I imagine this has been discussed, but starting a new thread on it may help make it more annoying to ignore.

Lots of terrific control possibilities in Synchron Player, but one missing (that was present even on 80's synths) is keyboard tracking. Let's say I want less reverb on lower notes, or less bright EQ on higher notes...afaics, can't do that in Synchron Player. If they added a "Note" option to the popup menus on controller assignments, I could track the range...say the lowest playable note is 0 and highest 1...and apply that multiplier to any parameter in the matrix.

Obviously you don't track the whole keyboard range, just the playable range, so keyswitches don't mess with your control values, etc. We can already set the control range and curve with your handy UI, we just don't have access to that key number data coming in. Unless I've missed something, and if I am still missing this at this point, that's an issue in itself.

Really, this is not a hard feature to implement, the hard work is done, just a new menu item in the existing menus is all and compare Note On value with the range and multiply. Surprised this got left out. Harder to update documentation than implement the code, but people won't care about old screenshots.

Of course, a good question is...what is the value on a chord, when the parameter being controlled is global rather than per-note? I might take the average value of the chord, or the first value in a given time window. Obviously, for monophonic instruments this feature is simple, but I think it can still make sense for polyphonic instruments controlling global parameters such as the effects chain or overall level. You take the average for a given time window, and ramp to it smoothly in that case...hey, if it doesn't sound good in some situations, then just don't use it, like you don't use the guitar cabinet plugin on every preset either. Still makes sense to include the guitar cabinet plugin in the product.

Oh and here's a hidden tip I just discovered:

Since one of my complaints is about the convolution presets, it turns out they supply presets for Orch Strings (ie ensemble strings) and Solo Strings that are panned center, but still have the nice EQs and correct convolution impulse. You find these in the list to the right under the SE1 category. Apply those, everything will snap center, and then you can pan to taste. (Edit: I found that the Orch Strings get decorrelated pretty severely, so I thinned them out with the widener plugin, which is post-convolution. But doing all this, they end up like an improved version of OT/SF offerings. Try it.)

Where should you control the pan? Most definitely NOT on the mix tab's panner! Because that will pan the reverb as well, and you'll be in half a room, which is seriously weird, if you care about these things. Instead pan on the Edit tab, and you'll apparently need to pan each articulation "slot" individually, although once just now it panned all slots at once, I don't know how. (Edit: click away from any rightmost slot, so the "Humanize" dialog isn't visible anymore, and you will be able to set the balance for every articulation at once.) Of course I suggest panning every articulation the same amount. That will pan, or actually stereo balance, pre-convolution, so you get the whole room back, and that still sounds good to me.

All of this if you don't like where they put the strings in the panorama.

Sadly, tragically...they do not provide alternate pannings for the rest of the instrument convolutions. All of the baked-in convolution EQs are a bit off from each other and therefore they aren't interchangeable. So no fixing where the Tuba is (although you can swap it left-right post-convolution, which I just did by turning their "Power Panner" inside out and red). I suppose the MIR pro thing is supposed to handle that level of control, plus put them in different rooms. But at least, with just SE1 you can get Synchron convolution on the strings for SE1, with custom panning, and the strings are the strongest part anyway.

SE1 TLDR: THE GOOD:

• Comprehensive collection of solo orchestral instruments plus a few string and brass ensembles, including a full solo string sextet and a terrific new recording of a Hamburg D.
• Great "Synchron player" plugin much better overall than Kontakt or anything else in the biz. though Kontakt still the features leader.
• "Vanilla" flavor i.e. unopinionated sound and playing style that could be used anywhere. Arrives pre-mixed with good consistency.
• Every instrument included is 100% professionally usable, if with some mix and controller adjustments.
• Terrific value when on sale for $200.

THE BAD:

• Recorded sounds 20+ years old, not up to current standards (other than Hamburg D). But certainly acceptable.
• The "Synchron-ized" convolution plugin does too much at once, panning, EQing, and reverbing the sound in one control, you have to hunt for a compatible alternate impulse in the list if you can find one, or lose the Synchron convolution sound entirely.
• The 2nd violins are just the same recording as the 1st violins a14, with a different convolution.
• I had to minorly adjust every preset's mix to fit my taste, I haven't had to do that with BBCSO Pro or Orchestral Tools. So if you can't mix or afford mixing, well, I hope you like the tone they picked out for you. It's not that bad, fairly foolproof. But not so contemporary. With second-tier library vendors, I basically have to rebuild the sound from scratch, so Vienna remains a first-tier outfit even on their old libraries.

THE UGLY:

• Most of the bass instruments (cellos, basses, tuba, bass trombone) are all hard-panned right in the Synchron convolution plugin, you can't rearrange the stage without picking a totally different tone for a different instrument, or collapsing the virtual space. Putting all the bass in the right channel is a dismal choice for recorded music, and these libraries are only used for recordings. I suppose they want to sell you Mir Pro for that.
• They demand you pay double for "Volume 1 Plus" which gets you 25% more sampling time for mostly rarely-used articulations but some often-used ones as well. Not sure I'll spring for that, or later volumes, until I miss something.

