Sonokinetic Sultan Strings Kontakt Library Better

To maintain journalistic integrity: Sultan Strings is not a panacea.

Sonokinetic is legendary in the world of sampling for one specific reason: their phrase-based approach. Sultan Strings is a crown jewel in their collection, capturing the exotic, evocative, and rhythmic essence of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean string arrangements.

However, if you are used to standard "key-switching" libraries (where you press a key to change articulations like legato or staccato), Sultan Strings can feel intimidating. You might feel like you are just "pressing play" on a MIDI file rather than composing.

If you want to make your Sultan Strings productions sound more authentic, organic, and "better," follow these essential tips. sonokinetic sultan strings kontakt library better

You need Kontakt 6.7.1 or higher (Full version, not Player). Why is this a "better" situation?

Because you have raw access to the wrench icon. In the Kontakt backend, you can:

One of the most powerful features often overlooked in Sultan Strings is the Time Machine (found in the GUI). To maintain journalistic integrity: Sultan Strings is not

Phrase-based libraries have a set tempo. If your track is at 120 BPM and the phrase was recorded at 100 BPM, standard stretching can sound artificial.

Kontakt’s standard scripting allows for arpeggiators and step sequencers. Sultan Strings includes a dedicated Phrase Animator that syncs to your DAW’s tempo.

Overall rating: 8.5/10
Best for: Middle Eastern, cinematic, ethnic fusion, trailer music, and composers needing authentic phrasing | Feature | Sonokinetic Sultan Strings | CSS

| Feature | Sonokinetic Sultan Strings | CSS / Spitfire Chamber / BBCSO | |--------|---------------------------|--------------------------------| | Western intonation | ❌ No (microtonal focus) | ✅ Yes | | Legato | ❌ No true legato | ✅ Excellent legato | | Arabic/Turkish maqam | ✅ Excellent | ❌ Not possible | | Playable patterns | ✅ Built‑in engine | ❌ No | | Price | $$ (mid‑range) | $$$–$$$$ | | Kontakt Full required | ✅ Yes | Varies |

Sultan Strings is built around Middle Eastern music theory. Standard Western scales (Major/Minor) often sound "wrong" or generic when trying to utilize this library to its fullest potential.

Haali Media Splitter

Changes

23/06/2013

New Features:
- Added support for more truetype font mime types (application/x-font-ttf, application/vnd.ms-opentype)
- Added support for A_TRUEHD, A_MLP, A_ALAC media types
- Added support for 'twos' uncompressed audio in mp4
- Added support for sampling rates > 48 KHz in mp4
- Added support for E-AC-3 in mp4
- GDSMux can use a full Matroska splitter input filter now
Fixed items:
- Fixed reading audio tracks from mov files where esds is inside wave box

03/03/2011

Fixed items:
- Fixed unrecognized video track in some transport streams
- Added more H.264 aspect ratio options
- Fixed occasional excessive disk I/O when paused

21/11/2010

Fixed items:
- Fixed a bug in uninstaller that prevented it from properly unregistering all filters

14/08/2010

Fixed items:
- Fixed aspect ratio processing in certain Matroska files, which caused errors on open

20/05/2010

New Features:
- Added support for WebM files
Fixed items:
- Fixed a lot of issues with mp4 muxer
- Better support for VC-1 in MPEG Transport streams

27/03/2010

New Features:
- Added AC-3 in MP4 support
Fixed items:
- Show error code in GDSMux when muxing is aborted
- Accept more AAC media types in the muxer
- Use correct timescales when processing MP4 edit lists
- Scan the folder for more segments only if the file references external segments

19/12/2009

New Features:
- Added a 64-bit version
- A shell extension was removed from the splitter. This will be available seprately at a later date.
- Added truehd and mlp support for Matroska files and transpor streams
Fixed items:
- Fixed lpcm in transport streams support

11/01/2009

New Features:
- The shortcut for gdsmux is created in the start menu
Fixed items:
- Broken Matroska files with looped SeekHeads could cause a hang in Matroska Parser, the number of SeekHeads is now limited to 10
- Removed the workaround to find tags written by Matroska Shell Extension, this caused excessive file scanning when opening files created by recent MKVToolnix
- File linking is now enabled by default

