Spitfire Studio Strings Professional
A downloadable Sound Set for Windows and macOS
Scale up your strings with Studio Strings Pro
Take your string scoring to new heights with the Spitfire Studio Strings Professional sound set for Sibelius. Our integration unlocks the library's mammoth section sizes - up to 32 violin 1s and 24 celli!
Craft bold strokes for massive ensembles or intimate detail with quartet-sized sections. Over 200 players across five instrument groups without phasing artifacts. All articulations intuitively available right in your score.
Massive or intimate sections for any need
- From 32 violin 1s down to quartets
- 24 celli, 16 violas, 16 basses, and all in between
- Balances power with detail and clarity
Total articulation coverage
- Legato, spiccato, pizzicato, tremolos, and more
- Extended articulations supported in some patches
- Control every technique directly in your notation
Perfect integration, optimized performance
- Zero-effort install
- Simplified setup, works great with NotePerformer & Sibelius
- Efficient RAM and resource usage
- Stereo mixes and detailed mic options (stereo mix recommended)
(Limited time beta price - $35)
Patches and Section Sizes
Our sound set builds on Spitfire's patches to bring together the widest possible coverage. Not only that, but there's two sets of double-section-size patches, for a massive section size of 32 (Violin 1), 24 (Violin 2, Viola, Cello) and 16 (Basses), as well as the full-size patches (16/12/12/12/8), full-section size (16/12/12/12/4) patches with extended articulations, half-sections (8/6/6/6/4) and two quarter sections (4/3/3/3 + 4). If you play all the patches together, that's over 200 players without phasing!!
Here's how the various types of string patches sound played together:
Here's a video of the core articulations supported:
The half-section patches (which we doubled up too) support an extended range of articulations:
If you own this library and Sibelius, then you owe it to yourself to marry the two together and see what you can accomplish!
Purchase
In order to download this Sound Set you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $35 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Comments
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Hi I am very interested in both studio strings pro and brass but I haven’t had an update on the BBC Symphony Pro pré-order so I’d prefer to have that fulfilled before commuting to other pre-orders. When can we expect to see the Symphony Pro become live?
Yes, I don't blame you, though Spitfire Brass Pro will be launched fully this coming week - I'd already done that some months ago because I owned the library and was using it myself, so 75% of the work was done. I had to thoroughly test it, create the templates, and do a lot of extra work on the underlying patches, and create the plugin to do the microphone configuration. That thing has just under 300 custom patches, so if you need to change one thing (like a controller assignment), you've got 300 things to manually change, and Kontakt doesn't do shortcuts!
I will actually be launching quite a few sound sets next week, and I've got my Windows dev certificate so I can sign my code now. The work recently has gone into upgrading the installer and testing it with various kinds of sound set - namely (a) non-kontakt player (such as BBC Discover), (b) kontakt player with numeric library id (Action Strikes), (c) kontakt player with problematic library id (Spitfire Brass), and (d) a library that needs full Kontakt retail (Glory Days Horns) - the challenge with (c) and (d) is making them autoload by cheating. It's a long story. The installer also needed to be upgraded to support a playback configuration merge utility - which allows you to combine libraries in a mix-and-match way. So basically, by challenging my installer with different kinds of libraries I had already created sound sets for over the last few years, I was able to make it flexible enough to not need too much changing in the months ahead. It's an installer that can now install multiple sound sets into multiple installations of Sibelius at once, for instance: and when it delivers patches to Kontakt, it searches out the library, creates the directories, and also creates pointers if necessary so that it just works without any batch resaves.
With the BBC sound set, I had to wait until Spitfire had their current 50% sale to buy the Pro version because no one's giving me these libraries and BBC wasn't one that I owned - I had hoped pre-orders would help buy it, but that didn't really pan out because there were relatively few orders in the soft launch. So in this whole venture I'm still quite in the red financially. I hope my faith in the Sibelius community to support this is going to be vindicated.
Anyway, so I have BBC Pro now and it's next in the queue, and will be started this week. Much of it is quite similar to Spitfire Brass/Spitfire Strings Pro in available articulations. I will finish Core first, and then move onto Pro. I imagine that it will be a couple of weeks before Pro is launched. Honestly, it's the patch alteration and drum maps in Sibelius that take most of the time!
After that, I will do Spitfire Strings Pro, because again I already owned it and used it. I'm trying to cover as many genre bases and vendors as possible, and have some exciting ideas about delivering curated collections of sound sets in one hit for specific genres: like Big Band, where if you have Glory Days Horns, you're still missing flutes, clarinets, a double bass and percussion which can be patched in from other libraries and vendors - including some of the excellent free/cheap instruments currently available in Sinus or SoundPaint.
I hope that's enough detail about the plans!
Chris
Tell you what, I'll send you a free download code for Spitfire Brass Pro when I launch it, to (a) say thanks, and (b) I'd quite like to see how it goes. It's quite difficult to find testers for these expensive library integrations because of the licensing restrictions. I just have to try and be exhaustive, and if I find someone who can put it through its paces, great.
That’s really good of you Chris. I have a piece that has now been performed by three professional groups for orchestral brass and percussion that hasn’t yet been recorded and I’m keen to hear what can be achieved with it. (You can check it out here: Bright Horizons for Symphonic Brass and Percussion). I’ll also make sure that my other composer friends and colleagues are aware of your work.
I have to say that Spitfire Brass is only my second favourite brass library (it lacks nuance), my favourite being Orchestral Tools Berlin Brass, (though that really needs the mute and additional expansions, which come standard in SSBP).
Being a big fan of Cinematic Studio Strings I was disappointed in Cinematic Studio Brass, which is too fizzy and severely lacking in instruments, though I used my skills to bulk that out a bit.
What percussion are you using? What other main libraries do you have?
Send me an email on chris@sibelius-services.com and I can send you stuff for testing as it's ready.
Hi Chris, thank you so much for the detailed reply - I feel guilty for holding up your work flow! I know from my own work how it can seem like it is being lost in the wilderness but I am sure that this is the holy grail of blending a notation programme with great sound libraries. I think that NotePerformer is superb for giving a sketch and some elements like the brass can be fantastic but your sound sets will mean I can really achieve that ultimate level, so please don’t be disheartened - I’m willing you on.
Thanks Matthew :) Just in the last day I had Sibelius refusing to find plug-in functions, and a weirdness where export audio gave a different result to playing in real-time. Both solved, but maaan.