Yes, thanks.

Had a look in the changelogs and what I could see, was that maybe VE 4 is the latest version with official support for Win XP.

Don´t know if it´s worth it to set up a second machine and be instantly blocked out from new updates.

Maybe  it´s better to leave it as it is and just buy an additional SSD for sample libraries to speed up performance a bit.

Really don´t know why so many companies abandon Win XP support altogether.Can´t believe it is so much different from Win7 from a programming point of view ( we´re not speaking about Unix or Solaris...).

I´m still working on a Win XP computer and would like to leave it that way, because a reinstallation & upgrade would be a bloody hell.

Is it possibel to use Vienna Ensemble as a bridge in that situation ( Win XP 32bit <-> WIn7 64bit slave) ?

Read some postings, that the latest version MIGHT run under WinXP, but not guaranteed.

Can older revisions (compatible with XP) communicate to an actual build VE or need master&slave be of the same install package & revision?

Otherwise shall we just install an older version on both computers ?

Or is it a bad idea all the way and it´s better to bite the bullet and kill several weekends for a new install on one main machine ?

(2x UAD1 PCI ...please not....)

Thanks & Many Greetings

kh

Not sure about Sibelius, but most often the software also comes with a lot of options to manipulate Midi volumes.

I sometimes have the same problem with an old DX7 keyboard,kown for its non standard Midi Volume output. Usually it is no problem to transform the input and output to your own taste or the needs of the VST plugin. In Cubase you can even set a compression ratio for it.

In the VST it is possible as well. Then you only change the resonse behaviour of the "slave", not altering the input data stream.

Greets

tmm

P.S.: When reading "Friday night" ....my mind actually continues with "...in San Francisco".

R.I.P. Paco :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C97H_HvBjPA

If you have an internal Laptop drive, that is run at 5400rpm, it will be slower than any SSD . But a good question is, if you are able to transfer the physical performance of the SSD over a USB port. USB 3.0 on the other hand seems to be pretty fast, so may be worth to try it.

If a 240GB drive is large enough is depending on your libaries. In the long run, it will be too small, I´m almost sure. But of course you could source out your most used libaries to the SSD and put the not so important stuff on the slower drive.

Have you thought about completely changing the internal drive towards an SSD ?

Booting and working on partition C from an SSD is always fun. Then you wouldn´t have to worry about the USB port.

The Crucial is a popular model. Of course there are more expensive models (Nand MLC vs more advanced types). Intel has good ones, but more expensive.

I have a Corsair Force and a OCZ, both with 128GB and Sandforce driven -no problems.

Samsung Evos are becoming popular as well now, but I have no experience with them.

If you have weird effects on Windows 7 with the Crucial, search on the web for  LTM state - a feature to save power, which is usually activated in Laptop environments. It can be responsible for nasty effects - especially known with Crucial SSDs, but also other SSDS with that controller.

It is not hard to deactivate it.

First the obvious points :

Any Virus Scanner ?

Have you tried to throw away iTunes  with all the Apple stuff ( Apple Mobile whatever... ET wants to phone home...)

To be honest, I don´t think that is is something like that.

What about IRQ settings, memory or other ressource sharing of the Lan onbord chipset or the audio interface with other units ?

Any Firewire devices, Liquidmix, UAD, SSL Duende, TC Powercore etc ?

Your drive specs are crazy, I wouldn´t expect any problem with that unless driven horribly hard.

Is the Echo Layla  working stable without Vienna or do the problems only occur when both are at work ?

Great.

Plus one "Kaffee-verkehrt-herum" and we´re melting in delight

In my opinion there are two important points why people love the VSL Library :

1) Sounds are dry (Silent Stage), compared to many others which are recorded wet.

At first it is more work to make them sound impressive, but we are so much more flexible with that architecture.

2) The player works. Period.

Reliability is so unbelievably important. if the VST is unstable, it can sound as good as it wants, users will hate it. (North Sounth East and West, New York Rio Tokyo...we all know)

I understand, that copy protection is always an important point to consider.

And the discussion of giving in to piracy at some point, because you can´t fight it anyway, has filled tons of postings in computer forums, without much result.

So far so good.

