@Paul said:

Hi everybody,

Enjoy these first demos of Synchron Strings, made by the wonderful Guy Bacos and Christof Unterberger!

Best, 
Paul

nice demos - the longs are telling (I like them).   shorts are easier to get 'away with things' (albiet they are strong) but the longs are solid.   Looking forward to Paul's walkthroughs (particularily the longs/legatos.)

I really need to hear how (all by itself) 'controllable' the non to vibrato sound is.  For me the GREAT weakness of ANY sample string section is its inability to do this convincingly without artifacts/phasing.   For me if Sample strings sit for more than a brief moment without some change to vibrato (not just xfade between sampled layers BUT vibrato and I am personlly taken out of it.)

And of course - is the new player going to allow me to use this in the heat of a tight schedule?

More and more encouraged.   Congrats VSL on what should be a success.

@Rob Elliott said:

I really need to hear how (all by itself) 'controllable' the non to vibrato sound is.  For me the GREAT weakness of ANY sample string section is its inability to do this convincingly without artifacts/phasing.   For me if Sample strings sit for more than a brief moment without some change to vibrato (not just xfade between sampled layers BUT vibrato and I am personlly taken out of it.)

I would  understand your Point, if you were talking about Solostrings, since one Violin alone do not produce any phasing while changing the intensity of vibrato. But: Synchronstrings I are Section-Strings. It appears to me not only quite natural if you have phasing effects between multiple stringplayers playing the same note especially while they are increasing their Vibrato intensity, I even think that is exactly what we want and expect to hear to make a difference between Soloist and Section. (While  - If I understood right and can believe Embertone - It seems to be even possible nowadays to map Soloviolinsamples in a way that would allow xfade without producingadditional phasing problems.) However for Section Strings increased Phasing effects with increased vibrato seem to me not the problem but something quite natural.

I'm on the fence of getting my first VSL instrument in Synchron Strings, I'm seriously blown away at the moment!

My only problem is, that I'm pretty intimidated by the scale of this whole library with my measly 32gb of RAM. Somebody told me however, that if run from an SSD you could load the whole Syncron Percussion with only 2.5gb of RAM if the buffer is at 1526. Is something similar possible with the Strings?

Hi lucor, 

You have a few options regarding RAM optimization, but with the Synchron Strings, the preload size should only be HALF the usual Preload Size of 16384 Samples => which is 8192 Samples. This way you will get a great and reliable performance (this always also depends on your arrangement, the more you stream, the more performance you need there). Might well be that a lower setting with the Standard Library is possible, and we're also working on more optimized options there. 

With our other "stereo-only" libraries, you can lower the Preload Size to 1536 Samples (so you could load 10 times more samples using only 1/10th of the RAM you'd usually need). This will work until you overdo it with insane TUTTI chords 😉

There are also options like "Activate on MIDI Activity", which loads all presets without samples and only loads samples when the articulation is triggered once. 

Best, 
Paul

@Paul said:

Hi lucor, 

You have a few options regarding RAM optimization, but with the Synchron Strings, the preload size should only be HALF the usual Preload Size of 16384 Samples => which is 8192 Samples. This way you will get a great and reliable performance (this always also depends on your arrangement, the more you stream, the more performance you need there). Might well be that a lower setting with the Standard Library is possible, and we're also working on more optimized options there. 

With our other "stereo-only" libraries, you can lower the Preload Size to 1536 Samples (so you could load 10 times more samples using only 1/10th of the RAM you'd usually need). This will work until you overdo it with insane TUTTI chords 😉

There are also options like "Activate on MIDI Activity", which loads all presets without samples and only loads samples when the articulation is triggered once. 

Best, 
Paul

Hey Paul, thanks for the quick answer. So how much RAM would it take, for example, to load all articulations of the 1st Violins with a buffer of 8192? Have you run any tests yet?

And the "Activate on MIDI Activity" is similiar to Kontakt's purge function, I guess? If an SSD can keep up with loading all these samples in real time, that would also be an awesome way of reducing RAM usage.

Hi Paul,

will you do an introduction video (like the one for dimension strings) before the early-bird offer ends?

Best, Ben

Yea, sorry mispoke on the phasing for sections - what I should have said is 'smooth' transition / evolving from non to vibrato samples.   For me anyways, this is never 'natural' and smooth with samples - like live sessions.   Just hoping and a wishing.   😉

@Rob Elliott said:

I really need to hear how (all by itself) 'controllable' the non to vibrato sound is.  For me the GREAT weakness of ANY sample string section is its inability to do this convincingly without artifacts/phasing.   For me if Sample strings sit for more than a brief moment without some change to vibrato (not just xfade between sampled layers BUT vibrato and I am personlly taken out of it.)

I would  understand your Point, if you were talking about Solostrings, since one Violin alone do not produce any phasing while changing the intensity of vibrato. But: Synchronstrings I are Section-Strings. It appears to me not only quite natural if you have phasing effects between multiple stringplayers playing the same note especially while they are increasing their Vibrato intensity, I even think that is exactly what we want and expect to hear to make a difference between Soloist and Section. (While  - If I understood right and can believe Embertone - It seems to be even possible nowadays to map Soloviolinsamples in a way that would allow xfade without producingadditional phasing problems.) However for Section Strings increased Phasing effects with increased vibrato seem to me not the problem but something quite natural.

