Strings VST

[nmcrae]

Does anyone know of any good strings/Orchestral Instruments for cubase? (not HALion Symphonic Orchestra as its not cheap!)?

[richiebee]

Well, there's always going to be a tradeoff - cheap or quality. You can't have both. Usually the cheaper libraries require more work from the user to get a believable result. The cheapest option that's worth looking at is Garritan's Personal Orchestra. I've heard good stuff from this, and REALLY bad stuff.
More realistic be a little way would be Kirk Hunter Emerald. You can buy just the strings if that's all you need. That's what I did. It's okay. You need a sampler to use this as it doesn't come with its own, unlike most of the alternatives. It has some good sounding strings, and some not so good sounding strings.
Next up would be East West Symphonic Orchestra Gold (silver might be worth looking at if you don't need much from it)
Best of the pile would be VSL Symphonic Cube. Be prepared to take out a mortgage to cover the cost of this one!

[brandondrury]

Richiebee comes from the world where he records real strings regularly and will be more picky about the samples being "realistic".

Your question was fairly general and makes me think that your needs may be a little more like mine. I don't really care about the samples being realistic because I don't even know what realistic is! I just want my strings to add intensity in the way that strings are supposed to (whatever that means).

So, If I were you, I'd start out with Kontakt2 and use the included samples In my opinion, the included samples with Kontakt are VERY usable. There is probably better stuff out there, but "better" depends on your needs.

Brandon