Even Herb has recommended not doing this inside VIP. Instead, set it up with your sequencer.

Star Wars main theme concert suite is available at Alexander Publishing.com. Look for JW on the home page.

I have hours on the scoring stages of Los Angeles. A so-called "Hollywood" sound is first in the writing. And as part of film marketing, a CD is usually released for listening. So any benchmarking is done with comparisons to that. I think the course title is pretty clear, Doing the BASIC Virtual Orchestral Mix. When you have the basics down you can move however you want.

Using VSL as the core instrument set, I've covered a lot of this in Visual Orchestration 3: Doing the Basic Virtual Orchestral Mix. It also features the Vienna Suite and FORTI/SERTI. So there's a lot of Vienna application in the course.

Within the VSL family which works with the Vienna Suite is FORTI/SERTI. In my tests with DS, I use a Brighter 03 C3 on the Violins and Violas, C2 on the Cellos and Brighter 03 or 04 C2 on the Basses. This thins out the sound a bit plus moves them further back "on stage" for a more recorded string sound. You can position the strings stage left to stage right using sample delay and then look for a brighter reverb for the mains.

These are called Tilt Filters and are EQs for the sound.

With VSL, the expansion pack is when you purchase the Extended, also labeled L2, edition.

You want them to blend so that nothing sticks out and calls attention to itself.

Please see:

http://soniccontrol.tv/2014/01/23/insights-the-truth-about-viennas-dimension-strings/

The VSL philosophy is to enable you to create the orchestral sound you want, including spatial placement.

With Dimension Strings, you can do something no other library can do - you can literally recreate your string sections.There's a fellow named Saxer who's been doing that and his results are excellent.

You can position them wherever you want and as a result do a kind of orchestral "sound design" just by stage placement.

You can create nearly any sized string section you want. For example, for the Endeavour series (ITV), composer Barrington Pheloung uses a string section of 54332. You can recreate that ensemble and make violins 1 and 2 divisi!

I've tested, and because of how they're recorded, you can have 16 Violins 1. And because you can pick and choose your own players, you can create Violin 2s without using the transposition trick. In a very good sense, it's overwhelming what you can do.

I'll be doing a new Insights article on DS soon.  Good times ahead for Vienna with DS!

Quite beautiful, Herb! Well done.

I show some of them there and in Scoring Stages.

I've tested this with both the Vienna Suite and MIRx Teldex. They are close are in color with Spitfire.

I've tried it both ways, Steve, and there's no mechanical answer except to try it and see which one your ears likes the best.

I'll answer this partially since I've been testing them for Visual Orchestration 3. Based on my testing, in general, the Vienna strings are vastly under rated, while at the same time, separate from MIR/MIRx some things are needed to really bring out the sound. One of them is within the VSL family, and that's FORTI/SERTI which is highly under rated. Once ERs and a TILT filter are added to the Orchestral Strings 1 and 2, they really blossom out and you get a much fuller sound from them that can work in any genre. At that point, it's the covering reverb.

Outside VSL, Ernest has a product that's been around for years called The Hollywood Impulse Responses which combine a reverb tail + a TILT filter. Add to this an ER from FORTI/SERTI and literally, in minutes, you've got your sound. Here's the link:

http://numericalsound.com/hollywood-impulse-responses.html

Tonight I applied the same procedural test to Appassionata Strings 1 to see if I could get them into the same room with Berlin Woodwinds (BWW). Worked. Like. A. Charm. Listening on Sennheisers, it was like having Von Karajan's string section in my computer. If you do the whole thing within FORTI/SERTI you have multiple choice on dark/bright factors for the TILT filters which helps in matching either Teldex or others in Kontakt that have a slightly darker quality.

RE: The Teldex sound. You have that available in the Vienna Suite with Hybrid Reverb and separate impulses for the Vienna Convolution Reverb.

SORDINO: I have the Cube and the complete Orchestral Strings 1 and 2 including the extended set. You have a VERY complete set of recorded muted strings vs. a switch that "enables" a muted string sound in Berlin Strings and also two other string libs that I'm aware of. This has been available since the days of the Pro Edition.

LEGATO: There are multiple legato bowings plus a "backdoor" legato with the trill legato.

SIZE: It's a larger string section (14 vs. 8 vs 11).

In fairness, I should point out that the other libs are multi-mic setups.

Speaking personally, I wrestled with this very question. But the career/musical decision that I came to, was that I defined the sound I was looking for. And here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8jIOgJzjLk

After some rigorous testing, I saw that I could pretty much achieve this sound with VSL, the Dimension Brass and Strings, and possibly LASS for some divisi writing. So this is my main template which is in development.  The sound I'm getting is coming almost entirely from the Vienna Suite, FORTI/SERTI, these extra bundles from Ernest, and an older Lexicon PCM 90.

With this planning criteria in place (hellooo Lean Six Sigma), I would then look at these other libs for a secondary template with a smaller sized darker sounding ensemble. My model is the London Metropolitan Orchestra as used in the Endeavour TV Series from ITV. Here's a link with Barrington Pheloung conducting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of0fIym7784

With a little effort, I could also capture this sound in VSL by creating a new template with the Chamber Strings or the Dimension Strings.

With VSL's new "audio division" you really do have a lot of different ways to go within the family!

HTH.

PA

It was TRULY intended to make you laugh. Thanks for catching the spirit of the humor!

Peter

Ahh! But now we have the music industry definition of early 2014 - around NAMM, which by experience usually means between April and June.

So do you mean:

Violins 1 = 12 players

Violins 2 = 12 players

If yes, I probably would not approach it this way. Dimension Violins has 8 players. I would mimic the LASS approach and simply use a second group of 8 to create Violins 1 = 16 players. I've done this and have not had phasing.

Then, using William's approach, I'd use the transposition trick to create Violins 2. Then I would mimic the LASS approach and use a second group of 8 to create Violins 2 = 16 players.

With this approach you now have div a 2 of 8 players in Violins 1 and 8 players in Violins 2.

If you want more than that, you can now do div a 4 with 4 players each in Violins 1 and 4 players each in Violins 2.

With this approach you can now approach the scoring techniques of Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughn Williams and others, that previously could not be executed with any other library.

Good point, except that for studio work in Los Angeles, it's 1,2,3,4.

Here's one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpMl-cCwd10

Beat - did you perform this line in "live" or did you step time it?

Thanks in advance for your answer.

For what I'm writing, Chamber Strings 1 allows me to create a good divisi similuation when working with the orchestral strings and appassionatas.

You have to hit Enter twice to get the correct spacing.

I just installed DB last night hoping to get this brass unison sound. Start at 0:23.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8jIOgJzjLk#t=39

This type of intensity would be great to have. FYI this was recorded at Smecky Prague where the RT60 is about .70.

Per Translate Google:

MIR Pro is not necessary in this scenario and only interrupts the signal when it is actually loaded in VE Pro channel. Possibly this is the error. :-) A screenshot of your setup would facilitate the search for a solution.

As noted in another post, the default strings set up in MIRx is commonly referred to as the European setup. Going Left to Right it's V1, Va, Ce, V2, Basses centered. When selecting Natural Volume, the section is pre-balanced for you which really shows up in vertical harmony.

Given the investment you've made in VSL and the hardware needed to run it, I suggest you invest a few dollars in your self and take piano lessons. Here, you'll learn to read music and how to play with musical expression.