I was moved on hearing of Paul's passing. In my short time on this forum I'd noticed his tremendous generosity of spirit, yet also sensed something of the personal burden he hid from us - though I had no idea he was so ill.

Might I offer this musical eulogy, written by another of life's great givers, J S Bach. This piece, rarely for Bach, ventures into the territory of grief and tragedy (BWV 721):–

   "Erbarm dich mein, O Herre Gott" [Have mercy on me, O Lord God]

Played by Yves Castagnet on the organ at St Sulpice cathedral, Paris, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsVG10aYbZY

Hello MMKA,

Excellent point about winning some slightly different time-dependent expressions with the transpose trick.

A couple of further observations:

1. VSL libraries typically map each sample across two adjacent keyboard notes. This means of course that to guarantee a different sample will always be played back as a result of transposing MIDI it's necessary to transpose by 2 semitones. This is crucial if one is using the trick to avoid unison phasing, but irrelevant if the intention is only to change the rate of vibrato etc.

2. It's possible to win back the 'lost' notes at the top or bottom of a patch's keyboard range by enabling the horizontal double-headed blue arrow symbol at the right of the keyboard display, and adjusting the keyboard range markers which then appear.

Sami, I've tried the old VSL 6x16 template with LPX 10.4.8 and 10.3.3, using VEPro 7.0.926 and 6.0.18504. I still can't get any expected delivery of MIDI beyond VEP instance 1. I've also tested the VSL 2x48 template with all these versions and it works fine for me, same as for you, on all ports and channels in both instances. Perhaps my MacOS is screwing up the 6x16 case, or there's something up with the 6x16 template itself, though on a brief inspection everything looks ok in the Environment (and I do know the Environment). Can't conclude anything definite, sorry.

Let us know how you get on with the alternative template.

Paul, thank you so much. I hope at least you may take heart in that here on this forum is a sturdy bunch of individuals who strongly value and support the musical treasures our cultures have produced in times gone by, and who, moreover, are right now aiming and working towards carrying cultural developments forward. Yet this bunch - from what I've seen - do it without espousing this or that hollow, mechanistic ideology which merely provides cheap methods and shortcuts towards utopia. I want to avoid politics here but I will say this: I regard all ideological doctrines, whether on the left or the right, as harmful to music's development as well as to the other fine arts.

William, thank you, thank you. I agree fully with your comments about today's onslaught of groupthink and the untold harm it has done and is doing not only to music but also to our humanity. Yes we're being goaded ever more insistently and cynically towards an automaton-like existence, never mind that nowadays one is free to adopt this or that variety of prefabricated clone identity. Haydn also spoke of Beethoven's great innovation of "the artist as hero". Well we know what that's morphed into recently in western cultures - an army of fake hero multi-millionaire big-time celebs who've sold their souls to .... ok I'll stop there. To be one of Haydn's true heroes these days would be really quite a thing, and I still firmly believe it's possible.

Errikos, many thanks to you, not least for starting this wonderfully energising thread. By the way, I love what I've learned from Jung and admire that he insisted his writings and teachings are philosophy, not paradigmatic science. Various doctrinal disputes between Jung and Freud are not over yet and bear much relevance to the predicament of the fine arts today. However, I spent all too many years pursuing wisdom from books; an end to that came when I switched over to studying music theory and I abandoned philosophy as too densely strewn with fool's gold. Well I made that bed for myself and that's what I lie in these days.

I fear it's pandemic right across the fine arts, Errikos. Over the past 100 or so years in particular, P.R. - i.e. what used to be called propaganda - has become virtually ubiquitous and omnipotent such that now it has seduced, suborned and saddled far too many people in western societies with the appalling belief that individuality - indeed one might say the soul itself - is something from outside, not within. 

In the following dramatisation of the first rehearsal of Beethoven's Eroica, some important words are ascribed to Joseph Haydn, who attended the rehearsal. (play pointer set to that moment, 1:17:42, in this link)

https://youtu.be/UtA7m3viB70?t=4661

  "He's done something no other composer has attempted: he's placed himself at the centre of his work. He gives us a glimpse into his soul."

Thus began the romantic period in orchestral music.

