It's unfortunate that there is no pan facility on Vienna Instruments patches (nor in Forte). It's unusual for a virtual instrument to lack panning controls, MIDI channel select and user-definable ranges, but the VI has been designed with other priorities in mind.

>Should I go back to my old (GS3+ Sonic Implants) setup?!

You'd lose all the wonderful VI facilities such as the brilliant performance legatos and extensive articulation switching within one instance. If you bought GVI (GigaStudio Virtual Instrument) you could run your Giga libraries alongside VI SE under Forte. Your VI samples will still be centrally panned, but you could freely pan the GVI instruments as you did with GS3!

Thanks for this.

I realised after posting this that I was talking nonsense with regard to the number of instruments, because of course the panning effect wouldn't occupy an "instrument" in Forte. And in fact I now have a very satisfactory setup using Forte and 20-odd instances of VI and a freebie VST called GPan (www.gsonic.com).

And yes, I did get GVI too! - the "upgrade" cost from GS3 Orchestra is so small as to make this a no-bariner - and so far (touch wood) it seems a lot more reliable than GS3.

But yes, it would be better if VI included a panning control. In fact to my way of thinking it would have been FAR better if VI had been designed the same way as GVI - i.e. one instance supporting multiple MIDI channels, and responding to bank/patch change requests like Giga does.

Nice one - how does GPan interface with Forte? Does one instance control the panning of all of Forte's modules? I agree with your comments about VI's lack of multitimbrality, it still seems odd to me.

You need a separate instance of GPan on each VI instance - at least, on all those which you don't want dead centre!

That's a lot of messing about, but it's good to know it works. Let's hope Brainspawn / Forte add panning facilities to their host one day!

If you are writing for orchestra then you will want to narrow the stereo width of most samples before panning.

DG

Hmmm - thanks for that.

OK, I think I understand the theory (having read other posts on the subject) but in practice, unless you're using Sonar or Nuendo (or GS3!!) or something that has a built-in facility to narrow the stereo width, then your choices are narrowed somewhat.

I searched high and low for a VST plugin that would just do panning - and the only thing I found that I thought I could understand was GPan. Now you're telling me I need to go an a further search for a "stereo width narrower"?!

[;)]

Any suggestions?

The Waves S1 vst does both (pan and narrow) well. It is pricey but good.

Best,
Jay

Ok - thanks, that's interesting ... was thinking of getting TrueVerb anyway, and the Native Power Pack includes both for (gulp) £300 or so.

Which is quite a bit more than VI SE. No prizes for guessing which is better value!!

Oh yeah and for the Waves stuff I have to buy yet another damn USB dongle! My PC is beginning to look like a sort of blunt plastic-spiked hedgehog.

@MikeHC said:

Hmmm - thanks for that.

OK, I think I understand the theory (having read other posts on the subject) but in practice, unless you're using Sonar or Nuendo (or GS3!!) or something that has a built-in facility to narrow the stereo width, then your choices are narrowed somewhat.

I searched high and low for a VST plugin that would just do panning - and the only thing I found that I thought I could understand was GPan. Now you're telling me I need to go an a further search for a "stereo width narrower"?!

[;)]

Any suggestions?

PM me an email address and I'll send you a VST panner that does both. I can't remember where I got it, but it was free and legal...!

DG