Siggi,

I'm thinking of (not certain yet, though) buying VSL and perhaps I'll start with the Performance Set. Strings, however, are important for me. You say you don't like the strings. What exactly is it about them that you don't like so much? Performance strings or VSL strings all together? What? If I hear the Mozart demo by Herb I'm pretty convinced that they're not so bad, don't you agree? The only thing I'm worried about is that it might take a professor's brain to program it all. I have a faint feeling that demo doesn't come right "out of the box". But it's always good to know that it is possible, no?
There use to be a time that it was easy to audition the sounds before making any decisions. But then those sounds came on floppies! Now one has to buy a library and spend almost as much as the cost of a new car without trying it first. That's a risk I might be willing to take with 250 Dollars/Euros but with $€6000*!€$????

So I appreciate any info, positive or negative.

Thanks


---------------
Alex Cremers

Hi Peter,

don´t missunderstand me, i respect the whole work of the vsl team. i heard also some compositions from herb. i think he is really a great composer, so i trust him that he know what we need. maybe my english should be better in my posts....but, please try to read between the lines and i hope (with my bad english) you maybe can find some possibilities to improve the project.

the main point to me is the marketing thing together with some critics to the library, which i don´t like so much and i am not the only one...

i´m a filmcomposer since 15 years. i made about 40 movies and about 500-600 episodes of different tv series, and too much commercials. i also bought about 90% of all the sample libraries you can get on the market. i spend really a lot of money in my work because i wanna be better and faster then you [[[;)]]] ...and if there is money and time for a orchestra recording, i will always use an real orchestra which i did in the past!


i think a big project like vsl can also be criticised. maybe it´s a typical german mentality thing [[[;)]]]
big composers will also get critics when they work e.g. with directors. i love good critics because most of the time you getting be better...(just my personal opinion)

to say it loud...this library is one of the best orchestral libraries on the market!

ok, if something is good i always try to give my critics and my opinions to the developers to make the product maybe better. that´s the reason why i did and do a lot of beta testing.

all the best

Siggi

ps: you´re right Peter i didn´t browse thru the forum. this morning i found some answers about the stopped instruments. sorry!

pps:
there is no anvil in the steel section of the pro edition, maybe it´s in the cube edition. what´s the difference between cube and pro...?

btw, i don´t need the anvil because some years ago i had the luck to do an horror movie and i bought some real anvils and made my own samples with them. i thought i´m speaking with some other user´s...

ahmm, and i still don´t like the 1,5 sec vibrato oboe...SHUT UP SIGGI ! GO BACK TO WORK !

Hi Alexander,

i didn´t listen to the mozart demos. i´m sure the demo is fantastic and shows you the possibilities you have with the library!

The vsl strings are very, very good and i also use the vsl strings for my work. it is a personal taste thing !
i like e.g. more the arco bass section of the old roland library and i love e.g. the trill string section with the RS samples of the vsl library...and so on. i personally like to mix different libraries together, pick up the best pieces for my own taste.

it is easy for me to criticize e.g. some, not all of the vsl string section because i had the chance to sample two years ago the munich staatsoper string section and i had the chance to conduct the session for my personal taste. i always compare my own library to the other librarys out there on the market. if i need some strings for melodies i always come back to my own library, but this is really a question of taste.
as far as i know, Hans Zimmer uses also his own library and if you have the choice to listen to this library you maybe don´t like it...
the one man´s poison, the other man´s cake...

it is always also very important how well the piece of music you compose for MIDI is orchestrated. sometimes "bad or cheaper" samples working for "realism" better. (my opinion)

check the vsl out and give them a try ! it is really one of the best library you can get on market.

Siggi

ps: to answer your question: the difference between the performance legato programs and the performance legato porta programs is very big. i would like to have also a setting something in between. another thing is, some samples sounding different (the intervall samples are less brilliant then the normal samples). also the intervall samples are recorded too short.

I might add that a comprehensive listing of the instruments included in both the Pro and First editions has been available for some time in the "Products & Shop" section of this website. The VSL team has always been very forthcoming about exactly what would be included in their releases.

ok, ok....! i really have to study this website ! maybe i´m getting older now. [8-)] usually i go to the shop, they give me the cd´s, i´m going in my studio, load the cd into my sampler/computer, listen and study the booklet at the same time.

siggi

Hi Siggi,

first, I don't have problems with critics and suggestions and wishes.
I think it's a great advantage for us (and hopefully for you too) that we can consider user input for our further developement.



