Well I was bored yesterday and had a few extra bucks layin around to toy with so I went down to the local Sam Ash, I usually do not buy from these stores as I get every thing online for much less but it was fathers day, so I figured I would treat myself for a change
I was really torn about buying this on the spot since I had recently been listening to demos of GPO and Vienna Horizon Series as well as EW Quantum serious, but I had to decide on what suited me best, the GPO is certainly a great value but I am a string newbie and did not want a full orchestra, I wanted strings only. The Vienna sounded really nice, extremely good, but was a tad out of the budget for a impulse item
The EW series also sounds great but again out of my price so I settled it and just said what the hell and bought the Halion Strings.1st impressions: Well the documentation is pretty lacking, it does not explain how to achieve proper string articulations though it does give some text demos to get ya started and explains what all the different bowing techniques and playing styles mean.
Another nice but tedious part is the instalation, there are (9) CD roms covering roughly 5 gigs of samples in .aif format it seems, the discs come in a nice zippered carry case, not that you would take your string edition samples around with you but it adds a nice touch the feel like the product is a quality one.
One interesting thing is the Halion strings comes with a slimmed downed version of Halion with some added features to supposidly make even the most amature of string players able to achieve some level of realism, there are 16 midi channels which are how the player handles patches, each midi channel represents one patch loaded, there are also 4 in 1 patches to make playing a bit easier in specific situations.
Also there is an option for the quality of playback as well as how you want your memory spent, you can load samples into memory, use disk streaming or set it up to use partials of both, loading the begining sample into menory and the rest streaming in a few variotions to ease playback.
Onto the sound: Now keep in mind I am to be totally honest a complet newbie when it comes to stings and understanding bowing techniques and articulations, so for this lets just say I had no clue what I was doing nor the understanding of how difficult it is to try and make orchestral music sound real
I figured hey if the demos can sound that good I should be able to atleast make some use from this sample set.For me I had planned to use the sounds not as solo strings but as backing material for electronic music, some what hybrid like if you are familiar with they're style.
First impressions of the sound are extremely positive, all samples are recorded in 24bit and an extra bit of wonder is that they recorded the trails ala natural reverb in the samples this gives notes a very natural and smooth sound, I was quite impressed with how clean the samples were, there are to the top of my knowledge 6 strings sets, 8 pad sets, 10 cellos, 8 double basses, 12 violas and I belive 16 violins covering all the standard playing stles and a lot of interesting extras.
I tried to replicate a peice of music and see how close I could get and I was pretty much there in sound, I have soo much to learn about how to make strings sound real, when and when not to use different strings, understanding the techniques of having different play styles running at the right times to give the sound that over all orchestrated feeling which seems to be the hardest part of the battle.
I have no clue if these strings stand up to the competition such as the edirol, GPO, East West, Horizons Vienna but hey ignorance is bliss and to my ears the strings have a very bright, warm and clear sound, I would venture a guess that using this set would require little in the way of EQing to try and shape frequencies, it just seems to have a balanced sound. These strings sort of have the movie sound track sound rather than a live orchestra, but I have no clue weather thats good or bad.
Any ways just a small review from a 1st timer spending a few hours with this series, any one have any views on this string set, if they suck feel free to let me know, I am looking at this set as a starting point for me to learn on before I invest a good deal of money into a more pro package, then again maybe I wont need more
Please share your opinions or advice and what not!
Cheers..
