[nyanpasu64]

> As long as you're willing to adapt your compositions to the instruments you have available

I've seen SNES and DS games whose sample sets handle staccato and sharp attacks better than the average soundfont out there. The cover I posted is worse than the original DS game in this aspect. I assume the Kontakt factory library is competent enough to get this right though.

I assume sample packs can't handle wide pitch bends and precise vibrato that well either. Synthesis is probably better, but the pricing I've seen is insane (but probably justified considering the complexity of simulating acoustic instruments).

[fleabitdev]

This is quite a good example of the hard limitations of high-quality sampling. If you composed a violin melody line which absolutely needed a fast attack, Kontakt (a £359 library) would give you:

- A "sustain" articulation with fast attack on the loudest dynamic (which also happens to be molto vibrato), but a slower attack on quieter dynamics

- An "attack" dial which can emulate slower attacks, but not faster ones

- A "staccato" articulation which has an instant attack, but a duration of about 0.5 seconds

- No legato, so even if you get the attack right, fast runs and ornaments are going to sound a little strange

I've encountered similar limitations with dedicated orchestral libraries. If it's not the attack, it's the expression, or the maximum note duration, or the speed of an ornament, or the timbre of the specific instrument they recorded, or something else which always dangles perfection just out of your reach.

I suspect you'd have similar problems with even the most expensive sample libraries; it's one more reason to opt out of that game altogether. If you lower your standards for audio fidelity, your musical freedom increases. When you're composing for the Nintendo DS, nobody's going to notice if you manually tweak the attack of your string sample, or fake an ornament using pitch-bend, or crossfade between two velocity layers.

SWAM is one possible escape route, but you're correct that it costs a fortune. It also has high CPU requirements, so you might need to bounce your SWAM parts to an audio track, and you'd have limited ability to put together seven SWAM violins and call it a "violin section".