I concur with all of the above and add my admiration of VSL's wonderful devotion to their craft in this day and age, when highly optimised design-for-production takes top priority, and automation, shortcuts, cheap methods and dumbed-down procedures have all but totally supplanted human skills and craftsmanship in the interests of "the bottom line".

But ... the damnable virus pandemic has hit so many businesses worldwide, and I don't doubt commercial recording activities in Synchron Sound Stage have been hit too. I can only hope with all my heart that VSL will weather the storm, whatever it takes to do so.

A meticulous and immediately accessible rendition, full of admirable care, craft, empathy and devotion. Bravo!

I was instantly transported back to the Golden Age of American song, even though the singer is not here.

If I may, I'd like to offer some observations on your mix that I hope might help take this rendition even further into the magical aspect of the essence of that Golden Age.

The sophistication, charm and wit of those great American songs hark back, I believe, to the European tradition of the Salon, where the ideals of politeness, civility and honesty were held in highest regard. The salonière (patroness) would encourage and nurture this kind of social ambience in her gatherings, no doubt much assisted by her feminine charm and guile. We could go back even further and perhaps recognize the codified ideals of Italian chivalry in later salon culture across Europe.

Would not this tradition of chivalry have tempered the ideal of honesty - in certain perfectly human, understandable and agreeable ways? Would not the salonière have preferred warm, somewhat subdued lighting and plenty of thick drapes, throws and soft furnishings? And here's my point. Would the sounds in her salon have been clinically bright or romantically soft? We can only try to imagine. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

So for your otherwise very excellent mix I'd suggest the acoustic equivalent of something akin to gas lighting, rather than bright daylight floodlighting. For this I'd try a little strategic EQ (probably no more than -6dB/8ve) to subdue the presence of the strings somewhat, perhaps together with some tactical compression (maybe of the de-esser kind) here and there to discourage HF transients and peaks from getting too far forward. A touch of tape saturation might work wonders too. As for reverb, it's difficult to be sure about this but I wonder if your very dry setting, although maybe objectively relevant for an intimate size of salon, ought be a tad more chivalrous and complimentary? (I'm certainly not suggesting anything like the typically soaking wet mixes of orchestras accompanying the great crooners such as Sinatra et al). 

For reference, I also listened to a recording of a fine performance of The Fire Within Me (with singer), on YouTube. I have to say, to my ear, that mix - although technically competent - is too clinical, too bright, even somewhat harshly so in places. It seems to me some of today's mix engineers are not sympatico with the salonières of olden times, by letting digital, scientific objectivity supersede the subjective charms of old-fashioned sound recording and processing, most especially in this wonderful genre of music. To get back to old-world romantic sounds, it appears we must in certain ways deliberately 'flaw' today's technically flawless audio.

But of course all this is just my personal preference - your mix as it stands is not wrong.

A final thought - maybe when (as you suggest) VSL release con sordino Elite Strings, we'll more easily be able to luxuriate subjectively in the intimate warmth and romance of salon style music, if that's our aim.

It's long been said we should avoid hiding our light beneath a bushel. And sometimes perhaps we ought remind and encourage those few proverbial dark horses among us to do their utmost to follow that wise entreaty.

Here's some beautiful light I chanced upon recently: it's an operatic piece called Echo.

Libretto is a poem by Christina Rossetti, set to music by William Kersten, sung by soprano Lori Trustman, music rendered digitally by William Kersten using VSL sample libraries.

https://youtu.be/0q-x3goksxg

This video was posted on YouTube in 2014. I'm amazed and dumbfounded that it hasn't become better known since then. The mass of utter garbage masquerading as art that gets shoved in our faces every day on social platforms - while this lovely piece remains virtually hidden - tells a very disturbing story about western cultures nowadays.

What must artistic talent do today to shine forth? I absolutely refuse to accept that narcissism is the way - it's become a pandemic disease, grievously afflicting and threatening to disfigure most if not all western cultures now.

One thing is for sure though. It does not serve modesty - nor any other virtue - to hide one's light beneath a bushel. There are already way too many people out there busy trying to hide, devalue or cancel everyone else's light in an effort to give undue prominence to their own dubious glimmer.

Pixelpoet, thanks for that very excellent idea. I immediately tried it and find the combination of (Group 1) regular vibr. + (Group 2) progressive vibr. is indeed very lovely - but yes: it has me waiting a little too impatiently for that most beautiful espressivo vibrato to kick in.

