Good string sounds?

[Sti-Jay]

Find it hard to achieve good string sounds which sounds real. I´m talking about strings like violin, cello, contrabass. etc..

Any great free presets or vsti´s out there?

[brandystarbrite]

Find it hard to achieve good string sounds which sounds real. I´m talking about strings like violin, cello, contrabass. etc..

Any great free presets or vsti´s out there?

Try using Lmms' Vibed plug in. I've just discovered, you can make almost realistic, to realistic, Guitar sounding strings in it. Or as the Lmms manual says, Plucky strings and notes. I almost made a "Harp" the other day.
Warning: I've just discovered, some of the notes in Vibed, other than C5, (C5 in some cases) causes a nasty loud sounding distortion sound. Probably a glitch in Lmms. Make sure your volume is very low, or not wearing headphones, when experimenting with this. Hopefully it does not damage your ears or speakers.

Theses are free DSK VSTi's:
You can check DSK instruments. My recommendation is "DSK's Guitar Steel." I give it 4.8 out of 5. Since it doesn't crash much in LMMS 0.4.13. 64 Bit.
Did I mention, it's also "Loud" when you raise the settings.

Try DSK's Indian DreamZ, if you want to use a variety of 6 Indian instruments. 5 of them are High quality stringed Instruments. I like "Sarod." And another one . He! He!

DSK's World strings is cool. But it strangely crashes LMMS 0.4.13.

DSK Asian DreamZ is good too, But it crashes often, when you try to use the Pica Tremolo.

Hope that helps.

[brandystarbrite]

Oh yeah. I should have mentioned before. I mentioned months back in a post, that I was making a full list of all Dsk Vst's, that work well in Lmms.
Here's the link for the post on it https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/lmms ... ?f=4&t=597. So you can check there, from time to time to see my progress.
Right now, I've checked out 88% of them. I'm almost done. I'll post it hopefully before Christmas, for everyone to see. Cheers.

[brandystarbrite]

I hope you got through sti2nd.

[Sti-Jay]

Thanks for taking time answering.

I was talking about stringed instruments like violin, cello, contrabass. Not sure if you can call them strings, my bad.
The DSK strings uses a lot CPU, but soundfonts and synthezisers works fine, just have to tweak them. Also I have finally upgraded my PC, so I can use DSK strings without mutch trouble.

[eastperson]

I've found DSK strings the best too for free VSTis - with the same CPU problem, but nevertheless sound good
In the background at a lower volume I have also found Mellotron VSTis useful for thickening out the sound too. I personally use (free) 'Tapeworm' and 'Meltron' VSTis. There would be others out there too. So not strictly 'real' but can sound great mixed with other string VSTis.
Thanks for this thread I was wondering what others were doing.

[tresf]

VSTs are overkill for string in my opinion. I would strongly recommend SoundFonts or Giga Banks.

Here's a decent soundfont repository, with some preview options:
http://www.sf2midi.com/soundfonts/string/

Warning, as with any sample, plugin or library, read the license before selling you music. Many prohibit commercial use.

Back on topic... I'm not sure why soundfonts aren't embraced or discussed more. When an authentic instrument sound is desired, I've found no good replacement for a good instrument bank or soundfont. They work without the bloat of a VST plugin.

The only downside to these is they can really weigh in at a large size (from 5MB to 500MB for a single instrument), however many VST coders will tel you that the majority of realistic sounding VSTs are just bundled soundfonts with a few built-in effects to tweak.


-Tres

[eastperson]

VSTs are overkill for string in my opinion. I would strongly recommend SoundFonts or Giga Banks.

Here's a decent soundfont repository, with some preview options:
http://www.sf2midi.com/soundfonts/string/

Warning, as with any sample, plugin or library, read the license before selling you music. Many prohibit commercial use.

Back on topic... I'm not sure why soundfonts aren't embraced or discussed more. When an authentic instrument sound is desired, I've found no good replacement for a good instrument bank or soundfont. They work without the bloat of a VST plugin.

The only downside to these is they can really weigh in at a large size (from 5MB to 500MB for a single instrument), however many VST coders will tel you that the majority of realistic sounding VSTs are just bundled soundfonts with a few built-in effects to tweak.


-Tres

thanks @tresf, that's interesting - I've only worked with VSTis and they have suited my needs up to now. Next time around I might give them a try. I have heard of SoundFonts but not Giga Banks before. If you have done any work with them, I'd be interested to hear them.

[tresf]

I have heard of SoundFonts but not Giga Banks before

I haven't done work with Giga banks (they are a bit harder to find on the internet), but they will be the functional equivalent of a soundfont. We'll be adding support for these in the 1.2 release.

If you have done any work with them, I'd be interested to hear them.

Here's a track that I made which was on the Best Of LMMS Volume 1 album. It was composed 100% in LMMS, including mastering.
https://soundcloud.com/gunnar-kennedy-p ... ck-of-dust

[eastperson]

Nice work!