Muse Strings Reviews

There are weird slides between the notes, and dynamics hardly work. But hey, it's free for a reason, right? (for the utmost terrible user experience)

They removed my older comment but every upodate the Muse strings have gotten worse and worse. maybe to encourage you to buy their paid strings. But thats no way to push that. I see a comment saying they prefer MUSE STRINGS BASIC?!! that’s how low in quality these strings have become. Compared to when they first released muse strings it sounded absolutely beautiful. To something this synthesized. i’ll never update this again.

there are so much unnatural vibrato and the glissandos are in places that shouldn’t be there. Maybe there is a way to fix this, but currently, I prefer the basic sounds on Muscore sudio better.

the normal nots and slurs sound exactly the smaae, litaraly no difference, this makes it very difficult to compose anything serrious

The solo instruments sometimes sound like multiple instruments. Also, when playing fast pieces, the realism may be in some cases worse than the MS Basic sound library, because of the uneven accenting and balance. The viola solo sounds like it is playing on the bridge, without a hallmark warm and mellow sound. I hope this may get fixed in the next update. Thanks

The violas are WAY too quiet even when the mixer volume is at 12! Also I would like a solo contrabass soundfont if possible!

Would really love to have a low B0 sound on the bass since it is pretty prevalent in modern times, even if players may take it up an octave it would be helpful to hear what it could sound like.

Has anyone else noticed that the violas in Muse Strings are at a lower volume compared to other strings instruments. Another issue is the volume of the pizzicato; it drops even more, even when using dynamics like forte, it sounds like a piano. I've attached a sample here: https://musescore.org/en/node/370547

The strings themselves provide great quality. Although, the violas when arranging for full orchestra/string orchestra, they tend to feel sometimes they are not there. Otherwise sound is great and it really feels like you are writing for these instruments.

Wish there would be a solo Double bass, not only the quatuor... Also it would be great if it played that much legato only for phrase marks

Great sound quality, but the viola can be too quiet at times. Even when I mark it at fortississimo, it's still pretty quiet. Another complaint I have is there's no solo contrabass. Only contrabass section. Other than those two, this soundfont is good. Would recommend for starters until you buy a better soundfont.

I downloaded this hoping for better solo violin sounds but it made every not sound like it was connected with a glissando. Would not recomend

There's contrabasses, but none for just one contrabass

Free? FREE??? Yup, Free = the right price! Unless I'm missing something, when I try to do slurs (I have yet to try out the MS 4.6 upgrades, so stand by for another update if anything has changed), but one thing that drives me crazy with slurs and legatos is that the strings (and to a lesser extent the brass and woodwinds) is that they tend to go "dwaaAAH-dwaaAAH" instead of making a natural rising and falling (crescendo-decrescendo) motion; it's hard to make a smooth musical line when that happens. But to be fair, the other paid-for soundfonts I have do the same thing, but in different ways. I'm fine with the pizzicatos, but none of the tremolos -- in MS or the paid-for ones -- have a tremolo that I like. They are substantially lower in volume than the surrounding full notes are, and the clarity is not really the best. I do wish that these soundfonts had the volume consistency of the old sounds, though, and I would *almost* like to combine the original sounds with the newer ones, if nothing else, for the sake of more sound stability. It sounds to me like overall (in both paid-for and these free soundfonts) that if one were to imagine a hill, and what we hear is the start of the note quite soft, then they get louder as you climb the hill; it seems to me like the tremolos use the "bottom" (softer) part of the hill, instead of aiming right away at at least the middle of the "hill." I'm not a real computer programmer, but if I was, I would make the first note in a soft passage rise up in volume, then during the rest of the phrase (probably tied with slur markings) would be more towards the top of that "hill" illustration I used earlier. Same for the tremolos. And going from mp to mf is quite the jump in volume and intensity! I would like to be able to control actual volumes of parts via the option to set ppp at, say 2/10 instead of 1/10 without changing the sample sounds, and at the other end, maybe set a fff at 8 or 9//10 so it doesn't blow out my speakers! But I give the thumbs-up because not only are these FREE sounds, but overall they're a remarkable improvement in sounding more like the real thing (as they're actually sampled). I write primarily for a full orchestra, so these sounds give me a decent idea of what they would sound like in a full orchestral context. My undying thanks to all of the developers of MuseScore Studio -- you're amazing, and you most certainly have the gratitude of the music-making community, even if we complain a whole lot! Haha! (But it's true!)

the sound in general is pretty good, and I'm surprised by the legato. However, I dislike the tremolo because it is quite harsh and robotic, especially with two notes. The volume of the violas is low, and with articulation, sounds even lower. Even so, Muse Strings is pretty nice :)

The dynamics are quite bad, instruments don't go as loud and also quite glitchy with headphones

The sound was so amazing that I was surprised at its beauty when I first heard it.Even though it took me about a day to download it and it often failed ,all my waiting paid off.

Add Contrabass solo, Sounds horrible, combine muse sound and musecore gm sounds

The new strings sounds are very different, and they are ABSOLUTELY terrible. The phrasing and legato is off, and they sounds more synthetic than human. The strings aren't as realistic, tremolo is stiff and too extreme. Much of the score annotation doesn't have the same effect, and everything sounds like a synth and not the astonishingly good sounds of the earlier version.

Surprisingly great legatos. Paired with the string EQ and Lush High End setting on the Mastering plugin, you can get some really gorgeous string playback for free. I actually stopped using my more expensive libraries for string legato in favour of this! The pizz, trem, and staccato patches are less impressive, but still helpful for mockups. Those legatos though are usable for realistic work.

pizzicato sucks everything else is good