29/03/2008

New Features:
- Added support for muxing FLAC audio as A_FLAC to the muxer
- Added support for parsing recovery point SEIs in H.264 streams in PS and TS containers
- Added an automatic colorspace selection option to the renderer, it switches to BT.709 when video width is 1024 or more
Fixed items:
- Added a workaround for some broken matroska files with trailing 0s
- Disabled the PS3 upscaler since it doesn't work properly on all hardware
- Fixed handling of VC-1 with changing sequence headers in PS and TS containers
- Fixed VC-1 aspect ratio detection
- Added support for PCM audio with 7 and 8 channels
- Fixed channel mapping for PCM in M2TS container
- Added a workaround to make MS VC-1 DMO decoder accept formats with included aspect ratio information
- Fixed the misbehaving Apply button in color planes shift dialog in the renderer

29/12/2007

Fixed items:
- Fixed a glitch in red/blue shift code and extended the maximum shift range

26/12/2007

New Features:
- Added V_MJPEG support
- Implemented slightly faster red/blue planes shift
- Added more stable bicubic upscaling when PS 3 are available
Fixed items:
- Restored Windows 2000 compatibility
- Fixed audio tracks stopping too early in files with ordered chapters

18/11/2007

New Features:
- Removed Win9x support
- Enabled autoloading fonts by default
- Added support for writing zlib compressed mov headers
- Added an option to write smaller but less compatile files in gdsmux, this behaviour was always on previously
Fixed items:
- Use ACM codec id 0x50 for MPEG-1 layer 1/2 audio
- Fixed detection of MPEG-1 audio channel count
- Various bugfixes in gdsmux
- Eliminated a deadlock in video renderer
- Fixed H.264 muxing
- Fixed parsing of zlib compressed mp4/mov headers

03/06/2007

New Features:
- Added support for more audio formats in quicktime files.
- Added support for zlib compressed headers in quicktime files.
- Subtitle streams are now shown by shell extension.
- Added a preview tab and range selection to GDSMux.
- Added A/V encoding support to GDSMux.
- Added hardsubbing support to GDSMux.
- Added minimal editing support to GDSMux.
- Added support for loading cuesheets and HD-DVD xml chapter files in GDSMux chapter editor.
- Added support for more video and audio formats to the muxer.
Fixed items:
- Fixed a regression in PS timestamps calculation.
- Fixed GetCurrentImage in the renderer so it behaves correctly when called indirectly via FGM.
- Fixed some minor bugs in GDSMux chapter editor.
- Fixed next/prev segment IDs generation and reading in GDSMux.
- Other improvements and bugfixes.

28/04/2007

Fixed items:
- Fixed a regression in PS timestamps calculation.

27/04/2007

New Features:
- Added support for DTS in TS stream type 0x82.
- Added support for more LPCM types in TS.
- Added workaround for some broken TS files.
- Added support for BT.709 color conversion in the renderer.
- Added support for full luma range in the renderer.
- Added workaround for filters that don't send NewSegment to the muxer.
Fixed Items:
- Use WAVEFORMATEXTENSIBLE for multichannel audio.
- Fixed MPEG-2 in TS/PS parsing.
- Fixed splitter stalling on very high bitrate files.
- Fixed parsing of wrapped PTS in TS/PS.

28/03/2007

New Features:
- The installer now shows a warning if you try to overwrite a newer version of the splitter.
- Added support for TRACKSETEX tags, they work much like TRACKSET ones below, with one addition: first word in the tag's value specifies the edition ID that is linked to this trackset. If that edition is activated from the UI, the trackset is also activated.
- Track numbers instead of track IDs can be specified in TRACKSET(EX) tags by using #num syntax.
- Added support for 'h264' fourcc to the muxer.
- The splitter will now register m2ts and evo extensions when MPEG TS/PS support is enabled.
Fixed Items:
- Some code rearrangement in the renderer that allows it to work on Intel GMA950 graphics devices (onboard graphics commonly found in laptops). Also it might reduce tearing on some other chipsets (Intel driver doesn't like to be called from multiple threads, it's possible that there are more drivers like that).
- The splitter no longer removes extra H.264 SPS and PPS NALUs from the stream, since there are transport streams where SPS and PPS do change in the middle of a stream.