After suffering for buying Vienna Smart Orchestra + XP instead of SE1, I finally got SE1 in the current sale for about $200 with the free Antares Choir plugin thrown in at AudioDeluxe. While I may at some point enjoy VSO+XP for the sketching workflow it was intended for, what I really wanted was some solo instruments to fill out the Epic Orchestra 2.0 that came with Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 that I bought when I got hired for my first classical orchestration gig, on a project I was doing my usual (for decades now) track/edit/mix/master on. I definitely should have bought SE1 for that, but I ended up buying Berlin Inspire 1+2 when it went on sale for $350 and that may have been better overall for that project. Since then I've added BBCSO Pro on sale for $500 and several other libraries eg Century Brass Complete for $150. Still, the SE1 is a very useful addition.

In fact I almost think the other library makers assume you have SE1 (or the older Vienna Cube era stuff) and make their libraries specifically different from it, but these old Vienna recordings are sort of the "vanilla" flavor that is more or less neutral in sound and character and the other libraries sometimes stretch a bit trying to be different. Which can be a problem, or it can be hip. Right now Orchestral Tools and Spitfire (and if you like Summer Blockbuster action trailers, Heavyocity) are the hip companies, with CSS and CineSamples starting to look a bit old, and Vienna and EastWest the aging stalwarts. EastWest seems somewhat moribund as they used SonuScore for their newer recordings...SonuScore being firmly in the second tier along with 8Dio, SoundIron, Audio Imperia, etc.

If "vanilla" doesn't appeal to you, don't get VSL, because it's all quite neutral in character. The presentations are fairly perfectionistic and restrained, with Orchestral Tools having more atmosphere and gloss, and Spitfire having more attitude. (Heavyocity, again, takes attitude to the tasteless no-neck level. Spitfire is classy attitude.) Since I make stuff happen for other people's music, I snap up the whole range when the deals are sweet enough so I can handle whatever the client wants. Or is already using on their session.

People considering SE1 are likely, like me, fairly new to orchestration, and the Vienna product line is historically confusing. The way it works is, they have old recordings done in a dry studio ("The Silent Stage") 20+ years ago with equipment that was OK then but I wouldn't use nowadays. They have an incomplete new set of recordings as well, at the old scoring stage they took over called Synchron. This is a live room, with a natural reverb burnt into even the close mics, and much better equipment in use. The old recordings sound somewhat scratchy and distant compared to the vibrant and detailed Synchron recordings, BUT, the recording and room quality isn't everything. The players and instruments were sometimes better in the old recordings I think, and in a dense arrangement, I doubt many could tell the difference in quality, but they may in character.

For a similar set (minus the pianos and solo strings) they now offer Synchron Prime Edition with the new recordings for about double the SE1 price. I demoed this (seems they yank the free demo offer pretty quickly) and decided not to buy it right now, but I am still interested in it when it goes on a better sale. The recordings for it are all deluxe quality although they do cut corners on legatos and articulations to preserve value for their premium versions of the same performances. I found the strings to be the strongest component.

And on SE1 I have to say the strings are again the strongest part. Everything is solid enough but the strings are where these recordings are still competitive. "You can never have enough choices of strings" people say and I do recommend having a variety of strings. The weak point of the SE1 strings is the 2nd violins are just a different convolution on the 1st violins, and don't even move much in the panning, so hard to get much variety there. Also the solo strings needed a fair amount of mixing help to stand on their own, but once adjusted, they work for more than just first chair duties and, while bright and forte compared to many other solo strings offerings, certainly have a place. It's a terrific value to get any solo strings at all at this price.

Speaking of needing mix help to stand alone, there is actually a Bösendorfer Imperial included as well as the modern Synchron Pianos Hamburg Steinway D. This old recording can be rescued just inside the Synchron Player, perhaps adding the free Soft Imperial as a piano layer. I've done that in this thread and offer the presets for it there as a gift to anyone making it this far through this review:

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t59173-Free-Preset-for-SE1-Bosendorfer#post311943

All in all, this SE1 was an excellent purchase, especially for the pianos and solo strings. The brass and woodwinds are useful, there is a full octet of solo winds which you usually don't see. The percussion is surprisingly good, although the "Synchronize" impulses tend to get a bit too hazy vs. the actual Synchron recordings, overwhelming the instrument fundamentals, while getting too direct-sounding when turned down. Those impulses work best on the ensemble strings, which are nearly perfect right out of the box. I will probably always have something from this library in a large session as it has so much useful stuff in it, and in a large session its minor flaws won't be too glaring.

I have zero conflicts of interest in the virtual instruments business.

Archived in case of censorship, which happened on my Prime Edition review.

