In VI Pro there's this "tip"/feature:

To assign "random" tuning curves quickly when you're changing the tuning of many patches, hold down Ctrl-Alt-Shift and click the "Humanize:" label, just to the left of the Humanize Preset box itself. You will then be asked to press a key to assign an "in tune random" variation number without going through the sub-menus.

How can we similarly setup humanize for a set of patches in bulk in Synchron Player? It is quite tedious to setup dozens of patches one at a time.

Originally Posted by: NG33

Hello,

I'm a very happy user of Strings Pro, and I would like to know what do think about buying at a great price the Synchron strings I ?

I know there is no portamento, but a lot of velocity layers...

About the tone, do they have the same tone?

SSI is one of the best string libraries available. I personally greatly prefer it to SSPro, not only for the much increased dynamics, but yes, also the tone and the greater legato and vibrato options.

For consistent and deep dynamics, realistic not-overblown legatos and vibrato, articulate onsets etc, Synchron Strings I is still the best game in town IMO. I prefer it over SyS Pro everywhere they overlap (which is a lot).

SyS Pro is a lot harder to use, with the dynamics split up, inconsistent levels between patches, sluggish long onsets etc.

I sincerely hope there's a SyS II that follows the groundbreaking approach and stunning depth, consistency and quality of SyS I. SyS Pro is not it.

I use DP 10.11 with VEP 7 server.

I start VEP 7 server first. Then all those instruments can 'connect'.

I use the MAS instrument and it works well.

+1. There are several of us who ask for this regularly over the years, but to no avail.

VSL instruments frequently need scripting and VSL does not provide it - neither in the players nor VEP.

Kontakt instruments get KSP scripting (for MIDI input transformation) right in the player. It would be a great feature for VEP.

Originally Posted by: Bill

Just remember that as the VST2 spec slowly fades away, program change will go with it...

That's FUD. MIDI is the spec and program change is still part of the spec.

Steinberg is not in charge of the industry. Are we consumers or sheep? Complain about their shoddy implementation of MIDI in VST3!

It's much more than PC as others have said. Get rid of MIDI and you lose:

• MIDI scripting
• Interapplication MIDI
• MIDI files
• etc

This nonsense about VST3 expression being the center of the universe is just that, nonsense from Steinberg.

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

I don't particularly think VSL instruments are any more cumbersome then others, in fact quite the opposite, they are quite flexible.  There is nothing stopping you, for example, from putting all of your articulations in Synchron Player under one super tall column (dimension), and only need a single keyswitch for each articulation.  You can reassign keyswitches and CC's to various aspects of sample playback better then just about any other sample player I can think of.  

Yes, the factory defaults happen to be setup in a way with 4-5 dimensions, which means you need to send perhaps 4-5 keyswitches using those arrangements, but you can rearrange your own presets however you want and can avoid multiple keyswitches..  ViPro also you can arrange presets using only a single row of X-based keyswitches if you want.

You are making a theoretical argument but have you actually tried these things? Synchron player does not offer scrollbars on dimensions and shrinks everything down to an unreadable and unusable size as a single dimension grows.

And VI Pro only offers 12 slots per X/Y dimension, even if the controller is a CC. Sure you could make dozens of single-cell matrices and drive VI Pro via program change but that is clearly antithetical to the design. VSL's intended design takes more control messages than any other. A single-dimensional control method can be offered orthogonally - e.g. Spitfire's UACC system (although the universality of that was an overreach). XSamples libs have a 2-D keyswitch system but also offer access to all 88 patches via a single CC, right out of the box. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate VSL's flexibility otherwise and I think a lot of the challenges come from their increased depth of sampling, which I also value.

As far as the initial ask (MIDI scripting in VEP). Sure, we can talk about the shortcomings of DAWs etc and make arguments for this (we agree) but there is already an example of this feature on the market and it is available with the vast majority of VSL's competitors - the Kontakt ecosystem.