07/03/2007

New Features:
- Improved gdsmux.
- Added support for S_TEXT/ASCII subtitles to the DS muxer filter.
- Added support for H.264 in MPEG-PS.
- Improved support for DD+ in MPEG-PS.
- Added a bitrate graph to the renderer OSD (only active when the splitter is used as source).
- Added some support for PCM an ulaw audio in qt files.
- Added automatic linking of VOB files.
Fixed items:
- Renderer: eliminated an incompatibility with geforce 5 hardware.
- Renderer: fixed a distroted picture with some VfW codecs.
- Fixed a problem with seeking in MPEG-PS/TS.

27/02/2007

New Features:
- Added MPEG PS support (incomplete).
- Added VC-1 in TS/PS support.
- Added more items to the renderer OSD.
- Renderer OSD can now be activated with right-Alt+O.
- Added LPCM in TS support (incomplete).
- Improved GDSMux utility.
- Improved seeking in TS files.
Fixed items:
- Fixed display when the window is partially outside the screen.
- Allow playback when TS file duration can't be detected, seeking is not possible in this case.
- H.264 with short startcodes in TS is now properly handled.
- Muxer bugfixes.

15/02/2007 Corrected an installer problem (It tried to register libraries in wrong order).

13/02/2007

New Features:
- Added color planes shifting code (useful for correcting projector errors).
- Added support for DTS in bluray m2ts.
- Added support for WMA Pro to the muxer.
- Aspect ratio and frame rate is now extracted from MPEG2 in TS.
- Added a graphical DS Mux application.
Fixed items:
- mkv2vfr now writes correct files bigger than 2GB.
- Fixed a bug in stream switching.
- A more detailed message is displayed when a codec is missing during a stream switch.
- Fixed incorrect behaviour during file open when the file is in the process of being written.
- Fixed image distortions when using bicubic enlarging.
- Fixed detection of some DTS streams in TS.
- Fixed a crash in the simple media splitter when file open fails.
- Fixed a number of threading issues in the renderer that happened during DVD playback.

31/01/2007

New features:
- Video Renderer now uses multiple passes instead of complex shaders, and works on PS 1.1 hardware. Bicubic scaling and deinterlacing are available staring with PS 1.4.
- Added DTS support in MPEG TS streams.
- Added a much better deinterlacer to the Video Renderer.
- Added Type 1 DV in AVI support to the splitter.
- Added minimal support for reference files in MOV container (useful when playing files over http).
- Added minimal support for Bluray m2ts files (only tested with MPEG2/AC3).
- BITMAPINFOHEADER is now used to passthrough aspect ratio when using WMV3 video in Matroska (only works when using the Video Renderer for playback).
Fixed items:
- Fixed seeking in WMV files when played with the Video Renderer.
- Fixed seeking when cues in matroska file are invalid.
- Fixed audio track switching to AAC tracks.
- Fixed handling of wrapping PTS in MPEG TS streams.
- Fixed video streams changing when using Matroska files with Ordered Chapters.
- Fixed a rare crash during Simple Splitter destruction.
- Fixed a muxer bug when a sample extends past the movie's end (rarely happens with subtitles).
- Fixed Matroska muxer to always use NALU size length of 4.
- Eliminatd tearing on some hardware when not using Soft VSync in the Video Renderer.
- Better compatibility with DVD playback using a Video Renderer (still not perfect).

28/12/2006 [DXR] Moving window to the secondary monitor is properly handled now. Added an option to show frame timestamps (d3dx v29 is needed for that). Fixed video frame size returns (Zoom player problems eliminated). Improved video shrinking. Startup delays on UP systems eliminated. Added an option to limit max number of frames buffered. Fixed seeking problems with WM files. Fixed an unwanted phase shift in YUV to RGB conversion. [dsmux] Allows setting some track parameters now (AR, title, etc). [Matroska] Muxer iprovements. [MP4] Better support for 3gp subtitles. [General] Added a shell property page (right click on attachments to extract them). Disabled an annoying error message when it shouldn't have been shown. Shell integration dll is now unicode only.
And a happy new year to everyone!

