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Spitfire Audio : Abbey Road 1 Modular Orchestra - Speculation Thread.

Aitcpiano said:
Yeah will be. Still to pricey for me for what it is and I'm just not hearing anything that sounds a massive step up or anything that blows me away. It sounds alright/good.
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If it's like the first violins, it will offer quite a lot of flexibility. A massive step up—no, it's not going to make every other string library obsolete. I doubt it will displace any library from its particular niche. But it has a lot of small improvements over other libraries, and the collection of small improvements amounts to quite a lot. And it allows me to do things—quite a few things—I can't with any of my other string libraries. Whether it's worth the price, that's going to depend very much on the individual.
 
Laurin Lenschow said:
The col legno isn't what I meant though, I was referring to the melodic/legato line
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The Legato line there sounds like those core violins. (I already passed on those for now)

The Cellos are handling the shorts below the melody. I don't know if I'm in love with the Violin line, but from what I hear, the problematic part of that section is the rhythmic interplay between the Col Legno and the staccato/spiccato.

Other posts seem to pick up on what you're saying so maybe I'm missing something
 
jbuhler said:
If it's like the first violins, it will offer quite a lot of flexibility. A massive step up—no, it's not going to make every other string library obsolete. I doubt it will displace any library from its particular niche. But it has a lot of small improvements over other libraries, and the collection of small improvements amounts to quite a lot. And it allows me to do things—quite a few things—I can't with any of my other string libraries. Whether it's worth the price, that's going to depend very much on the individual.
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This is my thoughts too.

I think the mics are the star of the show. No real fluff, each of the mics is meaningful and as a collection the flexibility is great.
 
jbuhler said:
If it's like the first violins, it will offer quite a lot of flexibility. A massive step up—no, it's not going to make every other string library obsolete. I doubt it will displace any library from its particular niche. But it has a lot of small improvements over other libraries, and the collection of small improvements amounts to quite a lot. And it allows me to do things—quite a few things—I can't with any of my other string libraries. Whether it's worth the price, that's going to depend very much on the individual.
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True I just think I was hoping and expecting something with a more noticeable and marked up improvements. It certainly does not blow me away and for me I don't feel it is worse the prices, maybe I would feel different if I had the chance to try the library.

Also, I don't even think some of what I'm hearing sounds as good as many other libraries available including there older air libraries and I'm again hearing issues in the demos.
 
This time I'm going to pass, just like what happened to me with the violins 1. The articulations and options are wide and vast. The legato is ok. The room is beautiful, but to my taste the overall sound is too sterile, with little character, and so lacking in detail that it seems very synthetic to me. It's a shame, because I found some of the percussive elements of ARO, like the snares, to be very good.
 
jbuhler said:
I was presented a very good price, owning all of AROOF and AR1V1. Already pre-ordered.
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I caved. I wasn't that moved by Violins 1 as they just sounded the same as what I'm getting from BBCSO. But this is the one that got me. The price was too good to pass up and it's the one place in the string section I've wanted to upgrade.😭
 
Aitcpiano said:
True I just think I was hoping and expecting something with a more noticeable and marked up improvements. It certainly does not blow me away and for me I don't feel it is worse the prices, maybe I would feel different if I had the chance to try the library.

Also, I don't even think some of what I'm hearing sounds as good as many other libraries available including there older air libraries and I'm again hearing issues in the demos.
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I don't know. It seems to me that SF demos aren't going through as much of a vetting process on these strings as they probably should. Or maybe it's just that they are rushing to get the libraries out and so don't have the time to get everything just so. Or the demo writers don't have enough time or the beta the demo writers are working with isn't fully operational. All sorts of things that can go wrong when you suddenly move up the time table for delivery, which it seems SF did in this case.

In any event, I'm going from my own experience with AR1V1, which I really quite like. On pre-order pricing, with all my various discounts, I think it's not unreasonable at the price I paid, and the cello is even less expensive. AR1V1 is one of the easiest string libraries I have to work with. Nothing very fussy about it, it sounds at least adequate on pretty much anything I throw at it (even the runs don't sound horrible to me, just not as credible as I might like), and it has it's own particular niche that is really quite stellar. (Despite the implicit marketing as a John Williams toolkit, it has more of a concert hall than cinematic attitude in my opinion.) And I can get a lot of different performances out of it by selecting a different legato, velocity, dynamic layer, and so forth. I'm also finding it plays well with libraries recorded in other venues and it can sound both like a medium sized orchestral section or a large symphonic section, so it has that going for it as well. In any case, it's already become the library I reach for first, if I just want to get something out and I don't want to fuss because as I said it's been rare for it to be less than adequate.
 
On the fence.

Like a few have posted, These ARO instruments do not strike me as a big enough step forward to justify such a steep price. Still, the mic options for professional (The only way I would go) could create a lot of flexibility.

I DO have a weakness for Cellos!
 
jbuhler said:
I don't know. It seems to me that SF demos aren't going through as much of a vetting process on these strings as they probably should. Or maybe it's just that they are rushing to get the libraries out and so don't have the time to get everything just so. Or the demo writers don't have enough time or the beta the demo writers are working with isn't fully operational. All sorts of things that can go wrong when you suddenly move up the time table for delivery, which it seems SF did in this case.

