Hi Ricardo,

>>  Is single-threaded performance really better in the new AMD processors?

No. Intel is still ahead of this, even with AMD's 3rd gen. Should you care about this at all? I'm not so sure. The number of cores is quite important, however. 

>> Is the new the zen 2 processors and PCI-E Gen 4 really worth it for Vienna Symphonic Library or should I get Intel 9th gen instead?

I'd say both will do the job well (I used Intel before, and then moved to AMD), but in terms of "bang for the buck" AMD 3900X is beyond competition right now. Arguably, it's beyond competition, period. And probably 3950X, which we are yet to see. Just my opinion.

Regards,

Crusoe.

Dave, thank you for taking time and explaining the thought process behind the compositional decisions. Even though I did undrestand them to some degree, a lot of times my understanding was ambiguous. And you helped to clear that up. With zero initial understanding, the explanations would probably be meaningless, as you rightfully said in another message. But half-way through, they are certainly useful for a guy like myself (pretty much uneducated). I myself often have trouble with finishing a piece properly, and your explanation is very helpful since your interpretation is unambiguous.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

an interesting piece, it went a lot of directions, they were fun to follow, even though I'm not sure I fully grasped the "main" idea. More on this later (hehe). The clarinet was somehow more assertive, and the strings followed it more often than speak their own word. The stringed instruments were also in unison often, which made me thinking about their... secondary role compared to the piano+clarinet. I could be wrong here.

The ending felt just a little bit abrupt, as if its composer (you) all of a sudden decided: "Enough!".

Overall, I enjoyed the ideas and clever interplay, even though I'm not really a huge fan of chamber music in general.

On the technical side, I felt sometimes there's too much resonance in the low-mids (~250-500Hz) that is created by the reverb (I think). 

I went through a discussion in this thread, and would like to add something vaguely related. I went to Paris once, to see the beatiful paintings of the D'Orsay museum, and then to see more of that in Louvre. Even though in visual arts I was as educated as an average caveman. It was overwhelming in terms of new information, but I didn't think there was a painting thing in particular that I *liked*. And then, a couple of days later, I went to Versaille, to see the palace, of course. The palace also boasted a few paintings, but to my amazement, they were horrible. Maybe they are not, maybe it was just me pumped up with the beauty of all those great masters, and just incomparable. It was amazing not only because the French kings couldn't find a single decent painter. It was also amazing because I knew by heart that what I saw a couple of days ago was more beatiful than what I saw in Versaille. I learned to appreciate paintings!

Well, not even vaguely related, so it seems :) 

Cheers,

Crusoe.

P.S. Disappeared, indeed, but not entirely :) just went on vacation. I for some reason don't get notifications from your YouTube channel, even though I'm subscribed to it.

Hi Philip,

my personal experience boils down to a few things:

1) If you "sink" a part into a properly mixed virtual performance, noticeable ambient difference diminishes quite a bit. Depends on your specific setting, in the end, but the scenario you describe has a pretty good chance to work. Check this out, for example:

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t50866-Boccherini---String-Quintet-op-41-ndeg1-with-the-turkish-Finale----violin-and-VSL-Instruments#post280410

I think you should be able to find other good examples on this forum.

2) Since it's a soloist, you actually *want* that part to stand out, in a certain sense. As soon as you find a proper dry/mix ratio while doing #1, the difference will actually work to your advantage.

Regards,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

I enjoyed this piece, it has clear and memorable main idea. Interesting harmonies, you use the same "hijink" several times, so by the end of the piece it becomes almost a norm. You also unpacked the leading harmony a few times, at 02:02 for example, so that it became very clear to me what's going harmonically (I couldn't do it at first).

Those staccato triplets were quite effective, I thought. Articulation also matches very well there, I don't think any staccato would fill the role this well, because it's so sharp and yet not thin.

Pizzicatos you introduce in the middle of the pice work very well, in my opinion.

Those runs at 02:12 sounded peculiar to me (not in a bad way) - it seemed as though some notes jumped in from another key :)

One small criticism I have is about violins - they suggest different ambience (room) compared to the rest of the string. This is clearly heard at 00:07 - 00:08 and in some other places where the violin tails are not masked. I came across this myself more than once and therefore don't think it's specifically related to SY-zed dimension string. Has to do with the way reverb algorithms work (differently for lows, mids and highs). 

All the best,

Crusoe.

Sergio,

thanks for the information. I was not very helpful, but you were! :)

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Sergio,

1) You use this HDD for archiving. The way I look at this operation, its speed is not really that critical - especially if you schedule it to run at some "idle" time, such as at night. 7200 rpm = noisy, at least compared to 5400 and even 6000. I don't see why do you want exactly 7200 rpm for backups, therefore. 