Here's what I did with the old Bosendorfer recording in Special Edition 1, using the Hamburg new recording as a general guide:

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t59173-Free-Preset-for-SE1-Bosendorfer#post311943

Would be interested in finding out how close I got it to the full Imperial (suppressing the cognitive dissonance of having paid a lot more for it may be impossible of course), especially the version I did with the Soft Imperial as the p layer.

In many ways I like the patch over the Hamburg, even though their new recordings are vastly more detailed than the old stuff (what was that...DPA mics into an ordinary console pre?). It has a simple and ethereal quality where the lower fidelity works in its favor a bit. Also I find the default Hamburg mix to be too crisp too fast, for show-off type ego's with hairy chests.

OK I figured out how to velocity switch the HELLO! Free Soft Imperial with the SE1 Bösendorfer. Not sure I like it  this way because it really is using the una corda pedal suddenly on a soft note. But it's not bad. I suppose you could hook it to a soft pedal rather than velocity.

Edit: OK much better...if I use the stack button on the switching group it does more of a crossfade, and I tweaked the tone a touch. Sounds somewhat legit now...I don't have the full Bosey version to compare to.

I hope it works on other people's installations. Just unzip and drag into the VSL/Synchron Player/Presets folder in your Documents folder or wherever these presets are stored for you, and you'll see it in the user presets down at the bottom of the menu. I'm sure the full version of the Bosey is worth it but it's nice to get a bonus grand piano just with SE1, in addition to the excellent Hamburg D. Have fun.

Just got Synchronized Special Edition Vol I today in the sale, haven't gone through it entirely yet. But I got zero information about the Bösendorfer patch that's included alongside the Hamburg D before I bought, and was interested what it was like.

The default Bosey patch is purely for orchestration and you can barely hear the thing because of the impulse they put on it. But I took that off and fiddled with it for an hour, going back and forth with the Hamburg, until I got it more or less comparable to the Hamburg tonally. Of course it is nowhere near as deep sampled and there's really only the ff layer included, but it does work pretty well.

Well enough I decided to upload my patch here for people to enjoy. Or go further than I did with it. The trebles are thinner than the Hamburg, the curves are a touch different still, but it may be more or less interchangeable if you find yourself wanting to switch to the other grand.

Now what I would like to do, but don't know how it would be done in Synchron Player, is take the free Soft Imperial patch they sent out and make it the p/mp layer of this Bosey patch, using velocity crossfade. The way they do pedal switching on the SE1 Bosey makes that seem unnecessarily difficult. Maybe one of you is sharp enough on Synchron Player to explain how it would be done all inside one preset. I could do it externally with some MIDI scripting I suppose, or just layer it on on the same MIDI channel and have it reduce volume with velocity.

Anyway have fun, hopefully this forum lets me attach the preset, it says it can at least.

I refused the eLicenser mess as with everything Steinberg so I don't remember VIPro.

What actually happens is you double click on a different EQ thumbnail and it closes the EQ window. You need to click four times to reload the EQ window with the EQ of a different channel. You can't open more than one EQ window (which is unfortunate because you can't compare EQs). The Synchron Player team is actually pretty good and I'm sure they will find this embarrassing once they learn about it. It's a bad note in the symphony.

Seems left-arrow got fixed in the last update.

Make 200 instances using the vertical orientation option and drag them around. You won't miss it...it's just an off-by-one bug on the size of the list element. You are thinking you're dropping between instances 3500 pixels from the origin but it's actually 3900 pixels (or thereabouts). Your list elements are actually one bigger than you're adding up, at least on Mac. This is a common enough bug to have in a dnd list, someone has to sit there and make 200 instances and test it and own their error. Don't overindulge them.

I repro'd the MIDI controllers bug here

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t59158-VEP7-bug--MIDI-controllers-break-when-Saved-As-in-Off-state#post311881

Although I'm still not 100% certain that will always break them. But I always break them somehow. The screen just looks like blank in the right column where the parameter would be, but the controller in the left column is still listed. I am not doing any other operations to the plugins or MIDI controllers, they are just breaking.

Most likely this is a conditional serialization bug: on Save As you are doing a tree search for data to save vs data not to save (probably because you are mixing in all sorts of ugly backpointers and GUI pointers in the model layer, given the quality of this implementation that would be about the programmer level). And when the power on the instance is off you are bailing on that leaf of the tree prematurely; that's still data you want serialized of course. As your programmer masters the craft they will learn not to do things this way, just like the Import bug kludge.

OK I have a repro path for the breaking MIDI controllers: Latest VEP7, latest Mac intel

Repro:

1. Launch VSL and create a new instance, with an instrument plugin of your choice

2. Connect to the instance from your DAW, and learn a MIDI controller (over there on the right column hidden behind Automation/Parameters) using your keyboard controller and a knob on the plugin

3. Turn the Instance's power off (so you won't have to wait to load it every time you open the server project) and disconnect from it.

