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@ct1961 said:
Saying that Julian, with the relatively low cost of a 500GB hard drive these days( got the latest barracuda for under £50) there can't be any good reason for VSL to compromise on quality surely?
Low cost for Harddisk space, yes. But the cost for distributing such a large amount of data as DVDs might be substantial. And juggling this amount of DVDs is horrible. One could ship HDDs instead or offer downloads (see above...)
@ct1961 said:
Saying that Julian, with the relatively low cost of a 500GB hard drive these days( got the latest barracuda for under £50) there can't be any good reason for VSL to compromise on quality surely?
Colin
If you can reduce the data amount stored on a hard disc without affecting the quality there are 2 good points excluding distribution costs.
The data takes up less space, and when streaming hundreds of voices simultaneously the data busses (whether SATA, Firewire, SCSI or USB) have much less chance of being saturated - however there is a trade off in increased CPU demand decoding the audio on the fly.
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless. If they have truly developed a 10-1 algorithm that is lossless then they surely would make more money licensing this to the computer industry than income from the rest of the VSL library put together.
Julian
@ct1961 said:
Saying that Julian, with the relatively low cost of a 500GB hard drive these days( got the latest barracuda for under £50) there can't be any good reason for VSL to compromise on quality surely?
Colin
If you can reduce the data amount stored on a hard disc without affecting the quality there are 2 good points excluding distribution costs.
The data takes up less space, and when streaming hundreds of voices simultaneously the data busses (whether SATA, Firewire, SCSI or USB) have much less chance of being saturated - however there is a trade off in increased CPU demand decoding the audio on the fly.
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless. If they have truly developed a 10-1 algorithm that is lossless then they surely would make more money licensing this to the computer industry than income from the rest of the VSL library put together.
Julian
Don't understand the technicalities of it Julian, but I can't see VSL throwing an inferior product at us when the whole idea is to produce a market leading brand. Or not? Who's on the night shift at VSL? [:)]
Colin
@ct1961 said:
Is this just wishful thinking or have I missed an announcement somewhere of VSL's intent to produce a master keyboard?
i think both. as vsl showed a prototype of vienna grand, this could be regarded as kind of an announcement. and i sure do wish it will be released sometime...
i was very looking forward to boesendorfers ceus-master and tried to get a prototype for a film project, but as there were just two prototypes in the whole wide world then, they sent me a ceus grand 280 instead - pity me! 😊 (thanks again, guys)
i guess with yamaha taking over boesendorfer, the ceus-master project was transferred to vsl, as recording of vienna imperial was planned anyway and this would make a good overall product, and probably vsl users are kind of a target group for such a keyboard, maybe more then are "traditional" boesendorfer-customers.
it depends on what price seems reasonable to you. a good grand piano mechanic is not cheap. i would expect the price for something like a vienna grand around 15k.
it may be useful to have a look at the yamaha range of products.
vienna grand will be much cooler, but i´m quite satisfied with my yus-5. good masterkeyboard, and a really really good piano as well.
@clemenshaas said:
it depends on what price seems reasonable to you. a good grand piano mechanic is not cheap. i would expect the price for something like a vienna grand around 15k.
Sounds reasonable to me. [:O]
I mean, we are talking 15k if the Italians opt out of the Euro and reintroduce the lire. Yes?
Colin
@julian said:
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless.
I suspect that the high compression ratio is due to the (highly repetitive) nature of the data being compressed.
Consider how (very) low quality sample libraries work (or the early ones) - a library might just have one sample for a pitch sampled at velocity 50. To play the same note at velocity 100 it would just double the amplitude of that sample, which although far from perfect is a reasonable approximation. So for compression purposes, if you do have a sample for velocity 100 what you could store rather than that sample itself is the difference between the velocity 100 sample and the velocity 50 sample with the amplitude doubled.
Now whilst that may not achieve a 10-1 compression, consider the difference between a velocity 51 sample and the velocity 50 sample (with an appropriate increase in amplitude) - the differences here would be pretty small (possibly larger than 10-1).
Similar compression can be achieved for pitch - instead of storing the entire c2 sample, store the difference between the c2 sample and the c1 sample with the speed doubled.
Now, I don't know if the VSL compression techniques are based on the above - but the above reasoning is enough to persuade me that it is plausible that there are characteristics in the sort of data needed in a sample library which can be taken advantage of to achieve higher compression ratios than are normally possible in generic more data sets.
Matthew
@clemenshaas said:
it may be useful to have a look at the yamaha range of products.
vienna grand will be much cooler, but i´m quite satisfied with my yus-5. good masterkeyboard, and a really really good piano as well.
Cheers. Will check it out tomorrow and hopefully won't require any further medical assistance as a result of your last post.
Colin
@ct1961 said:
Is this just wishful thinking or have I missed an announcement somewhere of VSL's intent to produce a master keyboard?