2) Does the noise wake you at night, perhaps? Maybe you could simply reschedule your backups? It's not such a frequent operation, the way I imagine it.

3) Maybe you should invest in a quiet case instead of a drive? Nice bonus of this is that you reduce overall noise, not just HDD noise. I own a beQuiet case, and man it's worth the price.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Originally Posted by: William

Crusoe that is a good call as the level of the tom-toms was questionable.  I cranked them up, also adjusted their individual dry/wet to -45.12% in the MIR Vienna Konzerthaus GrosserSaal v2 Conductor position with overall dry/wet  at -35.44% and the Miracle Close Orchestral Stage Enhance default setting.  

Oh, I guess I can see the reasoning behind this. Thanks for the explanation!

Hi William,

I agree with the people who already commented - very impressive. Must have been quite a labour to create such a fluid MIDI performance.

Indeed, the piece reminded me of Mahler, those parts with a quiet harp (sounded very natural, by the way) for instance. 

Didn't see that organ coming, :) it felt right, though.

Those toms at 17:15 attracted my attention (they are concert toms, right?). I wonder if you are 100% happy with the way they worked in that part. This would be the only crticism, if it is, everything else sounded flawless to me.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Paul,

Quite fabulous, if I may say so. I'm not familiar with Stark Trek series, perhaps the main motive is somehow related to it? It does create associations with some cinematic grandeur. I liked how you developed the main theme, and how you used brass instruments to assert their statement. It sounded very natural and believable musically.

About the MIDI performance. Brass and woodwinds were all spot on, zero complaints. Percussion is actually fine, too. I just paid less attention to it, because my attention was captured by everything else. Strings were very good, too, but if I'd give 10 for brass, 9 would go for strings. I'm guessing this was no simple matter to blend the two libraries the way you did (I don't have Spitfire). 

Even in the last, busy part of the piece where you've got heavy brass and strings going at the same time, they are very clearly audible on their own. You achieved that in part by panning, which did work out in all of the piece, in my opinion, but also the voicing is pronounced so that there's no problem in hearing everything. 

I also listened to the previous parts of this symphony, and this is, in my opinion, a culmination in every sense.

Anyway, really impressive work. I'll check the score later (many thanks for publishing it!), I'm interested in that loud ending in particular.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dominique,

Lovely piece, I enjoyed it! Can't provide any compositional critique, it all sounded right to me. The soloist and the rest of the orchestra are in balance all the time, I thought. On the technical side, one can notice the difference between the hall-esque ambience of the string and the "silently staged" bassoon. You did add reverb to the bassoon, but it still needed to "sink" into the scene just a little bit more. Which roughly means "less dry sginal/more wet", I guess.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Lokotus,

sorry to hear about your problems. I did experience noise blasts with VEP 6 back in its early days (several years ago). It never happened again since a long time now. Just to narrow down the investigation, let me ask you a few questions.

1) During the noise blast, do you see a spike in VEP meters? In Cubase meters?

2) Not likely, I guess, but could this be related to an (automatic) frequency switch on the audio interface? Maybe you could compare the "default" Windows frequency (if you use the same interface in Windows) and the frequency of your Cubase project. And anything related to a possibility of frequency change.

3) Did you try the ASIO guard advice? This is of general interest as well.

4) Last but not the least, what's the exact version of your OS ?

Regards,

Crusoe.

This is pretty much what I thought as well. At least this seems to be the case with the solo violin on top of everything else.

Regards,

Crusoe

Hi Jacques,

Fantastic job! I just don't know if I could cirticize anything at all, I guess I'm so excited by the violin(s) that you've played so well that I've lost my ability for critical thinking. Really, it all sounded quite right to me. Your interpretation made sense to me, too (to the extent of my familiarity with Boccherini's music, which is not too much). The dynamics, the tempo, it was all very organic. I recorded violin in the past (with a musician from an honored orchestra), and I think I understand the amount of work you've done for this. The violin was just tiny bit out of tune a couple of times, but even those imperfections didn't bother me as everything is too perfect in the sampled world.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi McArnes,

I asked a similar question some time ago, there was no "recommending" answer. Well, maybe there's one now, so I will just share my own experience. I use AMD Ryzen 1800X, and it does work quite well for me. Given its price, especially. My trail of thought was to save a bit of money for the data storage. If you are on a budget, I highly recommend to invest in high-speed SSD, such as modern M.2 and whatnot. Amount of pain you might get with slow disk storage is just immense. In my experience, this should be the number one priority. Once you got that right, spend everything else on a decent CPU. This is true with pretty much any product, but especially with Synchron series.

