com/soundfonts/listing-sound-fonts/ensemble/

 

[Erkan]

I have zero experience with sound fonts. What are those? All I know is that it is a REAAAAAAAAAALLY old technique, or that's what I heard atleast. But does it hold up to today's production quality? Should I check them out?

 

[Skinny Viking]

I don't know the tech was of explaining it but basically they're pre-recorded samples grouped into a midi bank that you can then trigger with any midi instrument or midi sequence. The better ones are already setup where not only does each key play the different respective notes but they have all different velocities as well. The sound quality varies ... larger banks with less instruments contained are usually pretty awesome sounding. It can take a while to find and create a great sounding library of them but I can tell you I love them and have no plans on stopping my use of them. Unfortunately I'm at work so I can't really post any samples by themselves but if you want to hear some soundfonts in action check my band page in my sig. Go to the song "Forever" and ignore our former vocalist. Give that song a listen, soundfonts through the whole tune from the light keys, piano stuff (not the piano solo, that was an actual keyboard being played) and some of the choir effects

 

[ESP21]

Cheers for all the info guys, checking some of the stuff out now, hope its all good

 

[Executioner213]

Anything like this for big-ass pipe organ sounds?

 

[Skinny Viking]

Anything like this for big-ass pipe organ sounds?

Yup!

I actually use a big-ass pipe organ sound on one of our newer tunes and I found it on that site that I put a link to

 

[Erkan]

Hmmm... sound like a quick way to get a decent sound. Maybe I should check out this "technology"

Say, the site you linked at the top somewhere to the soundfont library site, is that the best one out there or? Since I'm new with soundfonts, I would like to avoid all the shitty ones so I don't get discouraged as soon as I try a soundfont player with some soundfont. I've seen shitloads of freeware soundfont players atleast, so that's good.

 

[Skinny Viking]

Hmmm... sound like a quick way to get a decent sound. Maybe I should check out this "technology"

Say, the site you linked at the top somewhere to the soundfont library site, is that the best one out there or? Since I'm new with soundfonts, I would like to avoid all the shitty ones so I don't get discouraged as soon as I try a soundfont player with some soundfont. I've seen shitloads of freeware soundfont players atleast, so that's good.

one thing I should mention .. I'm not 100% sure about this but it may also require that your soundcard can read Soundfonts. I have a creative soundblaster audigy 2 in my pc ... just a thought

the site I linked is one of the better ones I've found. To be honest, I haven't downloaded anything or even checked for new stuff on that site. You can always just google "soundfont" I'm sure a bunch of stuff will come up but I can say that pretty much any sound I've ever looked for or needed I found there

 

[Skinny Viking]

at the bottom of the page there are some links for tools you can use in case your card is not compatible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundFont

 

[jacare]

some piano SF and other stuff:
http://sonimusicae.free.fr/petititalien-en.html
Gojira: try it man... free, and awesome... btw, look for sfz, the soundfont player
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/769.html

 

[Erkan]

Cheers guys, I'll atleast google it later and find out more about it =)

 

[brandy]

I usually use Gigastudio and the Vienna Symphonic library. Because Gigastudio on a dedicated system is oldschool I only have a small Vienna collection because I do not compose full scores and stuff. But it is quite difficult to program decent sounding strings. Recently I did an album with a full orchestra - but of course we were not able to hire the royal symphonic orchestra, haha! So the composer did everything in EWS orchestra Gold (or someting like that). Quite affordable library compared to bigger ones - AFAIK around 500 EUR. Well, lots of hard work, lots of tricks in the mix. But quite good results. More up-to-date libraries are delivered with a dedicated VSTi, I would recommend that over a third-party sampler.