I just purchased the Syncrhon Strings Pro Standard collection and want to share that these are the most playable strings patches to date for me personally. The agile and bold short articulations play cleanly, accurately and musically.  As those of you with classical piano technique, usually we have to play down to the samples responsiveness to get the best sound from the samples.  Not with these shorts.  PLay away like you are playing a fast piano passage and the strings keep up with no hesitation.  Really nice.

The long articulations are especially nice in that they include a soft release option. This allows for larger voicings to be played without the samples building up with the dreaded end of sample build up sound.

I like the polyphonic legatos using the complete sections loaded.  They are to be played carefully as I am sure a lot of programming is going on here.  But it is possible to get a fantastic legato across many voices being played in one pass.  This seems to be a breakthrough moment for this library and string libraries in general.

Add to all of this the value of VSL's pricing for this Standard collection intro pricing and I feel they have the best strings to value package here.  I am perfectly fine with the Standard collection with basic mic positions.  Thought I'm sure the extra mic positions would be useful for certain mixing uses.

Just upgarded solo strings to Synchronized Solo Strings having gone from the Standard to the Full articulations via the Synchonized solo strings upgrade, all I can say is these are fantastic. Super playable, fantastic sound, very responsive, and the solo strings with the Syncrhon Player works perfectly. Using my Kawaii VPC-1 88 note controller, to my surprise, results in incredible velocity control of even the sustain solo strings, beyond what I have ever experienced. I can bring out the top voice of say a two voice sustained string part like never before. I would go as far as to say these Synrchonized Solo Strings respond better and are more playable than any other string library I have ever used going back many years of professional music production for TV and Music Libraries. Highly recommend these.

The tuning problem does have to do with the individual upper two octaves single pitches.  Not so much a problem with relative tuning, meaning notes are somewhat in tune with each other.  Although I have retuned a dozen or so notes in the upper octave more to my ears liking.  The problem lies in the fact that single notes chorus when played alone.  So one or more of the 3 strings that make up that higher note's pitch are out of tune with themselves so the idiviudal pitch tuning doesn't fix this issue.  I will live with it.  Just aoivd playing those several notes that have the issue.  Perhaps the Steinway has solved this, I don't know as I do not own it yet. I only wish VSL developers had sampled those particular notes in tune with themsevles.  I know it is a daunting task to have all of these layers of each ptch in tune with themselves and am impressed with how in tune the entire keyboard is below the upper 2 octaves.  It seems that the uppoer 2 octaves on a piano are more susceptible to going out of tune during a recording/sampling process.

Originally Posted by: stephen limbaugh

Pat, what notes are out of tune on the Yamaha?  Also, are you familiar with the per-note tuning on the Edit page?

Following this up, the notes on the CFX that seem out of tune to my ears are:

B5, Eflat6, E6 (This is an example of a note that choruses meaning one or more of the 3 strings is out of tune making the note itself out of tune with itself which gives it that chorsuing effect when played), F6, G6, A flat6, B6, D7.

As Stephen suggested, I tuned them individually one note at a time. (Nice feature!)  Thanks for alerting me of that ability.  And this did improve the above mentioned notes in all cases except perhap E6 which seems to chorus no matter how I tune it.

By tuning up the notes above I am able to improve the tuning in that upper octave and feel this to be a big improvement.  (though this would be excessive, imagine sampling each string and then giving the user control over tuning each string not too unlike how a piano tuner tunes a piano muting the 2 strings while they tune the 3rd, and so on).  This would require 3x the sample memory and woudn't be realistic.  But it is an interesting idea at least. This might be applied to only octave 6 and above which seems to be a challenging are of a piano to keep in tune.

Thanks Stephen, I forgot about the per note tuning feature only having VSL CFX for a week.  I'll try that, although what I am hearing is a note out of tune with itself which occurs when 1 of the 3 strings that make up the pitch of the upper register piano notes, is out of tune with one of the other same note strings.  In this case tuning the whole note made up of 3 strings may not tune that note but I will try and report back. I am not in front of the CFX right now so I will do this tomorrow. And I will report back the results of tuning the notes and I will also note the notes that are out of tune.  Basically the notes themselves are chorusing when played one at a time which is caused by the 3 strings not tuned.

Late to the discussion, but after purchasing and testing the VSL CFX I find it meets my needs although I hear intonation problems, out of tune notes in the upper 2 octaves.  Perhaps this is impossible to sample any more in tune with the challenge of keeping all of the sample layers in tune.  I have listened to the VSl Syncrhon Steinway demos and I still hear tuning problems in the upper 2 octaves though perhaps a little less out of tune notes.  I do not own the Steinway sample but would like to purchase it if in tune.  I have heard that VSL improved on the Steinway tuning by learning from the process of sampling the earlier made samples for the CFX. I heard the piano tuner checked and touched up the tuning more often in the sampling of the newer Steinway sample. Does anyone that owns both the CFX and Steinway feel the Steinway's tuning to be improved over the CFX's tuning, especially in the upper 2 octaves?  Other than tuning issues, I feel the VSL CFX is the best piano sample I have used.  I have produced solo acoustic piano studio recordings for known artists using a Yamaha C7 and then a Yamaha S6 using Neumann mics and an excellent signal path, yet I find that the CFX sample to be very much on the same level in final quality.  We are using a Kawaii VPC-1 as the 88 note keyboard controller which goes a long ways in providing a realstic piano touch during the performance. With that said, our studio recordings of the real pianos are much more in tune than the CFX samples.  To achieve this we hire the piano tuner to be present during the entire multi days recording of the piano and he touches the piano up at least every hour or so.  Later, when we edit the album together we can edit previous days takes with newer takes and the tuning matches.  Though on the CFX piano sample we live with the intonation/out of tune upper 2 octaves in our midi recordings.  Perhaps the Steinway improves on this.  And perhaps the Bosendorfer piano will improve even further.