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  • Wagner Tuba

    Exploring the VSL-Wagner Tuba (Brass II) makes me wonder about the sudden change in sound-character with an increase of velocity: When played with low velocity, the sound indeed is very warm and horn-like (as intended to be by Richard Wagner); increasing the velocity just a little bit results in a sudden change to a very metallic, nasal, almost body-less sound with little power (resembling a contrabass or bass trombone). Is this the way it is supposed to be? Or in other words: Does this correspond with the sound characteristics of a real Wagner Tuba?

    Any comments are welcome!

    Thinwood


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    Hello Thinwood,

    That´s the way it sounds [:)]

    Our Vienna Academy gives you more information on the Wagner Tuba in general.

    Best,

    Paul


    Paul Kopf Product Manager VSL
  • You have stumbled upon what is called "velocity switches".

    When you go beyond a certain midi-level (which is divided into 128 steps) the Vsl sampler switches over to  a sample set that is recorded at a higher volume. Especially with brass instruments the sound can drastically change  with higher volume. Since there are only a few layers or sets of recorded notes (between 2 and 6) you will get more or less obvious tonal changes going from one layer to the other.

    You could try activate velocity crossfade for smoother transition or use crescendo samples.


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    @veetguitar said:

    You have stumbled upon what is called "velocity switches".

     

    Thank you very much for your contribution, veetguitar. In fact I was aware of the possible problems resulting from velocity switches. However, I refused to believe that - in case of the VSL Wagner Tuba - the given switch should be the desired outcome. To my mind the switch is far too harsh; we could use more layers to eliminate this. So maybe my question "Is this the way it is supposed to be?" was a little too british, just like Paul's answer "That's the way it sounds" 😊

    The thing is that sudden (and unrealistic) switches like that make it difficult to melt the instrument into a group of other instruments, especially brass instruments that do not have such sudden switches.

    However, to make one thing very clear: Overall the sound of the libraries is absolutely amazing. Especially the Dimension Brass is great to play with!

    Kind regards