Vienna Symphonic Library Forum
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  • Things in Need of Improvement in Vienna Instruments

    Hello there. I'm now using the VI Symphonic Cube for the first time in a commercial project.  I can't argue that in many ways it is incredible and adding a whole extra dimension to the music.  However I am finding some less than perfect things, so I thought I'd write them down in case anyone else agrees. 

    1.  Performance legato poramentos have only one speed!  Ok, having any realistic portamento is great but you soon realize that having it at only one speed is quite limiting for good expression.  The Garritan Gofriller Cello for example has many speeds, intuitively triggered by the velocity of overlapping notes. 

    2.  The performance legatos have only 2 velocity layers.  This is a bit poor for good crossfading expression, where 5 layers or more would be good.

    3.  You cannot crossfade the vibrato in.  Ok, I know in the video tutorials there's a way to set this up so I'll figure this out, but it would be nice to have them as part of the supplied presets which are generally very good.

    4.  I've mentioned this before but it would be good if rather than having a global on/off switch for velocity crossfading, you can have staccato samples triggered by note velocity and sustain samples responding to mod wheel or expression pedal crossfading, because this is just more intuitive than switching on and off while trying to perform.

    In all I think I've been so spoilt by the brilliance of Giorgio Tommasini's performance programming for Garritan and the new Peter Siedlaczek trumpet that in comparison the performance expression in Vienna Instruments is quite poor, stiff and old school.

    Of course though this doesn't take away from the incredible achievement of the library in general - it sounds amazing and fast runs in particular are incredibly realistic!

    Anyone else agree with this?


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    OK, I'll take this line by line as to my thoughts.

    @Another User said:

    In all I think I've been so spoilt by the brilliance of Giorgio Tommasini's performance programming for Garritan and the new Peter Siedlaczek trumpet that in comparison the performance expression in Vienna Instruments is quite poor, stiff and old school.

    I think that the Strad is an abomination and the sound is probably the worst sound that I've heard from any sample developer. However, the Trumpet sounds quite good, but I have to hear anything special. I think that you need to learn to use the VSL stuff better. For example, are you using a BC for your solo Wind and Brass instruments? How many  velocity layers do you use? Are you using a controller for Filter cut-off that is linked to any other controllers, so they both work at the same time?

    Don' get me wrong, I would love to be able to play and not worry about anything,. but so far this is not possible with any product. The Trumpet sees to be a step forward in some respects, but I need more than 3 instruments playing per machine, so it would be no good in its current state for any sort of serious work, if this was the way that all the orchestral instruments behaved.

    DG


  • I agree with the problem about there only being two velocity layers in the performance legato instruments. These days, most high-end sampled instruments (I'm thinking of the Ivory piano, or Broadway Big Band) offer MANY velocity layers for flexibility. I'm often having to work around this limitation with Vienna.


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    @stmain said:

    I agree with the problem about there only being two velocity layers in the performance legato instruments. These days, most high-end sampled instruments (I'm thinking of the Ivory piano, or Broadway Big Band) offer MANY velocity layers for flexibility. I'm often having to work around this limitation with Vienna.

    Which particular instruments are causing you to think that two layers is not enough?

    BTW I doubt that Ivory has any performance legato layers. [:D]

    D

  •  I would prefer to have an LFO in Vienna Instruments to simulate vibrato for those, who does not have vibrato patches.


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    @michkhol said:

     I would prefer to have an LFO in Vienna Instruments to simulate vibrato for those, who does not have vibrato patches.

    Which Collection doesn't have vibrato patches? I can tell you now that LFO won't happen. It never sounds good anyway.[:D]

    DG


  • For me, the most important improvements of VI,s should be: 1) POLIPHONIC LEGATO 2) Multichannel VI plugin (without the need to link VE as an external application to the host software). 3) A switchable LFO should be useful in some situations. 4) A "low quality mode" for saving CPU performance.

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    @fabio.angeleri said:

    For me, the most important improvements of VI,s should be: 1) POLIPHONIC LEGATO 2) Multichannel VI plugin (without the need to link VE as an external application to the host software). 3) A switchable LFO should be useful in some situations. 4) A "low quality mode" for saving CPU performance.

    Can you explain a little more?

    1. Doesn't make sense. How would VI know which note to join to which, and what sample to play?
    2. Use VI (on Windows). The current implementation of VE as a plugin, but using its own memory, means that one can use unlimited RAM, even though the sequencer is 32bit.
    3. I can't think of a useful situation with the current way of working with samples. When the instruments become more physically modelled, then maybe.
    4. I think you need to update your system! I don't think that much CPU can be saved here. If you are running convolution reverb plugs, then that's where the CPU is eaten up.

