Hello VSL-Team and hello everyone else,
Since today, there are several midi-recordings of famous classical or film music done with the vsl and shown as official demos here. I really like to know, what intention lies behind that.
I mean, they are worlds away from original recordings in terms of musical liveliness, sound quality and the overall atmosphere. The usual listener will not enjoy them - he will allways hear, that there is something wrong with it, especially if he knows the live recordings. For me, its seems to be a kind of self-adulation, but in fact, it casts no good light on the library and software of the vsl to me, also compared to results that can be achieved with other film- and mockup-oriented virtual instruments of the market. I own several instruments of vsl myself and also have vep and vienna suite - and i'm quite happy with them in the musical scope they can be used. But to produce existing scores of orchestral music to demo them is the wrong way in my opinion.
VSL has its strengths in the solo instruments and their versatility, caused by the neutral and dry recording. They will never blend enough together to form a believable orchestra, whatever MIR or other technologies will be achieved. So what I want to suggest: Present the instruments as they are recorded: prisitine and exposed. Take a look at the demos of the download instruments and you hear the problem. Apart from the unified demos of Mr. Kaufmann (which are not very useful, cause the music is not adjusted to the character of the specific instrument) most of the demos sound very processed and synthetic and its impossible for me to evaluate the sound of the respective instrument, that is to be shown. To show the possibilities of the VSL sounding together in the MIR or every other environment, please do music, where the instruments can show their strengths and not there weaknesses. Here I must remember to the very first demos of VSL in the beginning of the library (it seems only the intro of the Blue Danube is still online these days). Even today they come across much more comfortable than many of the newer demos.
So finally I straggle a bit from my opening statements, but what of it... Please take this post as constructive criticism by a professional user that knows and uses VSL and many other available virtual instruments.
Best regards
- Sascha