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  • How to improve Synchron Strings I?

    Hi all,

    there have been some discussions going on about the quality of the lib and it seems there are some major drawbacks. (To be honest, I have never seen so many negative comments about a lib release and I read VI-control a lot)

    In another thread I compared it to drawing the Mona Lisa (discussion with fahl5): VSL promissed a set of different brushes, different colours so we COULD attempt to draw the Mona Lisa. What did they deliver? Some brushes are missing and some colours are wrong. Not even Da Vinci could paint the Mona Lisa with that!!! That's the point!!!

    The lib has potenial with its clarity and wonderful lows. But also some major drawbacks that make it unusable for me. What's the purpose of releasing a lib that just sounds so fake. (The human brain is pretty amazing to notice, even for a layman)

    Problems I have:

    1) The sound should be fuller for this ensemble size. 
    2) Fake legato. It is possible to play very slow and very fast passages but it is impossible to obtain realistic melodic parts. It always sounds synthy, no matter what I try. The blur function just does not work and even introduces a reverb. 
    3) Violins are too bright. They cut through every piece and the fake legato just amplifies the synthetic characteristic.
    4) The mids are missing. Maybe beacuse the violins are too bright?
     
    Possible solutiuon?
     
    1) Overlap with another instance. (Doubles memory)
    2) Manual overlap, delay and attack adjustments. (Time consuming)
    3) EQ adjustments. (Clarity is lost)
    4) Doubling at lower octaves. (Faking it)
     
    VSL was pretty useless in ADMITTING their failure and in helping me. They tried ot sell me Synch CS to add another sound, ridiculous.
     
    Therfore, do you guys have any other suggestions how to improve (improve in the sense to make is useable) apart form the ones above.
     
    Thanks
     
     
     
     
     

  • Did you hear my Elgar mockup?


  • VSL never replies to any post that requests of improving or upgrading the content of Synchron Strings I, and people are keep trying to make demos that sounds synthy and fake to me. My mistake to pre-order this, and I will not buy Synchron CS for sure, because I am disappointed. What is delivered here by its current version does not meet my expectation and their own advertisement.

    I am satisfied with other Synchron products, but Synchron Strings I, I would say, just forget it. 


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    @Veola said:

    Hi all,

     

    Hi again frustrated Leonardo. Post Nr. 13 of 13 Posts here all without any exception attemting nothing else but only to downwrite the Synchron Strings. Wow !

    We never heard any single note of Veolas attempts to come along with that library to be able to judge what excactly might be the real reason of his bad temper.

    Even if I realy have no Idea, what ever might "improve" his attitude, let us be at least tolerant and commiserate with him, obviously he can't contribute here anything else but complaining like that😉.


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    @HBen said:

    VSL never replies to any post that requests of improving or upgrading the content of Synchron Strings I,

    Ok after having written already your 4th posting here. I am totally convinced, that you know VSL better than anyone else here. But stay confident. VSL usually read what is written here and care for what users demand, but thats right, they usually do not talk about, but simply do what is possible to meet all reasonable suggestions and expectations.

    I my self often wished to get at least any feedback on suggestions I made, while some times they even realised the most incredible futuristic suggestions I made just since they obviously have proved to be reasonable. In so far, if there is any founded demand or suggestion, be sure they will consider what ever could be done to draw reasonable consequences.

    However it is of cours fast and cheap to complain and demand, and could much more be an incredible and time consuming work to realise Products on a level they do, so to integrate improvements needs "a bit" more time, than just demanding them.


  • The biggest mistake is that VSL should not launch pre-order mode for Synchron String I based on its false advertisement, and thereafter no voucher compensation for unhappy customers. I could use that money to purchase other libraries instead of buying this one. It's really a lot of money for a single string library that does not deliver many of essential contents.

    When I hear demos of Synchronized Chamber Strings, I think it's fake and sounds not good to me, so I decided not to buy it. For other synchron products, demos are released before people can make decisions, and after hearing demos, I decided to pay for them. That's good.