But every producer should focus on its core customer base. So if I were VSL I would ask myself which percentage of sales is going to:

a) "professional" users . I assume that in this group there is only a very minor fraction to even consider hacked software, and be it only for legal reasons.

b) "semiprofessional" users, who don´t work full time in the music business. I assume that in this group people using "warez" stuff is stil very low.

c) "hobby musicians",who don´t make money from it, but take their hobby more or less serious. I would think that even here most people would only use legal software. And may it be only for "ethical" or moral reasons.

d) " on the fly users". The kind of guy using his Apple i-phone with a free "string APP" and who has heard about some professional library that is extremely expensive, but he might be able to download the stuff from some weird server on  the  Cayman Islands.

Question 1 : How many users are there from group No D ?

Question 2 :If the software is copy protected like Fort Knox and not available as a crack, how many of group No D would even think about buying it officially. So how many lost sales are there in the end.

Question 3: How many honest users don´t buy the software, although  they would be willing, only because the copy protection scheme is so user unfriendly.

These questions can only be answered by VSL, because they should have the best data about the situation. ( And I would still be interested about the average failure rate of the Vienna Keys or how many typical requests are coming in).

I can only judge from a small volume of cases, but I know for sure that some people dind´t buy plug ins from e.g. Waves for about a decade, just because of the problems with their copy protection in the past. UAD, TC, Voxengo, Ohmforce etc got the money instead.

As you can read in my former postings, I´m not the one forcing VSL to leave the Synchrosoft/ Vienna Key route with brute force. I can understand their position.

And I´m in the confortable situation, that my libraries have "only" cost me a few hundred Euros. Additionally I don´t make music for my living. So if the key would break down I might be angry for a day, but it´s not a catastrophy. If the key is stolen at home because a thief broke in , I might have much bigger problems than the VSL library....

But I can absolutely understand users, that have shelled out several thousand Euros, who are worried about their investment.

In the end it is all about keeping the customers happy. So what about a nice christmas reminder next time : " Dear user -your Vienna Key is now more than 2 years old. Buy a new one and Santa Claus will bring you a nice piece of Vienna Sacher Torte to your door for free!".

O.K., times seem to be changing.

I just learned that the company, most known to have wierd copy and challenge/response systems in the past, has moved forward - Waves !

Unbelievable, but they have done it and burried their ilok protection scheme.

You can now use the harddrive itself or a regular Fat32 USB stick for their license center - which by the way looks similar to the one VSL is using.

But here is the deal :

If your device is broken or stolen, you can recover your licenses with a few clicks and transfer it to a new device. The only restriction is, that you cannot do it more often than once a year ( I think everybody could live with that).

Here is their How to video :

http://www.waves.com/support/waves-license-center

May that be a solution for VSL ?

Speaking of the great composer

That may be the last chance to see him performing :

Live in Berlin, Zurich, Wien and Cologne between February and April.

Here´s an old discussion about exactly the same problem featuring Ilok and waves

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/78153-insuring-your-ilok-licenses.html

They also mention insurance companies (at least for the US & Canada).

As it seems, waves has more or less the same policy as Vienna.

But they also seem to deal with broken keys by inspecting them ( or letting them inspect by Ilok or whoever knows the hardware).

If granted they aslo come up with a temporary HD license to get at least their professional users back to work immediately.

My impression from older postings here is, that Vienna is dealing with it on a case-by-case base as well, at least under the radar.

And I mean, come on, I can understand it. On the UAD board there recently was someone from China or Vietnam with a weird story, he would have some licences from a friend, but he couldn´t phone the friend and hasn´t got his authorization number and the card would not work and how to transfer the plugins blabla. In Asia everybody would circle around the cards and put "something" onto it and stuff like that.

Easily understood....

On the other hand : If a long term customer has spend a lot on the libraries, you have his adress, credit card number, he has posted here etc etc, and after years is asking for help having a broken key  - I think it is a different case. And my feeling is that VSL has a good portion of common sense in these cases, even if it is not in their official FAQ.

Stolen or lost keys again...different case - Houston we have a problem.

Since a name is asked for here so badly: I just checked the german Allianz website ( not that it is the best, but just one of the biggest here in Germany): They offer a kind of Elektronikversicherung , which from all I can read goes even beyond what we are discussing here. In case of a "fallout" , "outfalll" , you know what I mean...(General Jack D. Ripper got a little mad in the head....), they even pay for, if you are temporarily forced to work outside of your workshop and have to rent equipment in order to fullfull deadlines etc. Travelling accidents can also be insured up to 20% of the total amount. They also expicitly speak of : "Cost for "reconstruction of data". And that for sure is not $1 for a USB stick.

