Screenshot of CPU usage. (Not sure why there are 8 bars while I have only a 4-core CPU.)

Hi VSL Support and Users,

I'm trying to create a new VSL template that contains all the patches from the Symphonic Cube (Full). The way I approach is to separate the articulations of one instrument into 8-13 tracks (for example, Flute 1 Short, Flute 1 Long, Flute 1 Dynamics, Flute 1 Accents, Flute 1 Trills, and so on) and fit all the tracks in one VE Pro stereo output instance (called Flute 1). I activate only the first articulation of each track, say only Staccato in Flute Short, but having Portamento_short (etc.) deactivated in the next cell, just to save my RAM. Then I route that particular output through MIR Pro for panning and reverberation.

Now I've come to the point where I have 385 tracks in Logic Pro X (from 32 Multitimbral VE Pros) laid down and I'm beginning to notice that CPU load is pretty high and my Macbook fan is being very noisy. I both increased I/O buffer size in Logic Pro to 1024 (maximum) and the buffer size in each VE Pro instance to 4 buffers (maximum). That only helps reducing CPU load from 100%x4 cores, to 70%x4 cores. Just to add on, that 385 tracks only include Woodwind and Brass solos/ensembles, no strings library have been put into the template at the moment.

The question is, is there still any way to reduce my CPU workload? If not, then I'll have to consider either getting a better Mac (since I only work in Logic Pro) or upgrading to Master-Slave configuration. I'm also wondering would it help if I get a slave PC with better 6/8 core CPU, or would it not make any big difference at all as long as my Master Mac is still the same Macbook Pro.

For your information, my set up contains Macbook Pro 15" (Mid 2015), Samsung T1 SSD 500GB USB3.0 (VSL Drive), one Full-HD Screen (HDMI), and a NAD D1050 Digital-Analog Converter.

Any help/suggestion is much appreciated!

Bamboo

I read somewhere in this forum that the situation can be a bit compromised.

- If your Vienna Key is broken under the warranty, you can get replacement free of charge

- If your Vienna Key is broken without the warranty, you need to pay around 40 Euros (can't remember the exact figure) for each license you have, but not for the product price.

- If your Vienna Key is lost, you might get a small discount on your owned products. But yeah, you'll have to buy it again.

Vienna Key warranty lasts for 2 years, so you'll need to buy and transfer your licenses to the new one before it goes off. 

The way they compared Vienna Key with jewelry is ironically right. It is as valuable as jewelry for many people here. Even I disagree with this inconvenience but I believe that it is the reason why you could never find VSL softwares being cracked.

I can only hope that you'll get over this horrible situation soon and that it will never happen to anyone again, including myself.

Hi, I totally agree with most comments here about the richness of VSL, and I would like to share my impression with VSL here too.

I started to know VSL when I was looking for a way to upgrade my Sibelius and to make it sound better. My first purchase, Special Edition 1, did the job well and helped my composition workflow even though I didn't feel much impressed with the sound quality. (I thought it was too dry, but I didn't know the reason at the moment.) I expanded it to SE1+ to get more articulations and tried the demo MIRx before finding out that it helped improve the sound a lot. I would say that Special Editions and MIRx are a perfect combination for notation software (plus VI Pro if you need access to polyphonic legato feature).

However, when it comes to DAW sequencing, I found it difficult to achieve the realism, especially for solo instrument phrases, with only SE and MIRx. The articulations were just not enough for me to make a phrase sound musically coherent. At times, I was caught in a dilemma whether I should upgrade my VSL, or just go for other libraries that sound good out-of-the-box.

I read lots of forums and did some research on VSL product lines. I realised that the philosophy behind VSL is different from other. They recorded the samples dry, therefore the most important parts to achieve great sounding are their software: VI Pro, MIR Pro, and Vienna Suite. The result of VSL approach is greater flexibility and more precise control over the sound of the instruments, but in an expense of a higher learning curve and being more complicated to deal with. I ended up getting the Solo Strings I and was amazed at its huge amount of articulations and result I could get with it.

Since then, I have kept visiting the VSL website every month to see which instrument was on discount and started to build up my VSL palette patiently. To anyone who is new to VSL, I would recommend starting with the combination of SE1, VI Pro and MIRx. Then, considering upgrading your frequently used solo instruments to the full library for more details and better realism. Software-wise, the best upgrading path, in my opinion, is MIRx>MIR PRO (24) with one RoomPack, before getting the Vienna Suite. (I skipped VEP because it has nothing to do with the sound but it becomes very handy when you have a huge template and have to set up a master-slave network.)