Today, when the technical means of producing music have become so widely available, convient and affordable, I'm constantly reminded of Kierkegaard's bleak observation on the spread of printing technology, which he regarded as a somewhat comical invention, for:-

   "Since when, oh God, have there been so many people with something to say?"

One thing surely has become horribly clear to many if not most of us today. The vast armies of people engaged, professionally or not, in producing P.R. for this, that and the other - and I include "corporate music" and all other kitsch music as part of their productions - are far from being those "with something to say".

I'd guessed you were not counting AU3 as an option. I'll try LPX 10.3.3 with VEPro7 (probably tomorrow) and see if I can at least reproduce the issue you're having on your system.

Hello Sami,

Until now I hadn't tried to use an old (pre-AU3) VSL multiport template with VEPro7, but your plea for help spurred me to do some testing. Previously I had no problems using those templates with VEP6. Well, you're doing better than me with VEP7: testing the old VSL 6x16 Logic template with VEP7 I can't even find where any MIDI is being delivered in instances 2 through 6 .... ei saatana! (Sorry but In Finnish I know only how to curse, although I'm trying to be somewhat polite for the VSL forum, lol.)

It does seem something is very wrong somewhere but I'm still investigating. Thus far, I have MIDI communication working as expected only for VEP7 instance 1. When I try to play MIDI notes to a different instance, the MIDI indicator lights up in the correct instance tab in VEP but does not appear to be delivered to any of the 16 MIDI channels in any of the first 16 ports in the instance (perkele!!).

I'm currently using VEP 7.0.926 with LPX 10.4.8 in MacOS 10.13.6 on a 2017 5K iMac. What version of LPX are you using, Sami? I still have a copy of LPX 10.3.3 and I'm wondering if that might behave more like your version.

Apple have been tinkering here and there in recent versions of Logic's Environment, and I do NOT trust their tinkering in that particular area - for example, they've broken a certain function that I relied upon in the Transformer object and it hasn't been fixed in the last 4 Logic updates. If we can precisely pinpoint and define fault conditions in the old multiport operation with VEP7 then at least we can send sensible bug reports to both Apple and VSL.

Sorry this post is not exactly helpful; I'm continuing to investigate as far as I can.

Well aware of that, Dietz, which is precisely why I took the trouble to find and record a sound clip in which I could measure time between the sound of Tom physically slamming the keys and the resulting sound from the virtual instrument.

I'd noticed in some of Tom Holkenborg's (Junkie XL) tutorial videos that he plays very slowly and his written pieces are slow to the point of being wearisome. It's not that his keyboard skills aren't up to it; I'm sure they are, despite him saying how bad his playing skills are. Is it merely that he tends to prefer lento, largo, adagio, etc, for his film compositions? Perhaps. But I think it much more likely to be an insidious by-product of having to work with his monster system's horrendous latency - which is noticeable in nearly all his tutorials involving his master-plus-many-VEP-slaves system.

I recorded part of this video by Holkenborg in order to obtain a more objective indication of his system's latency. Check out especially the few seconds following 28:10, where he bashes the keys hard with his right hand because the staccato articulation is too quiet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gVWW2tKN8c

It's a bit difficult to measure precisely but it looks like his latency is somewhere around 190 to 200mS. 

Tom, how can you - or anyone - work with that kind of delay???

(Subject title stolen from a '68 Pink Floyd track.)

With reference to my recent post about a 6 decades old TV-recording of a Wiener Phil/Solti/Wagner rehearsal, today's orchestral sounds are significantly different in several respects. For example, it could be argued that today's instrumentalists tend to give more "sterile and exact" renditions, compared to the "sheer uninhibited passionate unbridled and raw playing" we hear in that wonderful old Wiener Phil rehearsal. I'd say it's merely a reflection of what we're like in Europe now, and short of trying to make musicians act out roles that aren't commonplace or familiar nowadays, not much can be done about this cultural sea change.

There's little point in lamenting what can't be immediately undone. Perhaps many generations into the future they'll look back on today and pity that most of us resembled Nietzsche's description of "man, the sick domesticated animal."

One aspect of orchestral sound that we certainly can celebrate these days is the superb audio fidelity of recorded performances. And yet - and I'm as guilty as any - when we set about our synthetic productions using all the technological tricks at our disposal today, all too often we destroy realism by flooding the sound with reverb. And I do mean flood. Our ears know that reverberation is rarely if ever as energetic or powerful as the source sound - and practically never ever more powerful. So why do we tend to crank up our added reverb Fx until the source is, relatively speaking, inundated? I'm not sure why.