Then I had an idea for ameliorating my impatience:– 

I've just added a "Prog. vib" slot to the "XF vibrato" dimension column of Group 1, and then in the next dimension column I attached the relevant "Vib-progr" patch for each of the Group 1 players.

Now I can have both Groups in unisono start playing a note with regular vibrato until the (already triggered and silently running) delayed vibrato in Group 1 is established, then X-fade to my new "Progr. vib" slot in the Group 1 Sy Player.

I'll also add the same edit for Group 2, so I have the option of X-fading from regular vib to espressivo vib in both Groups as soon as the time is right.

Paolo, I add my request to yours. You and Pixelpoet have rightly pointed out that the Vib-prog patch is beautifully espressivo when its vibrato is established; so, as you suggest, surely it's possible to cut the front end off those Vib-progr samples to provide us with new Molto Vibrato patches.

(Lol, now I'm having wicked silly ideas about making some protest placards, saying, for example, "PLEASE VSL, give us Molto Vibrato in Dimension Strings", then a gang of us march up and down Engelshofengasse, waving the placards and chanting "What do we want?" etc. Lololol.)

@Info_9247, I jumped to a similar conclusion when I switched to a Samsung T7 Touch SSD. But I was reminded quite correctly by VSL Support that commercially available speed tests typically do sequential block reads and writes - yielding best possible or ideal results - rather than what tends to happen in actual practice (i.e. more random than sequential access, which is a very different kettle of fish, speed-wise). VSL's new built-in test makes its automatic preload settings according to its measurement of typical and practical speed rather than best-case.

At the time I moaned a lot about the new test giving "counter-intuitive" results. But I was wrong, VSL is right. (Hope they've forgiven my whingeing.)

Beat, thank you for your explanation and the helpful links. In particular I found your video on using the Hofa plugin interesting.

It seems my ear told me correctly that you're using traditional panning controls for azimuth positioning, not the ultra-realistic "binaural" type of positioning, e.g. as provided in Logic's mixer and in 2C Audio's Precedence plugin. If perhaps one day you switch over to this new type of localisation, I'd be fascinated to hear if your already excellent mix spatialisations become even more superb.

In recent years I've become a 'heretic' in regard to the widespread belief in the virtues of convolution reverb (I don't fully agree with the assumption that acoustic spaces can always be faithfully modeled as having linear and time-invariant reverberant properties, nor am I fully convinced by the ingenious techniques for interpolating between the positions at which actual IRs were originally captured).

To my ear, that ever-so-static 'crystalline corona' which all too often attends mutliple convolution reverbs tends to wreck the magic of a mix - no real acoustic space filled with people is ever frozen solid like that.

I'm very impressed by recent improvements in algorithmic reverbs, which I'm now exploring and exploiting in combination with "binaural" positioning for my mix spatialisation. Also I've found it fairly easy to combine Synchron Strings Pro (Full, using room mics) with SyDimStrings (100% dry before my spatialisation), with good overall spatial definition and coherence in the mix.

Not least, I'm now very happy about the much lighter load on my CPU. I'm sure there would be a good market for a purely algorithmic successor to MIR if VSL were to venture down that avenue.

I agree with you that in setting up and tweaking our mix spatialisations we're engaging in a somewhat dark art; and so of course experience matters a great deal. No doubt that has a lot to do with why I like and admire what you've achieved with your mixes.

Another of your glorious video tutorials, Beat; very well done - as always - and thank you so much!

I notice you don't show your methods for "adding an appropriate natural depth in the room" or "panning", and yet these are of course the crux of presenting orchestral ensembles and instruments convincingly and attractively in the stereo field.

When you showed your Late Reflections (LR) algorithmic reverb plugin in the video, I wondered if you're using that same make of reverb plugin, together with its companion plugin, for Early Reflections (ER) spatialisation - i.e. using an apposite variety of Angle and Distance settings in the automatically-linked companion plugins? I can't say I'm altogether convinced I'm hearing in your video the option I've just described - though I'm willing to be wrong. I'm well aware from experience with this particular pair of plugins that it can be tricky to set up and many kinds of results are possible; but when it all comes good, oh heavens above, it's astoundingly good!