29/10/2006 [Matroska] Fixed a compatibility issue with files having BlockDuration inside a laced BlockGroup (those were produced by mkvmerge around v0.6). [TS] Fixed a serious bug in mpeg-ts parser that discarded valid audio frames.

26/10/2006 [General] Various small splitter bugfixes and improvements. Added support for cuesheets and subtitles to dsmux (requires Gabest's Subtitle Source filter). Added an option to disable error messages, the splitter will silently fail on invalid/unsupported files. Thumbnails are now extracted in a separate process, so buggy codecs should no longer affect the host application. [Matroska] Much improved mkv2vfr utility now handles AVC video and correctly writes AVI files larger than 2GB, it is now included in the splitter package. [OGM] Added support for a couple of other ancient versions of the format. [DXR] A couple of bugfixes.

07/07/2006 [General] Muxer fixes and improvements. Renderer bugfixes and improvements. Added an MPEG-TS splitter. Fixed some issues with ACM Wrapper. Other splitter bugfixes.
Warning: TS files with missing PAT/PMT tables are not supported.

07/05/2006 [Avi] Set track language to undetermined. [MP4] Use proper timescale for elst records. Added a simple MP4 muxer. [General] Muxer improvements, video renderer bugfixes and improvements.

25/02/2006 [MP4] A few parser improvements. [Matroska] Better ordered chapters support, added multichannel and 24/32 bit pcm support to the splitter and muxer, added a command line DShow based muxer. [General] Added a video renderer, fixed a deadlock in FileSource-based filter.

30/01/2006 [Matroska] Updated MatroskaParser source.

29/01/2006 [General] Return proper LCID in IAMStreamSelect. [OGM] Properly handle codecs that have CodecPrivate data.

18/01/2006 [General] Don't discard frames when pausing.

17/01/2006 [General] Minor fixes/improvements. [MP4] One more seeking fix.

15/01/2006 [General] Better thumbnail extraction. [Matroska] Muxer improvements. [MP4] Better seeking.

02/01/2006 [General] Avoid unnecessary rewinding when switching editions. Added a splitter version that can use FileSource with MERIT_UNLIKELY. Added a splitter version that exposes all streams as pins with MERIT_DO_NO_USE. Added a http reader that is registered for matroska only, for other file types you can add a value in HKCR\http. Installer improvements. Added thumbnails extraction in explorer, registered for matroska only and disabled in settings by default. Fixed seeking in certain files with AVC. [Matroska] Muxer improvements. [MP4] Some small parser improvements.
A lot of changes went into this release, so some bugs may have slipped in unnoticed. Take care.

25/11/2005 [General] Added code to the installer to handle dlls that are in use during install.

25/11/2005 [Matroska] Muxer improvements. [General] Added a shell extension to display info in explorer details view. [OGM] Added some xvid decoder workarounds.

14/11/2005 [General] Fixed creating shortcut in installer, a few other minor improvements.

13/11/2005 [General] A lot of internal code restructuring. [Muxer] Added support for packed bitstream input with more than one b-frame. [AVI,OGM,Matroska] Read more tags from files, added an option to display muxer name as a Rating tag.

10/11/2005 [AVI] Discard dropped frames in the parser. [OGM] Accept some more weird files.

06/11/2005 [General] Added ogg parser.

30/10/2005 [General] Fixed yet another glitch in subtitle language priorities.

29/10/2005 [General] Added trackset language priorities to the splitter settings, fixed a bug in language selection.

25/10/2005 [General] Fixed a serious bug that slipped in yesterday.

25/10/2005 [Matroska] Added theora support.

23/10/2005 [MP4] Added primitive edit lists support. [Matroska] Improved muxer. [General] Added tracksets. They allow selecting both audio+subs tracks with a single click in the splitter menu. To use them add tags with name TRACKSET and value "video_track_id audio_track_id subs_track_id three_letter_language [optional name]". Track id '.' means don't change track, 'x' means turn off track (valid for subs only). Example:

   <Tags>
     <Tag>
       <Simple>
	 <Name>TRACKSET</Name>
	 <String>. 72784144 1640508160 jpn</String>
       </Simple>
       <Simple>
	 <Name>TRACKSET</Name>
	 <String>. 3634403394 x eng</String>
       </Simple>
     </Tag>
   </Tags>

11/10/2005 [Matroska] Added a DirectShow Matroska muxer. Fixed a broken audio language priorities setting. Added support for reading some more broken/incomplete matroska files. [MP4] Added support for reading some nonstandard 3ivx files.

