Though I've had some problems with Gigastudio - disc consistency errors and crashes in XP which Christian was kind enough to give me some really great info on - I nevertheless have been auditioning more of the samples of the Orchestral Cube. I'm not sure people want to hear more of my raving about the VSL, but here is some more anyway...

Concerning the solo horn the amount of detail in the variations of note lengths and articulations is beyond anything I've ever heard. And the playing is fantastic - I am a horn player and these performers are the best you could record. The piano attacks in particular are wonderfully clear and crisp. And this is the only time I've heard sampled horn players really laying down a true fff, no holds barred, that is close to vicious. In previous libraries, they always play just a bit limp-wristed. Not these guys! It is a big-time fortissimo in both the solo and ensemble horns. Also, a pretty wild set of glissandi in octaves and fifths.

The trumpet ensemble, layered version is astounding. Absolutely perfect recording of different dynamic layers that are crossfaded with no noticeable transition from a delicate, expressive pp to a brilliant ff, and an additional marcato attack that becomes harder with higher velocity levels. This is an example of how instantly useable the VSL programming is - you could easily use this one instrument alone for all the trumpet sounds in any number of compositions and it would sound perfect.

The flute is the most "sensual" rich-sounding flute I've heard in samples, with at last a true pianissimo in the low range that has the mysterious darkness of the instrument in that range.

Being a percussionist, I was amazed at the timpani, which again gave me the impression of having the actual instruments sitting right in my studio, they are so real-sounding.

These are just a few impressions, as there is so much wealth of sound in this library it is like being lost in the best toy store imaginable. I am still deciding how I am going to go about re-mastering previous recordings I've done with other sample libraries. The problems with Gigastudio obviously add to this consideration.

One thing I am relieved to find is that though the VSL is so awesomely expressive and complete you could easily use it for everything, you can still use your old sample instruments with it as well, if there are any that you are particularly fond of. I happen to still like many of the Miraslav sounds, though they are incomplete and therefore lacking in the full range of expression that is truly supplied by the VSL. So you could for example add one of the old instruments into your mix, say the Miraslav "soft" violins, and create a seamless blend with the VSL violins. Also, woodwinds that have a particular quality, such as the ensemble bassoons from Miraslav, mixed with the incredible solo bassoon from Vienna. This VSL bassoon, by the way, seems so perfect that I cannot imagine it being done better, no matter how technology progresses.

Anyway, since I have an enormous amount of other samples that I still like, I am concerned with how they will fit in with the new sounds. And I can see now they will fit perfectly, increasing the size of potentially useable sounds to an incredible degree, when one factors in the future plans of Vienna, with the complete saxophones from soprano to contrabass (am I the only person in the world who has missed classical saxophones from all sample libraires recently? they WERE originally classical and symphonic band instruments prior to jazz) as well as their other plans for unusual instruments.

If anyone wants me to shut up and stop wasting their time with this raving just let me know and I'll stop. I certainly have plenty of other things to occupy me now!

I don´t know about the rest, William, but I´m enjoying a lot these reviews you´re doing. Seeing how I can´t afford this library right now, at least I can better understand how it sounds (from someone who isn´t part of the development team, which is obviously more objective).

Here´s one guy reading your reviews. Thanks.

EDIT: I would also be very interested in knowing how it is like, working with VSL in actual projects whenever you start doing that. Don´t forget to review that for us!

Hey William

I also enjoy your feedback. Thank You! Could you tell about what you see in terms of LOAD TIMES, and RAM usage per instrument (5%-20%an instrument).

Richard

Also, please describe the Gigastudio problems you speak of. Are these things that can be fixed with downloaded updates, or will it take a re-release to take care of these things?

How bad are the problems?

Lee Blaske

William, send us your e-mail so we can get you the current training tools. Write peter@alexuniv.com

Peter Alexander

Concerning the load times, they are not long at all, about 30-40 seconds for large instruments. This is on a 1.5 ghz system, so you can probably get a lot faster. RAM useage seems also fairly small. I have only 512 mbs, but nothing has been strained in that area. The polyphony was up to 64 note on some rapid single line passages involving the four-layered instruments, obviously because of envelope release tails.