Alas, of course it wouldn't be appropriate to go into detail about these particular plugins in this forum, but if you could indicate in general terms if I'm on the right track or not with my guess above, I'd be very grateful.

Paul, thanks for investigating. I had a sneaky feeling that situation might be the case - it's not a problem, I trust the devs.

My tests have been unable to produce hard clipping anywhere in VEPro when I've pushed audio hard into the red - at much higher levels than I'm ever likely to encounter in normal practice. Now I can set up, save as presets and forget about my permanent default gain levels in Players and VEPro with no worries.

I liked it; which surprised me because the modernist idiom so often just leaves me unmoved and indifferent. Your setting spoke to me clearly and strongly; probably because it's built realistically upon and around a vibrant emotional matrix - turbulent and troubled here, perhaps, but it conveyed itself to me as a very human reality, not as some vapid intellectual discourse.

I was engaged, and I really appreciate that.

Also, for me, the reverb just seems apposite for this piece somehow; I have no quibbles there.

Well done!

Crickets. Ok well I'll proceed on the assumption that VSL Players and VEPro operate internally with 32-bit floating point like Logic (without 64-bit summing switched on), and since I'm not using Ethernet links I'll also assume that's what's received by Logic from VEPro. I'll just have to raise a ticket if I run into trouble with these assumptions.

Hmm, looks like you've got all the main bases pretty well covered. Not sure if a separate SSD will provide all the relief you're looking for, although it's recommended for library storage. Sorry, but I'll duck out at this point and hope others (especially VSL) may help you solve this one.

You haven't said what instrument libraries you're using. Do they include Sy Dimension Strings by any chance? These can get extremely heavy on CPU if you use factory Mix presets and the Synchron Players are using the 'heavy' Convolution setting (i.e the "Use Light Convolution" option is not ticked in Synchron Player Engine preferences).

I've had similar difficulty (although all in one iMac) using Sy Dim Strings in a Wagner piece that has lots of divisi string parts. I brought down VEPro's CPU usage from about 60% or more to about 20 to 25% by removing the factory convolution reverb presets (by loading the "99 Mir Unprocessed" Mix preset) and then using my own algorithmic spatialisation plugins in VEPro.

As for the hanging notes, perhaps that's a result of a CPU core becoming completely overwhelmed momentarily when it would otherwise be responding to MIDI Note-Offs; just a guess, impossible to say for sure, although you did mention that "the sound is not clear" in the busy parts.

I could be very wrong here, this is pure speculation on my part. If you let us know some more about your instruments and presets and your hard drive(s), then perhaps others may provide suggestions more relevant to your setup.

I seem to recall - only vaguely - reading somewhere in VSL literature what size the audio 'word' is that's being streamed from VSL Player outputs in VEP7 to the receiving devices in the master DAW. But I can't remember what it was and I can't find it anywhere now.

Is it 24-bit integer, 32-bit floating, or something else?

At the very least I need to know if it's more than 16 bit integer (though I think it must be). This is because I want to set up all VSL players in VEP7 at a nominal static gain and leave them at that setting permanently; then I'll do all non-timbral level conditioning and controlling (including Expression level, instrument levels, etc) within the confines of Logic. Of course I don't want to exceed the intrinsic maximum audio level anywhere in VEP7 (including within VSL Players in VEP7), so knowing the audio word format (in terms of its numerical range) is crucial.

[In the idea I'm pursuing here, I need purely objective numerical hygiene for audio in VEP7 while the crafting of expressive and other subjective dynamics during audio tracking and mixdown is kept locally within Logic as much as possible. Hence the only audio level changes I want in VEP7 are those which necessarily result from velocity changes, velocity-layer X-fading (which is the only level change I need Logic to manage remotely), recorded-sample dynamics. or baked-in sample level differences. If the audio word size is at least 24 bit integer, or perhaps 32-bit floating, etc, then I don't have to worry much about peak signal levels going quite far 'into the red', nor average signal levels falling quite far below what the meters can display, within VEP7 and its inserted VSL Players. I won't be using any level-dependent Fx plugins inside VEP7.

If this all sounds a bit like laziness, well, perhaps I'd admit to favouring economy of effort in this case, lol. But my main rationale is, I'm determined to avoid fixing door handles onto door handles fixed onto door handles ....]

Some thoughts on a future "Synchronization" feature for Synchron Player's Mix presetting.

