I feel the interface of this forum does not fit with what I bought from VSL over the time and certainly not the enthusiastic Introduction video for every new product. In my opinion a replacement is looooong overdue.

It was maybe ok 15 years back for small music companies, but it puts me off whenever I want to post something.

I can't even find my own posts, only the threads I started and a single thread where I posted in.

Quotes look horrible, collecting and editing them (to just quote the relevant part) is a pain.

Newlines and copy / paste on MacOS Safari still has issues.

And please VSL don't forget to SYNCHRONize the old posts during the migration.

Thank you for the clarification. So I mixed that up some.

To replace Vienna Protection Plan on an iLok you will have to get it covered with Zero Downtime ZDT AND make absolutely sure to enable Theft/Loss Coverage for it!

ZDT without TLC does not provide you with permanent replacement licenses, you just get short lived temporary licenses which allow you to continue and buy you time to contact each manufacturer and apply for RMA or plead / pay for replacement licenses.

A big plus of Zero Downtime with Theft/Loss Coverage enabled is that it covers all licenses from all manufacturers on a single iLock.

I still plan to add a Vienna Protection Plan for iLok if that becomes available. 

Activating TLC (Theft/Loss Coverage) on an iLok means to my understanding that all licenses on the iLok become temporary for 90 days from the last time the driver can contact the server while the iLok is connected. So if an iLok is stolen or abused it will only function for 90 days, after which the licences expire until they are re-activated by connecting to the server. This reassurance for the vendors allows Pace to issue new permanent licences to you, in addition to the short lived temporary licenses you get from ZDT (Zero Downtime) alone.

Edit: seems that I misinterpreted the technical details, see next post by @musicman691c or the docs. Still make sure TLC is on and let Pace's servers see your covered iLock before the 90 days pass.

@musicman691c got it already well explained (quote below), and the two iLock method is really a good point. You can buy ZDT and enable TLC on the second iLok when needed (before transferring licenses on it), but it is a good idea to have a second one ready. Note that you have to re-buy ZDT for the new dongle after loss anyway.

I prefer a dongle over a single activation on a computer, as it allows me to quickly move all my licenses to a different computer, there and back again, as many times as I please (of course the same is true for a cloud license).

If a manufacturer offers more than a single activation and uses either iLok or eLicenser I always put at least one on a dongle.

In my experience internet access is more likely to fail than computers, which in turn are more likely to fail than dongles. This is even more pronounced in live situations. If a computer becomes irresponsible then it can be difficult to quickly get replacement for computer activated licenses.

Both computers and dongles can be stolen, but dongles are much more likely to become lost. Theft/Loss Coverage and Vienna Protection Plan took the scare out of stolen or defect dongles or computers from me.

However, it would be nice if I needed only a single dongle used by all manufacturers.

(I'd love if Steinberg and Arturia would offer to use iLok as an alternative.)

Especially for Vienna products it would also be very helpful if individual licences of a single dongle could be used by different computers on the LAN using some sort of license server. This way there is no need to distribute the licenses between multiple dongles when using different computers for various instruments. It would also make ZDT coverage cheaper.

PS:

I hope we get iLok licensing before my Vienna Protection Plan for the eLicenser expires.

PS2:

I just got a new USB-C Gen-3 iLok, bought ZDT coverage for it and in the iLok License Manager simply selected all licences of the connected Gen-2 iLok and dragged them on the new one - the transfer of 28 activations completed in half a minute.

I believe this is not correct, you just need two adjacent layers for cross-fade to work efficiently. Therefore the answer you'd get using this method is never more than 2, no matter how many layers there are.

I'd recommend to get the Vienna Libraries along with the much cheaper upgrade/sidegrade to Synchronised Libraries. You can keep the licenses for both (at least this was the case with Konzerthaus Organ), and I hope that I can convert them both to iLok licences later on.

I definitely don't want to miss out on the dry sound option from the Silent Stage.

I second this wholeheartedly.

Thank you VSL people for this update. I tried the latest build 1.1.200, and voilà:

• Possibility to use key velocity (Settings/Engine)

This feature is really nicely implemented. I also like the Velocity Floor setting for key velocity.

Thank you for this beautiful post. The last sentence nicely summarises what I was hinting at.

Nice and very detailed post. I wholeheartedly agree : )

That's definitely the way I want to do - getting rid of some limitations of the real instrument and play it in a way I like.

I was listening to the Big Fugue in G Minor demo, and it made me sad that it sounds so static.

There's this project sponsored by Schweizer Nationalfonds where the organist and composer Daniel Glaus developed a mechanical Organ with mechanical controls per key. It features also some mechanical after touch. 

The linked document is only available in German, though, but deepl is your friend here (forget google translate):

Deutsch:  Quantensprung im Orgelbau - CORDIS Forschungsergebnisse der EU

Edit: Johann Sebastian Bach might have liked this. He also composed Das Wohltemperierte Clavier, for reasons. He was living in a time where instruments developed, and embraced the developments.

Thanks for your post.

The video shows how velocity can be used for key switching.

I however am interested at playing the sounds with velocity. The faster (or harder) I press a key, the louder.

Glad to be of help. Konzerthaus Organ was the first instrument I bought vom VSL, and soon after that Vienna Instruments Pro, even before I was sure that it can give me key velocity.

However, I had to make a custom preset containing each register and change it there, manually. I'd be happy if presets were XML or JSON so I could edit them as text and diff them.

Got confirmation today that I get to keep the Konzerthaus Organ license with the offered crossgrade to Great Rieger Organ, so I will get it.

If it does not offer a way to turn on key velocity, then I'll probably not use it much, though.

