Hi Christian,

Thanks for your response. I can think of lots of non-Digidesign products which work within RTAS. All of the Arturia products, all of the Native Instruments products. Spectrasonics. MOTU (Mach Five). YellowTools. Etc, etc. So, I'm still not really understanding why VSL can't work similarly.

As an alternative, why not make ALL of your products compatible with, for instance, NI Kontakt, which does work well via RTAS? Your Horizon series works really, really well via this method, and it just seems that VSO is missing a large part of the marketplace by excluding Pro Tools users for the Vienna Instrument series. I hope that you simply work with Digidesign to make sure your Vienna instrument series can work like any other product (all those named above) within Pro Tools.

because it's a holiday here and i've got some time to turn thoughts over in my mind i'd like to go back a little bit in history.

initially the VSL sample libraries have been created for gigastudio and exs - at that time the only samplers capable to handle the amount of samples and their concept at least *somehow*, with a series of workarounds though ...

later kontakt and HALion developed to a level which made it appear advisable to translate certain libraries for this formats too - the culprit has always been and still is to make the performance elements (and detection) work and leave at least some IP-protection on the product (activation of performance tool).

we always had hopes to be able one day to deliver scripted instruments with enough layers (dimensions) and any kind of copy protection.
the road to GS3 has been long and the iMidi rules are finally not protected, the scripts in Kontakt 2 are in fact not too, midi routing in HALion is still a mess and VSL is meanwhile the last plugin for logic/exs using authorization on an XSkey.
so what would have been more obvious than to develop a custom sampler fulfilling all these needs, especially concentrating the huge amount of articulations to a single track.

maybe it has been a mistake, but we've been always looking at PT more as a mixing environment than as a sequencer and (i personally) would still find it more important to allow VI docking to a notation software for a continous workflow ... anyway.

also personally i don't understand why one would need three (resp. in fact more than 3) methods to connect audio applications on the mac platform (AU as the preferred one from apple's side, VST, RTAS) whereas on windows VST seems to be sufficiently covering all needs.
i had no chance so far to see it *face-to-face*, but from what i've heard PT and VI doesn't run too bad side by side on PC (of course the absolute minority of PT systems).

so please understand that the amount of development ressources at VSL can only reflect the little, though important, group of users for a certain application.
christian

I've come to the conclusion that the best way to run *any* large sample player is outside the DAW anyway. That includes everything from Ivory Grand to the V.I. player.

cm, I go way back to the Opcode days with sequencing. Have been using DP since then, all the way to 5.1. It has been problematic with numerous DAE incompatibilities per upgrades/updates of both MOTU and Digi. I now do everything within PT. What VSL crew needs to understand is to really find out how many PT users there are who are wanting to upgrade from GS3 to VI. I own a few of these libraries both in Giga and VI formats. I prefer the VI but it is very frustrating trying to make it work within the PT environment! I bet there are a lot of PT users that would love a viable solution to this problem. I hope that the VSL crew won't ignore us PT users that do more than mixing in PT! You might be surprised how many PT sequencers there are.....

@Another User said:

also personally i don't understand why one would need three (resp. in fact more than 3) methods to connect audio applications on the mac platform (AU as the preferred one from apple's side, VST, RTAS) whereas on windows VST seems to be sufficiently covering all needs.
i had no chance so far to see it *face-to-face*, but from what i've heard PT and VI doesn't run too bad side by side on PC (of course the absolute minority of PT systems).

Because Digidesigns closest competitor is Logic, and thus apple, and therefore consider AU a format of the competition. It's not strange why a company wants their own proprietary format for their platform: for the sake of monopoly and distinguishing their product from the competition with exclusive features and plugins, and for not being a slave to a format that is directly controlled by the closest competitor. Sadly, it's always us end-users that ends up suffering the most from this.

As for the more technical aspect of this discussion, I have asked you before what kind of problems the RTAS format was producing that has kept you from developing VI support for it, and must say I'm still a little puzzled by the responses that the format seemed to not be well suited for a plugin with the needs and functionallity of the VI. I mean, there are several other developers that have made plugins for RTAS that also handle large volumes of sample data without any trouble performance or stabillity-wise. Take Synthogy's "Ivory", which runs just as good as any VST instance and is still able to bring your S-ATA HD to its knees before the CPU meter hits 10-20%.