There is currently a particular make and type of spatialisation plugins that have a unique and very convenient "Edit Group" feature. This optional feature allows many instances of the plugins to be assigned to one of 8 Edit Groups, such that all members of an Edit Group can be adjusted simultaneously and automatically simply by operating the controls of any one member of that Group, either manually or by automation.

This Group-Editing facility works regardless of whether the plugins are enabled or bypassed, so that when any member of a Group is switched from bypassed to enabled it will immediately start operating with the latest Edit Group settings.

In the case of the algorithmic reverb plugin of this particular make and type, the Edit Group facility works not only for parameter editing but also for selection and loading of any one of many hundreds of reverb presets. However, this is not necessarily the same kind of thing as loading IR files into a convolution type of reverb plugin. Very many optional algorithmic-reverb presets may be loaded into RAM along with the first plugin of the type, without causing a huge extra RAM burden. But loading very many optional IR files into RAM along with the first Synchron Player to be inserted may not be quite as economical with RAM.

Hence I'm not optimistic about the prospect of seeing a new and comprehensive "Synchronisation" feature added to Synchron Player's Mix presetting. But maybe VSL's ever-resourceful and inventive devs will prove me wrong - anyway I hope so.

Very kind of you Paul, thanks so much.

Stig, even though we might have to wait a while, your post highlighting this problem may well lead to a somewhat more convenient life for many of us. My thanks to you also.

Very nicely said Stig. (The exquisite quality of what I call "Danish Truth" is what made Søren Kierkegaard one of my all-time favourite philosophers! But I digress, lol)

There is of course the option of setting up your own ready-for-anything template in which you have several copies of each of your usual WW and Brass instruments and ensembles already loaded, each copy in its own Synchron Player and each of these having a different Mix Preset already loaded, according to your requirements. Enabling and disabling each of these various "mix-preset option" Synchron Players in your template can be automated (but currently not possible for VEPro folders, alas).

Dietz, I sincerely hope we can agree to disagree on matters of art, artists and politics. I've stated my opinion, you've stated yours, and they differ, and that's fine with me. Also, I certainly do hope you can bask in a bit of the glory if Mank wins the Achievement in Sound Oscar.

One point though, just in case we're talking apples v oranges here.

I was referring to artists working in the mainstream US film industry, and to the political ideologies and agendas they must absolutely consent to nowadays or else be 'cancelled' by the 'woke stasi'. Those artists who comply very well are rewarded (perhaps with trinkets such as Oscars) according to their propaganda value. You've not noticed any evidence of ideologies or leftist agendas in this film, and that's good news, job done and situation-normal for the 'wizards' behind the scenes; they put all their skill into keeping the propaganda (oops - I mean Public Relations) schwerpunkt as sly and underhand as possible (as Hollywood has done for decades, ever since Vienna-born Edward Bernays showed the way). I really don't think they want or expect any suspicious and naughty little Toto (such as me) sniffing around and pulling aside the curtain like in the Wizard of Oz.

(BTW, I seriously doubt if sound mixers or any of the other craft masters in the film biz are perceived by the 'wizard' oligarchy as any kind of political threat or asset, so I'm hopeful Meyerson's work will be judged fairly.)

Fingers crossed for that Sound Oscar. 

Now this old Cold War warrior will shaddap.

In reply to Dietz's news on Academy nominations for "Mank".

I do hope this film wins the "Achievement in Sound" Oscar, because what Meyerson's expert craft achieved (assisted by Mir) in getting the score recorded and mixed under lockdown conditions, was pretty much a miracle.

But on the other hand, Best Lead Actor? NOPE: Gary Oldman has been my fav actor for years (and still is) but even he couldn't breathe life into the appallingly dessicated screenplay in that horribly clanky film. And Best Original Score? Good grief, just about every original work I've heard on VSL's forum is way better artistically. If Mank wins Best Score (or any other award ostensibly for artistic talent) it'll merely be in keeping with what we've seen happening to Hollywood lately, i.e. the wokies have taken over. Today, official judgments and awards have hardly anything to do with artistic excellence, but much, much more about how well the 'artists' fit into the Procrustean bed of far-left neo-Marxian ideology. It's already looking painfully similar to conditions in which the fine arts struggled for their very existence under Second World regimes, back when the Second World was a thing.