I don´t know how it is done in France,though. Maybe they have special regulations.

I still think you can insure almost everything. Since decades there is the question, if nuclear powerplants shall be or can be insured at  all. For a long time it was told, no insurance-company would ever offer a policy, because nobody could insure against such a risk.

But I heard, that even this would be possible in theory, with the only drawback, that the monthly costs to be payed by the energy companies would be horribly high.

And that´s where I stop thinking about insurance in our case as well, because I´m sure, that the price asked for an insurance of the Vienna key would be very high, especially with the traveling component.

But just as an extension of your typical house insurance with some premium for the advanced topic, it shall not be ultimatively expensive.

I´d still be very interested in data, that only VSL can have, about the typical failure rate of these sticks. Or in another way. Which percentage of your customers ever came to the customer service with that problem or a lost Vienna stick etc ?

Because my feeling says, that we are talking about a very minor risk in general.

+1 for RME again.

Fireface 400 - no problems.

Came from an EMU 1820m. Loved the sound, converters and features, but hated the stability.

Came back to RME and all is working well. Fire & forget.

cheers

kh

As I wrote in a posting before:

1. Check older forum postings for advice on how to be somewhat safeguarded against at least technical failure by refurbishing your Vienna Key every 2 years.

2. Many people, including me , are not 100% happy with the situation, but what can you do ? If you like the Vienna system, you have to bite the bullet. If you find other libraries or VSTs without, or more user friendly copy protection, fine -  go for it. My feeling is, that there´s no competition for strings and other classical instruments. For percussion and more exotic instruments, there is, as well as dynamics or EQ plugins. Just make an elaborated guess or use google.

3. The copyprotection system used is not ilok, but Sychrosoft/Elicenser/Vienna Key - although I admit, that the problems bound to it are comparable. However, I never had a problem with it and I´m using it for years now , VSL as well as Steinberg.

4. If you are an absolute power user, having invested 1000s of $, consider splitting the library up into pieces on several Vienna Keys. It doesn´t solve the problem, but reduces the risk. Or renew it every 2 years as said before.

5. Opinions regarding insurance policies are widely spread apart. IMO, if you´re software is stealed in your home or professional studio and you have let the insurance company known of the value beforehand, there should be a good chance that it works out, But consult your local agent on that topic, because regulations might vary from country to country.

6. Don´ t travel with the Vienna stick and don´t let it get out of your hand, because that might be the most troublesome situation.

7. Relax,  because we might be 

a) discussing things of very low probability.

b) underestimating the real life handling of VSL in case of knocked out license keys

c) overestimating the importance of an eventual situation like a broken or stolen license key.

Do you think that it would be really a big problem if your USB stick is defective ?

Think about that :

http://www.britannica.com/dday

These people had problems.

We don´t have.

Greets

kh

I´m not happy with the Vienna Key situation as well.

But as I said in my earlier posting: Just relax.

The dongle situation is one thing - server problems are something different.

I´m 100% sure, that these poblems can be solved. I´m absolutely sure that you will be able to use your libraries. If it doesn´t work, mail or phone the customer support and they will help you out. Their Customer support is excellent, that infornation is everywhere here in the forum.

Back to the Key situation : Just search some older postings on that topic and read some comments of Vienna officials. Between the lines you can guess, that usually they are also very friendly when it comes to the worst case scenario we are talking about here, especially malfunctioning keys.

Stolen keys is a different thing - I also have no solution for that.

As long as you have a key - just change it every 2 years and everything shall be A - O.K.

People before us took much greater risks, so don´t worry too much....

Yeah, I think I got me a stick.

O.K, just read some old postings on this topic.

As it is, the best advice seems to be to:

1.) Buy a new Vienna Key every few years

2.) Concentrate on buying bigger collections, not single instruments, because in the case of a faulty (not stolen) key out of guarantee they might charge a service fee for recalling for each license.

3.) Relax, because there are user reports, describing VSL as handling these situations with care and looking into it individually with a good solution for both parties.