    Synchron Strings I is not a proper product for the flagship line. If VSL keeps posting main string library like this, I think they will lose more potential orders and more customers. 

    It seems that some customers from Germany are happy with Synchron Strings I, but let me tell you that some customers from China, at least 5-6 people who have bought Synchron Strings I are re-selling this product on our Chinese music forum, because they think it is synthy, fake and unusable for their music production, and they are disappointed and unhappy with this product.

    Maybe all resellers don't know how to compose music? Maybe they are all incapable musicians and cannot produce beautiful music with Synchron Strings I ? I am sad to see the point here: to blame the customer who complains instead of blaming the product itself, that's really odd.

    Maybe Chinese customers opinion doesn't count, but that's fine.

    Synchron Strings I is the very first VSL product that I chose to buy, but I am disappointed. I only hope we can have a good and decent VSL main string library, if it takes some time to improve or upgrade, that is totally OK. If nothing can be done to improve it, that's also fine, I will just become more cautious and careful to place orders for VSL products.

    It will be a big tragedy that people started to shut up and remain silent, turn around and leave. It is good to have some people that are complaning here, at least that proves people still have faith in you. They still have some expectations. VSL please do something positive to improve your product.


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    @HBen said:

    The biggest mistake is that VSL should not launch pre-order mode for Synchron String I based on its false advertisement, and thereafter no voucher compensation for unhappy customers. I could use that money to purchase other libraries instead of buying this one. It's really a lot of money for a single string library that does not deliver many of essential contents.

    When I hear demos of Synchronized Chamber Strings, I think it's fake and sounds not good to me, so I decided not to buy it. For other synchron products, demos are released before people can make decisions, and after hearing demos, I decided to pay for them. That's good.

    Synchron Strings I is not a proper product for the flagship line. If VSL keeps posting main string library like this, I think they will lose more potential orders and more customers. 

    It seems that some customers from Germany are happy with Synchron Strings I, but let me tell you that some customers from China, at least 5-6 people who have bought Synchron Strings I are re-selling this product on our Chinese music forum, because they think it is synthy, fake and unusable for their music production, and they are disappointed and unhappy with this product.

    Maybe all resellers don't know how to compose music? Maybe they are all incapable musicians and cannot produce beautiful music with Synchron Strings I ? I am sad to see the point here: to blame the customer who complains instead of blaming the product itself, that's really odd.

    Maybe Chinese customers opinion doesn't count, but that's fine.

    Synchron Strings I is the very first VSL product that I chose to buy, but I am disappointed. I only hope we can have a good and decent VSL main string library, if it takes some time to improve or upgrade, that is totally OK. If nothing can be done to improve it, that's also fine, I will just become more cautious and careful to place orders for VSL products.

    It will be a big tragedy that people started to shut up and remain silent, turn around and leave. It is good to have some people that are complaning here, at least that proves people still have faith in you. They still have some expectations. VSL please do something positive to improve your product.

    +1


  • I do hope the VSL team makes the necessary adjustments to this library. It would take time and money but I am convinced that if they don’t they will jeopardy the Synchron line. Releasing Synchronized Chamber Strings before their flagship strings library is fixed or the new sample content for Synchron Percussion is made available doesn’t feel right.

  • Well, I think sometimes things just don't really pan out. That's life.

    I had high hopes for this library and was one of those who pre-ordered. The thing is that I usually never pre-order stuff and never have. The only exception to this rule was SyS, because based on previous experiences, VSL was the one company I kind of trusted blindly - turns out that one time exception came back to bite me like a mofo. It's my fault, and it's not the end of the world. but there you go.

    Tbh, what stings more is not the fact that I find the library not worthy of using, but exactly that in some ways, what happened here kind of feels like a breach of trust. I always associated VSL with meticulous quality, a no-nonsense, no-shortcuts approach, innovation. I feel that SyS betrays those expectations.

