First Chairs Reviews

There are a lot of problems with this library. First, the instruments themselves do not sound natural; they sound as if they came from a soundfont. The overall volume of the instruments must be increased (especially for the contrabass, as it is literally impossible to hear it when played). More sound flags must be added, like nonvib and muted (mutes placed on the bridge of the instrument), plus the random accents that the first violin does when there is no accent mark written in the score must be removed.

The sounds just aren't very good and the slurs dont at all work. Sometimes on the violin especially with the first A on the E string, it accents it randomly. Also the dynamics are not great with most of the solos and the pizzicato is very loud.

The sounds are good by themselves, but the programming is so so bad that it makes it even worse to work with than the basic MS sounds. Just a shame, really, I'm sure a lot of work went into the recordings.

Still with lot of issues, good library, but needs update

It’s a shame that the sound of the strings is beautiful and realistic but there’s so much wrong with the way it was programmed for articulations and especially sustained notes… the vibrato is off and no matter what the dynamics are, there are random accents that happen here and there. Please fix.

In quieter legato passages, the sound is full and rich. With faster tempos and shorter note values, odd things happen. Short notes play as if they have an accent over them—when they do not. For example, in a series of 8th notes followed by quarter notes, as in a 6/8 meter, the 8ths will all sound quite accented. I ended up going through my entire piece, reworking the articulations to accomodate for this odd behavior. I would add legato markings over notes to try to compensate for the strangeness. One consistent thing seems to be that in louder dynamics (f, or ff) the articulations get really short. These two things should not go together. Getting a loud, legato sound is difficult.

First 5 minutes of using this shows me I wasted my money. A simple line of three legato half notes and a half rest can't be played right. When playback reaches the rest there is an extra, very short but louder articulation before the rest happens. It's like when the bow is released from the string it pops out one more articulation. C'mon! Glad this only cost me $8. The Muse Strings library does not do this and it was free.

Hopefully improvements are coming. There are several really annoying issues. 1) Even without score markings, dynamics are all over the place. One phrase plays really loud with hard accents, and the next plays really soft. 2) Randomly, a note sounds where there is a rest in the score. 3) Where dynamic markings are present in the score there is often a click as if the note-on occurs first then the new dynamic is applied afterwards. A composer should not have to alter a score to make up for flaws in the player. The player should interpret what the composer has intended.

Yes, it is better than the free solo strings where violin 1 plays with horrible portamento. However violin 1 in this plays with mysterious accents on shorter off beat notes and is very quiet on long note on the beat - violin 2 is better.