Martin, are there new samples included compared to the VI packages to realize the legato vibrato variations, or are these just the different sustains with the same transitions?

Paolo, thanks for the reply! 

Yes, that's exactly what I would like to do.

Unfortunately, the velocity curve seems to have only two parameters: one that determines by how much the volume is reduced at minimal velocity, and another one that controls the slope of the curve from minimal to maximal velocity. Yet, minimal and maximal velocity always seem to be fixed to 0 and 127 for every slot in a matrix.

Hi Paul,

thanks for your quick reply !

I understand that velocity xfade can be problematic for single instruments. I would have hoped that using several dimension players reduces the problem, but if you observed the opposite I surely trust you on this. 

Yet, cutting the instrument into two patches (aside from removing the transition from mp to mf) alone does not solve this problem and, as you write, merely increases the midi controller range. This might make it a bit easier to access the sampled dynamic levels, but if xfading does not sound well, it makes in my opinion not much sense to turn on velocity xfade anyway.   

In this case it would nevertheless be great to have a combined sound that switches all layers via velocity (velocity xfade turned off). There have been wind patches with 6 velocity layers already in the first edition and they still work great. The more layers there are, the smoother the individual steps become. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to create such a true 6-velocity-layer matrix in VI pro, since the way the layers are "packaged" into two different patches seems to inherently prevent this. In the old Cube libraries different velocity layers were individually accessible (in a "resource folder"), which provided complete flexibility to shape the transitions. Maybe adding these layers in the future would be a simple way to overcome the present restrictions?

Thanks again and best regards

Kai

I like the unlooped sustains in the extended VI Dimension Brass content, which as far as I understand offer 6 distinct velocity layers in total (please correct me if I am wrong). Unfortunately these are separated into two different patches (p & f) and I don't really understand why this is done. With Velocity xFade it would be very easy to access all of them with a single continuous controller and realize more realistic dynamic transitions. 

Such patches, restricted to a particular dynamic range, had been introduced previously for the Synchron Strings, but in this case the user can also choose to use a single patch that includes all 8 available velocity layers.

Is there any way within VI pro to program the two patches so that one gets access to all velocity layers via velocity or the single velocity xFade controller? (I know that I could additionally blend them with a second controller, but this is much harder to do.) If not, are there plans to release combined patches with 6 velocity layers in the future via a Library update?

William, the sul legato is a really good example. When I upgraded the Orchestral and Chamber Strings to full, I did not expect much and was blown away by the sul legato patches. They are still my favorite legato version since they are so "warm". Another strong point of their libraries, that VSL keeps really low-key, is the slurred legato. Whereas in Synchron Strings they point it out now, slurred legato is also included in most of the VI libraries, yet not even listed in the manuals. They are as far as I can tell completely separately recorded (normal and fast versions for standard and muted instruments and already contained in the standard libraries), include even more samples than the ordinary legato and are very useful to have.

Out of the String Libraries I have (including Synchron), Orchestral Strings are still my favorite. If you like the sound of Orchestral included in the Special Edition you cannot go wrong with the Standard version. They include more velocity layers (in particular p/pp versions) , alternations and chromatic sampling, which to me make a big difference. Moreover, there are a few more articulation, like fast legato. If you already have the Standard versions of the other sections this would give you a consistent orchestra, whereas Synchron Strings sound rather different, are less complete and use far more resources.

By the way: if you purchased Standard Single Intrument libraries, you might have gotten the same Special Edition content, you already had, once more. Whereas the Single Instrument Full Libraries contain the same Symphonic Cube content as the corresponding Collection libraries (with up to 6 instead of 3 velocity layers, ...), many Single Intrument Standard Libraries merely contain the Special Edition versions. I made this mistake before, so better make sure that this is not a problem for you as well ....

I can only agree with everything said before. The music is beautiful and the performance is just marvelous.

I am not sure if this is partly the youtube stream, but the mix and the reduction of certain frequency bands, makes it sound like an old recording and in my opinion significantly adds to the realism.

Thanks for sharing!

Hi Cyril,

ok I see, thanks a lot nonetheless.

Best regads

Kai

I couldn't follow the French part of the discussion, but I am having problems with Articulation Sets in Logic as well. 

I haven't tried Articulations Sets for some time and they have improved these quite a bit since the original release - they can now send several Midi message per articulation ID, which works great ! 