Kontakt player, like VEP, can host multiple VI instances, albeit only Kontakt ones. And right at the top of every multi there are slots for KSP scripts. People value this capability and it gets used. If you have a lib that only uses keyswitches and you want to use CCs, you can fix it. If you want to route across multiple instances you can do it, channelize, conditionally filter etc. Thus every Kontakt instrument supports MIDI input scripting but no VSL instrument does and no VSL product can add it.

So I'll change the argument - Kontakt multis offer both MIDI script slots and a built-in scripting language for them, why doesn't VEP?

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

Another route VSL could go would be to identify the specific reasons people are asking for a midi plugin slot and instead just build that functionality into VePro somehow, especially as pertains to articulation management.

That's a fine idea. We don't need our answer, we need the problem solved.

Here's the problem - and I'm limiting it to just being a consumer of ($14,000+ worth of) VSL sample library products:

Whether it's VI Pro or Synchron player, VSL requires more keyswitches/commands to be sent per articulation/patch change than any other product. In VI Pro it was matrix/X/Y, and sometimes A/B switch (4). With Synchron player, the sky's the limit.

VSL has a reputation for being hard to use and this is exactly why. Solving this problem in a DAW or notation program is a lot of work, and every articulation system is different. So not many people do it, and not nearly as many people use VSL as could.

What do I want instead of 4-6 commands per articulation? I want to send a single PC/CC. There are rarely more than 128 patches in an instance, and I'd be happy to live with that limit. Within the instance I want to be able to say PC/CC 42 = this patch, PC/CC 27 = that patch. That's it. I'm not playing this live, I don't want my hands on 5 controllers, I don't want extra keyswitch notes on my tracks, I don't want to have to record keyswitch/CC dumps or anything else. Nothing about solving this need get in the way of also supporting multidimensional live control.

This is what I use MIDI scripting for - turning a single PC/CC into the pile of commands that VSL requires. Obviously this could be solved in the VI/Synchron players, or VEP.

The other thing I always use MIDI scripting for with VSL is making it so CC2 can be interpreted as velocity when VelXF is OFF. That is, I want to use the CC2 value for the dynamic without the crossfading. This also could be supported as a mode right in the players.

In any case, the biggest point is that this desire/need is driven by VSL's sample products themselves. It's not an abstract "wouldn't it be cool" thing. I really don't want to have to use BlueCat Plug'nScript or Logic's Scripter etc. But VSL sampling products are just too cumbersome to use without, IMO.

Originally Posted by: Paul

Hi Duggle, 

I'm afraid VE Pro is not ready for MIDI processing plug-ins. There has been very litlle interest for it so far, so it is unfortunately not high on our wishlist. 

Sorry to have no better news. 

Best, 
Paul

How do you measure such interest? Is there a place for making feature requests and voting on them? It seems like most feature requests here just get ignored and we get whatever is already on the roadmap VSL defines.

There were several people interested in this, many interested in more precise CC control in Synchron player, many interested in being able to play trills in Synchron player as we can in VI Pro etc.

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

I'd actually rather have a mode, perhaps for both players, where when you add a row to ViPro (or a slot to a dimension in Synchron Player), the first row will always be cc value=0, the second row always cc value=1, etc..  instead of evenly dividing the range, just keep adding a new row to the end as the next available CC value.

As you put it, that would be much more explicit and consistent when working with expression maps and articulation sets, but not only that, existing tracks you may have recorded with key switches in place even without expression maps and articulation sets.  

I can see how the existing method of evenly dividing the range makes sense in certain situations where you are meaning to crossfade through a range of things.  However, when using it as a patch selector, then having it be more explicit, with exactly one matching cc value per row...starting at 0...would make a lot more sense.

Yup, I already requested that, here:

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t52871-FR---Bank-Select-as-discrete-dimension-selector#post286753

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

I'm not really understanding the problem here.  Can you please elaborate?  You can use a Dimension Controller for slot selection..isn't that what you're asking about instead of X/Y?  