Yes, it would be another dongle, but it would not only perform as a pure copy protection.

The difference is, that in case your UAD PCI card burns down after guarantee, it is stolen or got some water damage etc., it is of course the users problem and he has to buy another PCI card ( a Solo core currently is ~$299), but the plug ins ( possibly worth also thousands of $) are still in the user account and can be transfered to a new card /plug in group.

The drawback of it of course is, that the entrance barrier is higher for entry level users, who don´t want to spend a few $100 just to be able to get going. But if there´s real functionality in the "dongle", why not (instead of e.g. buying a SSD for $200 or a CPU upgrade).

But apart from that I also cannot understand, why VSL has that kind of hardcore policy regarding the USB stick. I don´t think it is the usual way companies deal with that problem. Most of them that I know are more user friendly in that point - even those which have much much less advanced copy protection, like simple serial numbers etc (Voxengo, D16, Soniccouture, audiorealism etc.etc.).

Regarding the non-physical download scheme you´re right. That might be problematic. On the other hand, if users here ask for the cost of insurance, why not offering the physical box / recall code on demand for the fee of the shipping costs or so. Fedex could then drop you the christmas insurance kit right on your door, a few days after you downloaded the files.

In the end I also don´t know if we are talking about highly unlikely incidents. I would be very interested to know about the typical failure rate of these Elicense USB sticks after say 7 years in the field

Of course stolen keys would still be a problem, but nothing in life is risk free.

Maybe they could take a look how UAD handles the piracy issue.

Their PCI/Firewire/Thunderbolt "dongle" has real DSP functionality, and without it you cannot run the software, because it requires the physical hardware for code execution.

To my information they are one of the few companies which don´t have been hacked and business is doing well.

That said, a small device offering some extra memory for samples, a DSP for some convolution reverb or hard wired MIR code, whatever, without which the user cannot play the samples at all, may be a solution.

Even simpler : If the fear is that pirates may hack into user accounts and ask for a new faked license - why not ship the physical DVD/key boxes with a secret password on paper in it, which can´t be found online in a database.

If a legal customer then asks for a backup due to a broken/stolen key, he has to phone VSL and tell them the secret phrase.

C´mon guys. It´s just an internet forum, not more.

I never thought, that trolling would infect the VSL community, mainly because the library and topic is so special, but you never know.

We can be lucky, that William didn´t leave, since he may be one of the most frequent and "senior" posters.

When anybody is feeling angry about some postings, just take a few minutes and enjoy the legendary JP22 thread in the recording forum 

http://recording.org/hybrid-recording-forums/21776-expert-sugguestions-advanced-guitar-recording-setup.html

Just epic comedy :)

"You are a disgrace to humanity and should be shot before you reproduce" ...

"I don't own a tube amp! HAHA!"

"I CREATED THIS TOPIC YOUR IN RIGHT NOW AND ITS THE ONLY ONE I POST IN. Enough said, NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF *MY* TOPIC.

"And furthermore my mother
isn't a hermaphroditic crack-smoking **** queen."

Compared to that, I think what happens here is rated PG 13...

So - just enjoy the evening and put in some EQ for the lost dynamics....

Cheers

kh

Are there any opinions on the Prometheus soundtrack ?

Watched it a few days ago and only now felt, that the soundtrack was either very much supporting the photography on one hand, or not very interesting on the other hand.

Actually I couldn´t remember what it was. But when hearing into it now, it sounds not that bad and has some unconventional elements in it. Also it feels very "organic" ( I think that´s the description R. Scott had for the great Alien 1 soundtrack)

At least it´s no Bruckheimer/Zimmer desaster.

Unfortunately no real "hookline" to remember.

The music seems to be just like the movie itself: Great atmosphere, but a bit weak in story and basic plot ( melodic composition).

Not listened right through the end, because " It was so long"

Some elements sound a bit copied from other scores, but let´s put it in that way : It could be worse.

It´s not Goldsmith, O.K., but I cannot say: "It was so wrong".

Greetz

kh

It´s a kind of similar situation like the one with the piano vs orchstra described above.

The guys with the Atari had limited ressources compared to the economically viable gear today, but put out th ebtter music (on average).

I put mine into the waste last year because of bad memory / bombs  ...

