New Sibelius sound set for all wind instruments and new VE/Sibelius manual

[andi]

We have a new sound set in the Overview/Needful Things/Sibelius Sound Sets section of our User Area.
http://vsl.co.at/en/68/141/460/576/655.htm

It is for all users with one (or more) of the following products:
Woodwinds I + II
Brass I + II
Special Woodwinds
Special Brass
Saxophones
all download wind instruments

VI Presets are also included.

Also available are sound sets for the following products:
Special Edition
Special Edition PLUS
Solo Strings I + II
Chamber Strings I + II
Orchestral Strings I + II
Appassionata Strings I + II
Harps

As if that was not enough: There is a new manual for our Sibelius users, which will help optimzing the playback. It is recommended for beginners and experienced users, as there are many useful hints included.
You can find it in the Overview/Needful Things/Sibelius Sound Sets section of our User Area.

Have fun,
Andi

[Oceanview]

 Andi,

Many thanks for the new manual. I've been looking forward to that ever since I started with VSL. I hope VSL will add to it as and when new information and tips arise, and keep it evolving as a one-stop manual of know-how for Sibelius users.

[Steve Martin]

Hi Andi,

yes, I want to say thanks as well for the new pdf guide and all the work you have put into this and the soundsets. Fantastic!

best,

Steve[:D]

[JSAntares]

Thanks a lot! I know this will be useful to me.

[DaveDrewry]

Andi

The Tuba and Contrabass Tuba entry caused some strange behaviour on my system. Using a score created against a previous soundset combination / playback configuration, I created a new playback configuration with multiple midi connections, two of which used your woodwinds & brass soundset. On the 'brass' one, when applying the "tuba and contrabass tuba" from the soundset when I restarted Sibelius, and opened the score the playback configuration data appeared empty (but wasn't in the playback directory) ie even the other midi interfaces which didn't use your new soundset didn't show up on the right hand side so all instrument mappings appeared lost. I edited the soundset and renamed it to Tuba rather than Tuba and Contrabass Tuba, retried and everything worked as expected.

Dave

[andi]

Hi Dave!

The "Tuba and Contrabass Tuba" program works fine on my machine. Simply renaming the program should not have much influence, but if everything works now, let's not wrack our brains what the problem was. ;-)

Best,
Andi

[DaveDrewry]

Hi Andi

Keep up the good work with the soundsets and tips. Most of the subtle problems like this are more often around trying to use a file created earlier with new config / soundsets. I logged it only in case some poor other soul hits a similar problem. I've found that if Sibelius' mixer doesn't automatically select what you expect, it's unwise to assume you can fix the problem by tweaking the settings e.g. with multiple similar instruments e.g. 4 individual horns, if the second instrument defaults to the first instrument' channel it won't fix the problem just by incrementing the channel on the second instrument. It behaves like the earlier second instrument problem prior to release 5.2.5 - ie the sound goes through the first channel regardless but articulation switching doesn't work. It might be worth adding to your 'try this' list that in such instances users should always look for the underlying problem. With similar but different playback configurations (e.g. I have ensemble and individual instrument ones very similar) it's easy to not realise that the underlying instrument staff mapping is not what's assumed e.g. ...trumpet rather than trumpets etc. I can't see either why just changing the label fixed the probem since I assume it's the actual sound mapping which leads to Sibelius's mapping of best sound - I can only report that it seemed to fix the problem [:)]