Cinesamples CineStrings Core: meet version 2.0

[Larry Shelby]

Revered in the film industry since its arrival, our flagship strings library has earned an update.

All of CineStrings' samples have been re-processed and ported to Musio to bring you the purest, most authentic strings sounds possible.
Try Musio now—free for 2 weeks—and compose with strings fit for film. No session players required.

https://portal.musio.com/signup

[Amicus717]

So, this morning I re-installed CineStrings Core via Native Access, as per Cinesamples instructions, and have been trying out the revised library...

My five cents, so far...

Much nicer interface, and the legato is more pleasing to my ears and more natural sounding, IMHO.

They mention on the site they've  applied new sonic treatment to the samples, including better trimming etc. The overall sound seems smoother and cleaner, although I find the samples are still rather noisy, frankly. It's one of the gripes I've had with Cinesamples: their samples can be really scratchy when the mod wheel is dialed low, and there has always been a ton of ambient rumble and fidget noises (foot shuffles, clothing rustle, etc). That kind of stuff is still present, although it is reduced.

I tested the new ensemble spiccato patch in a project I had worked on a few months back. With the original CineStrings Core patch, I noticed a lot of low end rumble that really sounded awful and was hard to tame, and it forced me to swap it for another library (Musical Sampling's Adventure Strings).

I figured this would be a good test of their revisions, so re-opened the project and dropped the new CineStrings ensemble patch in there. It sounds much better to my ears - less rumble and not quite as thick on the low end. 

It's really early in my testing, but I do find the mapping feature to be a bit confusing. I'm currently watching the new walkthru on the CineSamples site, so hopefully that will help. But I didn't find the settings intuitive. 

I also can't seem to get the "double repetition" and "triple repetition" keys working for the short articulations, no matter what I do. I use this feature a fair amount, as it's great for really fast ostinato passages. I've reached out to Cinesamples support for help. 

Overall, I think this revision is an improvement, although the basic character of the library is the same (in ways good and bad). 

That's just my opinion, of course. I've still got stuff to figure out with the new interface, and it's one thing to test a library on its own, and another thing to place it in the context of a big project and see how it performs.

So, YMMV.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Amicus717

[bitflipper]

Musio. I don't quite know what to think of it, but my kneejerk reaction is to not like it.

It costs $150 per year, an introductory price that will become either $200 or $240, depending on which page you look at. What you're buying is a licensing scheme where you rent sample libraries on demand and get to use them for as long as your subscription is paid up.

Granted, buying all those libraries (~40 at the moment) outright would cost more than the subscription. But most people neither need nor would use that many libraries (and I say this as a compulsive library collector).

You'll still need the same disk space as if you were buying the products. The Musio software must always be running in the background, and your DAW must have an internet connection. Once installed, the instruments remain on your computer - but if you cancel your subscription they become unusable. Even though they promote "instant, endless inspiration" you'll still have to wait for the download and installation, which seems like an inspiration killer to me. Once you give them your credit card, your subscription will be automatically renewed unless you explicitly cancel it ("no refunds"). They can cancel you as a result of a DMCA takedown notice, which unfortunately is a common occurrence in YouTube land.

I'm trying to come up with positives. Being able to preview libraries before buying, maybe? You could pay for a $20 monthly subscription and spend the month testing various libraries. Automatic updates, that's a positive. Not that big orchestral libraries get a lot of updates. Potentially saving money, that's another plus. For example, you want to create a big orchestral piece and use all those pricey Cinesamples libraries - you could do it for $20 if you work fast. If later you want to make edits, you could buy another month for another $20.

[Fleer]

Same thinking here and quite pleased we can still get their perpetual licenses. 

[Amicus717]

50 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Musio. I don't quite know what to think of it, but my kneejerk reaction is to not like it.

It costs $150 per year, an introductory price that will become either $200 or $240, depending on which page you look at. What you're buying is a licensing scheme where you rent sample libraries on demand and get to use them for as long as your subscription is paid up.

Granted, buying all those libraries (~40 at the moment) outright would cost more than the subscription. But most people neither need nor would use that many libraries (and I say this as a compulsive library collector).

