Piexelpoet, that is so true especially about the legato.  I think I am somewhat spoiled by how good it is...

Not absurdity, but a great project and so imaginative and wide-ranging. 

I have to note that not only are the clarinet and accordion so well played, but the VSL instruments beautifully incorporated and expertly programmed.   

plowman that sounds like me!  The old samples that were so inadequate and replaced by the awesome Vienna. 

However, what is most striking - there is still nothing like the original Vienna Instruments Tenor Trombone, C Trumpet, Vienna Horn, etc. - many others including the newest Synchron.   They have not been surpassed even now.  The musical expression is still latent within those samples, to the degree that one just sits back and thinks... "what can I do with this sound?"   

Macker, yes, what you see in the Vienna Instruments is truly the craft of music.   The raw elements that one can access so directly.  It is invaluable to creating an individual expression.  

I noticed another odd thing - this naming problem involves mainly the letter "C"  !  I was trying to name "Cello" and ended up with "Ello."  This happens on two separate computers running VI Pro standalone.     

Also - at first it didn't happen, with naming several presets completely normal And then after about 4 instrument presets, it started again. I was trying to name "Percussion" and got "perussion."  

It is not a huge deal as you can go in within VE Pro and rename the same instruments. But the naming function within VI is doing this erratically.  

woy and Bill agree with that.

Another thing that struck me is how VSL innovated the analysis of musical phrases and performance - now it's normal for sample libraries but VSL was the first using performance of legato, repetitions, round robins etc. that make the performance so close to real. When you hear a live performance all the details are combined by the player seamlessly, with years of practice, skills, even mastery of the instrument all combined. To first analyze this into its components VSL innovated and then used a very methodical approach to breaking down and naming all the details of performance.   I particularly like how there is such uniformity across all the instruments, with articulation sets. So you can experiment with orchestration, to the extent of substituting a trumpet for a violin, or a flute - all with very little tweaking needed. This is a huge advantage (and often allows very lazy orchestrations like, what should I do with the horns here? Wait a minute - double them with violas! It's often almost instantly transferable).  

This is all based upon the access to all the patches which are like raw elements of musical expression and can be combined in any conceivable way.

What seems to be forgotten often is that prior to VSL, sampling was around 2 to 10 individual note samples artificially looped and spread across an entire keyboard. I know - I HAD THOSE LIBRARIES!
It was Roland S-50 samples, Emu Emulator samples, Proteus modules, Miroslav Vitous samples. These entire libraries had fewer content than individual articulations of single instruments now within VSL! But what is most striking is not just incremental progress to more data - it was the invention of the legato and performance sampling. What nobody now acknowledges is that VSL, under the brilliant direction of Herb Tucmandl, did this first! It was the most shocking innovation to hear Herb's own demo of the Blue Danube waltz intro with beautiful legato horns against a string tremolo background. The second I heard this I knew I had to obtain this library even if it involved illegal activities to procure funding.
All the endlessly proliferating sample libraries now competing stole shamelessly from VSL and pretend to invent every approach now used, even though they were all created by VSL and the genius of Herb. He should be getting royalties from all those libraries but that has not been possible due to the complexities of technology. But I just wish that people would realize the incredible genius and innovation of this company. So many pieces of music could not have been realized without the beautiful sounds of VSL.

Paul, thanks very much for the reply.  It is Windows 10 Pro 64,  and loading VI Pro standalone, then trying to save any preset.  The naming seems to be a problem.  

I was remembering that this did not happen in previous versions as I had saved a lot of newly named presets without any problem.  

What is odd is that there is no problem with saving within VE Pro.  That works as usual.  But within VI pro, this happens.  I wouldn't be trying to do that except I had to use VI Pro standalone in order to do the shortcut for replacement of Dimension instruments.  

Thanks Dave, also your insights about problems with composing now are so well expressed.   

Paolo, thanks very much it is good to hear from you!  

Here is an amazing piece done by the Acclarion duo with David Carovillano who posts a lot of really fine things here - I was greatly impressed by the variety of music in this, and it uses some expertly performed and combined VSL instruments blended beautifully with the live accordion and clarinet which are so well performed.

Circus of the Mind

I was trying to save a preset in Vienna Instruments Pro standalone and it would not allow me to write a "c" in the name! Also some odd ignoring of other letters, then suddenly putting them in as I typed.  I thought my computer (typing) keyboard must have a malfunction, so replaced it with another I had.   Same thing.  I then tried to save a new-named preset on another computer running VI Pro and the same thing happened.  This looks like a glitch in  naming new presets.  

The reason I was saving them in VI Pro STandalone was to use the replace instruments shortcut with Dimension strings, but this had nothing to do with the other computer which behaved the same.

Macker, I didn't see this previously - thank you - that is very kind of you to write.  