4. Save the server project as "CC Test 1"

5. Quit and relaunch VEP7. Open CC Test 1 server project. Note that the CC controller is still properly mapped to the plugin knob, but don't power it back on

6. Save it as "CC Test 2"

7. Quit and relaunch VEP7. Open CC Test 2 server project.

=> THE MIDI CONTROLLER IS NOW BROKEN. It still knows the keyboard control, but it decided to stop saving the plugin control when it was powered off. That is now blank and has to be remapped.

While this may seem a rare path, it is a super-common path for me, as I am using a big template full of powered-off options, some with MIDI controllers mapped to them, that loads quickly but lets me choose which instances I want to work with on a project, and then save the server project as a specific version. I'm constantly forced to remap the MIDI controllers because of this bug, and what's worse, people not expecting this bug may silently have changes in their arrangement introduced by it, which will only be discovered later, potentially with a costly or dismaying result (imagine it is rendered as reference for a live recording, and the live players don't play vibrato because the rendering's vibrato quietly got broken by this bug!).

Don't say "ah it's good enough." ZERO of your customers feel that way about what they are being paid to produce. Whose music has bugs like these? And they are being paid less than you!

I have heard these fake little legato glides in the Synchron Prime Edition demo, and it was a reason I have delayed getting that, looking at SE1 instead on the current sale, which at least has a nice piano patch included. Of course, you might like these fake little portamenti, but they sound fake to me, and aren't what a player would do.

Would like to take this opportunity to complain about a little bug in Synchron Player if you don't mind:

1. Open an EQ window for one channel

2. Now click/double-click on a different channel's EQ thumbnail

=> The different EQ's settings are not loaded into the already-open EQ floating window. Instead you have to keep clicking until it closes and then re-opens the window. You check if there's already an EQ window open and then stop entirely, but you need to load the settings in as well.

Another thing. Seems that MIDI controller assignments don't survive my typical power cycling of instances, at least when on disk. Annoying to have to re-learn them all the time.

(I'm not actually certain what the repro steps are here. But these are steps I do, and it keeps failing. I would explore what exactly breaks it; it's something along these lines.)

1) Create a new instance, with an instrument plugin of your choice, and add a VST or AU FX plugin to the channel.

2) Create a new MIDI controller over there on the right of the screen, learn the controller assignment, and learn the plugin parameter to use for it.

3) Power off the instance, and save the server project.

4) Quit VEP, relaunch it and open the saved server project, open the instance and power it on.

=> MIDI controller will still have its source assignment but not its target asssignment into the FX plugin which will be blank and won't work.

I power the instances on only when I need them, as I have > 150 instances, one per instrument, as makes sense for Logic.

Also, you have an off-by-one error in the sizing of your instance elements for drag-and-drop re-ordering.

1) Make 200 instances in a new project (this is reasonable for a Logic workflow of instrument-per-instance)

2) Use vertical instance orientation, placing them on the left (the natural place for large instance count projects)

3) Drag and drop the 200th instance up to the 180th for example

=> Your drop location will be lower than where you are dragging, likely because you are miscounting the size of each instance element

And btw, when you add a new instance, it should be placed immediately below the current selection, using the color of the selected instance, and not at the very end of the list, using whatever color is last. Which forces an extremely cumbersome and time consuming drag back up to the top and re-coloring of any new instance you add to such a project.

Impress me.

Latest VEP7, intel i9 Mac latest

Repro:

1) Launch VEP7 and create a new instance

2) Add channels for any two 3rd party AU plugins (VST plugins and Synchron Player do NOT suffer from this bug): could be Kontakt AU, SINE player AU, Spitfire Originals AU... your pick

3) The bottom channel should be selected, just press the left arrow key which should select the next higher channel...but.....

=> Immediate crash out of VEP7, Mac desktop is all you see

I thought I saw a bug fix announced of something like this at some point recently, but if so, it has regressed.

(Also, I posted a lot of feedback (much of it positive) in this forum on Synchron Prime Edition and it all got deleted. Fear not criticism. The "Johann Strauss rather than Richard Strauss" line I'm not letting go of, that was bullseye. But I do like your stuff anyway.)

I'm not having this problem in Logic in a one-machine setup with the latest versions of everything. I suggest clicking the gear icon in the upper right corner of the BBC plugin and seeing if all the details inside match up...the default preferences may be different for you in VEP and you may be getting dropouts as the voice limits etc are hit. Also check your VEP prefs and your latency settings.

Originally Posted by: PatrickF

The problem is definitely not with Spitfire. I have the same problem, I think...it sounds worse than just short tails, because mine is also with sustained strings. I have spent weeks building a VEPro template and it is absolutely unusable, even when all tracks are disabled except one. I made a video comparing running BBCSO locally within Cubase, and running the same BBCSO in VEPro: https://youtu.be/rupmWwJEAbY. 

Arisake, have you found a solution? I am not getting any responses from VSL.

I should avoid the dreaded "sike award" and update the thread with what I actually did and think.

