Hi,
I own many string libraries and have been using them a fair few years.
CH strings are excellent but not usable in all situations. Here's what I love and dislike about CH strings:
Love
-Imo, best solo strings sound for demanding writing e.g. classical melodies, other than SWAM (however SWAM gets criticised for having a lacklustre sound out of the box, costs more and is more complex)
-Excellent value. It's cheaper than many other major string libraries.
-Fairly reliable. These instruments don't seem to glitch much for me. YMMV.
-Huge amount of articulations. More than any other generalist string library I know. If the default patch can't do what you want, it's likely another patch can*
-Extremely customisable. You can control reverb, body, vibrato, legato speed, attack etc etc.
-Huge dynamic range. Sometimes audible switches between dynamic layers.
-Keyswitches are consistent across CH instruments. Learn one, learn them all. CH brass, for example, is excellent and actually my go-to for lyrical brass writing.
-The legato is generally good**
-Dynamic expression is a great patch and can sometimes get quick expressive results***
-Chris Hein is active in forums and seems a generally good person for providing support, updates etc.
-Fairly flexible sound can be tailored to multiple genres of music.
-Gives you the option of controlling volume/ expression through MIDI velocity or CC or both****
Neutral
-Uses keyswitches heavily. You have to make use of these quite extensively in a lot of situations.
-High or low instruments don't play in the written octaves in MIDI. In this case, the double basses are written an octave higher than sounding. This can make large orchestral arrangements a bit confusing. You can probably change this, or just use a plugin before the VSTi to move MIDI up or down an octave (careful with how this will affect your keyswitches).
Dislike
-The longs won't last indefinitely long. Sometimes I need a longer note, which now adds 10 minutes to my workflow while I have to crossfade one long with another.
-There's some harshness around 1-3khz. The sound out of the box isn't as good as some other libraries. I tend to attenuate this area and then strongly boost the his.
-Reverb out of the box isn't great to me. I use my own reverb, and reduce the body of the instrument (see 'love').
-The louder dynamics layers are VERY loud in terms of decibel output. If your instrument is moving between these layers, you will probably need to automate volume or add a compressor.
-*The sound of different patches won't always match, e.g., 'Short 1' might be louder than 'Short 3' so I can't always simply swap between all these keyswitches without issues and time consuming fine-tuning.
-**Legato sometimes sounds weird and will often cause a spike in volume.
-***The consistent shaping that this gives most notes sometimes gets repetitive, and if it isn't what you want you'll have to load up a sustain patch which has very little movement and just manually input all the CC.
-****Takes a bit of setting up to get this how I like it, and can be very finicky if you want to use both velocity and CC to, e.g., create a fortepiano effect, especially when combined with any legato playing complications.
For general use, I prefer Performance Samples Vista or CSS. Aaron Venture looks interesting though I've never tried it. Met Ark 1 and 2 strings are brilliant for certain specific needs. However, CH Ensemble or Solo Strings is still a very good library and certainly not a waste of money. You can hear CH ensemble and solo strings in my music here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-668111672/n ... 1edd8facb0