I wish attack in samples would be independent of sound volume, period. In this way, not only improvement in attack would be achieved, but better legato would also be achieved. This is available in some of the much less expensive libraries still in circulation. Notes in the MIDI editor can be selected, singly or in bunches, and numerical values for whatever designated CC that samples respond to can be entered. I am here especially referring to tweaking string samples, but also winds.

But then, at the same libraries, high strings are completely inferior sound quality wise. This is another matter, though, different from our problem. Separation of attack from volume would also solve your (and my :) problem because by lowering attack for all of the used samples they become more even. And, by the way, piano players work a lifetime on evening attack. Just imagine playing Scarlatti or Mozart, or any piece that has copious amounts of Baroque, Rococo or Viennese "perlage", with all kinds of bumps caused by non-uniform attack. This would be unthinkable.

Just listen to renditions by the likes of Horowitz or Glen Gould or Schiff and you'll hear what I mean. I also have a question: Is there ANY possibility to give vibrato to the Solo Trumpet in Special Edition Vol. 1? The Trumpet overall is not very good, and without vibrato it is completely lifeless. Thank you all, John.

This will not do the trick. I have the same problem with the staccato part of a Trombone patch: TTB 01_basic. From velocity 0 - 99 there is a well banlanced cres. from 100 - 127 the sound gets very edgy and remarkable lower (softer). This means that the trombone dissapears in the mix if you get "louder" than 99. Thats not logical and I to my ears its an error. The same thing happens with the Trumpet in C patch.

Right now I can't find any compettetors to VSL regarding solo brass, but they will be there in time. I think VSL should consider correcting all these minor (I admit) problems in their libs instead of creating new ones.

Agreed. However, I don't know of any library that has all their samples equally well calibrated. Unfortunately this is reality. In general, demos sound quite well, but they're written by very highly skilled top notch programmers who have tons of plugins that add in the quest of correcting sample deficiencies. And, of course, very expensive plugins that a poor guy like me can't afford. So I spend tons of time trying to live with what I have with not much result. I am a melodist and would like it that high strings were much smoother and without extremely bothersome white noise that accompanies their higher registers and strident harmonics that are louder than their fundamentals.

I have 4 libraries, all with the same deficiencies. No, it's not the sound card. It's a good, pro card, so the sound channel's problems are in general solved. No matter what, I can't render my sweeping and tidy pop melodic lines with the aid of violins as sweepingly and tidily as I want. And yes, I also write 12 tone and world music. Maybe in 10-20 years time we'll have better samples. As far as Trombones, to my taste the best I've heard to date are those by Sample Technology. They probably use Physical Modeling. Well, at least the ***demos*** sound great. Wallender's (Physical Modeling as well) demos also sound well, but when I tried their software the Trumpet had such strident stray harmonics that I decided not to have the package because I couldn't take them out. I bought VSL Special Edition Vol1 because that's all I could afford.

I only tried the Trumpet, which doesn't have native vibrato and the patches don't react to cc17 + After touch. Far less expensive packages' patches DO. VSL, CAN WE HAVE VIBRATO WITHOUT SPENDING TONS OF MONEY? I think you'd only gain in popularity and, therefore, more customers :) Anyway, my 2 cents. John.

To be fair:

There are no magical, wickedly expensive audio plug-ins available only to the big players in the business that by themselves make sample libraries sound great. IMO, the smallest part of getting your levels and articulations balanced is a matter of inserting the right plug-in - it comes down to editing and tweaking your parameters to no end. And I doubt it will be much different even with the "next generation" of sampling technology.

Pudik, I'm curious as to what exactly you mean with "white noise" in the higher register of string samples. Generally, all the popular string libraries today are pretty low on noise. VSL strings in particular are super-clean. And even in the most ambient, super-wet libraries that are out there, I can't imagine that you're able to find any seriously detrimental noise in the samples - least of all white noise!

Perhaps you're confusing that natural "scraping" bowing sound with white noise?

@Stig Christensen said:

This will not do the trick. I have the same problem with the staccato part of a Trombone patch: TTB 01_basic. From velocity 0 - 99 there is a well banlanced cres. from 100 - 127 the sound gets very edgy and remarkable lower (softer). This means that the trombone dissapears in the mix if you get "louder" than 99. Thats not logical and I to my ears its an error. The same thing happens with the Trumpet in C patch.

How are you measuring loudness? It is very unlikely that it is getting softer.

DG

@DG said:

How are you measuring loudness? It is very unlikely that it is getting softer.

The first 4 harmonics get quiter as you increase velocity here.

@pudik said:

VSL, CAN WE HAVE VIBRATO WITHOUT SPENDING TONS OF MONEY? I think you'd only gain in popularity and, therefore, more customers 😊 Anyway, my 2 cents. John.