Although VSL samples and software have been the main part of my templates, I still love experimenting with other company's libraries and use them, either on its own or layering them with VSL, every now and then. Sometimes they just sound right in certain situations. I believe that there is no best sample library in the market, but the consistency, flexibility and the wide range of articulations that VSL offer just allows its users to achieve a very close result to recording real orchestral musicians.

PP

Hi,

I'm just curious about the samples amount of Vienna Imperial. As the description says that it is recorded 1200 samples per key, 97 times 1200 should be 116,400 samples. However, there are only 69,663 samples on the product page. If I assume that only 69,663/1200= 58 keys are sampled, does it mean that the Vienna imperial is sampled in whole-tone, not in semi-tone? What is the reason behind this? Also, I would like to know if the old Bossendorfer Imperial is sampled in whole-tone as well?

Thank you.

Hi MassMover,

Thank you for your helpful clarification. If the Violin 2 patches are not different from other patches in the library, I will simply use the transposition trick instead.

Hi Jasensmith,

Tranposing the entire patch with one click is a very good idea. I hope that we will see this feature in VI PRO soon. ;)

Hi VSL users,

I'm sorting out my VSL presets at the moment, but I have to consider which patches are optimal for sequencing the Violin 2. It would be great if you guys don't mind sharing your approaches.

As most of the VSL strings libraries: Solo, Chamber, Orchestra, and Appassionata; contains a huge variety of articulation patches, there is a handful of patches called "Violin 2" in every library. However, it is unfortunate that the number of patches in that particular folder is very few, comparing to the normal Violin patches, thus, the capability of Violin 2 is far less than the Violin 1. 

There are few solutions to this problem that I can think of.

- One approach is to use the normal Violin 1 patches for the Violin 2. This way, I will have to deal with the phasing issue, especially when the Violin 1 and the Violin 2 are playing the same note, with the same articulation, and at the same time. I can pitch-bend the Violin 2 a semitone higher/lower and transpose the MIDI notes one pitch opposite to the pitch bend. Then, the Violin 2 will have as many articulations as Violin 1 but the "Violin 2" patches folder will be ignored.

- Another approach is combining the 'Violin 2' patches with normal Violin patches in the same Matrix. The question is, are the Violin 2 patches the recording of a different Violin and a different player/group of players? If so, switching between two Violins would not be ideal since there will be two instruments/group of instruments in the same matrix. Furthermore, the phasing issue still happens on some articulations since some patches in Violin 2 matrix are borrowed from Violin 1.

Any thought about this? How do you approach your Violin 2? And what are benefits of having Violin 2 patches?

Thank you very much. :)

Bamboo

Hi Dietz,

Thank you for letting me know that. I thought that the MIRx was designed to use less processing power than MIR PRO. I might have adopted this idea from the Special Edition product line, which consumes less CPU power than the Standard/Full Instruments Collection.

I do concern about my RAM as well, but so far I haven't experienced any RAM shortage yet. Perhaps it's because all my VSL products are stored in an external SSD.

However, I would like to let you know that I have just upgraded my MIR PRO 24 to the full version. ;-)

I am excitedly looking forward to the next month's offers!

Cheers,

Bamboo

Hi, JT3_Jon

- The upgrade path from MIRx to MIR PRO is available by contacting . However, the discount cannot be combined with the current promotional discount.

- You cannot buy individual room from the RoomPack

- I'm not sure if it is the first time they're offering 25% discount on MIR products but you can see the promotion of each month in the last year (2015) in the News Archive (https://www.vsl.co.at/en/News/News_Archive)

As regard to your case, I would recommend MIRx since its sonic quality is exactly the same as MIR PRO. Still, there are some presets that you can play around, eg., Violin I Vivid, Violin I Warm, and a dry/wet knob.

Hope it helps!

Bamboo

Edit 1: For the upgrade path, please refer to Dietz's post. :)

Hi,

I'm still considering to upgrade my MIR PRO 24 to the full version in the last minute of the deal. One thing that makes me reluctant to do it is the technical limitation of my system, which is a 2015 rMBP with i7-4770HQ 2.2 GHz (4 cores) [Benchmark: 12,920] and 16GB of RAM. The orchestral template I'm having contains around 50 tracks for the full orchestra and it works fine with MIRx Teldex. However, I wonder if I change from MIRx to MIR PRO, would my system be able to handle 50 icons simultaneously in MIR PRO? Otherwise, I might consider expanding my MIRx instead.