A lot changed in a couple weeks; Spitfire ran a Spring sale that, along with a coupon and an upgrade discount, made the price of BBCSO Pro $513 for me...not much more than the $389 Prime Edition was going for on Thomann. Since BBCSO Pro includes the 5 string leaders, and a lot more articulations, and a whopping 20 different mic positions on everything in the library, making it tailorable to virtually any situation...I had to get that this time instead. I am fully satisfied with that purchase BTW. I was able to get sufficiently "iconic" sounds out of lots of well-known riffs on each instrument, along with lots of attitude as I mentioned and a fairly genuine symphonic sound out of the box. There are a few things VSL and Berlin Series do better, but there is nothing approaching that value at that discounted price.

With the luxury of a full demo of Prime Edition still running, I can compare them head to head. As I've gone through it, I'm starting to think the Strings are actually the true strength of Prime Edition, however, these are somewhat controversial Strings. To me, they are kind of like a fantasy of what Strings should sound like, using a lot of close mic, with a lot higher quality and placement of the mic than we're used to hearing on a symphonic recording. The fundamentals are clear and round and the balances of tone are perfectionistic.

The argument is whether this sound is both unrealistically hi-fi, and also, cloyingly saccharine. Which means "overly sweet" to those who ran off with the circus. VSL Synchron era is more Johann Strauss than Richard Strauss. In solo, I can find it hard to argue that the VSL Synchron recordings aren't better. Surely they are cleaner and higher fidelity and you hear every nuance in flawless balance. But this also takes out all the edge and posture and atmosphere. I'm not sure there's an easy way to put that back in...convo reverbs and compression/EQ/saturation etc. doesn't solve problems that stem from the player, instrument, room, and the direction of those elements combined. By avoiding all criticism the result lacks conviction.

There are several instruments where the earlier "Silent Stage" recordings are simply superior to these. The solo trumpet in my VSO+XP is better than these trumpets even! Although it only has a single articulation and so isn't of much use to me. You ought to have refunded me for it when I asked so I could get SE1 instead...

Still, I would enjoy getting this set and it's an excellent value. There are a lot of instruments here and the player is excellent. My original impulse applies: the brass and winds can serve very well as 2nd and 3rd chair (No idea why the Brits call this idea "desk" btw...where is the "desk?" The music stand?) to the Spitfire or Berlin 1st chairs with a little work in the Mix panel and some shared reverb. The Strings would make a good inoffensive "family movie" sound...I mean they are perfect for what they are. The percussion is useful and as I mentioned before, the Epic Orchestra 2.0 that came with VEP7 and the freebies (thank you for these!) fill in a lot of the gaps here just fine. I will continue to use those when I want some VSL tone, and I will look to pick up Prime Edition perhaps in the Holiday sales. And again, a Synchron Solo Strings release is the obvious missing piece and hopefully we see that soon.

Confirmed fixed in 7.1.1329. Congratulations.

Happy to see a major bugfix release today, although I myself would have hotfixed this particular bug and got it out in 24hrs. Perhaps though it's better for a team that would make such a bug to do a full QA cycle even on a critical fix like this. You can skimp on coders, you can skimp on QA, but you sure can't skimp on both at once, and beta sites are not professional QA engineers. Hopefully things are looking up there and I'm happy to see the progress.

This may seem a fine point but, let's say I want to turn the Synchron Prime Clarinet Sforzatissimo into a short using the Envelope control on the Edit panel. I set Hold to 0.25, Decay to 0.45, Sustain to -inf, and Release to 0. It's a short when the note is kept held down now, fine.

But, while you're playing, release the note before the hold + decay time is done (experiment with different key up times). An "echo" which is the release sample triggering now appears. With a sustain level of -inf and the sound decayed to inaudibility already, the release sample should be played at the effective level of the decay (which if it's -inf, could be skipped entirely as an optimization). Instead it's triggered audibly and joltingly, as the decay factor hasn't been applied, which is the bug.

Note that a "fix" where the level of the release sample is naively set to the sustain level would not be a fix. The release sample should still be played if the sustain portion of the envelope hasn't been reached yet. An actual fix is to play the release sample at the current level set by the envelope, wherever that is at the time of key up. I'm surprised this got through to release but I suppose people don't use these envelopes much.

"You shouldn't be doing that that way...use shorts for shorts" responses will be ignored, unless there really is so much better of a way of doing this that the envelope bug can be safely ignored. But it's still a bug, and I should be able to turn a long into a short with the envelope if I want to without needing to be careful how I play it. Thank you...

OK now I play with it a bit more, I think what's going on is the decay factor is getting applied, but the release sample in this case has gain up above that, which is being added to the decay factor, not scaled. So the fix then is, in cases where the release sample has extra gain, it should be scaled by the envelope coefficient, not simply added to whatever it determined unity to presently be.

Of course, now that we see this bug, a fix would have to keep the libraries all built sounding the same. So a compromise might be to only scale it when the envelope nears inaudibility so that these echoes don't appear, but otherwise leave it as it is so people's projects don't change in sound much. Or maybe you solve this with a legacy switch in the patches so that only new instantiations of the patches get the fix, but existing projects will still play with the buggy envelope. This is why you've really got to get all the bugs out of audio plugins before they ship...

