@JWL said:

I don't think the VSL team would withdraw *all* formats of one of their libraries.

I'm not so sure, actually. Their player is cross-platform, and is highly optimized for their libraries. The data itself is encoded differently, and the programming required for each new instrument must be significant. So why would they necessarily continue developing for other platforms? I mean, it would seem sort of extreme to stop supporting other samplers, but with proprietary formats from so many companies, the only reasonable way to keep up is... well... *not* to keep up. Build your own integrated system, combining the samples and the player... And that's exactly what they've done! [;)]


That's pretty much what I was driving at. There's a difference between discontinuing the *Horizon* line from the idea of discontinuing the *guitar library* with no recourse.

If Horizon is going away and taking the guitar library with it, it seems quite reasonable that VSL may have other plans-- ie: to re-issue the guitars in the new console.

Since Horizon is at its end-game, it would be huge news if VSL chose to withdraw the guitar library altogether.

For a company who has always been at the cutting edge, it seems out of character for them "not to keep up", so to speak. This is only a gut feeling and not based on fact. But if the guitar library goes away forever I'd be more surprised-- and even a little disappointed, really.

oh, duh... sorry, I didn't mean to ignore your point.

Naturally, the guitars will be released as a VI - I can't imagine VSL just tossing out however many sampling sessions it must have taken to create Overdrive.

J.

Actaully, I.m pretty sure that I read somewhere that they're discontinuing the guitars. Could be wrong tho.

Speaking as a total newb who is about to remortgage his home to buy VI (well, that's partly why, anyway)...

Apart from a choir, which looks as though it may already be on the way, I'd like to have a second solo violin recorded by a different performer for string quartet work. I've read up on the tricks you can use to make a quartet out of 3 performers, like transposing the second violin part up on the player side and down on the midi side, but surely you're still getting exactly the same technique, plus a virtually identical tonal quality. Apart from the obvious cost angle, I can't see why the Solo Strings didn't have two solo violins right from the start, unless it's something to do with the physical arrangement of the string quartet in Austria that supposedly has the first and second violin on opposite sides instead of next to eachother, so the physical separation in the soundstage makes up for the lack of "logical separation".

Another thing that appears to be needed is an extension of the crossfade into a sort of "cross-modulation" that would allow, for example, a violin note without vibrato to be smoothly and seamlessly faded into (and out of) a similar note with vibrato. I can't help but note how quickly the crossfades were done in the tutorial video so as to avoid exposing this issue!

Hi Angelus.

>Apart from the obvious cost angle, I can't see why the Solo Strings didn't have two solo violins right from the start

I estimate the solo violin on the Solo Strings VI plays around 30,000 samples. I shudder to think how long it took to record and program all those separate performances - having done it once, you wouldn't want to do it again!

Hey Conquer. while I see you here, check your PM, you obviously don't check it very often, this one I wrote something like 2 month ago!

Hi Guy. I'm proud and ashamed in equal measures to admit that I have never checked my PM and don't know how to! Yrs blissfully ignorant, C.

@Banquo said:

Actaully, I.m pretty sure that I read somewhere that they're discontinuing the guitars. Could be wrong tho.

Oh PLEASE say it isn't so!! [:'(]

Conquer, once you log in, look at the bottom, it will be written: you have no new messages or you have 1 new message etc.... just click in that and you'll see your PM.
You may have one a million dollars and don't know it! [:D]

I'd like to second Angelus' desire for a second solo violin.

I very much enjoy the present solo violin however it would be wonderful to have a second, perhaps more dolce-sounding solo violinist sampled.

I find it hard to believe after all this time, money and effort VSL has spent on learning how to sample strings that they could be through doing this. Every set of new strings has been sampled and edited better than the ones previous to it.

It would be joy to have a second solo violin with a new soloist performing. Each articulation would have different timing and nuance. Although I do have solo violins alternatives from different sample library manufacturers I very much prefer the VSL sound and and working within the Vienna Instruments interface.

@Another User said:

Forum: Vienna Instruments Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 6:21 pm Subject: OVERDRIVE

I think there is a missunderstanding.
We are not working on an "Overdrive" VI at the moment.

best
Herb

Sorry, guys. [*-)]

I still think VSL will release the two guitar titles as VI's eventually. But in the meantime, it might be sensible to snap them up in Horizon sound library format before they disappear!