Any suggestion?

Bamboo

Originally Posted by: dbudde

If you have instruments that have definitions in more than one sound set, then you need to specify the Preferred Sounds in the playback configuration.  Otherwise, Sibelius will pick one and if your key switches/articulations assume a different one, then unpredictable results will occur.

Hello dbudde, 

Your approach seems to be working as well. This way, I can match each instrument with preferred VE instance and avoid sound set to be influenced by each other. Thank you! :)

Regards,

P. P.

Dear Andi,

I have tried removing the sound ID for the accent as you suggested and now the problem is solved. :)

It is quite strange how one instance (VE Strings) is influenced by the other instance's sound set (VE Special Edition PLUS). However, thank you very much for your solution!

Regards,

P. P.

Dear Andi

Thank you for your reply! It is very likely that the Special Edition PLUS sound set just got in the way. As I wrote for the full orchestra, I need to run multiple Vienna Ensemble instances for different orchestral sections as they require the different sound sets. I'm not sure if there were a better way to do this but here's my configuration:

Vienna Ensemble 1 (VE Strings): Appassionata Violin, Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Harp I

Vienna Ensemble 2 (VE Woodwinds + Brass): Flute, Flute, Oboe, Oboe, Clarinet, Clarinet, Bassoon, Bassoon

Vienna Ensemble 3 (VE Special Edition PLUS): Piccolo, English Horn, Bass Clarinet, Contrabassoon, French Horn, French Horn, French Horn, French Horm, Trumpet, Trumpet, Trumpet, Tenor Trombone, Tenor Trombone, Bass Trombone, Tuba

Vienna Ensemble 4 (VE Special Edition PLUS): Timpani, Cymbals, Glockenspiel, Xylophone, Marimba, Vibraphone, Tubular bells

As you can see a list of my VSL products from the list below my post, I don't own Brass and Percussion standard/full library yet. That's why VE Special Edition PLUS sound set needs to be one of my sound set. However, is there any other approach that you would suggest? Such as making use of Vienna Ensemble PRO and combining 4 instances into one while each instrument responds precisely to its respective sound set?

Cheers,

P. P.

Hi,

I'm having a problem with Sibelius 7 and VSL Appassionata Strings playback.

I selected Vienna Symphonic Library House Style, Violin I (Appassionata Strings), Violin II (Appassionata Strings), and so on. I used the VE Strings sound set in playback setting and routed the signal to MIDI port accordingly. It worked perfectly fine until I put Accent Mark (>) on some notes in my Strings part. For some reason, it triggers SVi (Sustain-Vibrato) patch with 2 octaves transposed up in my VE (running 'Sibelius' Preset), which is the same patch as when I put diamond notes above the notes (Artificial Harmonic).

I downloaded and installed the latest version of Soundset but nothing changed. 

Any suggestion would be highly appreciated.

Cheers,

Hi Jasensmith and Plowman,

Thanks for your suggestion, I've sent an email to VSL support already. I know it happens and I'm not really expecting anything. I would be impressed if they could credit me for further purchases as you've said.

All the best,

Bamboo

Hi Jasensmith,

I find your approach interesting. As you said you used ConVerbs plugins on individual tracks, I'd like to know if you mute the convolution reverb part inside your hybrid reverb in your master track or not. Or do you prefer having two early reflections blended?

I'm using MIRx as well and I'm quite happy with it. Though, I'm hesitate to expand my MIRx since I read it somewhere in this forum that the upgrade path from MIRx to MIR PRO / MIR PRO 24 and Room Packs is not available anymore. Moreover, MIRx is only limited to VSL instruments, which makes it rather difficult to mix other libraries or live recording with your VSL. 

Anyway, thank you for your opinion. :)

Hi Dietz and Pyre,

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I tried the MIR PRO demo a couple of months ago and I do agree with you how flexible and easy-to-use it is. I felt like I was rather recording than mixing as I could quickly pick up the differences after tweaking, dragging, and rotating in MIR PRO.