Installed the demo and ran through every instrument. How nice to be able to have a full demo of a sample library before purchasing!!!

I should say that everything VSL has been doing since the iLok transition has been fantastic. My only issues with the company have been with the bugs in VEP7. I'm guessing the iLok transition and Vienna Assistant and this product has dominated their attention in the meantime, which is understandable.

This product is really an outstanding value. Vibrato Cross-fade control, Marcato start legato runs, Sforzatissimo brass, the Agile shorts, all of these things make the library very realistic and responsive to play. I would have changed around the default presets to show these advantages off when you first boot up the player, because I can't see not using them by default. Of course, that's why I have VEP7 to make a template with my preferred arrangement ready to play.

In fact, the Epic Orchestra 2.0 that comes with VEP7 adds some missing parts to Synchron Prime, in the strings and some percussion articulations. Plus there are the HELLO free instruments, which will be adding Harp Glisses and Violin Runs soon according to Mr. Michelmore. So I pretty much have everything I need, other than First Chair Strings, which I suppose VSL hasn't produced yet. I have workable alternatives for those in the meantime.

This more or less leaves the subjective dimension. The VSL Synchron sound is quite neutral, shiny, fancy. You may love that, but of course, you may be one who pours too much cologne on yourself every day. Which is my sense of the demographic that would respond positively to the fanciness of the tone. OT Berlin Series and Spitfire offer a more contemporary, moody tone, that splashes too much reverb on itself. (Since I got the Kontakt Berlin Inspire I was able to dry out the patches a lot, but I would need the Pro level BBC to do it with Spitfire.) Those choices have a strong attitude that will either work, or not, while the more vanilla VSL may need more mix skill sculpting an attitude to fit.

Although, now that I play through a second time, the second chairs seem to be more "moody" and reverb'ed. So maybe try the Horn 2/Clarinet 2 etc (which Michelmore misinterpreted as two players rather than second chair) if you want a more Berlin-series tone. The Celestial Strings are a more Spitfire-like thing, you can blend them for some "pepper" texture on the other strings. That and the Epic 2.0 Flautando and you more or less have the range but within the VSL general tone.

Some of the criticisms of Synchron Prime have been lame...for instance, not offering vibrato on Clarinet or French Horn is simply because it's totally non-standard to have vibrato on those instruments. The Clarinet btw in Synchron Prime is truly awesome sounding and may be the best in the biz. The library doesn't have Marimba or Vibes but you can get those for $7 each at 8dio at the moment. The Sfz brass is totally brash and cinematic with everything cranked, there's no wimpiness here even if it is tuxedo attire sound out of the box.

One criticism that does land a bit is the legatos don't seem to be true legatos. But I think Berlin has also moved to a synthetic legato within SINE player. (Hey, sometimes I roll my own synthetic vibrato, so...) True, sample-based legato makes a library massive and hard to program. I've had to fix several Kontakt true legatos. So these are fake legatos, but they are typically OK enough, and the Legato articulation most certainly does not sound like the Long Sustains when played fast enough. True Legatos and multiple dynamic layers (which I'm not sure VSL even recorded) are factors that make a more expensive library an upgrade, but I'm not sure most productions will need them.

Synchron Player is outstanding, for instance the Sfzissimo brass has a bit too much "humanize" on it by default for me but I can easily tamp that down. The controls are useful for bringing emotive life into these samples. It's hard to imagine the same people made Synchron Player and VEP but I predict VEP will catch up soon enough.

Anyway outstanding product and I do plan to purchase before the end of the month. Vanilla is the most important flavor in the cart and you can take it anywhere. The competing products cost more than double this for realistic playable solo winds and brass, and you can defeat the reverb here almost entirely, blend them with any strings of your choice and a nice reverb and you've got any orchestra you need. Try the generous 30-day full demo.

Originally Posted by: evang42

I'm pretty sure you've encountered a bug I was about to report however, I don't think it's a data loss bug, but rather a subtle but really problematic SAVING bug?  Or maybe I've encountered a slightly different thing....

Let's say you're working with a VEP file called "Template A" and you choose to import instances from "Template Z"

The very next time you go to Save As, it DEFAULTS to calling your file "Template Z" and saving it in the SAME location as Template Z.  Which means, if you aren't careful to NOTICE and CORRECT this, it will SAVE OVER "Template Z" with the NEW (potentially totally different except for whatever instances you just imported) from Z.

This is HIGHLY problematic, counter-intuitive, and should be fixed in my opinion RIGHT away.  Just because I want to import an instance from Template Z (saved on drive/folder Z), doesn't mean I've now totally abandoned working on Template A (saved in drive/folder A).