P.S. I'm getting my PM's now - sorry I didn't read them before.

in your forum profile you can set an option that a popup appears when you recieved a private message - of course you have to allow popups for vsl.co.at resp. forum.vsl.co.at then ...
christian

I would be VERY quick to snap up the concert guitar library asa VI, even without any new material. But that's just me.

@Another User said:

It would be joy to have a second solo violin with a new soloist performing. Each articulation would have different timing and nuance.

Exactly. The instruments in a string quartet need to blend perfectly, but still retain their uniqueness. In VSL/VI string quartets, there are only 3 players.

Maybe as a one-time amateur violinist I'm more sensitive to this, but I guess a flautist would wish for a second flute too.

Happily, there is a second flute in the VI collection.

I agree it would be nice to have a complete VSL string quartet, but I can't see how it would have been "a lot cheaper" to record two violins rather than one. Both players need a session fee, they obviously can't play their samples at the same time, and at the end of the two sessions you'd have 60,000 samples to program rather than 30,000.

However it was organised, the cost, recording time and programming time would all be doubled, wouldn't they? Or am I missing something?

@Conquer said:

I agree it would be nice to have a complete VSL string quartet, but I can't see how it would have been "a lot cheaper" to record two violins rather than one. Both players need a session fee, they obviously can't play their samples at the same time, and at the end of the two sessions you'd have 60,000 samples to program rather than 30,000.

Well, all the way through there would be "organisational" savings. For example, they would record each sample one after the other, so while one player is performing the sample, the other player is getting ready for the next one. Also, recording the two samples sequentially would save on editing time because the second sample would be so similar to the first that the editor could do whatever they had to do more quickly. It's a moot point anyway, they didn't do it so the cost of creating a second violin set would be well over one quarter of the cost of making the Solo Strings set, but would still hardly be economical as a stand-alone volume. The number of people wanting a second viola or cello is probably small, so it wouldn't really be economical either to make a "Second Solo Strings" set. Hence my point about if you were going to do it, the only sensible way would have been to do it at the same time as the other solo strings. The incremental cost would have been small, but the benefits great.

@Angelus said:

Well, all the way through there would be "organisational" savings. For example, they would record each sample one after the other, so while one player is performing the sample, the other player is getting ready for the next one. Also, recording the two samples sequentially would save on editing time because the second sample would be so similar to the first that the editor could do whatever they had to do more quickly. [...] The incremental cost would have been small, but the benefits great.

Thanks for your input, Angelus - but that's not the way it works, sorry to say so. Both the amount of work involved and the costs are simply twice as big when we sample a second instrument (like in the case of the harp or the flute).

Kind regards,

Hi Angelus. Interesting idea to have two players in the studio at the same time, but it would make the producer's job very hard. In a sampling session the producer has to constantly brief the musician, maintain a fanatical attention to musical detail, decide when re-takes are necessary
(because even the best players don't always play perfect samples) while keeping the atmosphere cheerful and positive (very hard when you have tens of thousands of samples to work through.) To do all that while constantly switching attention between two players would be next to impossible in my opinion.

As for the players, they would have to keep stopping while the other player played their sample(s), which would disrupt the flow and make it hard to maintain concentration. With respect, I don't think your idea is viable in real life.

>Also, recording the two samples sequentially would save on editing time because the second sample would be so similar to the first that the editor could do whatever they had to do more quickly.

No, I can't see that. Every sample takes a certain amount of time to edit, you can only edit one at a time and the fact that two are similar is no help at all.

I think its not so much necessary to launch another new product but to improve and refine the existing. There is even in the most versatile VSL still a lot useful things to add.

for me for exampls it would be much more urgent to get sordino-articulations not only for Orchestrastrings, but also for Solo, Chamber and appassionatas. I have missed them especialy for the Solostrings several times.

Likewise I would like to have the same stooped articulations for Solohorns and the Hornensembles.

And there would be quite a lot to add to complete the other existing Samplesets

In general, it would be great have the same variety of articulations for every parallel kind of Solosamples, small and bigger ensembles.

best
Steffen