Second on RAM question! How much should we've got? Can we work with Synchron with 8 GB as requirements site says? Or maybe without 32 it will be far from fun?

I'd recommend to run the Synchron library off of an SSD and have adequate RAM in your machine and optimize your pre-load buffer sizes in the Directory. 

@lucor said:

My only problem is, that I'm pretty intimidated by the scale of this whole library with my measly 32gb of RAM.

Well there's a way to fix that... 😉

-Sean

Hi, 

I'll do my best to have videos available before the Early Bird Offer ends. 

Regarding RAM, with 1st violins only: If you want to load all available microphones with all available articulations, much RAM is necessary (these are the quick tests on my computer):

With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 10 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins.
With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 5 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins. 

There will be alternatives available for a more resource-friendly workflow, like a ready-made stereo-mix. 
The presets will load without any samples loaded ("disabled cells"), and you will like the option to load articulations in only when you need them ("Activate cells on MIDI Activity". 

The "Optimize" option will also be a great help for smaller setups (the the sample player learn which samples of which articulations it actually needs for the specific arrangement). 

So there are quite some helpers there, but you are right: Synchron Strings I is by no means a small library.

Best, 
Paul

@Guy Bacos said:

I'd recommend to run the Synchron library off of an SSD and have adequate RAM in your machine and optimize your pre-load buffer sizes in the Directory. 

I don't understand why we can't take advantage of SSD with Synchron Strings ?

@Paul said:

Regarding RAM, with 1st violins only: If you want to load all available microphones with all available articulations, much RAM is necessary (these are the quick tests on my computer):

With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 10 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins.
With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 5 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins. 

Best, 
Paul

Hi Paul!  Is this a typo?

@Paul said:

With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 10 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins.

With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 5 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins. 

Best, 
Paul

Hi Paul!  Is this a typo?

Presumably it should be

"With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 10 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins.

With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 5 GB of RAM for the STANDARD Libtrary / 1st Violins."

with 32 GB RAM you are ready to load 1.+2. Violins of th all Microphonepositions of the FULL-Library with all Articlations tio let them play completly "insane tuttichord"😛 and with another 1-2 32GB PC's like that you are ready to let the whole Synchronstrings I be loaded and play completly "insane tuttichord"😛....

However in real world you will neither need always load all Microphonepositions nor all articulations and VSL obviously provided a bunch of options to reduce the amount of actual loaded articulations what means in consequence your 32 GB will presumably be still reasonably usable.

@Paul said:

Regarding RAM, with 1st violins only: If you want to load all available microphones with all available articulations, much RAM is necessary (these are the quick tests on my computer):

With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 10 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins.
With a Preload size of 8192 Samples, you will need around 5 GB of RAM for the FULL Libtrary / 1st Violins. 

Best, 
Paul

Hi Paul!  Is this a typo?

No it's the art of reading between Paul's lines 😉

This Synchron Series will be a bigger Hardware-Challenge - more than I have expected it would be.

I think I have to re-plan ... 

Ouch. 

So for the full library (400 gb) you need to load around 50 gb on RAM. It's like 12 % of totale samples go on RAM.

Am I wrong or it s an higher % respect the previous VSL product? I mean considering the same preload size.

Hi, 

My suggestion is to take advantage of the options that are available, to minimize RAM consumption. 

You will also get away with a lower Pre-Load size with an arrangement, it all depends on how you use the strings, with all the X-Fading Options, and the available mic positions. 

Best,
Paul

Thanks a lot Paul,

still sounds very optmized if we consider how many samples have to be streamed at the same time.

Let's also hope that newest ddr4 RAM and SSD M.2 will help us virtual orchestrator a lot :)

@LAJ said:

This Synchron Series will be a bigger Hardware-Challenge - more than I have expected it would be.

I think I have to re-plan ... 

Yes of course it ill be a bigger Hardware Challenge. It is alomst like the previous VSL-Libraries have been when they were released. When I started with the Cube we even had no 64 bit Systems at all and I needed 4 PC's with scracly 3 GB-RAM loaded to keep all sections simultaneously working It is not so long ago that I had for the first time the chance to keep the Superpackage loaded on one 64GB System. Now nearly 15 Years after the Cube was released we start again and presumably will come back again to networking at least for more elaborated projects.

But what did you think will be the situation again 10-15 Years later when VSL will start his next groundbreaking Orchestral library-Series. Of course it will be again 10 times more powefull and 10 times more hardware consumptive simply because the development of the available hardware will be not sleep either.

In short it might be necessary in the near future to keep an eye on the capacity of the hardware but imho over the years this wont stay that much a problem. Just lets wait how the available hardware looks like when the Synchon-Series is complete in the next years.

I calculated 64 GB for Perc/Drums, Strings, and all basic Winds ;) ... shit!

Since the appearance of the Synchron Percussions 1, it was clear that a complete Synchron-Library will not be a ultimate must-have for "mainstream-musicians" too soon. (Especially because of the Hardware-costs)

What you have to see today in addition to that is, that many people have thier Harddrives already full of Composer-Libraries. That was not the case when the VSL started their business. (And I'm glad that I never seriously collected some other Library)

But finally I have still more than 3K € Vouchers for future-products ... means: I have to take some action!