However, I have problems with the input side ("Switches" pane). I control articulations by program change messages in VIpro and have set it up accordingly. When I turn the Midi Remote button in the Switches pane off everything works and I can switch articulations from my keyboard (yet, Articulation IDs are surely not changed). However, when I turn the Midi Remote on, no program change messages from my keyboard are transmitted to VIpro at all anymore and I always hear the same articulation while playing/recording. Therefore, it is surely impossible to realistically play/record a sequence this way, due to the wrong articulations that are monitored. Nevertheless, when doing so, all the articulation changes I sent from my keyboard are encoded into the appropriate articulation IDs once the recording is finished, and work correctly when I play that sequence back again! I.e. it works in principle, but is nevertheless completely unusable as it is, which is really odd . Is this a bug or am I missing some setting somewhere?

Thanks so much for any help!

Hi Gil,

The Synchron Line represents a different approach where the natural reverb in the fixed Synchron Stage venue is directly recorded with multiple microphones. This could improve the realism but you loose a lot of flexibility compared to dry recordings (and need far more resources). Therefore, I don’t think that the Synchron Line is meant as a replacement for the Cube or that there will be an upgrade at some point. (This is surely a matter of taste, but I own Synchron Strings and still prefer the sound of the VI libraries)

I understand that you are mainly interested in the score. Yet, a potential upgrade to the Cube obviously concerns the playback. I fully agree that controller or velocity numbers are not very musical . However, the notes alone don’t fully determine the music. For basically every famous orchestral work you will find dozens of recordings that sound very different, even though they are based on the same score … and additional controllers allow you to specify how the notes are played. For instance for sustained notes the use of velocity crossfade makes a note “breathe” via subtle dynamic transitions that can significantly add to the realism. 

That said, there are several cases where the Cube should also increase the realism when you use it in Sibelius:

- the additional velocity layers will give you more appropriate dynamic levels, e.g. a realistic piano/pianissimo (many of the SE versions lack the softer end)

- the different variations are automatically chosen whenever you repeat notes

- speed control in VI pro can automatically choose the right legato version depending on the playing speed

- for many winds there are different vibrato versions and I would guess that you can select them somehow in Sibelius

Hope this helps 

Kai

Hi Gil, 

1) I don’t use Sibelius, but the Cube is great and definitely the way to go if you are happy with the sound of the SE and want to improve the realism

2) yes, you get many more articulations this way (e.g. fast legato) that will definitely improve the realism of your music (I guess you are talking about the Standard Version of the Cube? The full version has even much more to offer ...)

3) yes, this is for me the most important difference. The SE only has 3 velocity layers - the Cube has mostly from 4 (Strings, some Winds) to 5-6 for key Woodwinds and Brass. Moreover, you get more variations (from 1-2 to typically 4) and chromatic instead of whole tone sampling.

4) don’t know

5) as far as I understand, MIR allows you to place instruments anywhere on stage and to include non-VSL instruments. If you have a pure VSL orchestra and are fine with the standard positions, MIRx is just great.

6) yes

7) not sure what exactly you mean with “Synchron”. The VSL team had promised that there will by a Synchron MIRx extension with which you could use all VI instruments in the Synchron hall (just as any other venue in the MIRx bundle) - I would guess you can just upgrade your bundle once this is released. If you talk about the new Synchron Series instruments, there are no winds, yet, and the strings are still missing many key articulations compared to what the Cube has to offer.

By the way, I don’t fully understand your current approach: it would be far more natural to move the project from Sibelius back to Logic and finish it there. This allows you to shape the playback by additional continuous controllers, like velocity crossfade, since this brings the music to life - and even the Cube might not improve too much if you skip this crucial step. In this context you might also be interested in this:

www.articulate-preset.com

Best regards

Kai

Paolo,

Articulate Presets follow the standard VSL-convention, where velocity Xfade is controlled by CC2. If you want to control it with your modwheel, simply have your modwheel send CC2 (I did it for the modwheel on my second keyboard, and this can easily be done somewhere in the settings).

Articulation selection is in Articulate Presets actually done via program change messages. CC1 generally acts as one of three continuous controllers that let you e.g. simultaneously shape the attack behavior, vibrato intensity, section size, … . 