But I still have Notator + interfaces and my heart would break to put it into the trash :)

Yesterday I watched The Social Network on DVD.

It was only in the middle of the film, when I remembered that we had a thread in the VSL forum about it.

Today, while jogging through the bonus material, there are also some behind the scenes chapters about Trent Reznor and the score. In the interview he said, that one point in the music was, to have it in the background in order not to collide with the speech.

I think he has a point in that, because right from the beginning I found it extremely hard to follow the fast speaking actors ( especially since I´m not a native speaker, but nevertheless try to watch the original english versions whenever possible)

You can also see a lot of interesting instruments in his studio, so it´s not about just firing preset sounds.

The motivation and thinking might have been there, but in the end it´s far from being special for me. He is telling a lot about organic and solid sounds, but when hearing "organic" I directly compare to e.g. the Alien I soundrack. That´s what I´d call an impressive, organic & beautiful sounddesign.

So still, an Oscar for that ? Can´t believe it.

Exactly that was the reason, why I went for an SSD. Some noises can drive you nuts, even if they aren´t physically as loud as you think. It also heavily depends on where you place the discs. In my office there are several old computers, some of which are very loud, but I don´t care, cause it is a bigger room with carpet on the floor.

At home, in a smaller room with a wooden floor I swear I can hear if the HD is on or off even when I´m in another room downstaires....

SSD is a really a big step forward. in that point.

If you place your system on it, it also isn´t that much expensive today. Of course, if you want more than 200 GB e.g. for sample libraries, that will hurt much more.

I just wonder, why the Lacie is so loud, cause usually they provide good quality. If you hate it, just invest ~70 Euros for a second internal disc or ~180 for a SSD and you are fine. Then you can use the Lacie for backups only once in a while and the noise doesn´t bother you anymore. Unless you used eSATA, this will also speed up things as a nice side-effect.

Sometimes, I have the same problems with formatting.

I think what helped was to set "full HTML editor" or something like that in the forum user preferences.

If you are unsure, better type 2 returns.

Regarding Raid your´re right. Raid 0 is for speed (more risky) , Raid 1 for more data security.

If you are looking for speed, I would go for a SSD instead these days.

I love to have the OS on it, because it optimizes general working speed, booting and all the nasty background stuff.

For recording, a regular HD is fast enough.

Putting samples on SSD can be a good idea, if you want to reduce your waiting time, but the larger your library is, the more expensive it will get.

Also remember, external is O.K., but why not connect an additional drive inside the computer ? This will save some money and usually the internal SATA ports are the fastest you have ( but I´m not a Mac expert at all).

Especially an internal SSD is nice, because you have less noise and lower temperature, no need for extra fans or weird silent mounting cages.

When you put the system data on a SSD, remember to have a backup copy.

I have two such systems in use for ~6months now and never had a problem, but you never know how stable these SSDs are in the long run.

But let´s assume you put  VSL on an external 1.5TB discs, there should be plenty of free space left to do backups of your SSD boot partition onto that same drive as well.

If you need all this, really depends on how many instruments you want to fire up at the same time, at which audio latency, with which audio interface and how much realtime experience you ask for.

It is easily possible that one creates music with VSL on a laptop, where another one thinks about further extensions of his HAL quadro RAID helium cooling workstation an is still not satisfied.....

My guess is, if you use two dedicated drives, you wil be fine.

This would be true, if you had practically unlimited RAM and unlimited bandwidth for data transfer to the internal memory.

But as long as our typical systems still need some time to load sounds & samples, it is better to use the ressources wise and let  the controllers do their job as efficient as possible.

Since we know that the system is doing all kinds off stuff in the background - usually when we hate it the most - loading samples can increase the time that you have to wait until 1. the system is ready with its backup, defrag, virus scan, sector check or whatever kind of weird stuff is going on, although you just want to fire up your sequencer. And 2. you wait longer before your samples are loaded.

If you then made two partitions where the read head constantly has to switch between e.g. " Virus scan wants me to check sector A" and "VSL player asks for sample ZZZ99" on the opposite side of the disc platter (speaking simplified), you can imagine what happens. If you have two seperate discs or even better solid state discs, where there is no  physical read head at all,  the devices can operate more or less in parallel, especially when using also two dedicated controller pipelines, which don´t get in the way of each other.