If it's true that music models (or at least represents) currents and movements within the ever-changing ocean of our feelings and emotions (to which a very substantial part of the human brain's right hemisphere is devoted), then surely it needs to be heard as somewhat intimately nearby phenomena, rather than as reverberant vestiges of something so far away that it might not even be anything to do with the listener's organic realm.

These days I'm extremely critical of my reverb settings and just recently I've found a recording that I now treat as one of my benchmarks for setting reverb parameters. Here's a link to an exquisitely recorded and mixed, truly superb performance of several pieces of Wagner's Ring cycle, given by the extremely excellent Radio Philharmonisch Orkest (van Nederland), conducted by Markus Stenz, performed in 2016 at the Grote Zaal of the fabulous new TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht. (There isn't a MIR Pro room pack for this concert hall; one day hopefully there will be.) I haven't yet attempted to "deconvolve" the recording in order to determine various authentic reverb parameters, but it's on the agenda.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PBhlPeTJ_g

I've been mulling over the choice between VI Brass II and Dimension Brass II, because (a) I want to add yet more to the heft of my current brass sections, and (b) I love the timbre of Wagner horns. One of these libraries will be on my shopping list for this year.

In doing my homework on this quandary I encountered a video (looks to me like '60s era) of Solti rehearsing the Wiener Phil. (where?), rendering Siegfried's funeral music with a power, drive, intensity and verve that I just adore. Since then I've returned to this video again and again, partly to revive and recalibrate my sense of musical drama, but mainly for sheer pleasure. I post a link here in case you've not already found this precious treasure.

The words of the writer who posted this video 10 years ago on Youtube's hornchannel are sehr treffend - 

" ... This is here to lament the passing of a style of playing that is so rare to encounter these days - sheer uninhibited passionate unbridled and raw playing which has today been replaced by something more sterile and exact. ..."

(I can't get excited about the issue of correct nomenclature: "tuba", "horn", ... whatever.)

The Wagner horns first appear at 0:28. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkOiKy6sXfM

(Under the "uninhibited" heading, I include Solti's Rik Mayall-style display of underpants; I'd say this minor breach of sartorial decorum helped rather than hindered, lolol.)

Hurrah! Thanks for the good news Wader. And my thanks also to the VSL devs for continuing to be world-class problem-solvers!

Wader, I can't even reproduce your VEP server on-its-own scenario. I used an older 10-instance test VEP7 (now 7.0.834) server metaframe which has never ever seen any MIDI-controlled disable/enable from any source; it has several dozen Kontakts, VIPros, VSPs and various synths scattered through the instances; nothing huge. Without launching Logic, I've manually disabled certain channels and folders, saved the metaframe (i.e. in the "file" menu), then quit and re-opened VEP; those manually disabled items are still disabled, just as I had them before saving. I've done similar inside just one of the instances and saved it in the "instance", menu; it still works ok.

I'm out of ideas (and time). Perhaps VSL can help you unravel this mystery.

Hello Wader,

I've not seen that problem, but I don't use any of Dewdman's stuff. My VEP is woken up by Logic always as expected with VEP channels and/or folders disabled or enabled as I wanted. I haven't been using the disable button on any of the VEP client plugins in Logic, nor do I use the Instance Disable buttons in VEP; they're always left enabled. No idea what the issue might be in your setup, but when I have time I'll see if I can reproduce your problem, trying out different things.

Ah, thanks, now I have a somewhat better understanding of what you're doing.

1. First things first. Yes there is a free VST/AU delay plugin I can recommend: MUtility, by MeldaProduction. I use the paid version but believe the delay function works exactly the same way in the free version; and it lets you set delay values in samples or mS.

2. I wonder how Dimension instrument sample patches and presets actually relate to the acoustic realities of renditions given by the ensemble players during the Silent Stage recordings. I certainly don't doubt VSL when they tell us that the Dimension instrumentalists played in ensemble while being recorded individually. But also I wouldn't mind betting that VSL's library editors have subsequently tightened up time alignments across the ensemble's recorded samples, so that (a) it's then easier and more predictable for users to apply their own choices of complex post processing, such as humanisation, stretching, envelope manipulation, etc; and (b) the patches are capable of being played in DAWs with very precise temporal discipline if required. I see nothing wrong with such an 'editorial normalisation' approach. That said, I don't suppose VSL would ever describe their competitive tradecraft in detail.

