Hi Guy,
I would check out the Christian Kardeis demos in the video tutorial section of the website.
http://vsl.co.at/en/68/375/381/456.vsl
I do agree that EQing is important, however, how much, what instruments, and what frequencies you EQ depends a lot on what reverb you use, and how much of the sound you are sending to that reverb. Christian's demos showed me how important dry sounds are to the overall mix, and how dry can effect distance. Personally I've found that I like putting reverb on a bus rather than on each instrument, using only two busses, 1 bus for near sounds, 1 bus for far sounds. Obviously strings and ww's would go near, brass and percussion would go far (except some perc. needs extra attention, see the videos). Depending on what reverb and how you use it, I think any more than two (maybe three) reverbs starts to make things too muddy.
Though everyone has an opinion about what is the best way to
EQ/reverb/etc. with VSL the advice they (and myself included) give is
from the perspective of their own setups and their own ears, which is probably not like
yours. You must trust your ears and if possible share some of your work with the great people on this forum, they can help a lot.
However your ears can be deceiving when left to their own devices. To solve this problem I would recommend finding some good orchestral recordings (recordings you think sound really great) of solo and ensemble passages, and listen to them very carefully. This way you have a bar to measure you setup against, analyze every aspect of them and see if you can get your VSL setup close enough to those recordings that you can play along with them and it sounds like your VSL instruments are part of the recording. Remember that your not trying to make your VSL setup sound like a real orchestra. You trying to get it to sound like a RECORDING of a real orchestra. Whether you get there or not is not as important as making the attempt. You will learn so much from the attempt. I think this is a good way to start, but after this I would do some mock-ups of pieces you really like that you have good recordings for. This is invaluable because you will have a very specific sonic goal to aim for that will not only improve your template, but teach you how to solve certain performance problems with VSL using patches in ways that may not be obvious from the get go.
In general, short, controlled experiments are the best way to learn at first. Experiment on specific problems like clear woodwind solos, getting brass punch, getting a full string sound thats close yet rich in filling up the room., etc. It will be more productive if you don't try to tackle too many things in any one experiment. Hope this all makes sense.
Good Luck! Brian [:)]