Manuals:

Here we have to wait, when the EXS version is finished,
because some programmings of the EXS version are exclusively (which are labeled in the manuals).
It would be too expensive to make two different manual versions.


Oboe:

the Pro Edition includes more vibrato patches: sustains, crescendos, diminuendos, and a espressivo (pfp) patch.

Our second Oboe, a french Oboe, will be a vibrato bacchanal - promised.

Bassflute and Tom tom were not announced for the Pro Edition.
I hope I didn't post a mistakeable announcement elsewhere.

I did not know, that a bass flute was used for the score of Polanskis "Der Mieter". On reason more to watch this brilliant movie.

For concert toms help would be appreciated.
No orchestra in Vienna has real concert Toms.
I also got the information that the company who built concert toms, discontinued producing. Sorry, I forgot the name of this company.

If somebody knows an option - here in Europe - where we could rent good concert toms, please let me know.


Regarding site licenses.
Hopefully we can offer a flexible and comfortable solution, when we finish the Symphonic Cube.
It's planned as a hard drive release, and here we would be much more flexible to support different sampler versions and also different Bit resolutions.


best wishes
Herb

"Real" ones is probably right. The concert toms I've played are no different from regular toms with the bottom head removed...and if not, nobody could possibly tell the difference!

The main thing is that there are usually four of them, probably ranging from about 10 to 16 inches in diameter.

Hi Herb,

you should see "Der Mieter" it´s a great movie. Sarde did, in my opinion, a fantastic music to it. It´s a great mix of Bassflute and Waterphone !!. Fantastic ! I want to tell, i had the luck to work also with the main mixing engineer of Ph. Sarde, John Timperly he said, sad to tell, till now there is no DVD for this movie on the market. but if you are interested, i did a dvd recording from premiere germany. so, give me a sign.

keep on with your great project !

Alles Grosse in dieser Welt geschieht nur, weil jemand mehr tut, als er muss! - Herrman Gmeiner

best wishes

Siggi Mueller

hi siggi, let me step in with some administrative thoughts - possibly i've mis-interpreted your post, but i don't agree with some points

you mention $ 6.000.- for the library, hmm - as a user of the first edition (eur 3.090) you could have upgraded to the pro for eur. 2.090.-, which makes 5.180, ok this is almost $ 6.000, but this price includes VAT, which does usually (except california, where you have to add VAT) not apply to people who pay in US$, so this sum seems a little bit misleading to me, since for US-customers the amount would be $ 5.180.

excpected content: well, if _we_ don't know, how should you or klaus know? no, seriously - VSL is a kind of *living thing*, some weeks before the release of the pro edition a detailed list of articulations for the first and the pro has been published (still accessible from the respective product-page in our shop) after *audio-lock* (= final state, before the edition goes to replication). the same will apply to the release of the symphonic cube. users tell their thoughts, needs, wishes, ect and as far this is possible (and makes sense within herb's *master-plan*) content is subject to change until some weeks before the release. the pro finally contained much more stuff than we expected when the first had been released, so any announcement at that time had to be adjusted several times.
are you really disappointed at the content of the pro?

complicated interface: it's the first time someone thought about this kind of tool _and_ realized it. ok, probably it's not perfect but imho more intuitive than a lot of interfaces i know.
and please don't forget: it's the intellectual property of VSL - so if someone decides to re-use it, i would recommend obtaining a license-agreement and (allow me to comment on this) if something could be improved, than it's the way logic sends midi-messages (not very straight-forward in some situations, this issue has also been responsible for the long and sometimes painfull time needed for development and testing).
the members of our mapping team and beta testers have submitted a lot of issues/thoughts/wishes/bug-reports to the manufacturer with limited success and very poor feedback
last but not least i'd like to mention i've also been lost searching for the performance tool in exs the first time and it is not very user-friendly if you have to write a whole story and user-guide how to find the tool in the x-th level of an application

side license pricing: the wording of *only a different mapping* is imho also misleading. unfortunately the methods of mapping in gigastudio and exs differre in more than one point (not to mention the max.32-byte-filename issue on macs) and it took a vast amount of man-hours to get that done, besides an extra replication process, printwork, ect.
everybody is welcome to do this by his own without the need of purchasing a second version of the library. if (and i emphasize _if_) it will be possible to re-use the exs-version for other platforms, the price-per-piece could drop. and please don't forget: a side-license entitles a user to get the upgrade (=VIP) price for _both_ platforms. so to speak, it simply has to be cost-covering.

manuals: they cannot be written/revised/printed as fast as the DVDs are ready for shipping, so there are two choices: let the DVDs in deposit until the manuals are there or provide pdfs and send physical manuals later - we decided to do the latter. but we know and are working on it: this process is subject to be improved.