3. I have only the (Sy-zed) Brass 1 library of the Dimension collection but I know what you mean about the 'smallness' of the unprocessed sound of the ensembles. I guess that's probably partly a consequence of editorial tightening - just as in reality, musically very "tight" live ensembles tend to sound somewhat compact acoustically.

4. I applaud your efforts to undo the temporal tightness and acoustic compactness of Dimension Strings. As far as I can see the only thing you would be 'breaking' is that 'editorial normalisation' which one can regard as a technically convenient starting point - ONLY a starting point. Good luck to you!

[Edited addition]

I'm guessing you're after longer duration of the thickening effect, which is stronger the more that the voices' pitches deviate from each other. The risk of ending up with an out-of-tune orchestra is there, but otherwise there's no reason why you shouldn't experiment with your own more extended pitch contours. Of course it's also possible to offset the fine tuning parameter on each instrument, though that can in some cases sound more artificial than letting humanisation introduce modulated pitch discrepancies between the instruments. The latter technique is especially effective, as you've discovered, when the humanisation contours happen at different times because you've put different delays (all within the Haas region) on the various voices.

I assume you've had to add your Haas region delays outside VIPro. [Edit - Oh wait, sorry, I've just remembered the other delay facilities in VIPro.] Maybe VSL will introduce a new facility in VIPro for easily setting up the Pixelpoet chorus effect!

Hello Pixelpoet,

it seems you've discovered for yourself the well known "chorus" effect which thickens the sound and which mix engineers have been using for many decades. Up to about 40 mS the human ear doesn't notice any echo (i.e. the Haas effect; well worth reading up in Wikipedia). It appears to me far too few people these days are bothering to do what you've done and experiment for themselves with basic principles. Well done.

As for why VSL's humanisation pitch contours generally all return to zero and quite soon, experienced musicians can tell you far more and far better than I can. I think it's generally understood in broad terms that during the so-called attack phase of a note, the player very quickly and intuitively "seeks" the required pitch, so to say, then (sort of) settles into the next phase, dynamic or otherwise, with a more or less established pitch. But of course that's an idealisation. Many, many times using Melodyne I've examined pitch contours within recorded samples from many sources and I've seen the good, the idiosyncratic, the weird, the bad and the ugly. I'd say VSL have conservatively adhered to good taste as well as practical realism.

I'm glad to see my question hasn't elicited any adverse comment about the disabled-VEP template technique. I'm taking that as no news is good news, and I'll proceed with my plan.

Glad to see you're up and running with AU3 at last, Dewdman42. And thanks, but I'll be building my custom template step by step around a hefty subsystem I already have in the Environment.

I'm planning to build an everyday work template for Logic 10.4.5 and VEP7-AU3 in my one and only computer, using the so-called "disabled VEP" type of template configuration, along the lines described in Guy Rowland's splendid Youtube video, "A Cubase / disabled VE Pro Template Part 2: How To Set It Up."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0f4kVzzwL8

It appears to be ideal for me. Guy has about 800 or so tracks in his template, so I'm thinking Logic + VEP7-AU3 will cope and, in my more modest case, have room for me to expand later. Like Guy I'm limited to 64 GB RAM, and though I don't know what computer he's using I believe my 5K iMac (4.2 GHz 7700K i7) will manage well enough.

I don't suppose anyone's actually producing yet with an equivalent AU3 template in Logic 10.4.5, but does anyone with experience of a Cubase template of this type in a single computer have any comments about why a disabled-VEP7 configuration might not be the best way for me to go?

I've often struggled with one kind of case in which multi-mic live stage recordings can be somewhat of a hindrance.

If I want to alter an instrument's close mic sound creatively and perhaps even radically using various Fx, then the problem is of course that all the various ambient mics still 'give away' the instrument's original sound. Sometimes this doesn't matter much, but there are also cases when it really does matter and is definitely undesirable.

