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  • stacking solo instruments

    Hello,

    Is it possible to stack solo instruments to create an ensemble of a varying amount of players? Is this possible with the Vienna Ensemble? What I want to do is have an ensemble of 3-5 violin players.

    Thanks


  • I'm just setting it up myself, but I think that's the basic idea of VE.

  • so i could create six instances of solo violin and get the same results as the chamber strings using the vienna ensemble, just with alot of cpu and ram usage.

  • No!

    If you use the same solo instrument playing the same notes at the same time you will get nasty phasing-- with or without Vienna Ensemble.  You could transpose violin tracks and then pitch shift them to force the Vienna player to use different samples but this will still not sound precisely the same as the chamber strings.

    Best,

    Jay


  • Mr. Bacal is correct. It seems logical that if you have six violins playing, you get a chamber sound. And it also seems that VE facilitates that exact approach. But the resulting sound just isn't what you'd think. This was discussed on the EXS forum.

    We can assume that, for a few years now, the composers here had the less-than-Einsteinian idea to compound solos to get a chamber sound. Had we succeeded, would any of us have purchased the Chamber Strings? We could have bounced our way past the polyphony and RAM issues. Moreover, when the Chambers came out, they were particularly pricey, and VSL could not have sold it unless its users recognized that there was no real alternative in the quest for that sound.

    But Solo on Chamber and/or Solo on Orchestral definitely has merit. In fact, sometimes I'll sneak Orchestral under a Chamber if I feel the latter is too thin. But that's usually more of a mix trick than patch-building.

  • couldn't one use something like waves 360 to place each different violin in slightly different sections?

  • last edited
    last edited

    @reiman12_30456 said:

    couldn't one use something like waves 360 to place each different violin in slightly different sections?

    This is very easy to test with Woodwind or Brass instruments. Unfortunately layering two solo instruments does not sound the same as two playing at the same time. However, this is usually bearable, provided that it is buried in the texture. Layering six solo violins will sound nothing like a chamber section. I have tested this with live players and it is the same.

    Having said that, Jay came up with a wonderful script for K2 called the JB Ensemble Maker (I think), and whilst it sounded very good, it was not the same as a section.

    DG

  • Perhaps reiman means different solo violin instruments which occasionally I do myself, but the exact same I agree and even without the phasing effect they tend to cancel each other out.