Yes, Articulate Presets don’t cover the entire super package, yet (the list is growing, though). Anyway, if you want to create fancy presets for the entire super package from scratch you should allow a lot of extra time :-).

ddunn,

The advantage of Articulate Presets is not merely that they use program change messages: the different matrices do not consist of single patches, but offer far more realtime control by continuously blending many individual patches.

Hi Paolo,

in case you haven’t seen this:

www.articulate-preset.com

This sounds like what you are looking for … and much more.

Cheers

Kai

Thanks so much Stefan! I am very happy that you did not switch to a completely cloud-based solution and allow us to continue working anywhere. I carry my key with me a lot and so a BIG worry is gone  ...

That's great news - thanks so much Dietz! I am really looking forward to use the Synchron MIRx :-) ...

Originally Posted by: bbelius

See here: https://www.vsl.co.at/co...-MIR-Templates-Available

I have the same question, but unfortunately the above thread does not answer it. Actually it makes it even more unclear since Dietz writes that two alternative MIRx versions might also be released "synchronized" (at that time intended as a pun ;-)). So will there be an independent MIRx extension for VI/VI pro that will allow us to use all Vienna Instrument libraries in the Synchron Stage instead of re-byuing them again one by one as "synchronized" versions?

Thanks Paul, that's very good news! By the way: the new functions of the Player sound awesome 

The problem is not only RAM but also harddisk (i.e. SSD) space. The individual sectons come so far in monolithic (80GB) files. This means 300GB for the standard version of Strings I alone and correspondingly several TB for the forthcoming Synchron orchestra. This makes it is impossible to run this on a laptop (or, taking into account SSD prices, on anything else than a really high-end system). It would be great to be able to install individual microphone positions (e.g. only a stereo room downmix), which would significantly lower the disk footprint. I hope VSL considers making the installation a bit more configurable when they repackage everything for the Synchron Player ...

Originally Posted by: maurfe_8550

On my hard disk Installed File Size is 11.95 GB (including Flute Ensemble Full) vs 41.6 GB shown on the site.

Perhaps having previously purchased Flute Ensemble Full now makes me install the remaining libraries as purchased separately?

This would not be correct!

maurizio

Hi Maurizio,

I think the problem is that, having bought a single instrument library before, when you "upgrade to the collection standard library", what you actually get are merely single instrument licenses for all the other instruments in the collection (you can check this on your vienna key). As I wrote the single instrument standard licenses are for most instruments identical to the SE version, whereas the collection license, that you get when you purchase the collection from scratch, contains significantly more content (as detailed above). I had exactly the same problem and ended up upgrading to full to get all the unreduced versions (full single instruments licenses are identical to the full collection content).

I thnk it is a pity that VSL does not explain all these subtleties properly on their site ...

Cheers

Kai

Hi Michael,

I don’t think it makes sense to spend nearly three times as much to get Single Instrument Standard Libraries instead of the SE Woodwinds since aside from the additional articulations you get exactly the same reduced SE versions when you buy Single Instrument Standard Libraries (I made this mistake myself). 

I would rather get the Woodwinds 1 Collection Standard Library (and if your budget allows this Woodwinds 2 as well) since these include the unreduced versions of the included instruments with up to 6 velocity layers (compared to 3 in the SE, which makes for me a big difference), chromatic sampling (compared to whole-tone in the SE) and more alternations (up to 4 instead of up to 2 in the SE). Unfortunately the VSL website does not really explain these differences …

Nicola, this is a great midi rendition and an extremely useful comparison - thanks so much for sharing!

Dimension+Orchestral is my favorite version as well. However if I had to choose any single library it would actually be Orchestral, since they have this silky texture in the high strings (around 0.25), that is just amazing.

Originally Posted by: agitato

Hi Kai

I had stated that my calculation assumed no repetitions. You are right that it is 12^8 (or roughly 1 billion) with repetitions, which makes sense. But I like to exclude repetitions since a melody like  C C C C C C C C is obviously not interesting. And this is for only one note length and I never intended to include any variations in expression and articulation or dynamics. One could go crazy with this calculation and I am not that interested. This was just for a rough idea. 

I did not intend to suggest that music is math (oh please, lets not get side tracked here!) but posted that with the idea that someone might be curious about the number of combinations possible. 