Depending on what kind and degree of creativity has been applied to the instrument as heard on the close mic(s), it may be difficult if not impossible to use Fx to make all the original ambient mic streams appear to be genuine ambient renditions of the modified close mic sound. In these cases I tend to do without the original ambient recordings for this instrument, and mock up some new ones based on the instrument's modified sound - while of course endeavouring to make these new ambiences stay in keeping with the qualities of the overall mix as derived from the original live stage.

I suppose what I'm talking about here is likely to be an edge case if not irrelevant for the great majority of traditional concert hall orchestral renditions. But I'm thinking it's very relevant to today's high-excitement, max impact, Fx-riddled movie and video game scores.

I'm probably one sort of representative of the extended market VSL are now aiming to encompass - I'm not a pro composer and have somewhat limited computer assets. But I love to get under the hood and enjoy the manifold nuances possible with Silent Stage recordings in VIPro. I also use Synchron but don't as yet have any original Synchron libraries (except EO 2.0), nor MIR, and usually make my Synchronised library instruments as dry as possible. I have certain other, very recently released, truly excellent facilities for sound spatialisation which now I couldn't do without; they enable me to place Silent Stage instruments on a live stage with superb 3D precision and exquisite reverberant beauty.

Yet I'm also keen on big multi-mic live sound stage sample library recordings, and to date my best experiences in that regard come from using George Massenberg's astoundingly good and ground-breaking recording of Superior Drummer 3's core library at Galaxy Studios (with up to 11.1 channel surround capabilities). I believe percussive and plucked instrument sounds benefit the most from multi-mic live stage recording. Alas, to really enjoy the full splendour of big sound stage orchestral libraries I'd need some serious additional computer assets. (Well I'm dreaming of building a couple of VEP slaves with the latest lightning-fast PCIe-Gen4 slots and SSDs to match.)

While I'm up against these limitations they serve to make me more determined, more resourceful and more inventive in order to get the very best I possibly can out of what I have at hand. And these days the possibilities are HUGE. VIPro is in my view still one of the best enablers out there.

On my reading, all the viewpoints expressed in this thread have solid validity. But I'm guessing some substantial degree of resolution and unification of these viewpoints may well come when Synchron Player Pro eventually arrives.

(Oh and by the way, Paolo, I adore some of Messiaen's works and I certainly admire and respect your keen ambition with Quatuor. However I'd say to Mr Messiaen about Quatuor:- 'Mais mon ami, pour le chant des oiseaux, I'll stick to listening to live Blackbirds and Nightingales and all our other friendly feathered maestri out there.' lol - forgive me, just teasing.)

Edited my post at the top of this thread, hopefully adding a bit of clarification here and there.

Right up front I'd better let you know you'll have to open the Environment to do this. Techie awkwardness ahoy! Apple haven't yet fully integrated AU3 functionality into Logic 10.4.5 but what's there now is very useful if you don't mind doing a tiny bit of tech admin in the Environment. Still want to boldly go? Really, it's not that bad so let's go.

First thing to know: in LPX 10.4.5 we can now use Software Instrument tracks to provide access to more than one port in each instance of VEP7, with the added performance advantage of highly robust AU3 end-to-end communications integrity, rather than the older port-addressing technique used in VSL's pre-AU3 multiport workaround. (Note that VSL used the word "workaround" with good reason; it wasn't offered as a full production-standard solution. It was a good workaround while waiting for AU3 but it's open to certain highly technical questions which simply don't arise for AU3. So please don't go bashing VSL).

AU3 port assignment is not currently available in Logic's MIDI instrument tracks but it does appear possible to construct multi-port operation using MIDI Standard Instruments and Multi-Instruments, each connected in the Environment directly to a Software Instrument object that is assigned to a VEP7-AU3 Port; I'll cover that in another post, after some more experiments and testing.

We use only one Logic Software Instrument per VEP7/AU3 instance. This acts as the VEP client software instrument device in Logic for all ports and channels in an entire VEP server instance. All the additional tracks created after the first one (up to 768 tracks in total, but currently only 127 MIDI channels max) that are to connect to one VEP instance are merely hidden copies of the client software instrument track strip device in which you have a VEP/AU3 plugin inserted, except that each copy has its own port and channel assignments. Currently, any MIDI FX or MIDI scripts you plug in to the VEP client software instrument will affect outgoing MIDI streams on all ports identically. You won't see any of these instrument copies in the mixer pane of Logic's Main window, but they'll all be there in the Environment's Mixer Layer. More on that in a moment.

