Originally Posted by: evang42

Every morning I get into the studio I check VSL's homepage, hoping, praying, "today will be the day I see a big beautiful logo for VEP8 w Apple Silicon native support!"  haha.  One can dream....

LOL... +1

frustrating... isn't it? :(

Originally Posted by: Paul

Here's the thing: The Fazioli F308 really is different from other pianos, especially in regards to the high and low frequencies. You're describing pretty much what the Fazioli sounds like in real life. Very evenly distributed energy over the whole range of the keyboard, less dramatic overtones in the high frequencies, a very balanced bass region. 

Summarising:

- there is no issue or unintentional data corruption in the patch, and the actual version is precisely depicting your intention from a technical and musical point of view.

- for the reason above you are not planning any adjustment or update, since you are convinced this one is the right one.

I'm very happy to know about the first point ( I trust you have a very professional and streamlined production and quality control process, but we all know how difficult is with complex projects and under pressure to have it perfect in one shot).

Let me respectfully disagree with the last point: in my very humble opinion the actual release of the instrument basses has nothing to do with the real very special nature and identity of the Fazioli. I had the pleasure of playing some Fazioli and several other gran pianos (not this model, but being it even larger and more powerful, I can't believe it's less responsive of the one I played live), and a crescendo from pp to fff in the lower octaves is simply impossible to replicate with the actual patch, again in my very humble opinion and producer experience, due to the way the samples have been evenly (perhaps too much evenly) balanced and dynamically tuned by the editors and programmers.

I still hope you sooner or later will rethink about it and help us with a ready to use and professional adjustment at least of the low octaves.

In the mean time I thank you for the attention, and I renew my congratulations for the excellent recording and the wonderful engine. Synchron Pianos are a joy to play, and a powerful tool: that's a reason more for us customers to be demanding and noticing weakness if any ;)

Now I stop arguing and fade back to silence. All the best, F.

Originally Posted by: Paul

You CAN also go in and change the Dynamic behaviour of each single note (or whole selections of notes) on the EDIT page.  

Yes that's a quite optimal and surgical solution (thanks to the powerful editing capacity of the SP player).

Raising progressively (quite painfully, but quite effectively) from middle C down to the bottom left the volume of each key it's possible to adjust the response closer to a real grand piano ( and the other VSL pianos by the way).

The instrument that way sounds more expressive and playable, then still I don't get why we have to do it, and something similar was not implemented by default: there is a subtle borderline between personal taste and habits of each user, and the general objective performance, but in this case I think we were into the objective "space for improvement" more than personal opinions field.

I still hope VSL programmers will make a new patch with a more powerful and responsive dynamic, focusing on the basses (since they have more advanced tools, expertise and real-life references to use in the process).

Originally Posted by: Paul

Could you please post an example of what you mean, ideally with a sequencer project to check?

You can also send it to , there's always room for improvement, best with a positive attitude . 

Hi Paul,

I think we (and myself perfectly in line with others) are showing a pretty positive attitude, so to be very honest I didn't appreciate your remark.

- 1) I continuously buy your products, and publicly praise them when (quite often if not always) they are good.

- 2) I listed good and bad feedback, not stressing the issue alone

- 3) I was relying on the usually good reaction of your bug fixing team: e.g. the issues with the Synchron Pianos Player were not my fantasy, and were fixed the day after with 1.2.118

Now you ask for examples, and it's a pretty fair request, but the problem is so simple and so universal that you may check it yourself and save our time:

- just make a crescendo from 0 to 127 (e.g. a rolling octave in bass, whatever notes, or to be better several notes in different locations) with any of your pianos (or better with all of them) and compare output spectral changes and decibel of the Fazioli with the other pianos (or even better with real recordings, since you have the original samples to compare).

I can't believe that a grand concert piano as big as Fazioli is properly depicted into the actual patch, and I assume that your developers can make a slightly better programming of it.

The product is excellent, I really love it, and I even did some direct sound comparison with the available videos (from VSL but from others as well) of the real piano, and the timbre is so well captured: it really deserve fine tuning, in my very humble opinion.

(I'm a product manager as you are, and I know I don't have to teach you that is better a customer talking, and talking to you, than a customer disappearing in the silence, and perhaps sharing elsewhere his bad experience...)

Originally Posted by: David B.

...However, it does seem to be lacking power in the bass compared to the 274, 280,  and Imperial. I don't know if they had to sacrifice that to get the evenness across the range because it does seem to be the most accurate sampling in terms of consistency....