In any event, I'm going from my own experience with AR1V1, which I really quite like. On pre-order pricing, with all my various discounts, I think it's not unreasonable at the price I paid, and the cello is even less expensive. AR1V1 is one of the easiest string libraries I have to work with. Nothing very fussy about it, it sounds at least adequate on pretty much anything I throw at it (even the runs don't sound horrible to me, just not as credible as I might like), and it has it's own particular niche that is really quite stellar. (Despite the implicit marketing as a John Williams toolkit, it has more of a concert hall than cinematic attitude in my opinion.) And I can get a lot of different performances out of it by selecting a different legato, velocity, dynamic layer, and so forth. I'm also finding it plays well with libraries recorded in other venues and it can sound both like a medium sized orchestral section or a large symphonic section, so it has that going for it as well. In any case, it's already become the library I reach for first, if I just want to get something out and I don't want to fuss because as I said it's been rare for it to be less than adequate.
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I'm not sure, but I hear issues in some of the demos for both V1 and Cellos. It could be any one of the reasons you mention or indeed issues with the library but it certainly does not sale the libraries to me.

I still think it's very expensive for what it is, there is 5 of these for the core articulations but then probably another 5 for mutes and then what about all the other extended articulations? I already have tons of articulations with SCS Pro and in many way I prefer the sound of what I can get from that and other libraries like BBCSO Pro, CSS and many others!
 
jbuhler said:
If it's like the first violins, it will offer quite a lot of flexibility. A massive step up—no, it's not going to make every other string library obsolete. I doubt it will displace any library from its particular niche. But it has a lot of small improvements over other libraries, and the collection of small improvements amounts to quite a lot. And it allows me to do things—quite a few things—I can't with any of my other string libraries. Whether it's worth the price, that's going to depend very much on the individual.
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All I was hoping for were strings that had the AROOF sound, bread and butter articulations and scripted in a way that provided the flexibility most Spitfire libraries do not. It's delivered on all three fronts for me. :thumbsup:

Still baffled as to why people were expecting the over-the-top romanticism of CSS and Pacific out of a general purpose string library. Y'all realize those are specialty libraries, right? :laugh:
 
Aitcpiano said:
I'm not sure, but I hear issues in some of the demos for both V1 and Cellos. It could be any one of the reasons you mention or indeed issues with the library but it certainly does not sale the libraries to me.

I still think it's very expensive for what it is, there is 5 of these for the core articulations but then probably another 5 for mutes and then what about all the other extended articulations? I already have tons of articulations with SCS Pro and in many way I prefer the sound of what I can get from that and other libraries like BBCSO Pro, CSS and many others!
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I mean, if you are happy with the libraries you have and you are not hearing much to convince you to buy, then put your money toward something that is drawing you. I mean, I'd never advocate anyone should buy a library if you aren't hearing your music in it. I'm just saying that for me, I'm already finding quite a lot of value in AR1V1 because I'm finding it incredibly versatile and easy to use.

If I compare working with AR1V1 to my struggles with getting the violin legato of Pacific, say, to sound the way I think it should, there's really no contest for me. Plenty of folks get along fine with the Pacific legato, so this is not meant as a dig on that library. I would say that the legato of Pacific seems much more limited in what it does well compared to what AR1V1 does well. But if your music responds better to what Pacific does well, then you are definitely better off with Pacific than AR1V1! And for many folks on the forum, I suspect their music does respond better to Pacific.

in any case, I'm not meaning to pick on Pacific here, and I might well have chosen something like Berlin Strings (which I find a very, very fussy library) as the point of comparison. I'm just using Pacific as an example of another somewhat recent experience with a library that gave me all sorts of fits.
 
jbuhler said:
I mean, if you are happy with the libraries you have and you are not hearing much to convince you to buy, then put your money toward something that is drawing you. I mean, I'd never advocate anyone should buy a library if you aren't hearing your music in it. I'm just saying that for me, I'm already finding quite a lot of value in AR1V1 because I'm finding it incredibly versatile and easy to use.

If I compare working with AR1V1 to my struggles with getting the violin legato of Pacific, say, to sound the way I think it should, there's really no contest for me. Plenty of folks get along fine with the Pacific legato, so this is not meant as a dig on that library. I would say that the legato of Pacific seems much more limited in what it does well compared to what AR1V1 does well. But if your music responds better to what Pacific does well, then you are definitely better off with Pacific than AR1V1! And for many folks on the forum, I suspect their music does respond better to Pacific.

in any case, I'm not meaning to pick on Pacific here, and I might well have chosen something like Berlin Strings (which I find a very, very fussy library) as the point of comparison. I'm just using Pacific as an example of another somewhat recent experience with a library that gave me all sorts of fits.
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The useability and playability side of it is hard to know which is a shame because all I am going by is the sound of it and what I hear in demos and I do hear some issues that just doesn't sale the library to me. I'm sure it is a solid strings library (2 sections of a string library) that seems to be consistent so far. However, for me, I can't see it adding anything new to what I already have.
 
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