You'll still need the same disk space as if you were buying the products. The Musio software must always be running in the background, and your DAW must have an internet connection. Once installed, the instruments remain on your computer - but if you cancel your subscription they become unusable. Even though they promote "instant, endless inspiration" you'll still have to wait for the download and installation, which seems like an inspiration killer to me. Once you give them your credit card, your subscription will be automatically renewed unless you explicitly cancel it ("no refunds"). They can cancel you as a result of a DMCA takedown notice, which unfortunately is a common occurrence in YouTube land.

I'm trying to come up with positives. Being able to preview libraries before buying, maybe? You could pay for a $20 monthly subscription and spend the month testing various libraries. Automatic updates, that's a positive. Not that big orchestral libraries get a lot of updates. Potentially saving money, that's another plus. For example, you want to create a big orchestral piece and use all those pricey Cinesamples libraries - you could do it for $20 if you work fast. If later you want to make edits, you could buy another month for another $20.

Yeah, I'm not interested in Musio.

I already had most of CineSamples major libraries, so for me this was a free upgrade. I agree with your general take on it. I don't like subscription models in general, and have ditched all of them (I had Composer Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud for a bit, but cancelled them and have had no regrets about it). 

[Yan Filiatrault]

They are looking for beta testers for Musio. You get free access to Musio all the time you’re a beta tester

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/musio-beta-testers-needed-apply-now.137157/

[antler]

3 hours ago, bitflipper said:

They can cancel you as a result of a DMCA takedown notice, which unfortunately is a common occurrence in YouTube land.

Are you sure? I thought this was Cinesamples' version of Composer Cloud, i.e. you can 'keep' it if you bounce it. I could be wrong: I'm not interested in a subscription product, and haven't read the fine print.

[Yan Filiatrault]

There is a glitch on the sale. If you put the Everything Bundle in cart, you can checkout with all products around 80$ each in FastSpring. You can delete any product you don’t want and still get that price for any products. For example, Cineperc is around 80$. Cinesamples is aware of the way FastSpring is handling things and doesn’t seem to want to fix it.

[bitflipper]

18 hours ago, antler said:

Are you sure? I thought this was Cinesamples' version of Composer Cloud, i.e. you can 'keep' it if you bounce it. I could be wrong: I'm not interested in a subscription product, and haven't read the fine print.

Yeh, I read the entire license agreement (so you wouldn't have to). Sure, if you bounce the tracks it's now audio and beyond their reach. But they make it clear that they can pull the plug on you at their discretion. Not saying that would necessarily be a big issue, but it is an argument for buying libraries outright.

Now, I'm not faulting them for protecting their partners' IP, which they are obligated to do. But if I just buy the product, protecting developers' intellectual property isn't even a concern.

I think general resistance to subscriptions is pretty widespread. Remember when Cakewalk offered to let you buy SONAR in installments? Many users freaked out, mistakenly thinking it was a subscription model. Now we've got Waves going down the subscription path, and I believe they're going to regret it in the end. It's just one more way for Waves plugins to stop working, as if their fragile license scheme wasn't bad enough already.

[antler]

38 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Yeh, I read the entire license agreement (so you wouldn't have to). Sure, if you bounce the tracks it's now audio and beyond their reach. But they make it clear that they can pull the plug on you at their discretion. Not saying that would necessarily be a big issue, but it is an argument for buying libraries outright.

Wow. I do this just for fun and have no interest in Musio so this doubly isn't an issue for me. I do wonder what it means for library music/soundtrack composers though.

 

46 minutes ago, bitflipper said:

Now we've got Waves going down the subscription path, and I believe they're going to regret it in the end. It's just one more way for Waves plugins to stop working, as if their fragile license scheme wasn't bad enough already.

I kind of see this as an experiment. Hopefully the movement won't encourage others to go down this route too. It's funny - back when I was starting out, I had some Waves collections in my wishlist. As time went on I ended up buying plugins from other developers for better prices (this was before the $29.99 movement). I ended up with enough such that I never did end up buying anything from Waves. I have some freebies, but I could never get myself to install them because of the licensing scheme and WUP.