Hi Avacade, to summarise:

Vienna Superpackage
www.vsl.co.at/en/211/442/1797/1883/1881/305.htm
The full works: 24 complete collections comprising approx. 184 instruments and sections, chromatically sampled, all velocity layers, 871.5 GB. Standard library € 5,990, Extended library € 4,490, Full library (= standard + extended) € 10,480.

Symphonic Cube
www.vsl.co.at/en/211/442/1796/1885/1884/216.htm
10 complete collections comprising approx. 130 instruments and sections, chromatically sampled, all velocity layers, 548 GB. Standard library € 2,690, Extended library € 3,290, Full library (= standard + extended) € 5,980.

(Standard library  = basic articulations, Extended library = more advanced articulations. Extended libraries are not available separately; having bought and registered a Standard library, you pay extra to unlock the Extended samples.)

Special Edition Complete Bundle
www.vsl.co.at/en/211/261/2066/2090/1776.htm
All 6 Special Edition volumes comprising approx. 109 instruments and sections, sampled at tone intervals, reduced velocity layers, fewer articulations than the complete collections, approx. 130 GB installed. € 1,695 (download) or € 1,735 (on USB stick)

(The Special Edition volumes are slimmed-down, budget versions of the complete collections. Though they are less intensively sampled and don’t have all the articulations found in the collections, they still sound very good indeed.)

These are the SE Bundle instruments not found in the Symphonic Cube:

• Solo violin, viola, cello & double bass ‘con sordino’ versions
• Chamber strings (6 violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos, 2 double basses) con sordino versions
• Appassionata strings (20 violins, 14 violas, 12 cellos, 10 double basses)
• Bassoon 2, Bass Flute, Heckelphone, Contrabass Clarinet, Oboe d’Amore, Basset horn
• Trumpet in Bb, Cornet, Flugelhorn, Alto Trombone, Euphonium, Fanfare Trumpets (6)
• Alto, Tenor, Baritone, Soprano and Bass saxophones
• Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano, Vienna Konzerthaus Organ, Harpsichord
• Electric guitar (Overdrive), Concert guitar
• Vienna Choir

The Symphonic Cube has a much larger menu of miscellaneous percussion instruments than the SE Complete Bundle, including wood blocks, temple blocks, claves, cowbells, Roto toms, boobams, rock kit cymbals, gongs, bells, crotales, lithophone (small), log drum, waterphone, etc.

Since you are new to orchestral programming, I don’t think you should get sidetracked with high-end features like the MIR reverb engine; your system sounds more than adequate to get started. (N.B. To access more than 3GB of RAM, you need a 64-bit operating system.)

I would advise against going straight for the Superpackage: such an expensive, top-of-the-range product is overkill for a beginner, and you might end up not using half of it. The advantage of the Special Edition Complete Bundle is that it supplies a very good spread of the huge Vienna sample database, enabling you to get familiar with the instruments without spending a fortune. You can upgrade the instruments you use the most to their full collection status later, but in the meantime you can make *great* demos with the SE, which offers many playing styles (including the wonderful VSL ‘true legato’) and the fabulous Appassionata Strings.

All these libraries run exclusively on the Vienna Instrument. It takes a little time to figure out how the VI software works, and since you’ll be coming to terms with sequencing software at the same time, there’s a danger you could get bogged down in technicalities. My advice is to keep it simple and concentrate on what you want to do musically. If you get stuck, VSL’s educational videos are excellent, and there are also plenty of experienced Vienna users here who’ll be glad to help.

Apologies if I got any details wrong. Good luck!

Hi Mike, to hear the legato effect in all its glory you need to load a legato patch and play a single-line melody with the notes slightly overlapped. (This overlapping triggers the legato transition.) The legato inter-note transitions work for all intervals up to an octave in both directions. Let us know if you can't get it to work and we'll advise!

The SE brass sforzatos (sfz) are pretty powerful...

Cuivré (meaning 'brassy', see www.vsl.co.at/en/70/3139/3141/3142/5410.vsl).

You could try putting a 'sffz' or 'sus blare' patch in one slot, and cross-fading to 'fp' or 'sus' in the other. The sffz patches generally have the fiercest attacks in the VSL collections.

Hi Edward, hopefully that explanation did the trick? If not, try starting from scratch with an empty player, select the 'Advanced' view, then drag and drop a *single patch* from the Patch list into slot 1a. Then drag a different patch into slot 1b. You can now cross-fade between the two slots by using MIDI CC20 commands. To change the CC controller number to CC1 (= mod wheel), select 'Ctrl Map' (lower left of screen), select 'SlotXF', click on the box underneath 'Source', select 'Controller' and change the CC number there. HTH!

Due to their large section sizes, VSL's Appassionata Strings have a unique sound. To have that sound available in 'Dimensionised' form would be great.

Agreed, that would be very cool - it could be the ultimate violin section library.

Providing CC7 (Volume) and CC11 (Expression) are both set to control volume and nothing else, there should be no difference between them - both simply generate 128 MIDI values. If you hear a difference, it could be that one or other of them is mapped to an additional parameter within the instrument, or that the sequencer is doing something extra with the control data.

Hi Rangi - it consists entirely of muted (con sordino) samples www.vsl.co.at/en/211/442/344/1341/1501/1116.htm

Yes, they recorded every interval up to an octave, up and down, for every note on the instrument. That's why it sounds so good.

I too would be happy to have a second clarinet. It would be good to hear VSL's sampling chops applied to a second instrument, whether in A or Bb!

I agree. But I would think finishing the DS collection would be the number one priority for VSL at this stage.

If it was easy for VSL to provide a complete set of 8-way patches for DS Violins, I suspect they would have done it already. It would involve at the very least a redesign of the Patch browser, and for that reason, I feel it may well not happen, though I would welcome it if it did. In the meantime, I don't think it's a gross inconvenience for users to have to create their own presets - people who do this stuff for a living are used to that kind of programming job.