btw: i'm a little bit confused, since you're hopping in your post between first/pro edition for gigastudio and first edition for exs. for the latter and the giga-pro i could not find a registration, so from where and when did you receive the tool/manuals and which version of the tool do you have? i've only been able to locate a mail to you with a replacement for the corrupt Tr-3_perf-leg_p.exs, which makes it obvious you _have_ an exs-version.
i'd like to invite you to join the circle of our betatesters and help us improving any version of the library in an open and constructive way. you might have noticed all members of the VSL team and especially herb are open and responding to all comments and suggestions.

we are moving on to a level, where air can get a little bit thin sometimes, be it the capabilities of hardware or software or simply the amount of data or the demands we make to ourselves and users to us. it has turned up, that the users of the VSL have formed a great community by itself which makes us very happy, since VSL is not selling washing machines or microwaves, but a creative product for creative people, so a continuous evolution is in process. if we ever come to a point where one can say *this is the perfect, final, unexpandable ultima ratio product*, we'd better stop continuing our efforts - but i currently don't see this point even on the horizon [;)]

excuse me if i've been lenghty and/or boring, but i had to remark this
christian

Christian,

1) you didn´t find the pro registration because of this:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server- Fehler '80040e31'

Timeout abgelaufen

/user/register.asp, line 71

i tried it several times. If you like i can send you my pro reg. numbers and you can do the registration for me.

2) Klaus Kandler changed my giga version to exs (performance ed.) with no extra money because he promised me this 1 year ago. he said: "I don´t how the upgrade situation will be. So if the perf. ed. exs will come out, you can have it with no extra cost."
Now i already payed for the pro ed. giga and when the pro ed. exs will come out, i´m sure i have to pay for this.

btw, if i bought the 1st, perf and pro edition, i am a VIP member? what are the cost for the pro ed. for exs? when will it be available ?

3) I did some betatesting for you (Performance Tool EXS). you should ask Christian Teuscher. in the betastate of the perf.tool exs, imho we (christian teuscher, clemens homburg and me) worked very close and effective together. if there were bugs, imho the communication was very effective and the bugfixing fast. i don´t understand that you say the problem was more on emagic´s side and the feedback was poor. i think this isn´t true.

4) sorry for adding the VAST to the costs of the library [[;)]]

Siggi

siggi, sorry for the inconveniance during registering - we had a bad hardware-crash on our webserver and this error showed up after rebuilding it for a few users.
i'll contact klaus how this has been handled, because now you don't have accces to exs-related updates and downloads (you're still registered with your first edition giga) so please try it again or send me your codes, however you like better.
i'm sure he didn't know something about the upgrade situation one year ago, because the first edition (giga) has been released only 9 months ago, but since then the upgrade policy is absolutely clear.
also just for understanding: there is a first and a pro _edition_
each edition consists of the orchestral cube (containing the modules strings, brass&woodwinds, percussion) and the performance set (containing the performance elements)
having purchased the first edition before july 30th you've payed the VIP-price, which results in 5180.- for the first + upgrade to the pro, whereas the full price now is 5490.- so to make a long story short: yes, you are a VIP-member (this will also apply to further upgrades)

i've heard you've done some betatesting regarding the tool, so i'm assuming now you've sent your fedback (like mentioned in you originating post) to chris. the exs-version will always be a little bit behind the giga-version (although we try to shorten this delay to the possible minimum), because the original mapping is done by herb on giga and then has to be imported and revised by the exs-mapping team. if you are interested, i'd ask you to join our team of betatesters for exs, i'm sure such a relation would be prolific for both parts.
regarding your interest in the exs pro i'll follow up with PM, since this topic filled alredy some threads during the last days ...

if everything works fine, the pro edition for exs should be ready for replication in about 10 days and therefore ready for shipping end of october - disclaimer: this is no announcement, just an estimation [;)]

just for clarification: i didn't say the cooperation has been ineffective, especially between CT and CH, just feedback to our mapping team could have stand some improvement ... also i'm aware logic/exs is a complex application and we are happy to have the performance tool integrated in exs at such a level, but just this complexity turns up unexpected behaviour here and there. the (released yesterday) final version of the performance tool runs very stable, but you can still provoke situations in which it reacts unexpected.

this would probably also be the right moment to thank emagic for giving us the opportunity to integrate the performance tool at such a level

btw: what's your opinion to the way how to access the tool and it's settings? i think, if there would be a more *direct* way this would help a lot.

christian