John, I answered your question in your other thread, but in case you didn't see that, I will answer again.

There are vibrato samples available, but it sounds like you didn't buy them. In any case, orchestral Brass players playing in a Western style don't usually use vibrato, so it's debatable whether or not VSL is losing any money by not having them in your particular Collection.

Regarding using LFO and such devices, VSL produces orchestral sample Collections, not synths, so an LFO vibrato wouldn't be appropriate and furthermore would sound terrible. The best Brass product I've heard for constructing a fake vibrato is Sample Modeling, but that's recorded in an anechoic chamber and all the dynamics are fake as well. I doubt that this could be achieved using an instrument recorded on a scoring stage.

DG

@DG said:

... Regarding using LFO and such devices, VSL produces orchestral sample Collections, not synths, so an LFO vibrato wouldn't be appropriate....

I don't see how LFO vibrato would be so different from any of the other sample-manipulating functions in VI. The Humanize function alters the pitch already, and I don't think of that as inappropriate.

DG & Hellfire:

1. I completely agree that for good rendition samples have to be tweaked to death. However, that there is no "wickedly expensive" software that adds in the endeavor, just look at Melodyne (sp?) or even more so Altiverb. For who has that kind of money if he is a student or even someone who makes decent amount of money and has a family. That's completely discretionary expenditure affordable to the like of Hans Zimmer but not the average guy. Here too, yes, we have to work at making samples usable to our liking (depending on what sound image one has in his head). But that doesn't mean that samples shouldn't come with decent sound out of the box. How would it be if one buys an electronic piano and first thing he/she would have to do every morning to tune it and then adjust every one of the 88 notes (they are of course ROM samples) spending a few hours till they sound like a piano? I wonder how many of those pianos would be sold and how much time would remain for practice.

2. Bow noise is a built in parameter into the sound of every stringed (bowed) instrument. Without it string sound doesn't exist. I am just stating the obvious. But when samples are recorded this bow noise seems to become background noise or at least this is what I hear. I call this "Schmirgelklang" that is, the background noise sounds like fine sand paper pulled on a thicker aluminum slab, or, if I were to put it in harsher terms, like a shovel pulled over gravel. I can also compare it to the background noise on the tracks of old movies when the track on the celluloid begins to deteriorate. I've never heard a group of sample violins in a sweeping melodic line without their being harsh, discontinuous, with granulated sound. And, even the noise is discontinuous because every sound has its own noise. It's like a mathematical function with lots of holes, or a road with many almost consecutive pot holes.

It's pretty interesting that the noise is so evident (again, to me) and everyone is asking me with astonishment: "What noise, John?" Oh, no... I am not confusing white noise with bow noise. I kind of know my stuff around instruments. I need also to mention that I don't intend to have an antagonistic discussion but an exchange of opinion. After all, it's my ear and the sound image in my head; both pretty good though :)) Thanks for your feedback, Cheers, John.

PS: I forgot to answer your writing regarding vibrato for trumpets. It depends. If you take the Soviets playing Russian music, they definitely vibrate. The tone is thick, vibrated and very penetrating in forte. They also use vibrato in piano, cantabile, melodic solo passages. As an example, take the recordings done by the General Union Radio Orchestra (Balshoy Vsesayuzniy Radio Arkyestr) with Nikolay Golovanov such as Skriabin's symphonies or anything else, or Skriabine/Leningrad/Mravinskiy  The Poem of Extasy. But they do not play Wagner with vibrato. 

Orchestras in the West do not make this distinction because most Western trumpet players don't understand that one cannot play Tschaikovskiy like Bruckner, and few conductors would make them aware of this fact. The Russian orchestras after the Fall of the Soviets play more in tune with Western orchestras which is a bit uncharacteristic for Russian music. A good tradition has been thrown out and that's a pitty. But I need trumpet vibrato for my pop writings and not necessarily for symphonic writing. You state "Such vibrato cannot be obtained on the scoring stage" Well, just listen to Harry James or Al Hirt or the trumpeter in the "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". Some French trumpeters also use vibrato in Debussy, though not by far as rich as that of the Russians. And, all trumpeters, including me, use a bit of vibrato, which by the way technically loosens the lips off of the permanent tension they are under while in contact with the mouthpiece. Oh, I extended myself again. Sorry.

@Stig Christensen said:

staccato part of a Trombone patch: TTB 01_basic

That would be patch

/C -  Brass patches/56 Tenor trombone/01 SHORT + LONG NOTES/01 TTB_staccato

It does do some odd things. Set velocity high, and the 4 four round-robin samples on note D-sharp-4 vary in timbre dramatically. Notes lower than D-sharp-4 have one timbre, and notes higher than D-sharp-4 have a different timbre, with D-sharp-4 itself alternating timbres.

