Realsamples Natural Violin Collection HALion

I'm 45 years old and I've been making music since I'm about 10 years old. I was doing some clinics in the 80s and played keyboards in synths in several professional bands. I've been working mainly as a studio musician in the 90s and for the last 4 years, I've been building my own studio and record original stuff now. I'm mostly in the digital domain (Logic, Powercore, UAD-1), but I also got a Studer tape machine where I sometimes record in the first place to get more warmth and where I finalize things.

I've been working with these samples for 6 months now, and I must say I'm very impressed.
The Pizzicato section seemed nothing too special at first sight, but the normal violin samples sound AWESOME!!
Like Lou Reed's string section in "Walk On The Wild Side" (the string arrangement was not from Lou, of course, but Bowie's Mick Ronson...) -classy, shiny, warm... Yep, that's it.
The other Strings I tried (e.g. Kirk Hunter) sounded good, too, but they sound flat compared to these because they only have like 1 velocity of each note.
Offering just normal and pizzicato sounds, the library is rather specialized, but hey, they have 32 velocites of each note. THAT'S what I call realism and depth.

The pizzicato section is very good, too, and has the same depth because of 32 velocities, but I don't like Pizzicato in general, so I don't use it very often. The normal sounds are 10+++ to me, the only thing is I have no use for a Pizzicato sound.
And then, there's the price, too. Why should I spend 300++ $ for a library that sounds worse than one I can get for 40?

In fact I liked it so much that when I recently visited their website I purchased their Fender Rhodes set (see my other review).

I'm recording pop songs and ballads semi-professionally. I do the arrangements myself and play guitars and keyboards. For drums, I usually hire someone. I would consider my equipment to be rather professional: I mix through an small Trident mixing desk and use mostly outboard effects.

I always wanted to add some real violin sounds to my collection - I had tried the Advanced Orchestra strings. While offering many articulations, it lacked the real dynamics of stringed instruments.
The Realsamples Natural Violin Collection has 32 multisamples per note, so this time I could get real violin dynamics. The overall sound is rather "vintage" instead of polished like the Advanced Orchestra. As far as I understand, the samples are not finally processed, so I can still tweak the sound myself, which is just fine for me.
I think the realism you get here is great, also with the Pizzicato articulation. And for the price I think it's a real bargain.