Evan

Yes precisely. My suspicion is that they are using some ancient cross-platform database thing, and they kludged the import approach in a very, very inadvised way, and then promptly forgot to de-kludge the kludge and have no QA to find the oversight. Leaving it to us, with potentially disastrous results to our work.

The insides of VEP are clearly the work of an A-level coder. The frontend on top of that was either asked of that same low-level coder, which is a completely inappropriate use of their skills, or was assigned to a junior C-grade Windows engineer who can't even get the file menu implemented properly on the Mac.

This is version 7 of the flagship software product of the leading virtual orchestration company. I'm actually wondering, given how truly awful Steinberg's frontend work is, whether VEP is actually built by Steinberg under contract, and Steinberg gave them one of their best on the backend and worst on the frontend, and VSL don't have much control over it. Steinberg's userbase mostly on Windows and used to suffering, but artists mostly use Mac and needn't accept this abuse. We paid good money for this.

Though I don't know the backstory and shouldn't start rumors. They have been fixing my bugs, so at least there's that. But this one, and seeing it's not just me smacking into it, doesn't merit patient sympathy. This absolutely had to be detected before signoff on GA.

UPDATE: FIXED in 7.1.1329

This is real bad. Worse than any crash. More like a hard drive wipe severity.

Latest VEP7, Latest Mac OS intel.

Repro:

1. Create a new VEP server project with 10 instances. Imagine this is your main template you've worked on for months.

2. File/Save Server Project, name it "Main Template"

3. Quit VEP7 (which does not allow closing a server project any other way than quit...which is a notable smell...)

4. Launch VEP7 again and we'll use the new blank server project that appears for a specific project that doesn't need the whole main template, just one of its instances.

5. File/Save Server Project and name it "Specific Template"

6. File/Import Instances From Server Project... and import Instance "Untitled 8" from the "Main Template" server project you saved in step 2. You uncheck all the instances and then check Untitled 8 only before importing.

=> Untitled 8 now appears in the server project you're working on.

7. Now File/Save Server Project (cmd-shift-S) to save your work.

=> At this point, everything seems fine. BUT THERE IS A VERY, VERY BIG PROBLEM.

8. Quit VEP7, now that your Specific Template setup is done.

9. Launch VEP7 this time by double-clicking Main Template.

=> Main Template opens, but NINE OF THE INSTANCES HAVE BEEN DELETED.

Your months of work have been destroyed irretrievably unless you have a constant backup system. You now only have Untitled 8 instance in your Main Template.

10. Quit VEP7 and launch it this time with Specific Template.

=> Specific Template remains blank. Untitled 8 never got saved to it. It got saved to Main Template, clobbering the rest of the data in Main Template.

So what happened? There is a catastrophic data loss bug in File/Import Instances From Server Project. For some incomprehensible reason, the programmer decided to clobber the file system handle of the currently open file with the file they are importing from, and never cached and restored it to the current working file. The only hint this has happened is the title of the window you're working on changes to the file you imported from. But that is incredibly easy to miss, especially given you would never expect anything like this to happen. Fortunately in my case I noticed before losing a lot of work (although I have backups).

The (hopefully very temporary) workaround is, after any use of the exceedingly hazardous File/Import Instances..., immediately do a File/Save Server Project As... and navigate back to the file you meant to save over, renaming accordingly. But this is so easy to forget to do you ought to make backups of both files every time before using that feature at all.

Oh and if you have the terribly implemented Autosave feature enabled, you may not even get a chance to do the workaround before it clobbers your main template for you autotragically. PLEASE

Whoever is maintaining this...don't make it this easy for some jerk on the internet to embarrass you like this. If it were my code I would be level set on finding these before anyone else did. I mean seriously. Given this product is for artists, who often won't have good backup practices, you can't have a bug this hour-destroying this easily exposed. You absolutely have to bring good, comprehensive QA on board and work with them.

I think the most tedious thing with VEP Workflow is simply getting the various patch names out of the instrument through the VEP template and out into the DAW so we know what we're working with.

I'm not sure what facilities are available in the current DAWs but this is a prime opportunity to advocate for a reflection API that would allow tracks to be named from the patch selection automagically.

I see you have the articulations reflected in your own Synchron player, but you don't name the mixer channel after it, you just show it in a special box under the instrument insert. A facility for naming the channels accordingly would be a nice step, but I'm typically not even working with those VEP mixer channels other than to route outputs as I usually want to mix in the DAW specific to the cue or song.

Instance names are also hidden inside your VEP plugin and it would be nice if those could also be reflectable via the API, so that for instance we might create a summing stack per instance with each multitimbral MIDI part named automatically based on the VEP instrument patches and the DAW's audio channels named from the VEP mixer channels.

You could also do this reflection on track and channel color choices. I would expect the reflection flow to mostly be from VEP to the DAW, but maybe some people will want to go DAW to VEP, as e.g. you allow renaming instances from the DAW plugin.