Indeed, one of the sources of my doubt is also the difference between the demos sound and what I can get from my system. It seems that if properly set-up the piano can play basses and attacks in a more dynamic and brilliant way. This should not be related to clever mix of the mics or any digital cheating of demo makers, but more to some sort of artefact in the actual release. I still hope it can be fixed...

I tested my Fazioli (std lib) and the Synchron Pianos update (1.2.116)  today on my Mac Studio (macOS 12.6.1 Monterey) and results were quite disappointing:

- the Synchron Pianos (both stand alone and VST plugin) crash at startup. Only after launching AU plugin I got the Synchron Pianos opening... same issue i experienced by the way with the previous Synchron players update later retired by VSL... sounds alarmingly out of control on VSL side.

- the sound of the Fazioli is quite strange (over-compressed dynamic range and muffled fortissimo). So strange I suspect it can be disrupted by some bug, and hopefully VSL will fix it soon (at least before my warranty period expires, otherwise I will be forced to return it and ask money back. Should be very sad, because I really love this piano)

I got my Fazioli standard library today, and I really love the overall sound of it, but I have several doubts about the actual set-up:

- The library opens with default volume at -2db (the highest default of the collection) but despite that the volume still seems to be lower than my other synchron pianos.

- not only the volume is low, but the overall dynamic response sounds compressed, with surprisingly little timbral changes from pp to fff

- in addition the forte/fortissimo seems kind of muffled (like if top dynamic layers were missing or filtered)

Due to the fact the Synchron Player last update was crashing at start-up in my Mac Studio (macOS Monterey 12.6.1) and Reverb has also a strange behaviour, I'm wondering if there's an issue on the patches of the Fazioli or in the Synchron Piano engine that may be responsible for the unexpected Fazioli performance.

Looking forward to other Fazioli owners experience, and VSL team feedback...

I installed it on my sandbox Mac Mini M1, and all seems to work (slowly as usual due to lack of native code, so passing the Rosetta bottleneck) fine.

So far so good, but it's early to say... I won't upgrade my main workstation Mac Studio yet, waiting for consolidation and companies/users feedback on the web.

short answer: yes.

There's a cross grade offer, it's quite convenient, and I agree that it's worth to buy.

...have fun, and don't forget to play with the new 3D orientation of the sound source, it has some unexpected benefit (increasing realism, in particular when you use z axis to point the floor (more ER) or the ceiling (more diffusion). 

I upgraded to MIR Pro 3D and got rid of the eLicenser, but before doing it, I had my VEP 7 working in iLock with MIR Pro legacy without problems:

the only limitation was that the plug-in version was still on eLicenser, and you had to keep it plugged beside iLock to get the full set of requested licenses.

The old roompacks can be removed, because only the new 3D tuned roompacks are used by MIR 3D.

(I did it to save space since I keep them on the Mac SSD).

To be fair I had some trouble importing old VEP projects into the new set-up, but it's a complex combination of VEP7+M1 +Rosetta Mac specific instabilities. I had no problems importing Cubase projects with MIR Pro settings embedded in: they were replicated properly in the MIR Pro 3D environment.

fast reaction by VSL, the MIR 3D update fixing it 

EDIT: I found the update fixing it in Vienna Assistant just few minutes after we wrote: timely debugging VSL!

I had the same issue, and I figured out that it was due to the MIRacle plug-in installed by MIR 3D, but appearing to iLock as part of Vienna Suite instead, and so not authorized. 

I wrote another post just before yours, on the same topic, so crossing fingers VSL staff will answer.

Originally Posted by: FrankC

I am very undecided between Vienna Konzerthaus and The Sage Gateshead.

I already have roompacks 2 and 6.

I'm asking for help.

Thank you for this wonderful Mir Pro 3D.

really a matter of personal taste, but I can share my impressions owning both the venues:

- I would go for Gateshead, because the 3 rooms are more different and unique in my opinion (a small scoring studio, a chamber hall and a gorgeous large concert hall) all of them quite useful. 

- Vienna Konzerthaus venues are all more on the classical music concert-hall side, and for my personal taste, slightly more difficult to fine tune at your will.

Congratulations Dietz and VSL for the achievement:

being one of the nasty supporters, I updated immediately  and the first feedback is quite positive.

