View other reviews for this product:
Wedges2 « Best Strings I Own »
Published on 12/31/11 at 17:42Session Strings is a Mac and PC compatible library that runs on Kontakt 4 or later. It is very easy to install, as is with other Kontakt libraries. The GUI is very simple to navigate and after some experimenting you'll have a grip on all ot the different string instruments and articulations that are included.
There is a lot of great stuff in Session Strings. The simple legatos all the way to glissando and scoops / falls. All of the patches sound great! There is also a feature known as the animator which is by far my favorite part of the whole package. It allows you to create movie like staccato, pizzicato, etc, rhythms that sounds very real and convincing.
Unfortunately, due to the quality of the instruments the CPU usage is very high. On some patches such as basic legatos only about 10MB of ram is used. On glissando patches for example, 500MB of RAM is used. I'm running Session Strings on a Dell XPS Studio 7100 with 6GB of RAM and six cores. With this set up Session Strings isn't really a hassle to run, but on computers less suited for music Session Strings may be a memory hog.
Overall Session Strings is great. If you have the computer to handle it, you'll enjoy great sounding strings in all kinds of articulations and even rhythms thanks to the animator. It's simple, loads pretty fast, and runs smooth. There is a demo you can try, which I encourage you to do so, and if your please the asking price of I believe 180 dollars isn't too bad for the only strings you'll ever really need. After trying Miroslav Philharmonik, VI ONE, and Nexus, I would still make the decision to buy Session Strings. Native Instruments really out did themselves in making this product, and I can safely say that they are the best strings I own.
There is a lot of great stuff in Session Strings. The simple legatos all the way to glissando and scoops / falls. All of the patches sound great! There is also a feature known as the animator which is by far my favorite part of the whole package. It allows you to create movie like staccato, pizzicato, etc, rhythms that sounds very real and convincing.
Unfortunately, due to the quality of the instruments the CPU usage is very high. On some patches such as basic legatos only about 10MB of ram is used. On glissando patches for example, 500MB of RAM is used. I'm running Session Strings on a Dell XPS Studio 7100 with 6GB of RAM and six cores. With this set up Session Strings isn't really a hassle to run, but on computers less suited for music Session Strings may be a memory hog.
Overall Session Strings is great. If you have the computer to handle it, you'll enjoy great sounding strings in all kinds of articulations and even rhythms thanks to the animator. It's simple, loads pretty fast, and runs smooth. There is a demo you can try, which I encourage you to do so, and if your please the asking price of I believe 180 dollars isn't too bad for the only strings you'll ever really need. After trying Miroslav Philharmonik, VI ONE, and Nexus, I would still make the decision to buy Session Strings. Native Instruments really out did themselves in making this product, and I can safely say that they are the best strings I own.