Probably much of the hassle of making and using VEP templates is simply copying over names, so this is worth advocating for with the various plugin API bureaucracies and DAW vendors. While the win for VEP would be massive, it would also help working with other VIs directly in the DAWs. Maybe some DAWs already have something like this...?

I'm very close to buying this now there's a nice price at Thomann.

The manual is up and required reading:

https://www.vsl.info/en/instruments/prime-edition/prime-edition

They really haven't held back much. I suppose I could get the Embertone quartet ($299) for the 1st chair strings until VSL offer them in Synchron versions to match. But pretty much everything is there and should work. Thankfully rolls on much of the percussion although I'm not certain about velocity layers. This looks like a better deal than BBCSO Core which is a popular comparison...more like the Pro level for that.

Finished my first project with Berlin Inspire 1 + 2 and client loved it. And then immediately started asking for the missing articulations I'd need to get the whole Berlin Series for! The Teldex sound is a bit wet on the Berlin but the Release knob lets it be dialed back if needed. The Kontakt version let me fix a few bugs as its mostly unlocked. Anyway that gig gives me the funds to get Synchron Prime which offers far more articulations and control. May get more Berlin when its on sale I suppose.

Anyway congrats to VSL on this release at this price point, definitely taking it directly to the competition and getting back in this game. Seems things are looking up in general for this company as they've been responsive to my bug reports as well. Well done and I will report back how I like this once I make the purchase.

Hey! No one's taking the title of worst troll away from me!

Actually I have found you both useful to read over the years and this was a dongle in a teapot.

The walkthrough videos should definitely have shown Vibrato XF on the solo instruments. The fact they didn't, mislead me into thinking it wasn't included. I expect marketing to display all the positives loud and clear and your friendly forum trolls to inform us of the negatives on these mostly non-refundable purchases.

Speaking of which, apparently they do refund, at least for store credit, if you act quick. Which is nice to know.

Videos comparing the Vienna instruments with eg. CSS suggest you have to struggle to get an emotive performance out of the Vienna recordings. I think what's going on is all the notes are played straight and get a lot of dynamic compression to ensure an even performance, you are then expected to use MIDI CC to coax an emotive performance out of this very vanilla, on/off, one-size-fits-all recording style. That's going to be really hard to make natural; perhaps the better strategy is to choose the library that fits the mood of the piece. That's my main concern with Prime Edition, it might not offer emotive depth out of the box.

But given the full Synchron instruments are so resource intensive this may be the best product VSL offers. If they get a set of Synchron Solo Strings and add them to this library, definitely a competitive offering. The first and second chairs offered here could knock down to second and third chair and the first chair replaced by the library that offers the specific mood you're looking for. The Synchron Player is excellent (contrast with the rickety old VEP) and offers a dry patch that you can match reverbs with other libs, plus timbral shift etc.

I think this looks like a solid product even if saying so makes me less of a troll. I'm happy they've gotten out of the Steinberg orbit with the ilok. I was waiting for that.

Latest VEP7 ilok, latest Kontakt AU2, Latest Mac OS intel

Now and then when opened in VEP the Kontakt GUI freaks out and displays any sort of visual chaos you might imagine: a giant window with a partial stretched GUI, colored snow, you name it. This can happen whether the instance is connected or not, whether the GUI is tethered to the VEP window or not, etc.

I find the best workaround to be creating a new Kontakt instance in the same VEP instance, this will not only come up with a normal GUI but also cure the GUI of the old Kontakt instance. At which point the new instance can be deleted.

I have no specific Repro path for this as of yet.

I suspect the use of the power button and saving/reloading powered off instances may have something to do with it. I use the power button as a better form of sample purge (that works on non-purging players too) across a fairly large number of instances.

Originally Posted by: littlewierdo

1. I am wondering, I currently have the Special Editions Complete Synchron libraries, what am I getting with Prime that I do not already have?

2. Is there no upgrade pricing available for those of us who have the Special Edition libraries? My understanding is that the Special Edition libraries come from the same collections as the Prime library, so I am a bit confused... Considering I paid significantly more for the Special Edition libraries than what Prime costs, this new collection confuses me.

The confusing thing is they use "Synchron" and "Synchron-ized" to define two different eras of products. The new products, called "Synchron" are new recordings made in their own in-house "Synchron" recording studio we paid for over the years. The older "Synchron-ized" products are old recordings that they made in dry recording studios, which have then been processed with "positional IR" convolution reverb impulses made at the various section locations of their in-house Synchron studio so they sound like their newer recordings. Plus a lot of programming.

Synchron-ized Special Editions are drawn from the old material that has been refreshed this way. Synchron Prime Edition is from the new material recorded at their in-house studio. They are all different samples from what you have, so there's no crossgrade discount. This is reasonable. 

Originally Posted by: littlewierdo

3. Also, does this Prime Library have vibrato control for solo instruments? In all honesty, this is the only thing I really wish I had in the Special Edition libraries...

Vienna Synchron Player uses a Vibrato XF crossfade continuous control for this. And below it is claimed this is included in Prime Edition.