ViPro has 2 dimensional patch selection, actually 3 dimensional if you include the matrix...and maybe more if you use A/B.  But anyway, with Synchron, you have N dimensions due to the tree approach to arranging patches..you can actually do quite a bit more than under ViPro, unless I'm missing something?

In order to use something other then a keyswitch to choose which slot from a column, then you use one of the dimension controllers, which can be CC, PC, key, velocity, etc..  all just like ViPro.

I was missing this before and someone cleared it up for me a few weeks ago...  Ben probably...

Or what am I missing?

In VI Pro you can designate a CC for an X/Y dimension and then explicitly set (arbitrary) splitpoints for the mapping to cells, e.g. split at every 10 - 0/10/20/30 even if there are only 7 cells across. Or assign the absolute min and max values to certain cells and spread out the rest, 0=first cell, 1-126=second-sixth, 127 = seventh. Explicit splits also make it possible to add cells and not break mappings.

In synchron player the mapping of CCs to slots is a product of the number of slots in the dimension and the curve selected. E.g. a straight curve will place the splits at every 128/N and the non-straight curves are pretty difficult to predict. So the straight line split for 7 slots will be every 128/7 = every 18.2857149. Quick - where are those splits? And doing things like reserving min/max etc is almost impossible. Adding slots to dimensions always breaks mappings unless you already reserved them with empty slots. Pro tip - reserve them! Padding out to 8 slots = every 16, 12 slots = every 10, 16 slots = every 8 in the CC range.

Thus synchron's is a system for human fader/knob twiddling that poorly serves expression map and notation users.

Originally Posted by: assagai

Will Synchron player ever get user definable values for controllers like VIPRO has?

I understand the use of the curve, but it involves way more guesswork/tweaking and is more unpredictable than the way the x/y axis works in VIPRO which allows for far more precision, and is one of the reasons I sometimes use VIPRO over synchron.

Also will the Synchron Player ever get a sequencer function?

Thanks

+1 please allow for more precision in dimension control! The only precise controls are keyswitches (I'll never use them) and program change (which is only useful for about 16 values - would be much better if PC could control 2 dimensions, 10s/1s as I've described elsewhere).

The current system might be fine for playing around with faders or using MIDI dump, but it's an absolute bear to make expression maps or notation rulesets.

Originally Posted by: thomasoehler

I would have another question: I thought I would originally organise things "per desk", and therefore have (for example for violin I) 4 SP with only the corresponding players loaded/active in the mixer, which means 2 players per SP. I would then use a summing track in Logic to control the 4 SP at once when needing a tutti of the 8 players. It worked as intended, but it did not sound as good as the "all players" patches. Did I make another foolish mistake, or as I suspect, the "all players" patch is different (and nicer) than a mere combination of the 4 desks? Or maybe I need to "re-mix" the summing of the 4 tracks to re-balance things when using a tutti? This solution would be more elegant and optimise CPU and memory load even further; but I am not sure if it is achievable.

Again, I am so grateful for insights! I recently endeavoured to up my game with the quality of mockups, but my tiny composer's mind sometimes struggles with the complexity of the technical side of things...

Thanks a lot

You're quite welcome. I've used the same summing track techinique in Logic to target multiple instances of SynDS and it worked and sounded fine. Maybe something else is amiss? Make sure you are constructing the group with distinct players (1+2, 3+4, 5+6 etc) and not getting 1+2, 1+2, 1+2, else you could have phasing.

Also note, since you obviously have DS II and DS III as well, that once you use "all players" and no longer the desks you can reclaim the first dimension to select between modes of play in a single SP by copying and pasting the Sul Tasto and Sordino "all players" trees into a single preset.

