Completely unfamiliar with synths - looking for good string sounds

H

Herr Joachim

New member
I'd love to find a synth with string sounds better than what composition
software like finale and sibelius offer. What should I look for?

Advice is greatly appreciated.
Have a lovely day.
 
I've always felt that Roland does strings well - and they have so many synths on the market you could likely find any number of used keyboards fairly low cost. Since you don't talk about piano, I suspect you don't care about weighted action, etc. - which gives you a lot of low cost options.

You should be able to get by with a 61 key (or even 49 key) board - and candidly, in addition to Roland - Korg, Yamaha and even some Casio keyboards can do decent strings.

I haven't tried any of the recent Roland Juno series - but the older JP, XP, XV series all had several decent string options. Even going waaaay back to the D50 Roland had decent strings.

That all being said - if you do by a synth - give some real thought to what else you may think you could use (piano, organ, brass, etc). Once you have a synth you may start wanting to use other sounds (no sense buying a synth only for strings) - so....if your gonna spend the cash, try to find other sounds you can use (beyond strings).
 
I have to agree with the above and Roland, in addition to the previously mentioned take a look at the JD990 if you would prefer a module. I have a JP-8080 and it does some nice strings as does my Korg Radias. What is your budget and type of music you will mainly be using the synth for?
 
mikeh said:
You should be able to get by with a 61 key (or even 49 key) board - and candidly, in addition to Roland - Korg, Yamaha and even some Casio keyboards can do decent strings.
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I find it somewhat to be a matter of taste with the big three synth makers. All have acceptable strings depending on how you use them, what patches, what registers and articulations etc.

If possible, consider a synth that accepts expansion boards. Some of them have specialty boards i.e. Roland has a few symphonic boards that would give you more options. I think they all do.

If you want real good sounds, go the sample route. If you want to try a demo of an interesting softsynth try www.synful.com
 
Synth strings or Acoustic strings?

For acoustic strings, look for Garritan and Miroslav, or if you have the money for VSL.

For synth strings... Roland's synths, Virus...

And if you wanna go old skool... get yourself a Mellotron :D
 
No offense to anyone but I've always hated Roland strings. They always seem boring to me. I prefer Kurzweil for realism and Korg for thick and spacy.
 
I own the Kirk Hunter "Emerald" library and I think it sounds great and is an incredible value for the money. The strings are excellent, but there's also the rest of the orchestra in there, and those samples sound good as well.

For strings in a hardware box I suggest the Roland XV or Fantom series synths with Roland's SRX-04 Symphonique Strings expansion board.
 
TexRoadkill said:
No offense to anyone but I've always hated Roland strings. They always seem boring to me. I prefer Kurzweil for realism and Korg for thick and spacy.
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I like mixing them up. I layer patches quite often, I own a Korg, Yamaha and a Roland so I use patches from all three.

Well, I use low string patches fromm all three. For upper strings I overdub real violins. You should try it, it kicks ass.:D:D

If I had to pick one rompler for strings, I would go with Korg. As Tex said, they are thick and lush. Yamaha's strings arent very good, but I sometimes mix them in. My Roland is a Jv1010 with orchestra expansion. Its good but I cant really judge it because it is an older line than the Fantom Series.

I have all three on right now and am comparing. Yeah, the Korg is definitely my favorite. There is one patch called "Pro Strings" that really kicks ass in the cello department, I think its the best rompler patch I have heard so far.
 
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