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  3. I win. I WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • I win. I WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    T
    T

    Man, I'm pretty stoked. After nearly 120 hours spent searching over the last month, and up to page 300 or so on my Google searches, I finally found an online retailer with a copy of the Horizon Series Solo Strings.

    YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I feel like I've stuck it to the man, outsmarted a clever and elusive foe. It's kind of a bizarre feeling of victory, since I like these Austrian-made chamber strings and epic horns very very much. But I like Kontakt very very much, as well. I don't want the VI - ever, if I can manage it. Kontakt works for me, and when it doesn't, I write a script that modifies its behavior. I don't care about dongles. They never did anything to me. :) But I really don't like the thought of being constrained to a canned workflow. I've done all the reading, all the viewing, all the research. I understand how the VI makes lots of folks' lives easier, but it's not for me. I have a particular paradigm, Kontakt does it for me, and I'm stickin' to it. So nyah.

    The sense of relief is prominent. I was going to be bitter if I had to fork over the dough for the VI version of the solo strings.

    I missed the discontinuing of these strings this past spring, as I had my head buried in the sand with a massive pile of gigs and contracts. And I really couldn't tell you the purpose of this thread. It's my first post in these forums. I guess I've never wasted more time and energy in my whole life trying to hunt down a sample library. So you VSL guys know I think your samples are the cat's pajamas. :)

    Well, alright, off to go relax after a long and tiring day in the trenches of electronic commerce. If anybody wants to know the vendor, PM me (if such a thing exists on this forum). I was informed they have the entire Horizon Series in stock, but aren't making a big deal out of it. Kinda wish they did, so they'd be easier to find - but then again, they probably wouldn't have any copies laying either, if that were the case!

    -Tom
  • H
    H

    Congratulations!  [^]

    best

    Herb
  • T
    T

    Hey, William. This forum doesn't function similarly to others I've used, so I am sorry if I've missed something obvious. But I can't find your message to respond to it, and replies to the e-mail I received only goes to some generic address. So I'll just respond here. :)

    In no way did "stick it to the man" in any way imply that I've somehow "bested" the VSL team. Sorry for the miscommunication. After all, I just gave them some more money and I already own Chamber Strings and Epic Horns from the Horizon Series. :) If anything, they're the ones who've got me by the scruff of the neck!!! No thanks to those fabulous recordings... ;) I'd simply meant that I'd circumvented the cosmic forces which were ensuring every store in the world was sold out of the solo strings library.

    As for "not a matter of ... doing complicated things to samples" - that's what I like to do!!! Half the fun for me is all the tweaking, adjusting, scripting, reprogramming, and coming up with new ways to express music and emotion dynamically with a static audio recording. When I'm not actually writing music with the patches I have, I'm dreaming up ways to construct new ones.

    Additionally, Kontakt can do all of the stuff you mentioned. I've only ever used one MIDI track for any particular instrument, via instrument banks. Kontakt can purge unused samples from memory, too. I admit, I don't know what "absolutely practical" performance controls might mean, but I like to think the controls I've set up are practical and effective. :)

    I also never said that the VI might be a complicated, burdensome sampler to learn - simply that it wouldn't let me toy around with the recordings the way I like to. I don't want this to become a "Kontakt vs.VI" debate, because they're two different programs for two different ways of working, and I just prefer Kontakt's way. And I was fretting about not finding a Kontakt version of the Solo Strings. But I did. :)

    Now granted, I don't own any VI libraries but I know I can't tweak the samples in the manner I want, so the issue of ownership versus non-ownership does not discredit my statements. I've seen the videos and done a lot of reading. It IS a cool sampler and can do a lot of powerful things quickly and easily. The dudes at VSL should let other libraries develop for VI, and open it up for reprogramming!

    Okay, well, time to keep an eye on the UPS tracking for a few days...!!

    -Tom
  • W
    W

    I guess I have gotten to the point that I cannot imagine life without horizontal cell keyswitching.
  • A
    A

     I had pretty much the same reaction.[<:o)]
  • E
    E

    Yeah, you won... until you realized that they actually had a miscount of # of available horizon series products AFTER you placed an order and AFTER they told you they had it available.. That's what happened to me. In a way I'm glad though. VI Plugin is frikkin awesome. I hate using Kontakt.