Of course, there are composers who don't want to deal with all the mixing stuff. For those, the "Synchron-", "Synchronized-" and all the "MIR-" products are great. - Beat Kaufmann

This is a completely dismissive and false statement. Actually MIR is a vital part of many professional mixing setups, and now Synchron as well. MIR is probably the finest reverb/environment for orchestral samples and as such can be used in any number of mixing scenarios.

The dry sample format - you're right, that is what makes VI so valuable.  I've never used that auto divisi since I always wanted to control each player, but agree  it is a good feature - that is actually like a sample library that never made it, DVZ Strings.  It is interesting how Dimension Strings actually did what those guys were trying to do but went way beyond with the simultaneous performance/individual miking as well as hugely more samples about a decade later.      

maybe they haven't, yeah.  Just some people writing in?   

The thing that VI needs to have added is Dimension Strings IV, which is extended techniques, sampled trills to larger intervals,  unusual experimental sounds done with the same Dimension approach.   

But it's true that VSL has done a huge amount with VI already and is an amazingly complete library for orchestra.  Especially if you get all the string libraries which when taken together, create a hugely varying ensemble.  

That's so true and it seems like a commercial fact that is happening with VI - it is not as monetarily rewarding as something more instant.  This is a huge problem because it is also better than the instant things precisely BECAUSE it is not instant.  It can be used with other systems of audio in the most pristine way, because of the Silent Stage which is the most  significant development by far of VSL.  Though now it is being shunted into "legacy" which is wrong.

That's exactly how I feel about it. That sounds like an interesting piece you're doing! In my score for Metaphysicians Dream I used a very small chamber ensemble but put it in the Pernegg Monastery for ultra ambient reverb - I really like that ability to do different combinations. Also I remember Dietz saying the reverb or hall is a performer itself. Definitely true in that case.

pixelpoet that's a great post and how I feel

I have other libraries but always come back to VI as the main one.  It's because of the combination of that pure silent stage performance with the simple programming.  

If you look at the patches - load an articulation and it is just that sound perfectly put together, without a lot of menus to deal with. 

Though I created my own general instrument presets some time ago and just load one of those - one for high instrument, one for low instruments -  then whatever articulations will be needed.  So they all behave the same across the orchestra, and you can make radical changes in orchestration, like changing a flute part to a violin, just to check whether you want to do that - or perhaps double the instruments.  This is possible because of the consistency of naming articulations VSL did,  which allows you to do this experimenting with orchestration. A lot of times, even using the same controllers and keyswitch setup, I hardly have to make any change in a MIDI track even to switch between radically different instruments, though it's always easy  to do that if it needs tweaking.

Overall I would say it's that access to raw sound of great performances with Silent Stage recordings that makes it superior to other systems.    

If you are using MIR, a lot is accomplished by default. Anyway combining different strings is a good idea.

well the reason I feel anxious is because of other companies, admittedly. They tend to "discard" previous software, even though it is often superior to the newer. I'm not saying that about Synchron which isexcellent, but the workflow of VI has been integrated into pro systems and switching to another system for no reason at all, except for a different set of bells and whistles, is absolutely stupid. And yet this is often the case and people grudgingly go along with it in other current software, so I am hoping VSL does not do the same and force users to do that.
This is another reason: despite not having as many "dimensions" or layers of menu-driven pre-programmed automation, you can do anything with VI musically speaking. You have total control over ever possible MIDI parameter. And you can create your own setup which is very easy to use. That is ideal.

This was a hysterical overwritten post of mine so I edited it, but I mainly wanted to state that I am hoping Vienna Instruments will continue as it is extremely flexible and well-designed especially for creating your own presets and instruments using the patches, deciding what controllers you want to use, how to combine things, etc. A huge amount of options but with a simple design to begin with so it can be built up into whatever sounds you actually need to use for your own orchestral setup. 

OK, I was referring to Vienna Ensemble Pro,  not the Vienna Pro server. 

Well to clarify what I was saying there are in Vienna Ensemble 4 things you can load - VI, Synchron, VST, and Audio input. When you say  "input" it sounds like you are talking about audio.  You seem to be actually talking about VST plug-ins if its Kontakt. So you would load a VST into Vienna Ensemble and select Kontakt. Then you select the MIDI port and channel at the top of the mixer in VE.  Then you need to go into whatever Kontakt instrument you load and select what port you have activated in Kontakt, and the channel that corresponds to the channel selected in VE.  It is dependent on Kontakt having been configured to have the correct ports active.  But that should allow playing of any Kontakt instrument you wish, one to each VST instance  - though you can set up multis on one channel if you want several playing from the same channel.  Anyway that's how I do it to add a Kontakt instrument into Vienna Ensemble.  

An input is normally an audio input so not an instrument. A VST can be inserted with a different icon nearby. Once you click that the available VSTs
will be shown.