So do you mean:

Violins 1 = 12 players

Violins 2 = 12 players

If yes, I probably would not approach it this way. Dimension Violins has 8 players. I would mimic the LASS approach and simply use a second group of 8 to create Violins 1 = 16 players. I've done this and have not had phasing.

Then, using William's approach, I'd use the transposition trick to create Violins 2. Then I would mimic the LASS approach and use a second group of 8 to create Violins 2 = 16 players.

With this approach you now have div a 2 of 8 players in Violins 1 and 8 players in Violins 2.

If you want more than that, you can now do div a 4 with 4 players each in Violins 1 and 4 players each in Violins 2.

With this approach you can now approach the scoring techniques of Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Vaughn Williams and others, that previously could not be executed with any other library.

lol wait for the violas!! haha

@johnstaf said:

Yes. You don't have instances of Dimension Strings as such; you load up to eight violins in an instance of Vienna Instruments. If you assign a single violin to its own instance of Vienna Instruments, you can write for each violin separately.

@johnstaf said:

If you load eight violins in the same instance, they will all play the same line, so if you want each violin to have its own part you would have a separate instance for each violin." If you wanted 24 violins playing their own unique part, you would need 24 instances of Vienna Instruments, and each instance would have a single violin loaded; you can choose which of the eight violins you load into each instance.

John, that also depends on your definition of a "full string section".  DS only comes with half the instruments you've listed.  You'll find that only huge Romantic writing requires nearly that many string players.  That style of writing, however, would not require each of the sixteen first violinists to play separate lines!  So either way you'll need a lot less instances than that.

 I think you're still not clear on how to set up a standard template. Some people, myself included, would use VEP5 to do that since it helps manage various things and also plug MIR into the end result, so let me speak in those terms (sorry if this adds another bit for you to consider, that is VEP).

On one single instance of VEP as your host, add 8 VIP instances, and add each one of the individual DS violins to each VIP. So VIP1 will play DS Vl1, VIP2 will play DS Vl2, etc. So you have 8 individual players for you to write for as you wish, each routed to a separate MIDI channel. Now, on your DAW or notation software you replicate the setup, and have 8 separate staff parts. Unison play? You write once and copy+paste to all parts. You want Div2, write the two different lines on Vl 1 and 5, copy/paste 1 to 2,3,4 and 2 to 6,7,8. And so forth if you wanted other divisi configurations. So that takes care of your first 8 violins. Hope that's clear.

This is not extremely CPU or disk intensive, but it does take much more computer power than most other libraries, as in the end, DS is comprised of a set of individual instruments, just as if you had 8 instances of the Solo Violin playing simultaneously. But I don't want to digress much.

Now for your second group of 8 violins, you have a few options. First, what has been mentioned about detuning and transposing another group of individual violins just as above. Second, could be for you to utilize the desks or 4-player presets included in DS by VSL. You could set up the 4 desks and the 2 4-player groups and use different humanization parameters, and use different EQ settings, to make them sound slightly different to the individual violins above. Then on your DAW, you'll include separate staff lines for each desk/choir, separate MIDI channels, and write there whenever you need to.

In the end, the most you'll have is one VEP port, with 16 MIDI channels / 16 VIP instances (or less if you use the pre-mixed desks), for all your complete 16-players violin section. Then do the same for the Cellos, etc.

This is what I do, and I didn't win the lottery... yet.

Hope this helps.

There is nothing difficult about this.

You simply have 8 players (for violins) and 8 instruments.  Though if put together they sound correctly as an ensemble. 

If you transpose/pitch shift them, you have 16.  You can conceivably do it again, in the opposite directions of transpose/pitch shift, for 24.  Though that is questionable.   I have only done transposition/pitch shift for a total of 16 players.  I then go to Appassionata Strings for larger groups.  You can hear that on the "Vertigo" demo here.  The reason I say it is questionable is - it is best to pitch shift DOWN and transpose UP.  Otherwise, vibrato is speeded up weirdly.  You can always slow down vibrato, but speeding it up sounds weird.  So you would have to pitch shift up and transpose down a second group to get 24 - not the ideal.

But in general,  with the Dimension Strings, you can assign them and control them, however you want.  But they are individual MIDI instruments that will sound like an ensemble.  So there is no great difficulty in dealing with them.  That is the nice thing about all the VSL instruments- they are totally consistent.  if you know how to use a VSL piccolo, you know how to use every other instrument including all the way down to a contrabass tuba.

See?  Composers have always needed to rewrite their music to suit their players :oP  

William, wouln't it not really be possible to wind up with 24 first violinists since you'd end up needing to transpose three more times to get your second violin section?  Alternating transposing up/down, you'd need to transpose to a minimum of a minor third.  Sounds like too much to me!