Thanks for the answers, that is very disappointing.

My Fabfilter plugin suite for example has been featuring free scaling for all plugins for years. It is rather difficult to understand why VSL is unable to provide a modern scaling UI with additional size options for their single main sample player, especially given the price point of their sample libraries.

And we are not even talking about something extremely complicated like scaling for a complete DAW (and even some of those already feature good scaling options - Studio One for example).
I just hope this is high on the to-do list, because it really does not leave a good impression if the main VI sample player UI is not up to speed, while at the same time there seems to be a lot effort going into Synchron products.

I am using Vienna Instruments Pro 2 as a plugin in Cubase 9.5 on a laptop with Full HD/1080p resolution running Windows 7.

Much to my suprise, the VI Pro 2 window takes up not even half of the screen, which means the UI is very small and the font is rather hard to read because of the size.
I have been looking for an UI scaling option or at least some predetermined zoom level settings for the UI, but unfortunately it seems such an option does not exist? The only "user interface" option I have been able to find after checking the manual is "adjust brightness". While I appreciate the really nice brightness options, I somehow assumed that VSL is aware that not all users are working with a 27"+ screen and not all people have the same eyesight?

Currently I hope that I am just missing something. Or does VI Pro 2 indeed have no options to change the UI size?  Because in the current state, it is rather uncomfortable to work with VI Pro 2 on a laptop screen.

Well, the obvious difference is that the products you listed are all free, while the current price of MIR Pro is 645 Euros.
The equivalence of this business model would be to make MIR Pro (or at least Mir Pro 24) free and only charge money for the room packs.

Since you use the example of a sampler, I must admit I am having a rather difficult time coming up with a current software sampler that is sold without any kind of factory library.

Of course, you could argue it is advantageous that the user can pick the room pack and isn't stuck with unwanted impulse responses, especially considering the price of additional room packs.
However, I would have thought creating and including at least a simple "factory" room pack with MIR Pro for free would have been a good idea, because currently people who buy only MIR Pro basically own a useless product.

Now, I know all this is mentioned on the website, and frankly it doesn't concern me much, since I purchased the complete room pack bundle together with MIR Pro. I am also happy to say all room packs are useful, especially in conjunction with the VIs.
But I can completely understand why people checking the VSL webshop for the first time feel this is a rather strange business model.

Just imagine NI suddenly deciding to ship Kontakt without a factory library and claim "you can decide which samples you actually want to hear". People would probably not be very happy.

I don't think there is a good answer to the question you are asking. I doubt any software company would produce a product that only sounds "correct" or is intended for a certain type of headphones. If you have high quality headphones which are suited for mixing, almost everything should at least sound good or better.

I don't know how serious you are about sound quality, but IMHO none of the headphones you listed are an especially good fit for serious mixing, especially in case your mixing training is a bit limited. I am afraid, if you want to buy a product in this price range, you might have to compromise.

As for recommendations, if your budget allows it, you could take a look at the Sennheiser HD650 (currently 329 Euros at Thomann). AFAIK, these are quite popular for mixing purposes in this price range and are among the most neutral headphones, even without any plugin correction.

I am still a beginner when it comes to composition, so I feel I am not yet qualified to comment on your composition technique. That being said, I have been listening to your piece all evening and the part from 1:33 to 2:09 keeps making me smile.

From a mixing engineer's view, I think I can see what the intent was: The mix seems to put less emphasis on creating a very realistic space/room tone with proper depth, but gives priority to moving the important musical elements in the foreground, so they can be heard very clearly. 
Obviously, an experienced listener might notice a certain lack of depth (as has already been mentioned in this thread) and consider this mix as missing a bit of realism. However, I think a point could be made that this mixing style does appeal more to the casual listener and could work well in the context of - let's say - a TV commercial, where the main goal might be to bring a theme quickly to the listener's attention instead of creating a perfect illusion of the Vienna Konzerthaus space.

Of course, it depends on what you agreed on. From my experience, the more clearly and detailed you state your wishes before the mixing process starts, the more satisfying the result will be.
I can also imagine that combining these libraries with different amounts of reverb to create a single realistic homogenous space is no easy task, especially if the engineer did not have access to the Synchron Stage roompack and MIR Pro.

No. It would be like paying for the necessary repairs of your car yourself instead of having an insurance at all.
Probably a more realistic scenario would be people who don't buy health insurance, but have to cover doctor's fees themselves in case of illness.

So in other words: If lose my USB key (and ONLY in that case), I would be more than happy to pay for the additional work caused for the VSL support to replace my licenses. Until now, that fee was an outrageous 50% MSRP,  due to the fact that VSL feared people would sell off/pirate the key and get a cheap replacement.
But as I have written above, this has changed with the new license system - stolen/lost licenses can now be deactivated.

So important questions are:

- How much does it actually cost for VSL to replace a license?
- And I would still like to know, why I have to pay an annual fee, even if there is no problem with my USB key - thus causing no additional work/costs for VSL at all.

If I were to play the devil's advocate, I could argue that VSL just created a comfortable new revenue stream for themselves, because:

a) VSL decided to use the USB licences copy protection. In comparison, other popular companies such as Spectrasonics and Fabfilter just hand me a serial and demand an online activation, which (though admittedly less secure) are obviously vastly superior in every way for the customer - because there is no danger of license loss whatsoever if you are registered.

b) Only due to the choice of VSLs copy protection, until now users were in danger of losing 50% of their investment in case of key loss/theft.

c) In order to remedy this obvious disadvantage of the chosen copy protection scheme - which again has no benefit for the customer at all - VSL wants me to pay them extra money to offset the risk caused solely by their choice of said protection?