I recently watched for the first time a very famous, double Oscar-winning, big-budget, epic US film released in 1930. It had me totally engaged from start to finish and evoked many, many feelings and thoughts about the realities it depicts; about cultural differences between then and now; and about film-making, acting and writing, among other things.

The film is "All quiet on the western front", directed by Lewis Milestone, adapted from the internationally best-selling novel set in the Great War, "Im Westen nichts Neues" (1929) by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque (born Erich Paul Remark). Remarque fought and was seriously wounded in the Great War.

Here's the thing: this great film has no score, apart from during the opening credits. The whole film has been very carefully restored and the resulting picture and sound aren't bad at all. Where else nowadays is there to be found such great cinematic material without a score already printed into the soundtrack?

So unless you're already a busy pro, or have no interest in scoring to film or other media ......
what's to stop you writing your own score for this outstanding classic?

Apart from the invaluable practice, couldn't it also be a very strong asset for your showreel?

Stig, there's no obvious way of automating Mix presetting. Loading these presets involves the slow-boat-to-China kind of software operations; definitely not suitable for realtime automation, which presumably is why no relevant mix presetting parameters are exposed for user-assignment to automation.

Can't think of any cute workarounds - but maybe someone will.

Archie, I'd add a few more suggestions to Civilisation 3's already good coverage of this issue.

1. Your system might have capped the speed of your Gigabit Ethernet links to 100Mb/s if certain conditions currently prevail in your network (including such possibilities as a damaged link cable connector). From what you've said, I think it's worth using an appropriate network utility to find out if link speed has been capped. I'm not an Ethernet (or macOS or PC OS) specialist so I must leave it to you to find trustworthy pro advice about such testing.

2. It's possible to set up audio-intensive tests in VEPro that will indicate how your system is responding mostly to various degrees of audio-streaming load, rather than to other CPU loads.

2.1 For example, you could set up a test instance in VEpro having as few as possible sample players, using the VEPro mixer simply to duplicate audio output streams until you're sending the maximum possible number of audio streams per instance to your master machine (where nothing fancy or demanding is done with this audio). The sample player in this test should be one for which you have best familiarity and confidence, loaded with a lightweight library that you know has the lightest possible CPU usage (including switching off all reverbs etc, and using just one long sustain note.)

2.2 Then just keep adding more copies of this test instance in VEPro, one at a time, playing them all simultaneously while you listen and watch how the system responds.

3. Also, set up VEPro instance tests to do the opposite of 2 above - i.e. in this case we want absolute minimal audio streaming while building up other CPU work incrementally towards giving the VEPro host CPU its worst nightmare loading conditions, using your most CPU-hungry players, patches, Fx, etc.

Make sense to you? When a complex system acts up and there are just too many possibilities getting in the way of making a straightforward diagnosis, this is more or less the kind of approach I've always taken as a systems design engineer.

P.S. One other thing I've just noticed: you're using 48000 sample rate. Just to eliminate any possibility that something untoward is happening because of that, I'd suggest trying 44100. And If that does the trick, but you need to deliver at 48K, then you could of course subsequently upsample your master audio as an offline process. (I know 48K has been a kind of norm for some years now and I understand the theory behind it; but I've become extremely doubtful that it produces any real benefits in actual practice these days. However, having nothing to do with anti-aliasing, my own lab tests have shown that 192K offers a real advantage by measurably reducing timing jitter in the audio - but that's another story.)

Indeed, completely agree with you, Vanceen.  A while back I spent some months with Reaper and was very impressed by the design - one of the dark horses perhaps but it's certainly up there running with the pack.

Deleted by writer - because not a satisfactory post. Entirely my fault. Very sorry about that. :-(

Deleted by writer

Paolo, while you're waiting for this wish-list item to be implemented, I guess you already know about the CC-assignable Tuning (Master Concert Pitch) parameter in Synchron Player?

I'd agree that using MIDI CC-controlled Pitchbend in both VI Pro and Synchron Players would be handy for you, but wouldn't (Master Concert Pitch) Tuning in Synchron Player provide a workaround for you for now? 

Master Concert Pitch (labelled as "Tuning" in the parameter list in the perform tab) gives a range of about +77c to -81c: i.e. not only adequate range but also slightly better precision than the ± 100c Pitchbend range when assigned to a 7-bit MIDI CC (given that different MIDI CC scaling is used for each of course); in practice that's not too bad.

Just a thought.