Hollywood Strings 2 Drops to €145, Down From €256
Hollywood Strings 2 is listed at €145 at Plugin Boutique, down from €256. That is €111 off EastWest's rebuilt string library, a 21-player section recorded fresh in Studio 2 rather than a reissue of the original Hollywood Strings.
Affiliate link — ModWheel may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what a brief says. How we work.
Checked against the store page on 8 September 2026. Prices move without notice, so confirm before you buy.
Buy it if you want a close, controllable string sound with real mic flexibility and do not already own a section you like. Skip it if your template already has strings you are happy with, because this library's case is its control, not a bigger sound than what you have.
Playing connects you to YouTube, which may set cookies.
The interesting decision here is not the discount, it is that EastWest went smaller for the sequel. The original Hollywood Strings was a big-room, big-ensemble library. Strings 2 puts a tighter 21-piece section in EastWest Studio 2 and mics it closer than they ever have before. That is a bet that composers wanted more control, not more scale, and at €145 it is worth testing against your own template.
What Is Actually In It
134 instruments across five sections: 6 first violins, 4 second violins, 4 violas, 4 celli and 3 basses, plus a full-ensemble patch stacking all 21 players in octaves. Every section carries legato, detache, pizzicato, staccato, spiccato, marcato, col legno and flautando, most with up to four dynamic layers.
Mic control runs to six positions: three separate close mics per section (including mics mounted directly on the instruments), plus main, mid-field and surround. The library ships in Opus, EastWest's own engine, with individual instrument downloads and three preset Moods (Classic, Soft, Epic) that recolour the whole patch.
The Close-Mic Argument
The reason to pick this over a bigger-sounding library is the close mics. A lot of cinematic string libraries fight you when you want the section forward and dry, because the main mic was recorded to sit back in a room. Hollywood Strings 2's close positions are built to sit at the front of a mix without EQ surgery, and you can blend in as much of the room as the cue actually needs rather than accepting what was baked in.
Playing connects you to YouTube, which may set cookies.
The Real Costs
Budget 160GB of disk and a machine that meets EastWest's stated 16GB RAM and quad-core 2.7GHz minimum. Opus is not Kontakt, so this will not sit inside an existing Kontakt multi, your articulation maps do not carry over, and you are running a second sample engine alongside whatever else is already loaded. If your template is Kontakt-only by policy, that friction does not go away just because the samples are good.
Feed prices exclude VAT, so checkout may read higher than the number above depending on where you buy from.
Who Should Buy This
Composers without a string section they trust, or anyone who has fought a library that will not come forward in a mix without fighting the EQ for it. If you already own strings you like and are not chasing mic-position control specifically, the money is better spent on brass or woodwinds instead.
Prices at Plugin Boutique move without notice and sales end without warning. This one was checked on the date shown above, so confirm the figure on the product page before you commit, and see the best cinematic strings roundup for how it stacks up against the rest of the category.
New reviews, no noise
Occasional email when we publish something worth your time. No daily digest, no vendor press releases.
We store only your address, never sell it, and delete it as soon as you unsubscribe. See our privacy policy.
Louis Raveton
Louis works across immersive scores (Venice Biennale, LVMH) and animation (Canal+), while producing Downtempo and Electro-Dub as Monsieur Shwill and Flagada. He treats his sample drive like a record collection, constantly hunting for the perfect 'imperfect' texture