Synful has announced an update to its virtual orchestra, version 2.4.1.

Check out the impressive MP3 demos below to hear what Synful can do.

What’s New:

• Full String Playing Modes. pizzicato, bartok-pizz, col-legno, tremolo, harmonics, sul-ponticello, sul-ponticello-tremolo.
• New Powerful Controls. Adjusting harmonic tilt, release time, and release noise level in pizzicato strings creates all kinds of Koto, African Kora, and otherworldly sounds. You can adjust tremolo speed from almost a dead stop to inhumanly fast without altering fidelity of the original recording. The bow noise control continuously adjusts a string tremolo from sharp and jagged to a smeared out shimmer. The new sforzando control continuously stretches and emphasizes the first strokes of a tremolo just like a real player.
• New Synthesis Engine. Achieving hi-fidelity in a sampler is easy when you’re just playing back digital recordings. But if you want to stretch and compress the durations of sounds, alter characteristics like bow and breath noise, adjust the levels of individual harmonics in the sounds, and splice sounds together in complex ways, then preserving the fidelity of the of the original recording is much more difficult. We believe we have achieved this with our new synthesis engine. The new string playing modes are the first to use our new synthesis engine, preserving full 24 bit fidelity while allowing us the flexible morphing capabilities we need for Reconstructive Phrase Modeling (RPM) – see www.synful.com/RPM.htm.
• Sibelius 5 Direct Plugin Compatibility. We have received so many requests! Earlier this year Sibelius 5 was introduced, featuring full plugin in host features for AU and VST plugins. Use either format on Macs and PCs and combine the expressive power of Synful Orchestra with the powerful notation and sequencing capabilities of Sibelius.
• Keyswitching. To access the new playing modes you can use keyswitching, MIDI program changes, or the Control Panel. Articulations that normally occur in arco string playing such as spicatto, detaché, normal legato, bow-changes, attacks of various kinds, etc. are still automatically selected based on normal Midi input. However Playing Mode changes from arco, to pizz, sul-pont, etc. are choices that the composer/performer must make and keyswitching makes these very convenient.
• Flexible MIDI Controller mapping. You can now map any MIDI continuous control to any Synful Orchestra parameter. No more Volume Only or Volume and Expression switches.
• Small Size. Uses 120M of memory – no disk streaming.
• Flexible MIDI Controller mapping. You can now map any MIDI continuous control to any Synful Orchestra parameter. No more Volume Only or Volume and Expression switches.
• Flexible Control Parameter Names. The name of Control Parameters may now change depending on the Program and Playing Mode and are more appropriate to the instrument. For example, the old “sustain noise trim” is now called “breath noise” in flute and “bow noise” in strings. See Help for full details or just play with the Control Panel.
• Simpler and More Flexible Program Management. See the Help for details about Local Channel Programs, Save Load Default Programs, Renaming Programs, etc.
• Pre 2 .4 Mode. A number of things have changed in version 2.4.x but we want to make sure your old projects load and sound the same. For the most part this happens automatically however there is a new button called Pre 2.4 mode on the Control Panel which is on by default when you open an older project. 99% of the time you can and should turn it off. See the Help section on Upgrading to 2.4 for full details.
• Changed MIDI Program Number . It used to be that we displayed MIDI program or patch numbers from 1-128. Now we display them from 0-127. This will not affect your sequences or projects. It is just how we display the numbers in the Program and Playing Mode pop-up lists. So where Violin used to be displayed as MIDI Program (or patch) 41, now it is displayed as 40. The reason for the change is that most controllers and sequencers seem to do it this way (however, the fact remains that they do not all agree!).
• Integrated Authorization. On Mac there is no more SynfulOrchestraAuthorizer – just a button on the Control Panel. Authorization and trial period status is displayed on the Control Panel.
• Windows Machines Require Reauthorization. We have changed the copy protection scheme on Windows to be the same as Mac. See Purchasing and Authorizing in the Help for instructions.
• Windows Vista, XP64 and Vista64 Compatible.
• Mac Universal Binary, Leopard Compatible
• Logic 7/8, Cubase 3/4, DP5, Sonar 6/7, Live, Garage Band and Many more
• Logic 8, Cubase 4, DP5 Compatible
• Bug Fixes.

A free demo version of Synful is available for download.