See the problem there? With the new possibility of deactivating keys, it's like a car dealer, who says: "Hey, if you lose your car key, we will not authorize a new key, unless you pay 50% of the car's MSRP. Otherwise, we will repossess the car.
But fortunately for you, we have this shiny new "Car Key Protection Plan", so if you lose your car key now, you can buy yourself a new key and we will reauthorize it, so you are still able to use the car.


I am not unreasonable, I can understand users who have have spent +$10,000 on VSL instruments and use the software in their daily work on tight deadlines. These people might just see the protection plan as a negligible business expense and are happy their investment is safe and they can get quick replacement licenses.
Heck, even I am grudgingly thinking about purchasing the protection plan, because I recently got the Cube with the Mir Pro roompack and I know I could never afford to pay the 50% replacement fee.


But the more I think about it, I believe this new protection plan was not the best choice from a PR standpoint. IMHO, it would have been a lot smarter to offer at least an unlimited one time license replacement for free with every key.
I would have even been ok with a little more expensive USB key or a few percent price increase on all libraries if VSL has new additional costs that need to be offset. Going this way would have invalidated the #1 argument against USB keys: Potential loss of licenses. Now if you read through neutral forums, opinions are much more divided because of the recurring cost.

While I am very happy that a new solution to protect the Vienna Key exists and the situation has undoubtedly improved dramatically for users with many licenses (especially given the new availability of Vienna Emergency Licenses) I still hope you will continue to monitor and tweak the pricing scheme.

Let's not forget that all forms of copy protection - while undoubtedly necessary - are usually an inconvience to the paying customer. Until now, the main argument for not replacing lost/stolen licenses was that it was technically impossible to invalidate licenses on stolen/lost keys. If I understand your post correctly, fortunately that seems to have changed.

However, the following things are a little hard to understand:

1) Why did you decide to introduce the new Vienna Protection Plan as a subscription based service instead of just charging users with a one time fee for the needed services when the key is actually lost/stolen?

2) If this is supposed to be something close to an insurance, why is the Vienna Plan used up in case of key failure? It sounds like the worst of two worlds: Users have to pay a recurring fee to be protected for a limited amount of time like in an insurance, but the plan is used up after you have to use it once - like in a fee based model.
On top of that it sounds like the plan only protects the licenses itself, not the physical key, so the user will have to buy a replacement key even if protected by the new plan.


Now, I understand that these technical solutions involve some work and people need to get paid. However, your customers are now in a situation, where they basically have to pay an additional recurring fee to protect themselves against the risk of loss of their licenses - a risk, which only exists in the first place because of the copy protection.
Sure, I will agree that this is much better than having no protection against loss/theft at all. But I must admit it leaves an uneasy feeling that being a VSL user basically comes with a new mandatory annual fee to limit the potential risks caused by the USB key copy protection.

I own Waves NX and demoed Redline Monitor by 112dB. However, my go-to plugin for headphones  crossfeed/room emulation is TB Isone 3 (individual settings). Using Isone 3 and Sonarworks Reference I can do 85%-90% of my mixing with headphones only.

However, as has been mentioned in this thread, it is very advisable to have access to an acoustically treated room with calibrated speakers to put the finishing touches on any mix and check if everything is correct.

All the mentioned plugins have demo versions available - I always recommend trying for yourself to see what works best for your needs.

Comparison:
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2016/5/3/mixing-on-headphones-the-headphone-monitor-plug-in-shootout

Whatever headphones you choose, I would highly recommend trying/purchasing the Sonarworks Reference Headphone Edition software. No matter what headphones you buy, you will never get a really linear frequency response. Of course, experienced audio engineers can adapt through experience, but IMHO the much better solution is to have a software correct the frequency curve.

You can actually try the tool on their website without any hassle - just pick your current headphones model, start the demo songs and compare the sound with and without calibration to see if it is useful to you.

https://www.sonarworks.com/reference

(scroll down to "Try it out")

I don't have a solution to your problem, but I suppose it would be helpful if you had audio examples of the differences?
You could try using a software that records the audio out of our computer, such as "Total Recorder" which IIRC has a free evaluation version (noise every 60 seconds).

I would consider the following steps:

1. Record one minute of the "correct" audio out, while listening to playback through Cubase.
2. Export the same part through the export dialogue in Cubase (same audio format as 1).
3. Import both files on different tracks in a new Cubase project, zoom in as far as possible and line them up 100% correctly.
4. Normalize. If you think the differences between the tracks are completely obvious, you could upload/post them here.
5. If you want to be absolutely sure if there are differences, flip the phase of one track by 180°. If you press play and don't hear anything, the files are identical. If you still hear something, the files are different.

There is a large thread about all things copy protection/eLicenser/cloud related here:

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t42581-VSL-LOST-KEY-POLICY?=#post256404

As far as I understand from reading through 5 pages:

1) VSL are aware that quite a few users are unhappy with the current copy protection scheme, especially because of the large cost in case of eLicenser loss/theft

2) There is no alternative solution yet, but something seems to be in the works

3) There is no announcemeant or release date yet

4) For any further discussion I would suggest posting in the above thread to keep all input in one place

That's impressive!

If I were to suggest something to take a look at, it would be the brass motif from 0:16 to 0:29.
In the LSO version, it has a bit more bite than in your full mix version and cuts through the rest of the orchestra.
In your mix, I feel it gets a little lost compared to the rest, which is probably because the volume balance is not 100% perfect (in case you want to get as close to the LSO version as possible).

You could also try to raise the presence range in the brass with an EQ, maybe a few dB @  around 2.5 KHz and see if you like it. But all in all, I like your final mix better than the "MIR Pro only"