I worked on a piece the other day that used CineBrass but needed some good strings.  I own HS but frankly I don't use it.  Too much hassle and I need something that just works..  So I turned to Appassionata Strings.  Done.  Perfect.  Love the legato.  Love assigning the mod wheel to velocity x-fade.  Everything works.  I did a Herrmann styled piece a while back with CineBrass and I also used the Orchestral String trills from VSL.  What delighted me is that the harder the velocity, the faster the trill (at least it seems this way).  Briliant.

Can't wait for VI PRO 2.0  

Personally there are elements of different ones I like.  The App version is good but too dry for my tastes but the detail is nice...although the basses always sound muddy to me though.  The HS versions I like till it tries to do the TREM parts and the detail is lost.  This would sound much better with the stage or a close/main mic mix.  The LASS would work if you panned everything and brought up the verb...a little too dry to me.

Despite those comments thanks for doing this..well done!

I agree that the App basses sound "muddy"!

Yes, it sounds good and big, etc.  We all know that, which is why we bought it.  My point is, as far as I can recall, before Diamond came out they didn't say anything about it requiring more hardware to actually work in the way it should - I could be wrong about that, but I kind of expected it to work as well as the other libraries under the same conditions.  Then I was thinking, at least it ships on a drive...but it was a drive they didn't recommend for optimal use.  At the time, although it did a few things that VSL didn't (like crossfading dynamics on legato, for instance) and although it sounded great out of the box, it seemed way less efficient, and I wound up getting Gold as my second license so that I could use it without spending $5k at a minimum for another Mac to play a $1400 library.  (With intonation issues, that takes a bit more work than VSL to get the timing on legato patches right.)  Don't get me wrong - I do really like the way it sounds.  But let's not say it isn't a bit of a pig for resources if it requires the absolute fastest tech available to really do what it's designed to do.  Because that is what a pig is.  A resource hog.  Fortunately, bacon makes everything taste better.

I don't mean to appear argumentative, but let me clear up a few points.

First, the last one.  Gold is 16-bit.  Less data throughput.  Easier on a system.  Not the same as Diamond using only one mic position.

Second, the second to last.  I've never run HS on a system with less than 16GB RAM.  That's a good thought, of course.

Third, SSD's are an emerging standard.  But they are not the industry standard yet in our business.  Why?  Not inexpensive enough.  They'll be the standard when nobody's buying platters anymore - or when a library that really (come on, now, it really does) requires SSD actually ships on one and it doesn't increase the price by half or more.  So a library that really doesn't do everything it should without the fastest tech available was a bit of a shock to many people, I think - certainly based on lots of posts here and elsewhere.  Also, I'm guessing there may be a minor misunderstanding here - but within reason, a drive like the OWC top-of-the-line SSD could easily be considered the fastest tech available, standard or not.  Arguably faster and more suitable for sample streaming by virtue of its large numbers of iops than, say, fiber-channel 15k drives.

I suppose what I'm really getting at is this: I could be wrong, but to my memory, before HS was released there wasn't any (or much of any) mention of the fact that to really do a full contemporary arrangement with everything online, that you would really want to spend @$950 on an SSD system - and oddly enough, before Play 3 was released there wasn't any mention of the fact that to get the same functionality as Play 2 in certain instances, that you would have to upgrade your RAM.

Now, I don't have anything against upgrading hardware for software.  I built PC's to run Giga and later VSL.  I remember when MOTU seemed to code for computers that hadn't quite been built yet.  And the price I pay for being an early adopter of EW software and libraries is that I often don't find out until I install the stuff that my system is lacking in some way.  It's not EW's fault if I'm eager and willing to live on the bleeding edge (when I'm not in the middle of a project, anyway).  It is, however, worth noting that the FAQ that was just released is the first document that indicates that Play 3 might require an upgrade - and it was released after the beta cycle and after the product was released.  I don't know why that is, and I don't really care.  Someone else can go there (and has).  

Anyway, just clarifying my position.  

The comparison cues are really interesting.  I have a question for Erik - are you using the same articulation types for HS and VSL?  I've always felt VSL to be a little bit more agile in terms of fast things, but there are faster articulations available in HS than may be represented in the comparisons... also, am I wrong or have the files been replaced with newer and perhaps more ambient versions?

As has been said, thanks very much for taking the time to do this!

I used for all non MIR examples EWQL Spaces (NY String Hall, true stereo, 3,2 s). Personally I think, that 'non VSL libraries' don't match with MIR for an optimum result, whereas the combination VSL-MIR has certainly high qualities.

I have used as much as possible the same articulation types for HS and VSL. But in somes cases you might conclude that we are talking about apples and pears because of the way patches are presented by both companies. VSL has staccato long and short + perfect spiccato + perfect rep. spiccato and staccato, HS has marcato, spiccato, staccato, staccatissimo and staccato on the bow.

To be honest: usually I choose what I personally find the best solution for a musical passage within one library, also doing a lot with velocity in combination with CC11: if a higher velocity is too rough I use a lower setting, but increase the CC11 setting. Or the other way around. This makes it time consuming, but in a way it is just the level I want to work on: in a way you get the feeling of being a virtual (!!) director who is creating and moulding the sound he or she has in mind (that day, that moment etc.).
This is exactly the point where anybody else would have each individual version, so this makes any comparison as stated before quite relative.

Furthermore: a true LASS user would have been able to present maybe a much better LASS version than mine because of the fact if you use a library really very frequently you simply know it much better and can do better things with it. So the issue of involvement with a libray is at stake here also.

Next point: talking about more ambient versions, I simply don't remember very well anymore the few (1 or 2) changes in the beginning of this 'adventure'. Indeed I (hopefully) improved some reverb settings of the first contributions. I haven't made a logfile.

Besides this I  hope to have encouraged others here to make their own version with whatever library (and to present it also of course).

Hollywood sounds don't mean anything and straight off the bat that's the whole point of sales language. You've all fallen for sales techniques. There is no Hollywood sound. That's the whole point. The classical Hollywood string sound is made up of orchestration. If you can't orchestrate  to show off that style and string writing,how on earth is a sample library going to do that for anyone.

Bernard Herrmann wrote numerous Hollywood film scores. That would not be regarded as the Hollywood sound. There is no Hollywood sound. Thomas Newman writies great string parts. Is that the Hollywood sound? Max Steiner's score to Key Largo?