It will look like this:

Syn DS combo preset

Originally Posted by: thomasoehler

I was wondering about the demands of the (by the way wonderful) synchroni-zed Dimension Strings on CPUs. I would like to experiment with them in the context of complex all-out divisi and possible layering, but I quickly ecounter limitations.

Any advice greatly appreciated! Thanks!

It matters quite a bit how you are organizing your use of synchron player(s) (SP) and dimension string players.

I presume when you say 9 'voices' you are talking about dimension instruments/players? VIs typically use the term voice for simultaneously playing sample, and if you look at the voice count at the bottom of SP you'll see dozens of voices used even for single note lines.

Presuming you are talking about dimension players, you have a number of choices re: e.g. which preset (e.g. all players vs desk etc). By far the easiest way to work with SynDS is with the 'all players' patch, even if you only want to use a subset. This is because you can quickly create dimension tree edits and mappings for all players rather than have to replicate your work as you had to do in VIPro, and quickly try different player combos.

But by far the hardest thing for a single SP to do is run all 8 DS players.  

I'll presume you have an SSD, and you are running SPs in VEP (from your tags), if not then the DAW performance is another factor.

What you want to do is:

a) (Continue to) use the 'all players' patch for convenience in editing, selecting players etc. It is, IMO, the single biggest value prop of synchronized DS.

b) Use more/many SPs - VEP is much better at multitasking than is a single synchron player.

c) In any particular SP, activate (see below) only a subset of the players, e.g. no more than 4. You can setup another SP listening to the same channel in VEP for the other 4. 

d) In any particular SP, make sure you are not using CPU for resources you don't need (i.e. when you only use a subset of the all players)

This last part is subtle and here are two tips:

1) If you are using MIR and not the built in synchron IRS, don't merely disable them - remove them. Removing IRs releases the CPU

2) Don't just mute any players you are not using (or the reverb), deactivate them by clicking on their name at the bottom of the channel in the mixer. The name will go grey and italic. Deactivating releases the CPU burden in a way that muting does not.

In this way you always have the convenience of having all players at hand (vs having only a subset in the tree/mixer).

I had a lot of dropouts with synchronized DS until I adopted these practices after which I've had no dropout problems (using VEP on the same box).

Good luck!

Originally Posted by: Paul

Hi Rich, 

I'm afraid that's not a priority in the near future, but our SY-ized SE Vol 2 and 4 already contain the basics of the whole Saxophone family. 

Best, 
Paul

Ok, thanks.

Any chance of a synchronized saxophones package?

It would be great if there were 'PrgTens' and 'PrgOnes' options for dimension control using program change.

There is no practical way to use all PCs in a single dimension, as previous messages have demonstrated, and the offset system isn't a path to doing that. But if synchron player were to also expose PC as a tens part and ones part separately, then one could reach 100+ patches with just 2 dimensions, neither of which would be too much for the UI.

Imagine if you could assign one dimension to PrgTens and the next to PrgOnes. Then a program change message of 42 would generate 4 for PrgTens and 2 for PrgOnes.

This would greatly facilitate using synchron player in Digital Performer and other apps that have strong program change support.

Originally Posted by: Dewdman42

ps - like I said, I haven't tried to measure my VSL instruments to see how much attack latency there is, or if its different per articulation, etc.  But a product suggestion for all sample developers, including VSL; would be to have a way to have the instrument report to the host a consistent amount of overall latency and then automatically adjust the attack time of each articulation relative to that, so that they all sound exactly the same amount late....and the Plugin Delay Compensation of the host can then bring them all back early again...and wala.....they'd all sound as desired...on the grid.  To my knowledge, no sample library does this, but I would be supremely impressed to find out if someone does.

Audio Imperia Nucleus does this (but not via PDC). It knows the 'sync point' of every sample and ensures that all samples have the same offset to the sync point, so you can plug a single negative MIDI timing adjustment to the (multi-articulation) track and get everything tight. For live playing you can turn a knob to temporarily move the start offset to get less latency (and less realism) and better timing and feel, then turn it back.