    So much about the library seems fibbed, band-aid, makeshift, cheapened out. The omission of standard articulations, the fake patches, the tacked-on transitions ... actually I even feel there was even some blatant false advertising. For example: the articulation list always stated "marcato", whereas there is literally no marcato in this library. Not even a "fake" stacked patch, like the sfz. The only "marcato" thing in SyS is a dimension preset where a long note is being stacked with a short one - something you could do yourself any time.

    This is just completely the opposite of what I've come to expect from VSL. Their products always reflected that they were willing to go the extra mile - this one on the other hand makes it obvious that they were trying to cut corners and skimp their way around as many things as possible.

    Or maybe they just made a bunch of wrong decisions. I'm sure they worked like crazy on this thing. But to me it seems that the effort was spent in the wrong areas. For example, I believe much was expected to come out of the many dynamic layers, which to me totally backfired, because the benefit is almost inaudible/nonexistent. It only makes the patches even more fiddly and difficult to use and blew up the library to an absurd size, whereas those gigs would have been way wiser spent on more articulations and more variants of true recorded dynamic performances.

    Not sure the many mic positions are really needed either. 3-5, each with a clear purpose and distinct sound, would have been enough.

    I believe that it would probably be better to record legato samples as a whole - without transition samples crossfading into standard sustains. I'm not an expert on this, but it seems that some other developers took this approach and it sounds way more real.

    The tone is kind of brittle and overly sharp with some odd biting resonance you can't really get rid of. The basses are great and the violas are really nice too, but the celli do have this problem and the violins are just incredibly weird - screechy, but flat, lifeless ... can't even describe it.

    I also feel that nobody needs two different vibrato intensities you can't even crossfade through coming from novib, when even the strong vibrato actually hardly produces any emotive vibrato. I'm sure that most people would end up not using the normal vibrato at all, while still struggling with getting some kind of passionate movement out of the lyrical one.

    I've been trying to mock up some stuff originally done with other libraries and it just doesn't come out right. To me it just doesn't work. The violins are the weirdest. The tone is odd, the legato hurts inside and the results just don't really sound musical. Fiddling with it is hard work, but you end up just having to admit: the other version you already had just sounds more beautiful and real.

    I can already see the buffoon comments stating that it's my fault because apparently I was too stupid to "master" this woe-ridden product or didn't have the necessary rigor, but even if that were true: why should I? It's just not worth it. What's the point, when there's already stuff available that produces better results with less painstaking effort?

    There's parts of the library that are great soundwise, but ultimately, there's just to many problems. I gave up on it and finally deleted it from my drive. I don't really think that things could be improved here. It would be so much of an overhaul, they could almost just as well make a new library. It's a shame. I'd sell it, but honestly, I'm not sure who's supposed to buy this thing off of me.

    The whole "synchron-ized chamber strings" thing also kind of strikes me as a band-aid solution and a cash-in with leftovers, and I'm not sure that's a philosophy I'm willing to support. I just hope that VSL carefully reassesses when it comes to the rest of the Synchron line. I do really like the percussion. Maybe things can turn out different for winds and brass.

    I'm not trying to bash anyone either. Sometimes you put a lot into something and it just doesn't work out, and that's tough to deal with. I think it's a shame that VSL is facing all this backlash, as I'm sure they were incredibly busy and hard at work making this library.

    I don't know what went wrong. Perhaps the concept sounded great on paper but didn't fly in practice. Perhaps cost-cutting measures because the stage cost them tons of money. Or maybe the library actually is exactly what they wanted and believed in, but turns out that the expectations of the users were misjudged and the market isn't embracing it at all. I really do wish them all the best with the next product and that they successfully bounce back from this setback.


  • JimmyHellfire,my applause to you.

    Your statement is absolutely correct about everything with decent politeness.

    Every words are just right there in position to express our exact feelings towards this SyS product.

    So, I think we have made statements, requests and we just let the market decide.