Also, it has come to my attention that Hans Zimmer is producing a big Virtual Orchestra plugin for Digidesign/AIR that will be in direct competition with Vienna products, so somehow it must be possible to get something out of the format. I read in an interview with him that he decided to make the library as a tool for his own writing, while making it a product available for regular customers that also use ProTools for composing, but have no sample library to use within the sequencer.

Fact remains that ProTools is the industry standard for recording and mixing with an aggresive stance on conquering the composing market, and that market has been wishing for quality composer's tools for ages now. If the market is big enough is of course up for you to determine, but there is without much doubt a rather large niche of the pro/semi-pro market that has unserved needs. [[[;)]]]

vagn, thank you for your considerable and un-emotional response.

there is one thing i'd like to put into relation though: VI Bösendorfer (as one of the little libraries from VSL) has 9.350 samples and about 55 GB, whereas it reads as Ivory has 4.000 samples and 40 GB for all 3 pianos, so i'd assume there must be some difference regarding load on a system.

if someone here finds the time i'll ask to have a look into load and performance of bösendorfer only (which obviously would only need just a single instance of VI). if i understood the feedback from initial tests correctly problems started beyond the second or third instance of VI and therefore it appeared to be unusable for orchestral work.
christian

The Italian Grand is 19GB on and takes up about 750MB of RAM, but the older Yamaha grand (one of the original three) takes up 500GB of RAM.

thanks nick for the heads up, i think we're getting closer ... 19 GB, 2000 samples, 750 MB memory ... this gives me 384 KB preload header per sample - VI is using 64 KB (one sixth), which means (simplified) at least six times as much harddisk access and related events.
now we would need detailed info on (process- and thread-)priorities on a PT system. if (and i could imagine this is the case) the highest priority is given to recording and less priority to sample streaming (and the following buffering proceedings) this would fit pretty well into the picture. probably those priorites are nothing VSL could influence or manipulate unless one could set some related preferences on the PT system itself.
christian

@Another User said:

Also, it has come to my attention that Hans Zimmer is producing a big Virtual Orchestra plugin for Digidesign/AIR that will be in direct competition with Vienna products, so somehow it must be possible to get something out of the format. I read in an interview with him that he decided to make the library as a tool for his own writing, while making it a product available for regular customers that also use ProTools for composing, but have no sample library to use within the sequencer.

Hats off to Hans whose film scores I really love, BTW. I know that he is a big fan of VSL, met him at the NAM's VSL booth a couple of years ago and I would only hope that his VI will come close to, or even equal the quality of VSL's samples because he obviously knows that there are serious PT users out there that are looking for something a lot better than Garitan or Miroslav's mediocre libraries... AND are frustrated with VSL's inability to have the other format available (RTAS). As mentioned, I love VSL's sounds and have purchased their libraries for both Giga and the current VI series, the latest being the Appassionata and the SE... but what good are they if they are not available to us PT users? I am forced to to go back to Giga as the VST to RTAS wrapper have not been reliable.... All I can say is if Hans can do it, why not VSL? '[*-)]

question to myself: does it even make sense to go into technical details if no one is interested in facts and in a countermove the thread turns into VSL RTAS bashing?

vagn, rinky, any links you can provide to see a proove what exactly is possible, i mean in the sense of an already working setup?
christian

If I'm buying the best samples available in the world... and I have, a buying customer who spent thousands of dollars AND are willing to spend thousands more, does not need a technical data on how to make it work. It's just a wish! If the support for PT will never happen, then that "small" percentage of PT programmers are either gonna be forced to go to Logic or back to DP... or may discontinue to buy great, but unusable product and hope for a cure in the near future. No VSL RTAS bashing, but a customer's wish to also be able to enjoy the thousands of dollars worth of a million dollar sound.
Perhaps you can post a thread or turorials or a "how to for dummies" on other alternatives, such as the steps or process of creating a host/slave using Bidule that I've heard so much about. This is where customer service is golden. There are a few of us who are only musicians and not techie musicians. I am so willing to buy a Mac Mini if I had a guideline on how to go about making this work.

cm, I'm interested in the facts. [:)]

I've been using PT for 15 years and love it to pieces, but even though I like some of the new A.I.R. née Wizoo instruments, I still use Logic for sequencing. It just isn't as robust a program for that yet.