Using Audio Imperia Solo Strings for String Quartet

As I noted here: Using Spitfire Solo Strings for string quartet, I use Dorico as a composition tool and I’ve been looking at string libraries that provide a “fair” audio rendition suitable for musicians to get an idea what a piece might sound like.

I picked up the Audio Imperia Solo library a few months ago. It provides 11 solo orchestral instruments and 2 voices for a very reasonable price. And, IMHO, the instruments sound very good. The Kontakt interface is quite nice too, and easy to work with. That said, the sounds suffer from having few articulations (e.g., for some strange reason the strings have spiccato, but no staccato) and no control over vibrato. Also, the clincher for me is that I find that some notes are sour - they are just not on pitch - so for now I’m not using the library. Perhaps it’s something I’m doing wrong, but I can’t imagine what.

Nevertheless, I created a solo strings expression map. It’s based on the one provided by AI, but with a number of tweaks, including creating a staccato articulation, which is mapped to spiccato in the instrument, but still sounds pretty good. I notice that all the strings use the same EM, so although AI provide 3 separate ones, they’re the same so I just replaced them with the one. I also set up the strings in quartet form in Kontakt and found settings that worked for me.

In case it’s useful for anyone, I’ve included the EM file in the attached zip. (I would have included the Kontakt NKM file too, but I hit the 4Mb file limit - which seems very low to me.)

Audio Imperia Solo Strings.zip (1.9 KB)

1 Like