Regards,

Crusoe.

Hey Dave,

Thanks for the informative response, it actually expands my way of thinking about piano, specifically, how you tame the mids depending on pedal use (they are, indeed, a bit of a problem).

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

In contrast to what Tom said, I mostly thought about pathos :) Could be that I'm particularly sensitive to it (naturally) in music. There's a lot of expression, both in music itself and in the execution (those slight, but quite assertive tempo changes). I liked how the piece progresses compositionally, and with two parts it felt like a complete piece (although I guess there's some freedom for expansion there).

A couple of questions, if you don't mind. When the "main" theme, initially played by the piano, is repeated with strings added, those chords' harmonic balance changes a little, I guess because the the violins attract so much attention. Specifically, at 0:57 of the 1st mvt. And those recurring high notes made the rest of the harmony somewhat hidden to my ear, while it was perfect with the solo piano. Is this something you could confirm, or it's just my perception? Could very well be the latter.

Last note about piano - are you happy with the way reverb works on it? It seems as though it's in a different space compared to the rest of the ensemble.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

As it happened with your pieces before, I really did enjoy the development of the main theme. Basically, everything after the 1st minute was quite exciting to listen to. The 1st minute is fine, too, it's just where my attention was grabbed completely, and I was following (to the degree) the interplay.

Regarding the counterpoint. Seemed very clear to me, as Jasen already mentioned. The arrangement didn't sound that busy to me, maybe because this way of organizing the melodic lines is something I like doing myself (on my primitive level), and I often knew by heart when a new instrument is about to enter. So, zero complaints here. This leaning of mine might be contributing to my liking as well.

You mentioned somewhere else that you use standard editions only. Is that right? I thought that a few times those extra articulations from extended libraries could help (in terms of envelope and just plain amount of information). Not to criticize any specific moment, just recalled a couple of specific articulations that I used.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Jobauma,

this is an interesting idea, maybe even a meta-idea, not a complete work so I won't comment on the compostional merits. Did remind of Arvo Pärt's music a little bit.

My complaint would be about counterpoint, the voices compete (for atention) with each other sometimes. Also, maybe you could cleanup low-mids a bit (around 250-500Hz).

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Steffen,

both versions are pretty good to my ear, and I agree with MMKA on pretty much everything - I know what VSL is capable of, and yet there were at least a few times when I thought - man, this part is just great. SY strings sounded alright to me, although their somewhat anemic vibrato sometimes did make me prefer Alan's version if I were to judge and give scores. To your credit, it was barely noticeable, thanks to SY-zed strings (I guess).

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Leslie,

both works are equally convincing, very smooth sample-wise, and enjoyable. Solo violin 2 fits the pieces very well, too, I thought (I own it and therefore understand why you decided to go with it).

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi Dave,

Even though the piece does have a theme (flute plays it), the piece improvises around quite free, for the fun of it. So it seemed to me, at least, and, of course, the name suggests that too.

Love the piano (live playing), those bold chords reminded me of Rachmaninov for some reason. My favourite moment is the quiet part that starts around 3:00. I called it "a moment when nobody watches". One moment when the music sounded strange to me was at 2:40, that unison. Not sure why it does, I can't see why it should stand out.

About the stereo field - it's quite wide, and with only two instruments playing it doesn't need to, I thought. Actually, it sounds fine on my speakers, but in the headphones the picture is just a bit disjoined, at least sometimes.

P.S. Indeed, as in those verses:

"...I wish you knew the kind of garbage heap

Wild verses grow on, paying shame no heed,

Like dandelions yellowing a fence,

Like burdock and bindweed..."

Dave, that's interesting. Not a unique experience, I suppose, but certainly not a common case either (I mean, the quality of the mixes you mentioned). My mixes are dreadful, for instance, so I use all the help I could. While a lot of aspects can't be used as a reference, obivously (William mentioned a few reasons for this, too), the balance between dry and wet is something I lose track of very quickly (because ears get used to it), and like to refresh using a trusted source.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Hi David,

I find it very productive to use a reference track for this kind of decisions. Excludes a lot of subjectivity. Well, if that's what you want. Sometimes subjectivity is desirable.

Cheers,

Crusoe.

Oh, now I see, totally makes sense. In fact, I tried something of this sort, too (with harp, didn't work), and I even saw in a review of some harp VST something like "very nice sound, cuts through the whole orchestra playing loud". Hehe :)