I know they had something at NAMM but I was under the impression that was a one-off proof of concept intended more as a publicity aid? The various reports from NAMM decribe it as "Vienna Orchestral Piano prototype, Vienna's first hardware concept study"
If VSL do produce a midi keyboard, I hope it is a little more like a conventional midi keyboard in size and shape, and less like a 7 foot grand piano in size and shape, since I don't have room for the latter!
Matthew
@mdovey said:
If VSL do produce a midi keyboard, I hope it is a little more like a conventional midi keyboard in size and shape, and less like a 7 foot grand piano in size and shape, since I don't have room for the latter!
Hopefully you're right Matthew. A 7 feet grand piano sounds a bit over the top.
My Steinway's only got 3.
Colin
@mdovey said:
If VSL do produce a midi keyboard, I hope it is a little more like a conventional midi keyboard in size and shape, and less like a 7 foot grand piano in size and shape, since I don't have room for the latter!
Hopefully you're right Matthew. A 7 feet grand piano sounds a bit over the top.
My Steinway's only got 3.
Colin
this is what the boesendorfer "original" prototype looks like.
http://oesterreich.orf.at/wien/stories/178007/
@julian said:
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless.
I suspect that the high compression ratio is due to the (highly repetitive) nature of the data being compressed.
Consider how (very) low quality sample libraries work (or the early ones) - a library might just have one sample for a pitch sampled at velocity 50. To play the same note at velocity 100 it would just double the amplitude of that sample, which although far from perfect is a reasonable approximation. So for compression purposes, if you do have a sample for velocity 100 what you could store rather than that sample itself is the difference between the velocity 100 sample and the velocity 50 sample with the amplitude doubled.
Now whilst that may not achieve a 10-1 compression, consider the difference between a velocity 51 sample and the velocity 50 sample (with an appropriate increase in amplitude) - the differences here would be pretty small (possibly larger than 10-1).
Similar compression can be achieved for pitch - instead of storing the entire c2 sample, store the difference between the c2 sample and the c1 sample with the speed doubled.
Now, I don't know if the VSL compression techniques are based on the above - but the above reasoning is enough to persuade me that it is plausible that there are characteristics in the sort of data needed in a sample library which can be taken advantage of to achieve higher compression ratios than are normally possible in generic more data sets.
Matthew
With many video compression techniques for each consecutive frame only the differences are sent as new data until the next keyframe (full data requirement) is sent. This allows for significant data reduction, though when the picture image changes rapidly like in a fast moving sequence there is less redundancy frame for frame and artefacts soon become apparent.
However when VSL sample a piano for example every sample is unique. It may have the same pitch and be slightly louder than the sample before but there is no redundancy between samples of the same pitch. Each and every sample is unique and cannot share data (however compressed between another sample). So VSL makes the original recording and then edits and produces the final uncompressed samples in 24bit/44.1k for current delivery.
The quoted data size for the complete set of samples is advertised at 500GB - a rough calculation using the bit rate of 2116 bps or 264.6 Bps for a 24 bit stereo 44.1k sample gives us a total recorded duration of, amazingly, 525 hours if all the samples were played back to back in their entirety.
So by reducing the data from 500GB to 50 GB VSL are squeezing 525 hours of recordings into the space normally occupied by 52.5 hours. Now we all know mp3 encoding achieves this all the time but I do not understand how the piano samples when played from the Vienna Imperial software engine can be the same quality as the original when it is re-created from only 10% of the original data.
I do hope someone from VSL will expand on how the seemingly impossible is being achieved!
Thanks
Julian
@julian said:
no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity
allow me to step in ... whereas we received interesting compression ratios with a few products (especially harps and acoustic guitar ~1:3) i have to concede i couldn't believe it when i first saw the result. but be aware: this is a very special situation not only related to the wide spreading of velocity layers, but more to the particulary character of the raw wave data and the used compression algorithm - i doubt this would be reproducable with any other instrument than a piano.
while i'm here: the very special with the Vienna Imperial is that - to my knowledge *) - the first time it has been possible to keep such compressed samples in memory and uncompress them on the fly in the new engine while streaming, congrats to george for this masterpiece in software.
christian
*) on-the-fly uncompressing for legacy compression rates of 3:2 have been archived earlier with GigaStudio 3 and the regular VI/VE engine
I would like to say that this is a wonderful performance by Jay on the new piano.
I really enjoyed listening to this Jay.
many thanks,
Steve[:D]
Hello people,
I admire VSL for the products and the great service but at the moment I am wondering if the "Vienna Imperial" is suitable for pop-arrangements. My problem is that all sample-based pianos seem to be to weak for that purpose and to far away, wet and smooth in their recording. Will that be better than in the case of the "Boesendorfer imperial" with the close microphone positioning? To be honest I thought about getting the Eastwest Piano with its Yamaha-piano - but 270Gb seem to be a kind of a show-off and no guarantee for real quality - and VSL is much more sympathic to me. And a last question: will my 2,6 Ghz Quad Mac from 2006 be strong enough for both librararies?