Vienna Instruments Pro allows to activate key velocity, also for Konzerthaus Organ presets. But that took me quite some time to do.

This shouldn't be buried in the Synchron Libraries subform.

And I am glad to read this.

I totally agree with the whole post, not just the part I quoted.

What I really miss in Vienna Instruments Pro is the ability to have the key switches on a different channel or use other midi control changes etc., AND make them the same across all instruments.

I find it so annoying to have the whole Matrix-A-B thingy on different keys for each instrument and to have to share the keyboard with switches.

Its easy to stick a couple of cheap mini keyboards on the main one or use another MIDI controller to do that.

I haven't really used any of my purchased Synchron Player products, so can't comment on those.

Hi Dietz

Thank you very much for your resoponse. I recognized MIR's potetial immediately and hope there's more than new venues to come, as you suggested.

Accessing the ambisonic domain would actually be the most universal solution. I am also waiting for a Nuendo update that is finally able to handle Higer Order Ambisonic tracks. 

I have the impression that the gaming industry still has the lead in this field, and from my experiences a lot of VSL products are used to produce game soundtracks.

I think the majority of people just never experienced true binaural recordings. In comparison rigging up stuff like xx+y speakers is just a compromise. Many people nowadays listen a lot through earphones, to stuff which was sadly produced for speakers.

By the way, it's perfectly viable to use headphones together with a subwoofer to experience the full physical impact of sound ;)

What I most miss in MIR Pro is the ability to place a Binaural microphone, E.G. a Neumann Kunstkopf KU 100 for audiences and in keeping with current development maybe a way to import personalized HRTFs from AES69 files.

I was actually wondering right when I got the first version of MIR that something like this is not included out of the box. To me it seems to fit naturaly with the concept of MIR. I'd gladly invest the amount you pay for two packs to just get these features.

Benefits as I see them:

- Most realistic Monitoring of the sound at a given position using earphones.

- With the KU 100 you get good results for a Binaural Mix for a large audience including front of head localisation.

- With personalized HRTFs (Head Related Transfer Functions) you could stick your very specific virtual head into the stage.

A more complex but also more futureproof path there would be to include Higher Order Ambisonic Microphones. 

badibeat

Maybe it's about time VSL and Steinberg discontinue eLicenser and switch to iLok instead.

The scary issue of lost or stolen dongles is solved if you purchase zero downtime for iLoks and activate Theft and Loss coverage aka TLC. The licenses are replaced with 90 day temporary licenses which get refreshed whenever the iLok "sees" the server. This covers all licenses from all manufacturers on that dongle. The yearly fee of some 30 EUR/USD per covered dongle is not much higher than the price of a new eLicenser I buy every year just to renew the hardware guarantee and get some small protection against a defect but not loss or theft.

With iLok I would need only a single dongle per computer, plus license protection was provided by third parties.

I understand the need of protection against piracy, and a dongle provides also some flexibility to use your licenses on a guest computer. However, I believe VSL and Steinberg should put their focus on keeping their products up-to-date and provide us customers with the new stuff we are willing to pay the price for.

Badibeat

Hi Andi and Vyv!

That's too sad - dear VSL people, please, pretty pretty please reconsider.


So true!

Just to enable velocity for Konzerthaus Organ presets in Vienna Instruments Pro ended in a click-orgy.

Much like Vyv! I too am looking for a unified way to operate my instruments that suits me. In my case its both for live strumming/blaring, preferably over the whole keyboard range and for some form of automation in a DAW. With the addition of the super package standard libraries the variety has become overwhelming.
I am very reluctant to yield a single of my 88 Keys or the modulation wheel to such mundane tasks as patch switching.
Preferably I'd use other controllers and live controllers like velocity, polyphonic aftertouch, playing style for doing this. More so now that buttons on controllers become ever cheaper, more colorful and numerous.

And last but not least I utterly fail at remembering where AB switches, matrix X switches, matrix control switches, matrix key switches and my precious playable keys begin and end.

So I want the whole matrix switching thing to go to a different MIDI channel or preferably (to keep all associated MIDI data in a single channel) different controller types which I could map to buttons on a physical controller. One Button per matrix element, except maybe A/B.

A file format which can be parsed by a program or script would be of great help for all of this.

Still - sound's great. And the Applications are improved constantly.

Cheers badibeat

Bach was a sticker for new technology and might have wanted an organ featuring velocity if it was possible (of course it would have to be well tempered, too). This is the one thing I really miss about Konzerthaus Organ: The dynamic range (DYN.R.) parameter of the patches can not be altered from 0 to something else, preventing me from adding MIDI note-on velocity to the sound. That's what I want much more than a GUI.

Hi Colin
Thanks for the reply and sorry for the bother.
In the meantime I re-installed Vienna Instruments - and the problem is now gone.
I had Licence Control Center open during the original Install - this may have prevented the latter from completing properly.

Hi
I installed Vienna Instruments v2.0 buld 3238 on my MacBook Pro running the latest ac OS X 10.5.6.
As soon as the Vienna Instruments Standalone is started or the Vienna Instruments plugin is loaded into any host application the vlsdaemon process gets launched (my guess it'ts a registration / licencing / copy protection thingy). however in Activity Monitor the process shows up red as "Not Responding", causing the spindump proocess to run which takes about 8% CPU. Whichever of the three (Standalone or PlugIn / vsldaemon (Not Responding) / spindump) is responsible I don't want to figure myself, but the result is a nasty audio stutter, making playing unbearable even at very high latency times (500ms overall).
I set a new custom directory and reastarted my machine. I did not re-install Vienna Instruments, though.

Does anyone now how to fix this?

PS: I didn't figure how to properly search this forum. It's a pain.