    DG


  •  1) One simple solution could be to join with the nearest note. Another solution (more affordable) should be assigning the part legato control to a dedicated midi CC (say 15). The composer could "label" every part with the same value, recognized by VI. Example: every CC 15 vith value "10" corresponds to the lower line, and every CC 15 with value "100" corresponds to the upper line, and so on. In this way, the composer should have the power and the flexibility to say to VI which notes have to join.

    2) I would use one VI in Logic (mac) controlling, i.e., 16 differents midi channels, exactly as another multi output sampler can do. Personally i find VE a poor solution to this limit of the VI.

    3)  Useful only in limited tweaking situation

    4) Yes, i have to update my system, but i've spent my money buyng VSL libraries ;-)


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    @fabio.angeleri said:

     1) One simple solution could be to join with the nearest note. Another solution (more affordable) should be assigning the part legato control to a dedicated midi CC (say 15). The composer could "label" every part with the same value, recognized by VI. Example: every CC 15 vith value "10" corresponds to the lower line, and every CC 15 with value "100" corresponds to the upper line, and so on. In this way, the composer should have the power and the flexibility to say to VI which notes have to join.

    2) I would use one VI in Logic (mac) controlling, i.e., 16 differents midi channels, exactly as another multi output sampler can do. Personally i find VE a poor solution to this limit of the VI.

    3)  Useful only in limited tweaking situation

    4) Yes, i have to update my system, but i've spent my money buyng VSL libraries 😉

      1. So how would you manage to phrase each polyphonic part independently? You can't use more than one continuous controller to control velocity xFade at a time, so all parts would have exactly the same timbre. Not a very professional solution IMO. It's much better to have independent parts on separate Instruments. The only time this becomes a problem is when using a notation program, and this causes other problems, which are probably best left to another discussion.
      2. Sorry I don't quite understand this. The MIDI controls the sampler, not the other way round. It's not the VI that's limited, it's the lack of 64bit applications on Mac. When OSX has caught up with XP or Vista, then this probably won't be necessary.
      3. Well I have yet to hear an example of LFO working well with samples. That's not to say that there isn't one; just I've never heard one.
      4. Yeah, this game ain't cheap....!

    DG


  • ...as far as I can tell the clarinets don't have any vib DG!

    ...i think saying the Strad is an abomination is a bit extreme... it sounds great with a bit of reverb (and echo and filtering and distortion!).  i know what you mean, this and the Garritan cello are a bit thin and artificial in a way, but they can also be quite flexible and expressive in a way that combines well with the VI's more natural but less expressive and flexible sound.  hey DG do you have any music / a website?  you're such a pompous ass (and I mean that in a very nice way, you're also very helpful!), that I'd like to hear if your ability lives up to your posturing!  As I say, I mean that nicely :-) [:)]


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    @dagmarpiano said:

    ...as far as I can tell the clarinets don't have any vib DG!

    ...i think saying the Strad is an abomination is a bit extreme... it sounds great with a bit of reverb (and echo and filtering and distortion!).  i know what you mean, this and the Garritan cello are a bit thin and artificial in a way, but they can also be quite flexible and expressive in a way that combines well with the VI's more natural but less expressive and flexible sound.  hey DG do you have any music / a website?  you're such a pompous ass (and I mean that in a very nice way, you're also very helpful!), that I'd like to hear if your ability lives up to your posturing!  As I say, I mean that nicely 😊

    The clarinets have very little vibrato, but that's the way that clarinets sound in an orchestra. Vibrato would be a special effect, and not really suited to orchestral music.

    I'm entitled to be as pompous as I like and I don't even have to be any good at anything . My ability, or lack of it, is irrelevant. You don't really think that music critics know anything about music do you? [:P]

    DG


  •  1) Uh! I don't considered the problem of the velocity XFade. Sorry. But i have to say: this is a limitation of VI. Is the same for the Expression controller.

    I realize that at this time, the best solution for using VIs is one instance for one instrument, meaning often "one VI for one voice" (due to VI's limitations on poliphony, vel Xfade and Exp controllers.

    It works well, is simple and effective, but for me sometimes is far from a real "sheet" compositive approach, because always it need some tweaks to split parts on multiple tracks, losing the real mind-sheet scheme of the score (i have to put around 3 tracks for each instrument).

    Seeing how much people are interested in the Sibelius-VE integration, i think that lot of VI users would like to use VI for composing directly in the midi arrangement, with the same intuitive approach as in one notation program.

    In other words, for me should be fantastic if the midi arrangement could be written as an orchestral sheet.

