Century Strings Bundle by 8Dio Review
When it comes to composing with string libraries, it is all about emotions. Strings are very well placed to express happiness, sadness, fear, hate, desire, lust, love, etc. When you compose to picture you want to suggest or enforce the story that the director had in mind and Strings are one the best instruments to communicate emotions and moods in contemporary writing.
The success of many virtual instrument libraries is built around how good they are to trigger an emotion. Some audio companies can encourage the composer buying decision based on emotions – which could result in GAS buyer behavior. The majority of purchasing decisions is about how good a string library is helping you to deliver an exceptional score to your customer. Customers need a score that drives the emotion required in a score or any writing to picture. This is based on how a library sounds and performs in a sample player of choice for example Kontakt.
8Dio’s Century Strings Bundle combines up to two products Century Ensemble Strings and Century Sordino Strings.
- Century Ensemble Strings size: 1st Violins (6) and 2nd Violins (4), Violas (6), Cellos (4) and Basses (4)
- Century Sordino Strings size: 1st Sordino Violins (6) and 2nd (4), Sordino Violas (5), Cellos (4) and Basses (3)
The sound is of the included instruments in 8Dio’s Century Strings Bundle is cinematic. The strings sound lovely. The bundle contains many “normal” articulations and further not joint articulations that I hadn’t come across in other string libraries. 8Dio did send a review copy with no strings attached.
Installation
After purchase, you get codes to download the library through the 8Dio installer tool. After a batch re-save in Kontakt, you are ready to use this library.
Sound
I do assume that you already spend the time to listen to the demos both on SoundCloud and on Youtube. What I can report that the character and tone of the library are of exceptionally excellent sounding quality. This is one of the many highlights of the library, driven by the brilliance of the samples 8Dio recorded. Century Strings has prominently carefully marked string samples that are typically available in the top string libraries where this library lives. Or in other words, 8Dio understands how a vast sounding string library needs to be sampled and has done an excellent job here.
The instruments are easy to play. You get a delicious, with lush character articulations and the silky sound of Sordino Strings. Don’t forget to join those articulations for exceptional tone and unique character. Century Strings comes in a small/medium size which is useful when you want to score an intimate track. If needed you can double up and expand the scope to go bigger.
8Dio’s Century Strings are very touching and meaningful, especially crucial for lush, emotional sounding romantic scores. The silky sound of their Sordino String is exceptional for passionate and emotional expressions. Those arc and 2-bowspatches are an excellent choice for delicate melodies lines, and the tone from those pieces is unique. With the Arcs, you can sketch up ideas, later you want to add melodic lines with the other included short, long and legato patches.
The shorts can be used successfully in a composition. When it comes the short articulations there are just so many choices in the market. The Arcs, longs, sordino, and legato is the main reason why this library sounds so unique. You can get a value-add when you add this library to your toolbox.
The library was recorded in the centered instead of using the traditional orchestra placement. With this approach, you can preserve clarity, and you can pan the instrument within the mixer or tools like a stereo imager. However, it comes with the need to move the strings outside their center position.
The center mic placement and recording approach is a bit more work for classical scores, for scoring to Picture and for 98% of the audience listening to a song/score this is a unique approach. It is a new approach, and new methods can make yourself uncomfortable. Overall the close mics on the strings have a fantastic clarity, maybe some of the best tight mics recording available today. This central position makes it also easy to push the instrument location back into the room on either side by using the include mics and internal, stereo imagine tools (3rd party) or external reverb.
User interface & Usability
I entirely like the Interface user on this library; it is clean, presents the most necessary features and makes them accessible. The selected design is comfortable on the eyes and if needed fast to customize to my needs. The patches and included instruments are incredibly easy to play, which is one of the unique points about many 8Dio libraries.
Rating: Five out of five stars
The sound of Century Strings (8Dio’s Century Strings Bundle) is truly excellent; the patches are playable, combined with a simple UI. 8Dio Century Strings has joined the tiny and selected club of industry-leading string library. Century Strings enables the player and composer to create new high sounding scores and offers a wide range of articulations and especially so great sounding sordino and exceptional version of arcs, longs with surpassing legatos. Overall this bundled library performs and sounds stellar.