Unlike in Vienna Suite, I often find myself sliding a parameter to an absolute value, trying to find out what the difference is. Things get more complicated when I hear something wrong in the mix but can hardly adjust the correct parameter to fix it. It seems that there are endless possibilities to make my music sound better with Vienna Suite.

Recently, I tried to imitate one of my original production, which uses MIRx, by bypassing it and using Hybrid Reverb instead. I couldn't manage to achieve that result even though the Hybrid Reverb sounded great in its way. Would it be precise if I say that the MIR PRO's stunning realistic cannot be achieved by the conventional way of mixing using Vienna Suite?

Dear VSL users,

I'd like to ask for your opinions about reverbs achieved by these 2 products: Vienna Suite, and MIR PRO.

VS Hybrid Reverb contains both Convolution Reverb (Early Reflection) and Algorithmic Reverb (Reverb Tail).

MIR PRO is a (multi) Convolution Reverb and it comes with MIRacle for adding Reverb Tail as well.

How would you compare these two products' results regardless of the difference of their user interfaces and approaches? Is anyone using two of them together and for what reason?

I've sent an email to ask VSL support about this once but they replied me with demo licences of all products mentioned instead of a proper advice. Unfortunately, I ran out of my demo licences before finding the answer.

Any input from experienced users here would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Bamboo

Originally Posted by: mc202vt

Is there a dynamic layer difference between the WW I & 2 instruments compared to the WW in the Special Edition?

Is this the main difference for upgrading to the bigger libraries?

Hi Mr A,

As far as I know, the instrument collections contain more detailed velocity layers than the special editions. I suppose it means that doing a velocity crossfading with special edition does not yield as a smooth result as with instrument collection (either standard or full).

Another thing is that special editions are sampled in whole-tone while the instrument collections are sampled in half-tone. Therefore, each articulation patch of the instrument collections contain more samples and produce more realistic sound.

Having said that, the main reason that I upgraded to the instrument collections was neither of what I've mentioned; it was just because of the access to more articulations.

Regards,

Hi VSL users,

I'm doing music production on Macbook Pro Retina 15" (CPU Quad Core 2.2 GHz). I notice that there is some distortion due to CPU overload when I'm using VI Pro as an instrument plug-in in Logic Pro X. However, this never happened if I use Vienna Ensemble (not Pro) as a multi-timbral host for VI Pro. When taking a closer look, I notice that VI Pro only use 1 core of my cpu, while VE utilizes every core efficiently. Is there any way to solve this problem? 

CPU screenshot 1 (VE) : https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9c695h30bo7tot/Ex_VE.png?dl=0

CPU screenshot 2 (VI Pro) : https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmldxaxhuvrzhed/Ex_VI.png?dl=0

Thank you,

Bamboo

I apologize for asking you too many questions. I'm also sorry for user matteo if I have ruined the original question of this thread. Anyway, thank you for your kindness and clarifications. I'll stop talking/asking about the Holberg Suite by now and let people continue discussing about Solo/Chamber/Dimension Strings.

Regards,

Bamboo

Hi VSL Team,

I own the Special Edition 1, 1+ and always get some discount when purchasing full libraries. This is because Special Editions and Instruments Collections are sharing a number of same contents.

Thing is, I wonder why I couldn't see any discount when I'm trying to do the other way round. I own a full Appassionata Strings but still have to pay the full price for Special Edition 3: Appassionata & Muted Strings.

This is holding me back from completing my SE collection. Actually, Special Editions are still very decent for using with Sibelius. I wonder if this were intentional for some reasons.

Regards,

Bamboo

Hi Beat,

Thank you very much for the .zip file (also, for your suggestion about the velocity layers). I found it very interesting. :)

One thing that I am curious is, in the mixer.gif, there are plenty of tracks with similar names:

- Violin 1, Violins 1, Violin 1 a

- Violin 2, Violin 2b, Violins 2, Violins 2a. Violins 2b

- Viola, Violas a, Violas b, Violas c

- Celli a, Celli b,

- Bassi

- Vorne, Mitte?

Are plural forms representing Chamber Strings, while the singulars represent Solo Strings, I guess? I just wonder why did you need that many layers for each section.

I've been always thinking of layering strings as a copy&paste process. For example, you have 5 tracks of Solo Strings and you copy it to another 5 tracks of Chamber Strings. Would you mind clarifying this a bit more?

Regards,

Bamboo