18/09/2005 [General] Try to select a default track first if it matches the language preferences.

18/09/2005 [General] SSA font sizes can be scaled in splitter options now, frames are now dropped when fastforwarding so faster speeds are possible. [Matroska] Better handling for some invalid/unsupported Matroska files, zlib upgraded to 1.2.3.

04/09/2005 [General] Added an API to get some codec timings, fixed a bug that occasionally happened in graphs without clock (never happens during normal playback).

03/09/2005 [General] Fix wmv9 support that was broken in the previours release.

31/08/2005 [General] Added limited video size and AR runtime change support for ordered chapters. [AVI] Try to remove garbage from start of mp3 tracks like MS splitter does.

18/08/2005 [General] Fix occasional errors in subtitle switching that appeared in the previous build.

15/08/2005 [MP4] Added support for QT files with 5.1 AAC audio. [Matroska] Improved mode2cd support.

02/08/2005 [General] Buffering code rewrite, this should eliminate the occasional problems introduced in recent versions.

31/07/2005 [General] Map wmv3 to WMV3 fourcc in avi, so wm9 video works. Bitrate graph should be more accurate now, and labels are scaled to display dpi. Changed queue sizes so they try to use the entire file buffer.

18/07/2005 [General] Fixed wrong rgb order in jpeg reader.

18/07/2005 [Matroska] Show the first jpeg attachment as video if the file has no video tracks. [General] Eliminated a crash in ffdshow when switching video tracks and/or segments.

11/07/2005 [Matroska] Don't reject some damaged/truncated files. [General] Better compatibility with vsfilter.

03/07/2005 Various fixes and improvements.

26/06/2005 [General] Fix: a reference to the graph could be held for a long time in some cases, that prevented proper graph destruction. Updated zlib to 1.2.2.

25/06/2005 [General] A bunch of small bugfixes and improvements. [MP4] Support AR correction for ASP video and nero decoder.

12/06/2005 [General] Fixed a subtitle selection glitch inroduced in 07/06/2005 version. Removed AVI compatibility transforms from mp4 parser, and unified native mpeg-4 asp code in matroska and mp4 parsers. This was required for correct rendering of vfr streams and native mpeg-4 asp in Matroska. Native mpeg-4 asp is tested and works with ffdshow and nero decoders, xvid and divx decoders probably won't work due to a different format block. Warning: mkvmerge versions before 2005-06-12 have bugs in native mpeg-4 asp processing.

07/06/2005 [General] Fixed avc sps parser to understand high profile.

29/05/2005 [General] Don't show tray icon when called from explorer.exe, added mp4/avi on mode2 CDs support. [MP4] Register mp4 extension.

21/05/2005 [MP4] Added multiple sample descriptions for tx3g tracks support, added support for some more apple HD qt trailers. [Matroska] Map ARTIST tag to DS Author field.

03/05/2005 [Matroska] Improved ordered chapters support. Fix a bug when wrong frames were accidentally left in queue at file open, this could happen with some truncated files and files with unspecified segment length. [MP4] Add mp4a in qt support, so recent apple trailers play with audio.

19/04/2005 Fix VOL patching when ext AR was already present.

18/04/2005 Handle one more case of VOL changing.

17/04/2005 MPEG4 ASP and AVC pixel aspect ratio values in the bitstream are now replaced with Matroska DAR. Other containers are left as is.
Some backgound: I've spent this weekend dealing with aspect ratio issues due to (not so) recent decoder changes. DirectShow has a standard way of passing aspect ratio in the VIDEOINFOHEADER2 structure that is stored inside media type. Unfortunately, for this to work, these values need to passed right from the splitter down the filter chain. MPEG-2/4 bitstreams also have a way to store aspect ratio. Usually decoders simply passed on the AR info provided by the splitter and all worked fine. Buf recently some of them were changed to ignore media type AR info, and instead take AR from mpeg bitstream. This results in breaking playback for many existing matroska files, where PAR in bitstream is usually 1:1, and correct AR is in the container. To workaround this, I now modify mpeg bitstream on the fly and set PAR to values calculated from Matroska DAR.