    If it's a good product, I think it will be great for a long time and people are going to recommend it continuously to friends around. VSL will receive a lot of orders when people are considering to buy new string libraries.

    If it's a bad product, and if VSL is not willing to do anything about it, that's it, that's fine. That's how life goes. We just leave and buy other string libraries for our music production.


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    @HBen said:

    It will be a big tragedy that people started to shut up and remain silent, turn around and leave. It is good to have some people that are complaning here, at least that proves people still have faith in you. They still have some expectations. VSL please do something positive to improve your product.

    You are totally right. Don't listen to chatty people, mostly if they are posting tons of low quality music qualifying them as noisy chatters. If you count, finally they are just 2 or 3... the others prefer talking about facts (and often are posting good music, such a coincidence 😛 ).


  • I agree wholeheartedly with JimmyHellfire’s post.

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    @JimmyHellfire said:

    Well, I think sometimes things just don't really pan out. That's life.

    I had high hopes for this library and was one of those who pre-ordered. The thing is that I usually never pre-order stuff and never have. The only exception to this rule was SyS, because based on previous experiences, VSL was the one company I kind of trusted blindly - turns out that one time exception came back to bite me like a mofo. It's my fault, and it's not the end of the world. but there you go.

    Tbh, what stings more is not the fact that I find the library not worthy of using, but exactly that in some ways, what happened here kind of feels like a breach of trust. I always associated VSL with meticulous quality, a no-nonsense, no-shortcuts approach, innovation. I feel that SyS betrays those expectations.

    So much about the library seems fibbed, band-aid, makeshift, cheapened out. The omission of standard articulations, the fake patches, the tacked-on transitions ... actually I even feel there was even some blatant false advertising. For example: the articulation list always stated "marcato", whereas there is literally no marcato in this library. Not even a "fake" stacked patch, like the sfz. The only "marcato" thing in SyS is a dimension preset where a long note is being stacked with a short one - something you could do yourself any time.

    This is just completely the opposite of what I've come to expect from VSL. Their products always reflected that they were willing to go the extra mile - this one on the other hand makes it obvious that they were trying to cut corners and skimp their way around as many things as possible.

    Or maybe they just made a bunch of wrong decisions. I'm sure they worked like crazy on this thing. But to me it seems that the effort was spent in the wrong areas. For example, I believe much was expected to come out of the many dynamic layers, which to me totally backfired, because the benefit is almost inaudible/nonexistent. It only makes the patches even more fiddly and difficult to use and blew up the library to an absurd size, whereas those gigs would have been way wiser spent on more articulations and more variants of true recorded dynamic performances.

    Not sure the many mic positions are really needed either. 3-5, each with a clear purpose and distinct sound, would have been enough.

    I believe that it would probably be better to record legato samples as a whole - without transition samples crossfading into standard sustains. I'm not an expert on this, but it seems that some other developers took this approach and it sounds way more real.

    The tone is kind of brittle and overly sharp with some odd biting resonance you can't really get rid of. The basses are great and the violas are really nice too, but the celli do have this problem and the violins are just incredibly weird - screechy, but flat, lifeless ... can't even describe it.

    I also feel that nobody needs two different vibrato intensities you can't even crossfade through coming from novib, when even the strong vibrato actually hardly produces any emotive vibrato. I'm sure that most people would end up not using the normal vibrato at all, while still struggling with getting some kind of passionate movement out of the lyrical one.

    I've been trying to mock up some stuff originally done with other libraries and it just doesn't come out right. To me it just doesn't work. The violins are the weirdest. The tone is odd, the legato hurts inside and the results just don't really sound musical. Fiddling with it is hard work, but you end up just having to admit: the other version you already had just sounds more beautiful and real.

    I can already see the buffoon comments stating that it's my fault because apparently I was too stupid to "master" this woe-ridden product or didn't have the necessary rigor, but even if that were true: why should I? It's just not worth it. What's the point, when there's already stuff available that produces better results with less painstaking effort?