The traditions of classical music composition have found ways to teach us how to narrow down this amazingly complex "landscape" of tonal possibilities into beautiful melodies without ever knowing math. It is fascinating to me that a computer algorithm that churns out melodies will probably take a million years to write a melody like Tchaikovsky or Mozart that can move us emotionally. How does the human brain achieve it? Fascinating.

Cheers

Anand

hi anand,

so sorry, i missed that you made this assumption. in this case my point is not about the math, but rather about the assumption itself, because you should have a hard time naming a famous melody without a single note repetition.

my post wasn’t entirely serious and i did not want to turn this into a nerdy discussion about math , i was just surprised to read such a post on this forum. 

my main concern is your assumption that every 100th melody is “good” (which is surely hard to define in first place). i would guess that out of the nearly uncountably many (landscape is a good picture), the percentage of melodies that a large number of people agrees on to be “good” is FAR smaller. otherwise we would hear many more of them … and that’s why the exquisite examples in this thread are so special.

i fully agree with your statement about classical music, but i am not sure about the million years. neural networks are making tremendous progress. recently the same architecture of the “alphago” software that had previously beaten the world champion in the game of go taught itself in less than a day how to play chess (and other games) and plays now better than specialized chess software (despite decades of development of the latter). the “deepdream” networks can already “imitate” famous painters and the results are quite stunning (although a bit creepy). so i wouldn’t be surprised if a neural network would learn how to copy a certain style and “compose” e.g. “tchaikovsky-esque” music in the next decade. coming up with really new ideas is surely much harder, but who knows, maybe a neural network can one day even learn what makes a melody great and implicitly apply this complex recipe (which likely won’t consist of a few simple rules) to come up with new ones …

cheers

kai

Originally Posted by: agitato

btw being a physicist, I thought I might add a bit of math info regarding the number of possible melodies, which some here might already know about.

Even if we take a diatonic scale with an 8-note melody or theme, choosen out of 12 chromatic notes with no repetitions, the number of possible combinations are 12!/(12-8)! = 19 million. (the ! refers to the factorial function)

That means even without note repetitions there are 19 million possible diatonic melodies. But of course most of these will not sound pleasant. But even if 1/100th of these are good, we have 200,000 melodies. Now imagine if we add 7 note or 6 note or 5 note melodies, allso variations in rhythm.

There is much room for new music!

Anand

anand, being a physicist myself I have to correct you there : the minimal number of 8-note melodies is 12^8 (taking a melody as an ordered set with repetitions - see guy’s first masterpiece ), which is already nearly half a billion. as you point out this does not take into account that notes can have different lengths … as well as different velocities, being played with different articulations, dynamics, vibrato—and changing some of these additional properties you can easily mess up any good melody.

so the odds to find a good melody by chance should be far less than hitting the jackpot. but the amazing examples in this thread (which I enjoyed very much!) show that music is not math and that all these extremely talented people here definitively know what they are doing .

Originally Posted by: plowman

New samples and platforms are exciting, but anything that relieves deep, datailed, endless keyswitching would be genuinely ground-breaking. 

this sounds nice, but how could an algorithm “know” if you want to play a staccato or a short detache (not to mention more fancy stuff like spiccato, harsh, …)? The information how the attack phase should be played and how long the note should sustain is simply not available at the moment a mere note-on message is received and at which the algorithm would have to pick an articulation. The algorithm could only use the previously played notes to “guess a likely articulation”, but this would strongly restrict our freedom and is definitely not something I would want (or it should at least be possible to disable such a feature). Because with a given algorithm one might either be able to play Haydn or Stravinsky, but hardly both .  

They mention continuous controllers, which could surely be very useful if implemented properly (in particular if they would "morph" different articulations), but this is just another form of manual articulation selection ... and it would be nice to know what exactly they do.

8 velocity layers (even for the legatos) sounds just great . However, at least so far, there seems to be far less content compared to current Cube libraries. I have two questions:

- presently we have up to 5 standard note lengths: staccato, short detache, medium detache, long portato and sustained. In the new library there is apparently only: short, long portato and long. How do they relate?

- the new libraries include up to 10 variations. Does this mean these new patches include the previous repetition patches (where also the transitions between the notes are sampled), or is it merely 10 “independent” variations (instead of 4 presently)?