    A real BIG evolution could be the passage from the concept

    one track(one Vi instance) -> one instrument, to

    one track(one VI instance) -> one orchestral staff

    Don't say that this is impossible!

    2)  Some misunderstandings. What i'd like is to have a "multipart" and "multioutput" version of the VI plugin. Most Virtual Instruments have also the multi output version. One instance could load i.e. a large set, receiving midi data from different midi channels. You can route the instruments on one output at your choice. A sort of VE but as a plugin opened within the host application. Memory limitations due to non 64 bit applications...OSX Leopard is 100% 64 bit. Ok, if Logic is not 64 bit it can't load more of 3 Gb, patience... but let's talk about the future!

    3) Maybe it was a bad idea.

    4) ....


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    Fabio, I think that I understand what you are saying now. However I still see a slight problem with polyphonic parts on one stave. I think that this could be solved by:
    1. Sending certain notes to one VI and the other notes to another. This is a sequencer problem.
    2. Setting different continuous controller for each VI instance. In this case as long as the controllers were different for both options and when they are not being used, are set not to respond to anything. I do this anyway in order that I don't have to worry about release samples on and off, and also because some instruments work better with Breath Control, and others with a fader.

    Regarding VE as a plugin, I'm not quite sure what is wrong with the current setup of VE2. There are inherent problems for 64bit sequencers trying to run 32bit plugs, and it has proved (so far) that the best solution is to go the VE route, where a 64bit plug can be loaded in a 32bit sequencer. Once everything is 64bit this will be a non issue, but that is not likely to be the case for up to a year IMO.

    DG


  •  now for my 2 cents worth, which i've mentioned previously in other posts.

    More uniformity amongst the articulations (specifically DYNAMICS) within (and between) collections.

    What i mean is this:

    If my Orch Strings 1 had a 1.5 sec, 2 sec, 3 sec, 4 sec, and 6 sec PFP articulations for the regular Violins, id like those same exact numbers for the the strong dynamics, the medium dynamics, the con sordinos, the tremeloes, and the same values available on the Violas, the Celli. the Double Bassi, etc. My Chamber strings DO seem to be more uniform. Nearly All have available a 2, 4, and 6 sec dynamic cres/dim patch, which is good. Maybe it's just the Orch strings that are less congruent, i dont know. Anyhow it would be nice :)

    And the other thing would be to have the glissandi available for all instruments in a collection. In Orch String 1 and 2, they are only available on the violins. [:(]

    oh yeah, one more thing: I'd like all the collections to be made available as free shareware and come with a T-shirt, bumper sticker, and free VSL Secret Decoder Ring. [:P]


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    @DG said:


    Which Collection doesn't have vibrato patches? I can tell you now that LFO won't happen. It never sounds good anyway.

    DG

     Special Edition. I'm not so sure that LFO cannot sound acceptable. Add random variations in speed and amplitude and it will be good enough.

  • ...


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    @DG said:


    Which Collection doesn't have vibrato patches? I can tell you now that LFO won't happen. It never sounds good anyway.

    DG

     Special Edition. I'm not so sure that LFO cannot sound acceptable. Add random variations in speed and amplitude and it will be good enough.

    Random is not good enough, When a string player plays with vibrato, it is not random; if follows a very specific set of rules, and even then it still sounds different, depending on the player. I would think that to make anything even bearable with LFO you would require a detailed knowledge of playing the instrument, and then you would know enough not to be satisfied. [;)]

    With regards the vibrato patches, which instruments are you missing them with, so that we can be totally clear about this?

    DG

  • Fabio,

    To further elaberate on DG's point 1 above, there is a small transition sample played between notes when playing the legato patch.  So, as DG pointed out, how would VI know which note to attach to which other note.   That's why legato patches are not polyphonic.  At least that's how I understand it.  


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    @fabio.angeleri said:

    For me, the most important improvements of VI,s should be: 1) POLIPHONIC LEGATO 2) Multichannel VI plugin (without the need to link VE as an external application to the host software). 3) A switchable LFO should be useful in some situations. 4) A "low quality mode" for saving CPU performance.

    Can you explain a little more?

    1. Doesn't make sense. How would VI know which note to join to which, and what sample to play?
    2. Use VI (on Windows). The current implementation of VE as a plugin, but using its own memory, means that one can use unlimited RAM, even though the sequencer is 32bit.
    3. I can't think of a useful situation with the current way of working with samples. When the instruments become more physically modelled, then maybe.
    4. I think you need to update your system! I don't think that much CPU can be saved here. If you are running convolution reverb plugs, then that's where the CPU is eaten up.

    DG

    I was refering to this post here.  Sorry I forgot to quote it.