    There's parts of the library that are great soundwise, but ultimately, there's just to many problems. I gave up on it and finally deleted it from my drive. I don't really think that things could be improved here. It would be so much of an overhaul, they could almost just as well make a new library. It's a shame. I'd sell it, but honestly, I'm not sure who's supposed to buy this thing off of me.

    The whole "synchron-ized chamber strings" thing also kind of strikes me as a band-aid solution and a cash-in with leftovers, and I'm not sure that's a philosophy I'm willing to support. I just hope that VSL carefully reassesses when it comes to the rest of the Synchron line. I do really like the percussion. Maybe things can turn out different for winds and brass.

    I'm not trying to bash anyone either. Sometimes you put a lot into something and it just doesn't work out, and that's tough to deal with. I think it's a shame that VSL is facing all this backlash, as I'm sure they were incredibly busy and hard at work making this library.

    I don't know what went wrong. Perhaps the concept sounded great on paper but didn't fly in practice. Perhaps cost-cutting measures because the stage cost them tons of money. Or maybe the library actually is exactly what they wanted and believed in, but turns out that the expectations of the users were misjudged and the market isn't embracing it at all. I really do wish them all the best with the next product and that they successfully bounce back from this setback.

    +1

    I would love to hear a reply to this post from VSL/Paul .  But I doubt we will hear from VSL about this. They are totally ignoring it. (which is not a good, or wise attitude). 


  • Well, I'd love to hear some replies from VSL. Otherwise, this will become another edition of story about the Emperor's New Clothes, only VSL and a small portion of people think this product is good enough on the market.

    It's not a good attitude to ignore customer's feedback, other companies would listen to customers and do some improvements, but it seems that is not the case here. Sad.


  • You all write the same shit since more than a half year. Why don‘t you switch to another product then? Sorry, but I don’t get it. What answer do you expect? ... something like ... Paul: „Hello all, I would buy HZ Strings“ ... won’t happen. So, if you don’t like the product, take action.

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    @LAJ said:

    You all write the same shit since more than a half year. Why don‘t you switch to another product then? Sorry, but I don’t get it.

    What answer do you expect?

    ... something like ...
    Paul: „Hello all, I would buy HZ Strings“ ... won’t happen.

    So, if you don’t like the product, take action.

    I think this thread is kind of the self-therapy-group for Synchron-Frustrated non active Musicians.

    You have to be very calm and friendly otherwise they will fall again in deep Synchron-Frustration 😛


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    @LAJ said:

    You all write the same shit since more than a half year. Why don‘t you switch to another product then?

    I have. I'm only posting here so that you have something to complain about. Maybe you should show some gratitude.


  • I took action and already switched to another product and also deleted Synchron Strings from my disk. But it's more than that in my opinion.

    It's about reputation. I own many VSL libraries, but I lost faith. And the release of synchron-ized Chamber Strings as a probable fix for Synchron Strings emphasised this feeling.

    For a new string library in 2018 I had high hopes. The competition has introduced way more advanced features and new innovative approaches over the years. Synchron Strings still follows the same patch structure as in the older libraries, disappointing for me.

    It's their first wet string library, so I only want that they admit that something went wrong or that they expected more themselves or that they keep on improving this library. I would totally understand it, because it's a new way of recording and editing and they have to gather new experiences as well.

    I love the older products, so I only want that VSL keeps on making good libraries (again). But if they don't care about our feedback, sorry, but than they have to face the truth. I think they know it, I can't imagine that Synchron Strings sold well. And, for me, VI Pro is far superior than Synchron Player, it has used to be and is still the best sample player on the market.


  • Everyone here would like to see the Synchron line succeed rather than fail. Some of us also preordered this product expecting the best from VSL. I think those are two good reasons why you can see them voice their concerns here, especially when no one from VSL will say where they stand regarding the current state of SS1.