17/04/2005 [Matroska] Minor parsing fixes. [General] Patch avc sps to always use AR info from container, not from bitstream (fixes ffdshow ignoring container AR).

14/04/2005 [Matroska] Better support for hybrid wavpack. [General] Only merge explicitly linked segments by default.

13/04/2005 [MP4] Added nero chapters support. [AVI] Fixed reading DXN avis. [General] Fixed preroll handling.

10/04/2005 [MP4] Fixed ttxt parsing.

10/04/2005 [MP4] Added AMR and h263 support. (3gp files)

08/04/2005 [MP4] Don't flag multiple sample descriptions in stsd as an error.

08/04/2005 Added timed text in mp4 (tx3g) support, text positioning is not supported yet.

02/04/2005 Renamed filter to Haali Media Splitter, added about box, added raw YV12/YUY2 in avi support, improved seeking for mka files with large frames (Wavpack, TTA).

22/03/2005 Added PCM audio in avi support.

22/03/2005 Hybrid wavpack support, misc bugfixes.

19/03/2005 Better handling of multichannel audio in mp4.

19/03/2005 Added wavpack support, vorbis in mp4 support.

17/03/2005 Added workarounds for broken and weird AVI files.

16/03/2005 Stream switching fixes.

15/03/2005 Fixed mpeg4 asp bframes in mp4.

14/03/2005 Xvid&divx decoders for mpeg-4/asp in mp4 compatility (these want a sequence header prepended to each frame to work), you need to enable mp4v fourcc in xvid for this to work.

11/03/2005 Plugged a memory leak when closing the file.

10/03/2005 Assume mpeg2-aac is the same as mpeg4-aac in mp4.

10/03/2005 Added 'ftypavc1' to the list of mp4 signatures.

09/03/2005 Added vobsubs in mp4 support.

09/03/2005 Added mpeg1/mpeg2/mp3 in mp4 support.

08/03/2005 Fix embedded subtitles switching in avi.

08/03/2005 MP4 container support, only mp4v, mp4a and avc1 streams supported.

03/03/2005 Regsiter shell file type if there was no .mkv yet, seamless subs switching with latest VSfilter and MPC, fix a typo in setting.

19/02/2005 Fix a crash when the cues table was present but empty, tray icon can be turned off, additional support for shared intro/outro, fix a subtle bug in buffering that could cause annoying jitter in avi playback, fix a bug in buffering that could cause jitter and excessive seeking in high bitrate matroska files.

04/02/2005 Don't scan for more segments when NextUID is null, ask the user if he wants to load embedded fonts, better support for files without cues.

29/01/2005 Fix an obscure bug that prevented the value box from being shown in properties when invoked via MPC.

28/01/2005 Added a much better language selection option, you can specify audio&sub language pairs now, added nested chapters support.

28/01/2005 AVI support can be enabled in the installer, fix a possible division by zero in AVI parser, display proper error messages on Win9x, add DXN Fusion multisegment files support.

24/01/2005 Properly display ampersands in context menu.

23/01/2005 Relax cue checks a bit, so valid files are not rejected by the parser. DShow: don't deliver samples at a wrong time (this could lead to crashes in ffdshow and other downstream filters).

20/01/2005 Installer improvements: added an option to disable existing matroska splitters, Matroska file types are now added to the WMP open file dialog.

19/01/2005 Merge segments with identical codecs into one virtual segment. Split files now look the same as the original.

16/01/2005 Add AR signaling for Zoom player, fix typo in options.

11/01/2005 Fix rundll32 path.

11/01/2005 Add another mediatype for A_REAL, it should play in MPC now.

11/01/2005 Fix chapters support that i've broken two days ago, fix file sharing modes on open.

10/01/2005 Fix seeking in files that don't start at 0.

10/01/2005 Native mpeg4 support, fix tree in properties page, automatically load linked files (needs to be enabled in options).

06/01/2005 Start menu shortcut, better win9x support, other small fixes and improvements.

02/01/2005 Win9x support.

02/01/2005 Mode2 cd support, various fixes and improvements.

17/12/2004 Flac playback fixed.

17/12/2004 A complete rewrite with many new features.