@pudik said:

1. I completely agree that for good rendition samples have to be tweaked to death. However, that there is no "wickedly expensive" software that adds in the endeavor, just look at Melodyne (sp?) or even more so Altiverb.

Of course - MIR PRO, Ircam SPAT or Altiverb are very expensive. On the other hand, these complex and powerful tools are manufactured with full-time professionals in mind who ideally generate substantial income through their musical work. Those tools are however certainly not the only means to achieve a satisfying ambient sound, IMO. And they certainly don't guarantee outstanding results by default either.

I personally think that the whole reverb topic is sometimes being over-thought and overcomplicated. There are plenty of more affordable and also easier to use plug-ins and software solutions that can still yield satisfactory results. VSL offers MIRx, which obviously lacks the advanced functions of MIR PRO, but on the other hand delivers fairly similar sonic results with minimum effort and at a very affordable price. It's really a no-brainer. There is also the Vienna Suite - although quite expensive, but on the other hand, not unreasonably so considering the extensive array of high quality tools it offers - with wonderful convolution and hybrid reverbs.

Of course there are also some great plug-ins from other manufacturers -EastWest, ValhallaDSP or 2cAudio come to mind, and those products won't exactly break the bank either. Cubase 7.5 even comes with pretty viable convolution and algorhythmic reverbs (REVerence and the new, still somewhat overlooked, but beautiful REVelation) out of the box.

@DG said:

... Regarding using LFO and such devices, VSL produces orchestral sample Collections, not synths, so an LFO vibrato wouldn't be appropriate....

I don't see how LFO vibrato would be so different from any of the other sample-manipulating functions in VI. The Humanize function alters the pitch already, and I don't think of that as inappropriate.

Becuase that is not the ethos of VSL, whether you like it or not.

DG

@pudik said:

You state "Such vibrato cannot be obtained on the scoring stage" Well, just listen to Harry James or Al Hirt or the trumpeter in the "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".

BTW your post is almost impossible to read, so it might be worth formatting it better which you can do via Profile/Community/Content Editor/Enhanced.

However, what I was going to say was you misunderstood my comment. I was saying that recording samples that can be manipulated in the way SM does is probably not possible with material recorded on a stage, not that people can't play with vibrato on a scoring stage.

DG

@DG said:

... Regarding using LFO and such devices, VSL produces orchestral sample Collections, not synths, so an LFO vibrato wouldn't be appropriate....

I don't see how LFO vibrato would be so different from any of the other sample-manipulating functions in VI. The Humanize function alters the pitch already, and I don't think of that as inappropriate.

Becuase that is not the ethos of VSL....

How do you know that?

Humanize, which lets you modulate the pitch up and down at a low frequency, is part of VSL's ethos, and VSL finds it appropriate. You're entitled to your opinion about what's appropriate, but I'm not sure VSL agrees with you.

@DG said:

The best Brass product I've heard for constructing a fake vibrato is Sample Modeling, but that's recorded in an anechoic chamber and all the dynamics are fake as well. I doubt that this could be achieved using an instrument recorded on a scoring stage.

Here's artificial vibrato applied to non-vibrato samples recorded in a concert hall:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ZYXb_HdIQhMk1WeXBUVmZKdzg/view?usp=sharing

[url]https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ZYXb_HdIQhMk1WeXBUVmZKdzg/view?usp=sharing[/url]

Doesn't sound good, but if someone spent more than 60 seconds on it, maybe. I doubt it would present any difficulty for samples recorded in a silent stage.

I personally am not a fan of Sample Modeling or Friedlander's artificial vibrato, but I still think it has potential.

John,

There are certainly some very expensive plugins available, but I don't think many of them would be a particular advantage with VSL. MIRx is better than Altiverb for processing VSL samples. For a conventional style reverb, QL Spaces is amazing -and not too expensive. The rest of the expensive plugins are unnecessary. They might help shape your sound in a particular direction, but they won't improve the quality of it, and they most certainly won't reduce the amount of work you have to do on your samples.

I use a Breath Controller to control the volume of VSL instruments. When the Breath Controller reach 127 it's on max and the sample should be loudest. The patch: 01 TTB_staccato changes dramatically when the volume controller goes from 99 -100. The sound is very edgy and the instrument sounds like it's moved AWAY from the mic - result the sound gets weaker. Result: the Trombone disappears from the mix, when it's supposed to be loudest.

@pudik said:

You state "Such vibrato cannot be obtained on the scoring stage" Well, just listen to Harry James or Al Hirt or the trumpeter in the "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".

BTW your post is almost impossible to read, so it might be worth formatting it better which you can do via Profile/Community/Content Editor/Enhanced.

However, what I was going to say was you misunderstood my comment. I was saying that recording samples that can be manipulated in the way SM does is probably not possible with material recorded on a stage, not that people can't play with vibrato on a scoring stage.

DG