To be fair I work with stereo set-up only, but I was curious to see if the higher order ambisonic was providing the density and natural potential improvement to the sound, beside routing, modernized GUI and iLock license benefits.

Perhaps I've a placebo effect bias, but I've the feeling that the IR are better "wrapping" the sound, and the mix of direct sound and reflections sounds more "natural" to me.

Being it true or just imagination, anyway I love the new functions like the preset "roles" management and the dry signal treatment options. Great software-design, guys!

Hello,

I updated VEP7 and MIR today, using Vienna Assistant, and opening for the first time all the apps, I got an unexpected iLock error message asking for the Vienna Suite license (that I don't own).

Later I realized it was due to the MIRacle plugin installed by MIR Pro 3D, that overwrites the MIR Pro old one:

- now the MIRacle plug in is available inside the VEP 7, but is no longer available in AU or VST DAWS: the sequencers find the plug-in but ask for an additional licence to enable it.

Was it intentional (are you removing the right of using MIRacle out of VEP7 for MIR 3D users) or is it a license bug?

Due to the fact MIR Pro 3D is a plug-in for DAWs it should be a pity to loose the option of adding MIRacle to the DAW effect chain.

Updating to MIR Pro 3D on my Mac Studio M1 Ultra:

I had the same problem today with Synchron Stage Venue for MIR 3D. I fixed it checking "keep downloaded library data" into Vienna Assistant preferences.

...all true: simple outcome being "the larger, the better" with a clear priority to SSD.

(since 64Gb RAM sounds still quite effective, while 1Tb SSD sounds quite weak and small yet)

Problem for user is to resist the temptation of rejecting the close-to-criminal prices of larger Apple SSD, and believe in technical experts reporting that it's really worth the price...

I have a Mac Studio Ultra with 64Gb RAM but just 1Tb SSD, and I'm already starting to think I did a miscalculation.

product page says:

COMING SOON! :)

now it sounds serious 🧐 

hi!

unfortunately I have to confirm I got similar disappointment, but not as serious as the one you report:

- I got my Mac Studio Ultra 64Gb work pretty well with (native) Logic and Studio One, but it's pretty obvious that everything native works better. I often experience picks and inconsistent performance when a mixture of native and Rosetta software is running. VEP and Synchron Player are not native yet, so if you use them in Cubase you must use Rosetta and that is not optimal for our machines

- the recent update of Cubase (12.0.30) and VEP (via Vienna Assistant) claim to have improved the mutual compatibility and resulting performance: I didn't test it yet, but I recommend you do after updating, perhaps you get a positive surprise.

In any case, I didn't pay excessive attention to the lack of performance of the current VSL software, because I didn't expect it to work optimally and at top speed in Rosetta, in the hope VSL will deliver soon Silicon Native versions to really stress test and challenge... hopefully this is not too far in the future, and hopefully it will match expectations. I cross fingers on hold till that moment... 

Probably title is misleading :) Indeed VEP works under Rosetta on M1 macs in both AU and VST versions.

MAS sorry I don't know ('cose I don't use it)

Originally Posted by: Macker

"Are we nearly there yet Daddy?"

Lolol.

"I told you we are going far, far, faaar-away, son."

;)

Well, understandable position of product management is to avoid premature communication.

(I hope your boss wasn't too nervous about that LOL)

Anyway we may say you got some positive effects as well, because often you represent the VSL brand at the best of friendly professionalism, and that's a goal for anybody in business.

On the other side, being MIR a flagship product and at the time being, quite outdated, any hope and good news about updates and successor are quite welcome from a PR and commercial point of view as well 

Originally Posted by: Dietz

We work on it day in, day out right now. ;-)

thank you for keeping your supporters base informed and the hope alive :)

Is the new platform still including a plug-in version, to support DAWs beside VEP?

(as I wrote in the other post I really want to get rid of my eLicenser for using MIR, and I will for sure upgrade to MIR 3D from day one, if price will be reasonable)

I'm quite happy with the migration to iLok, even because all my owned licenses and software are already iLok or dongle independent.

So at the actual status I still need to keep the eLicenser only for the MIR Pro plug-ins, (that I massively use in my workflow, and can't skip by the way) and beside keeping a USB port busy, I'm continuously experiencing the (usual, but now even more frequent for some reason, perhaps OS or HW updates or larger USB traffic... don't know) issues with dongle recognition.

So I'm really anxious of getting rid of the eLicenser once and forever: any hope the MIR Pro plug-in iLok updates are coming soon?