Magnus wrote: ↑28 Jun 2019
esselfortium wrote: ↑26 Jun 2019
I recorded it a while ago and uploaded it today. After the whole Softphonics ripoff fiasco, the oddities I had noticed in Euphonic Strings suddenly became far more suspect and I decided to look a bit more closely into it.
Whilst there may be some sample oddities, and their Squarespace account has now expired; that alone isn't proof that this entire library is just a resample job and contains copyright infringement.
The Softphonics video I saw, back when that scandal broke, demonstrated it to be unequivocal that the source files in that case were stolen. But your video above doesn't prove that the product is stolen. I would be careful saying such things as "They were another rip-off operation like Softphonics." as that is libel and they could sue you.
I would consider the copious amounts of repitched samples a pretty significant smoking gun on their own, because there is no plausible reason for that to happen other than careless use of a sample ripping tool, but there are plenty of other things that don't add up.
Many samples in Euphonic Strings have audible phasing problems, the result of layering multiple solo instrument samples on top of each other. This is easily audible in the "4 Violins No Vibrato" NN-XT patch. For a library claiming to have been recorded by pros, the professional touch is absolutely absent here: if you're recording a strings library and you need to resort to poorly layering samples for
four violins, something is severely wrong with your approach. Ensembles are not recorded this way to begin with, but this kind of phasing wouldn't happen unless there was some re-pitching of same samples going on again. Also, opening up those samples in the sample editor, in addition to revealing some extremely shoddy loop crossfading work, some of them continue for
one or two seconds longer on the left channel than the right. Listening to each side by itself, it's noticeable that the right-panned violins simply
end like a basic midi note, while the left side violins have an actual note-release recorded. That's an "oops, I ripped this from two libraries that had different feature sets" oversight, not something that could possibly happen when recording your own samples of actual violinists in a room. (No, not even if you are recording a soloist four times. Unless you decided to stop recording in the middle of a note sometimes and just add a fadeout...)
In this one, notice how the shape of the left side's waveform completely changes two seconds before the end of the sample. It's an audible change, too: the phasing goes away and you're left with one solo violin playing non-vib. Strangely, the samples layered with it until that point actually
are playing heavy vibrato, despite this specifically being a "No Vibrato" patch. Weird how that would happen when recording actual violinists in a studio (it wouldn't possibly).
Another thing: if this were actually four violinists recorded in a room, there would
not be this clean of a split between left and right channels! In that case, given that these four-violins patches were created by layering a few solo violin recordings together, there is a strange lack of any "solo violin" patches here at all. If they went through the considerable trouble of recording them, why not?
The tremolo and trill samples audibly contain recordings at different speeds playing out of sync with one another. It sounds like there's repitched layers of the sample sample in these as well, just like in most of the other patches.
Another tell is the absolutely inexplicable violin portamento slide samples. These were cropped from longer recordings, very inconsistently (sometimes even with non-zero-crossing clicks on one channel or both!), and are played via combinators that simultaneously play the short slide sample via one NNXT while fading in a standard sustain via another. The sustain fade-in has no relation to the length or timing of the slide samples, and is just an ADSR setting dependent on velocity, totally hosing the intended effect. This is such a klutzy setup that there is absolutely no way it would be done if the samples were actually recorded with the intention of making a Reason refill.
There are round-robins included for these slides, but they're clearly made from clumsily layering samples together, because most of them start from completely different intervals and thus sound utterly sour. But let's consider it for a moment: we're here in the studio, paying for time to record a sample library, and we can either use this time to record slides into full sustains so that they'll sound natural instead of like two samples pasted together,
or we can use it to record every slide three times, most of which are sour notes.
Making matters worse, the slides have their own EQ to try making them fit in better with the sustains. Again, if this were actually recorded 'using a pro signal chain by pros with pro gear' or whatever their website claimed, or even taken from the same sample source, these kludges wouldn't exist.
Meanwhile, the solo contrabass samples are presented in mono, for no apparent reason. How's that for a 'pro signal chain' for orchestral recording?
The manual says that you can "apply volume modulation in a similar way to a string player applying vibrato for a pleasingly human, expressive feel", but vibrato is pitch modulation, not volume modulation. A strange mistake to make when recording a strings library where that distinction is crucial to doing your job.
There are no credits listed of any of the performers, seemingly no photos of the recording sessions (only some stock photos on the old Zampled site), and no information about the recording engineers or anyone else. Were they too ashamed of the questionable quality of the result, and asked not to be credited? These names and session pictures would surely be prominently featured as promotional material to help sell the library, especially given the vague claims of
The thousands of sampled notes were played by highly skilled musicians and obsessively captured by our engineers at London's famous Livingston Studios. We used the same world-class signal path featured in countless hit records and classical recordings.
The performers and engineers are ghosts who don't exist.
"Zampled" has never released another library and has only ever offered Euphonic Strings, a complete strings library that sells for very cheap and was only ever released to the small niche audience for Reason ReFills. The product description on its shop page says its contains over 6300 samples. Creating this library legitimately, even with all its inexplicable faults, would be an expensive production. It currently sells for 49 dollars, and it's not even on sale. Comparing its price with any legitimate offering is telling. There is no way to recoup costs producing a library like this and selling it so cheaply to such a small audience.
There is an endless list of things that don't add up about Euphonic Strings.