Brian,

Thanks for chiming in. I'm really glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Until now I've been willing to concede that my disappointment in the legato patches might be a matter of my expectations not being met, i.e., my idea of legato may simply not the same as those people who programmed VSL. But... after using VSL for 3 weeks now (and trying my damndest to find realistic and consistent workarounds for the legato glitching) I'm no longer willing to consider a justification for it.

Speaking generally, the meaning of what a "legato" sound is (on any instrument) is not, IMO, really open to debate to any great degree. Legato playing is a technique that musicians learn to achieve very early in their training. At least amongst classical musicians I think it's fair to say that there's a fundamental understanding of what "legato" sounds like on any particular instrument. And in general the VSL legato patches do not achieve this paradigm [u]out of the box[/u], and simply by playing the legato patches themselves. Heck, it's virtually impossible -- if not [i]actually[/i] impossible -- to achieve a legato sound even between two adjacent notes (whole or half step) on so many of the VSL legato instruments!

But there is some hope... After discussing this subject on another forum, I've learned from a chap named Daryl an approach to making VSL legato patches actually sound legato. The technique involves routing your sound through a reverb (small room) and listening only to the wet signal. The room sound smoothes out the bumps in the legato patches.

Try this:

Select the chamber violin legato patch -- dry, no reverb at first -- and play some legato phrases (at varying speeds) using only the notes G2 through C#3 --- this representing notes which can only be produced on this single string and don't extend past the first position on the string. Imagine playing the part using long, continuous bow strokes. I guarantee you that some of what you play will likely sound just awful (not your music, the legato transitions!). Next, try this technique of routing that patch into a small room and listen only to the wet signal. Assuming you've chosen an appropriate room (which might take some time to find), there's a good chance that the bumpy legato transitions will no longer be an issue! Those same lines that sounded really crappy and stilted before will now sound musical!

The downside to this technique is that you cannot use VSL legato patches to produce intimate sounding, close-mic'd instrument simulations. Utilizing a reverb for this purpose commits you to a room sound for that instrument, if not the rest of the instruments in your ensemble. Depending on what you're doing, this may or may not be desirable

I realize this is not a new technique -- listening to a sound as though it were in the context of a room and the listener at a distance -- but it's one that seems to be necessary in order to make legato patches work.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Peter, Thanks for sharing the tip. I had noticed that reverb used in the regular way tends to improve things, but this technique will be an additional help in some situations. I think you are right to feel that this is not entirely a subjective matter. Let me put it this way -- I can remember taking auditions in which I was asked to play specific scales or intervals just to demonstrate that I could play a smooth and effortless legato. If my playing had sounded like the VSL legato clarinet does much of the time, I would have failed that part of the audition, no doubt about it! Of course there is no way that the technique used by VSL can ever be perfectly realistic (to get close to that, you'd need the engine to have some kind of real-time spectral morphing inbetween samples). But I'm optimistic that it could be greatly improved to the point of being reliably *musical*, if they put some sufficient effort into fine-tuning. After careful listening, it seems to me that the majority of bad-sounding legato intervals are caused by the transition samples either being too loud (given equal-velocity notes), or slightly too long and thus too conspicuous. A few, however, seem to be the result of less-than-ideal performances. Even without an update to the samples, perhaps an elegant partial solution would be for VSL to add a new feature where you could use a controller to switch on the fly from their legato mode to a conventional crossfade-and-skip-the-attack mode, where desired. Anyway, that's how I see it for now.

A hearty "Indeed!" to everything you wrote. And I do mean "everything".

I agree, there are some bad performances. It seems to me that on some instruments, and for some notes, the repetition sample is the better of the two.

Being able to crossfade from one sample to another really isn't that hard to accomplish provided the raw material (i.e., the sampled notes) are adequately performed. But even with less-than-perfect samples, if the idea of connecting notes in legato fashion is tantamount to crossfading between the sustain portions of those samples, the attack of such a "bad sample" can often be entirely overlooked. There are much less expensive sample plugs on the market (which shall remain nameless) that accomplish this quite successfully. While there is no comparison when it comes to the difference in sound quality between them and VSL, as it is, many of the legato VSL patches can't be used for their intended purpose anyway. And by "intended purpose" I mean the universal understanding of what legato sounds like, per my above post.

So there's lots of room for improvement here. Meanwhile I use VSL for the strings and brass and sustained woodwind patches (the clarinet sustain in particular having received high compliments on its sound quality from the composer I'm currently working for).

Yin and Yang here. Wish there was more of (whichever is the good "Y" word) with VSL legato patches.

Sincerely, Peter