It's a brilliant idea and every sample library should have this.

Originally Posted by: synergy543

Yes, I agree these are really terrific demonstrations and extremely informative.  The Octopus video in particular is quite amazing and my favorite.  Guy shows enough details of controllers and various parameters that you get a really good sense of how he creates his magic.

Agreed, just wow. Thanks Guy!

Originally Posted by: stephen limbaugh

Re RichHickey

Say a trumpet player has a C5 to D5 trill.  An open to first valve trill.

Is the same amount of air used on each of those notes?

Look, if you want to shape every note of a trill nothing about this feature existing will stop you - simply don't use it.

OTOH the lack of this feature stops every keyboardist who has ever played a monosynth or software VI, including VSL's VI Pro, from using a common technique.

Originally Posted by: stephen limbaugh

Originally Posted by: herb

Hi V ad im

holding one key permanently is not recommended, also not in VI.
The performance trills are based on multiple variations of the same interval samples, and holding one key permanently will trigger always the same interval sample in one direction. The other key which is performed will trigger the variations. So depending which key you have fixed either all up or all down intervalsamples are not altered. So a real performed trill on a keyboard will offer the best results.

best
Herb

To expand on Maestro Herb's post here, I would add that sometimes the holding down the lower note of the trill may appear to render a more even-sounding trill, but it is in fact less realistic AND less flexible than playing a well-performed trill.  Yes it might sound more even (a good thing) but it sacrifices some key elements.

My unsolicited advice:

A well-performed trill should have some shape to it, meaning that there are (for lack of a better term) micro crescendos within a turn or trill that help propell the phrase (unless of course, it is a purposefully marked/intended decrescendo).  That crescendo usually comes from the lower note more so than the upper!  So, you want to have those repeated lower notes, each with a slightly different "feel" or "landing" to them which would mimic a professional playing a nice, tight trill.

Another tip is temporarily taking your tempo to larghissimo, zooming in on your trill, and seeing which notes make it sound like a dotted rhythm, adjust the midi, then put the tempo back where it was.  That might help smooth things out.

Or, if you are using VI Pro, the APP Sequencer has preprogramed trills!  These are GREAT!  So if someone can't play a super tight trill, in the APP Sequencer in VI Pro you could trigger a super tight trill with your toe... or nose... or... what ever appendage isn't in use at that moment. 

EDIT: also implement humanize like William said!

This remains a key stumbling point with Synchron player for me and others - the performance trills are not playable as they were in VI Pro.

I think both pieces of advice above are simply wrong. Herb made a product that had trill retriggering, then 'improved' it by removing it. Whether or not the same sample gets triggered is a (changeable) property of how the software works. And the idea above of a 'real performed trill' on an electronic keyboard is too narrow and inflexible.

A piano (and marimba/vibes etc) performs trills as decribed. And when triggering a piano/vibe/marimba sample no keyboardist would leave the lower finger down - they would rearticulate.

But almost all of the other instruments we are trying to perform with samples do not articulate each note of a trill. On a wind instrument you hold down some keys for the lower note, then add and remove the key for the higher note while blowing continuously. On a stringed instrument you leave your finger down for the lower note and then add and remove the finger for the higher note while bowing continuously. There is no such thing as 'landing' the lower note - the finger(s) for it remain down.

Legato retriggering for playing trills is a standard keyboard (not piano) technique as old as using electronic keyboards for non-piano sounds (e.g. monophonic synths emulating winds and strings). You are essentially taking away a performance technique that many electronic and computer keyboardists have honed for decades. When emulating winds and strings, performing trills by leaving the lower note down yields a much more realistic sounding performance.

Please stop the rationalization and fix this (make it an option for those that want the 'new improved' way).

