The Sound Board

Orchestral Tools rarely, rarely have sales. Can anyone who owns them comment on these tools and how the update improves functionality?

From the email:

TOOLS COLLECTION
Orchestral String Runs & Symphonic Sphere Capsule Update - Special Offer!

Hi Friends,
we updated our legendary Tools Collections!
Orchestral String Runs and Symphonic Sphere are now running on Capsule for Kontakt.
All existing OSR & SSP users will get a download link for the free update, for all the others we have an attractive offer!

Orchestral Strings Runs, which was our first product we ever released, is the specialist when it comes to absolutely realistic-sounding string runs.
Find pre-recorded runs and playable runs patches to attain an absolutely authentic result.
In addition to the runs, the Collection also contains some beautiful basic patches.
Symphonic Sphere was our second Collection we placed on the market. A tool to create shimmering and flickering colors in orchestral compositions. Debussy and Ravel were our main influences when we did the concept for this one. The innovative Trills Orchestrator lets you play up to 5th Trills without using any keyswitches.
Another really high-grade tool for which we got so much positive response, is the Symphonic Sphere Harp - the first Harp that was sampled in all possible pedal positions! Adjust the pedals the way you want to - achieve any musical scale you have in mind. Symphonic Sphere also contains rich sounding orchestral percussion patches.
Since 2010, when Orchestral String Runs was released, we put a lot of work into the development and improvements of our Collections.
Our Berlin Series belongs to the best-sounding orchestral sampling Collections out there;
with Capsule we gave our instruments a technical heart to improve the workflow of our users.
But we are also proud of our old classics - we still love their specialized features and their unique
sound. So we took the time for an extensive update.

What is new?

For Both Collections
CAPSULE implementation
Multi Instruments
Time Machine Patches
Orchestral String Runs
New Runs Builder Feature "Lock To Beat"
New Runs Builder GUI
Two Different Runs Multi Types (Run Type & Tonality Type)
Improved Release tails
Various Bugfixes
Symphonic Sphere
Improved Release tails
Various Bugfixes
All existing users of OSR and SSP will get a download link in the next hours.

For all the others, we have an attractive offer:
You now have the chance to get Orchestral String Runs and Symphonic Sphere for an attractive
price of just 189€ + VAT each.

This offer runs until August 31.

Find all information on http://www.orchestraltools.com

Downloaded and installed the new 'Sphere', and am waiting for the OSR link. Great they decided to update these older products, as both are still very useful.

Frank, which parts of their Sphere do you find particularly useful?

The harp, especially, and occasionally a smattering of the rest. But what I was really suggesting was that they should still be quite useful for some, especially those who may not have other options. It was more of a general comment than a personal one. The Sphere and OSR were early products produced by OT, and better libraries have come along since them. For example, personally I wouldn't claim the woodwinds in Sphere are as good as in BWW. But quite recently I heard a piece done mostly with the Sphere instruments, and it still sounded quite good. As for OSR, I still use them occasionally, but it's a bit tricky sometimes getting them to blend well with some of my other libraries. Would I buy either product today? I'm really not sure. Probably not Sphere, but maybe OSR. I still need to go through the patches etc. in the new versions though before forming a solid opinion.

Ya, I bought the Cinesamples Strng runs a while back and they do the job for the little I use them, so I'm more curious about the Sphere.