CineHarps vs Spitfire Symphonic Harp vs Pacific Strings Harp

[Laurin Lenschow]

Here's a little harp comparison video using a mockup of "Across the Stars" that I made some time ago:



There are timestamps for the three different versions (all without external processing btw) and CineHarps (with external processing) in context of the full arrangement at the end.

Click to read more...

 

[LATABOM]

It doesn't sound like you tried to match the closeness/room size of the different libraries, so pretty difficult to really compare. Spitfire sounds like the default setting, which is mainly tree mics and recorded in the main hall at Air.

CineHarps sounds like "Tim's Mix", which much more closer and in pretty dead scoring stage.

Pacific (which I don't have) sounds like 3 microphones at different distances and there are some timing issues between them (which happens frequently when trying to mix close and distance mics on harp).

For a better comparision with CineHarps, I would go with 90% close mics on spitfire with 10% "Ambient" and no Tree. No idea how to best match Pacific.

 

[Laurin Lenschow]

It doesn't sound like you tried to match the closeness/room size of the different libraries, so pretty difficult to really compare.

Thank you for the feedback! You're right, I went with the default mic settings for all three libraries. Here's the thinking behind that:
When I'm comparing libraries I generally don't try to make them sound as similar as possible. If I did, the comparison would be colored by my own ability to shape the sound or to work with the (often different) settings of different libraries to get certain results. Instead I aim to provide a realistic presentation of the out-of-the-box experience with the libraries I show. I stick to the default settings because they are the starting point the developer intended for the library, so it should be a fair assumption that the default settings will highlight whatever the developer considers to be the sweet spot of the library - and in that way it is a fair comparison. (...if the comparison wasn't a general one but rather something like "Which Harp library is best suited for dry and intimate pieces" it would be a different story and I definitely would make alterations to the default settings, but most of my videos are general comparisons and not aimed at specific use cases.)
I hope this makes sense