The Procedure

1. Launch the VEP7 server. Starting with a completely empty Logic project, create the first software instrument and insert a VEP7/AU3 plugin. You should now be able to see MIDI channel (default "All") and Port (default "1") assignments in the Track Inspector of Logic's Main window. Connect the plugin to an instance of the server.

2. Let's set up 16 single-channel tracks for Port 1. Set MIDI Channel to 1 in the Track Inspector. With Instr 1 track in the track list selected, hit [Ctrl]+[Return] or top-bar menu item Track/Other/New Track With Next Channel, 15 times. Stack these tracks in a folder if you wish. Now you have 16 tracks on one port, each on its own channel.

No need to agonise over the choice between omni (MIDI Channel: All) or single channel tracks at this stage - the steps below will enable you to manage your options later. You can at any future time add more tracks to a port without necessarily having to delete or change anything already done. This ability to layer many tracks in a single port is useful for assigning several omni tracks to one multitimbral Kontakt player in VEP, thereby allowing you to choose an instrument in Kontakt simply by assigning note channel numbers in the score. It's especially handy for changing between tutti and two divisi parts in one staff.

3. Next comes the tricky part: how to create more tracks and assign them to other VEP ports. Having tried lots of other ways, I've settled on this one cuz it works cleanly and predictably.

Create an empty new software instrument (i.e. with no VEP or any other plugin). Now open an Environment window and select the Mixer Layer. You'll see 16 track strip objects representing the 16 tracks you created in step 2, along with the new Instr 2 you've just created, plus some default strips belonging to the mixer. Might be a good idea to tidy it up a bit before you go further - it can get messy.

Select Software Instrument 2 that you've just created and look in the Object Inspector panel. It won't show any Port assignment yet. In the "Channel" assignment field (second one down in the Inspector list) open the popup menu and select "Inst 1". You now have another track connected to the VEP plugin in the first software instrument you created at the top of step 1. Software Instrument 2 has gone. Next down in the Object Inspector list, set "MIDI Channel" to 1 (or leave it at "All" for an omni track) and "Port" to 2. 

Hop back to Logic's Main window and satisfy yourself that this new track in the track list is now assigned to Instrument 1, Channel 1, Port 2. You can now use the process in step 2 above to add more channels to this port.

If you created an omni track you'll then need to repeat step 3 if you want to layer more tracks (single channel or omni) into the same port. Also, if during step 2 you happen to try and add another track when all 16 channels are already assigned to the port (by an omni track, for example), then Logic will automatically create a new software instrument which is separate from the VEP client instrument; in this case you can easily re-assign the new track back to the VEP client instrument and a port that you want, as described above in this step.

4. And that's it, basically. For each new port you want to assign new tracks to, or in order to layer more tracks into a port that already has 16 channels assigned, create another new empty Software Instrument then hop into the Environment and re-assign this new instrument to the software instrument that already has the targeted VEP instance plugged in.

Hello Stephen,

Lol, agree with your comments about Apple's apparent 'strategy'. I still have a great deal of respect for Apple's desktop hardware design engineers (much more so than the MacBook cowboys), and OMG the exotic new cheese grater and that fabulous new 6K 32" Retina screen have set the world of computer techie Youtubers on fire! Looking forward to some serious testing and reviews from those guys before I know whether to feel miserable or very miserable about not being able to afford those beauties.

As for AU3, I've had VSL's AU3 Beta multiport templates (created by VSL on 2nd May) working without problems on my localhost 2017 5K iMac with LPX 10.4.5 in High Sierra. Also I've been able to build my own custom AU3 multiport templates from scratch without too much hassle and thus far without any serious problems in operation. 

Custom-building AU3 templates is not exactly a slick job (though just a little smidge easier than in 10.4.4) because Apple clearly haven't yet brought AU3 functionality up to full production standard in LPX; it seems to work ok on my system but one could say right now it's in an early Windows/Cubase kind of awkwardness lol. I'll be posting a new thread here on how to approach the building of custom AU3 multiport templates in LPX 10.4.5.