Thanks,

Your customer

Originally Posted by: ddunn

I've got a template set up for the full sections, works great.  My template is quite a bit different than the factory set up.  I need to make the divisi sections now and I trying to find the best way.  It seems the easiest way would be to mute players in the mixer, but I'm concerned that I'll still be streaming voices that are muted.  I looked at the "Delete all slots containing missing patches" in the sub-menu, but can quite figure it out.

Suggestions?

Thanks

I think if, rather than mute, you deactivate the players (by clicking on their names at the bottom of the mixer, like you would to deactivate the reverb) that saves voices/samples and other resources, but I would love a confirmation. That's what I do (use an all-player patch and deactivate players).

Originally Posted by: Seventh Sam

Do you work with REAPER as your DAW?  If so, the Reaticulate script does exactly what you're talking about and more. 

I don't use Reaper as my DAW, but I do use several other MIDI scripting tools like Logic's Scripter, BlueCat Plug'nScript, Bidule etc. In fact, I always have to use them with VI Pro in order to get it to do what I need.

But Synchron Player is new and they are still working on this next generation dimensional control scheme. I'd love for it to be more flexible and powerful, and thus require less or no scripting. Discrete treatment of certain/selected CCs is a generally useful capability. UACC's CC32 usage hinted at this but was obviously too specific to Spitfire (and broken by Kontakt's broken handling of CCs).

Tools like Reaticulate and Scripter are cool, but non-portable. And DAWs and notation programs have vastly different levels of support for VST/AU MIDI insert plugins.

VST/AU MIDI insert plugins (or integrated Lua MIDI scripting) would have been a great feature for VEP7, but alas they didn't take my suggestion :)

Feature request - support Bank Select (CC0/CC32) as discrete dimension selectors

Synchron player is fun, but it seems like the control system is entirely too much optimized for humans fiddling with faders and keyswitches, i.e. live performance and recordings thereof.

Sequencing with SP, and especially doing notation expression maps, is a bear. A key problem is that several common dimensions (esp Articulation and Type) are logically discrete, not continuous. But the CC mapping system is only continuous, and is terrible at e.g. mapping a CC to a dimension with 7 values. How does that split up? We can't see, need to do math etc. Several people have asked for the discrete, settable CC splits we had in VIPro, but that can't work because the same CC is used for different counts (e.g. one articulation has 5 types, another has 7 types, another has 3 types, and they all must share a controller). Furthermore, if you do figure out how 128 divides by five, and later add another slot, all the numbers realign and your maps break.

Keyswitches are discrete, but they don't chase, pollute scores and pianos rolls etc. I want nothing to do with them. (If you like them fine, please don't fill this discussion with your thoughts on their superiority, this feature is for people that don't want to use keyswitches).

That leaves only program change as a discrete, chase-able dimension selector, and support for PC from hosts is mixed (looking at you Cubase/Dorico).

However, the MIDI spec clearly indicates that Bank Select CC0 (and its LSB partner, CC32) are intended for discrete control - selecting particular patches via particular values. I recommend you support CC0/32 as discrete selectors for dimensions.

What does that mean? It means if a dimension is assigned CC0, then CC0 value 0 selects the first slot (no matter how many there are), and CC0 value 1 selects the second slot etc. Ditto CC32. In this way everything is predictable, adding a slot doesn't break anything, accommodating different numbers of children for the artics is not a problem etc. There's no awkward math. And they'll chase. And they are well supported.

Yes, these won't work great with faders - but there are plenty of other CCs available. CC0/32 were never intended for faders/wheels etc. They were in fact intended for exactly the same problem as selecting Articulation+Type.

Adopting Bank Select (CC0/32) as discrete in addition to PC will give us 3 chase-able discrete controllers and greatly facilitate the creation of robust expression maps for sequencing and notation.

Please consider.

Thanks,

Rich

Regardless as to arguments about what is right or best or whatever, like the OP I find the difference here to be a loss of useful functionality and would appreciate an option to restore that behavior.