The problems with Gigastudio bug me, and there is no fix available. They occur with the most recent updates. They involve crashes, not really with doing any spectacular - just using the program. And also they cause, almost every time the system is booted, disc consistency checks, warnings about having to use chkdsk when attempting to defragment, and a few other very odd errors that have occurred ONLY when Gigastudio is installed. This computer is flawlessly functional at other times, including running a professional video NLE, Sonic Foundry multi-track recording on Vegas Video, and full DVD encoding and burning functions. All of those, which dwarf most applications in data handling, work perfectly. So the fault is not with this system. I've heard some buzz that Gigastudio is going to have to come up with a new version to solve these problems. However that may be I do not like the way they handle their customers and have been turned off totally by the company.

I am thinking very hard about other options. All of this is solely to use VSL. Otherwise I would kiss Tascam good bye with a few choice obscenities. I have both EXS24mkII and Gigastudio, but no matter what anyone says I do not believe hardware samplers are out of the picture, especially when one considers the 512 mb AKai Z series or a bank of maxed-out Emulators combined with multi-track hard disc layering. The amount of data that kind of system can handle is gigantic. And it is all totally reliable and controllable, unlike Gigastudio. And the programming is straightforward, and actually more flexible than Gigastudio 2.5. For example, EXS24mkII imitates EOS in its design especially with being able to route any modulator in midi to any destination. Gigastudio cannot do that and that immediately makes it inferior with my set up, because on the Miraslav library I used an approach that involved the pitch wheel for filtering and volume so the mod wheel could be used for increasing the volume of attack articulations. I used absolutely no velocity for controlling volume of the main sustains and layered detaches (or tongued slurs), so that it could be used to create varying degrees of marcato attacks with the staccato samples. This system, when applied to strings and brass, allowed for a completely intuitive, "felt" expressiveness to the initial performance, without having to think consciously about programming all the different layers, etc. One could simply play an entire violin section line, for example, from smooth portato or legato (though without VSL's actual legato samples) to varying degrees of detache and marcato in real time. And if it was a tricky one, overdubs in midi could layer in the controllers for volume or attack. EOS is an incredibly powerful piece of software (which no one today seems to want to hear about) and NEVER CRASHES. EVER. The instrument simply functions once you turn it on. Like picking up a trumpet or a guitar. It's all what you do with it, not what problems the computer decided to create this morning.
Does anybody care about that besides me? I know stage musicians do, because they do not touch with a ten foot pole a sampler like Gigastudio. Can you imagine such a thing? "Sorry ladies and gentlemen, but tonight's peformance has been cancelled due to disc consistency errors."

At any rate, I am in awe of the work of VSL in the conception and carrying out of this recording project which is beyond any ever attempted before. The actual work done by them is an art so far above all these damnable computer problems that it is an insult to discuss them in the same breath.

Though I should probably say a few Hail Marys before admitting it, I actually have one criticism of the samples. The solo oboe has no espressivo vibrato in the long notes, only in short notes. This seems odd, and perhaps the result of a problem with the oboe player (?) The other woodwinds are astoundingly beautiful. The clarinet captures the dark chalameau and pp expressiveness wonderously, and one can hear the exact same breathiness in the recordings - something I've never once heard before in samples but heard every time I was next to a live clarinet player.

The timpani rolls have perfect release samples, so that the roll is finished off precisely with an eighth note. Here, as well as in the string tremolos, the samples are not long enough to avoid loops. So these will have to be looped at some point, either by users or by programmers.

I would also add to this already overlong post that the solo trumpet and horn represent almost maniacal attempts to capture everything the instruments do. (I haven't yet heard the tuba and trombone.) The varying lengths of short notes and dynamic changes are so subtle that it is hard to imagine how one could do more with the original instruments.

Thanks for the remarks, William. That's some really helpful information.

BTW, I'm a big Emu fan from days gone by, too (I've got five E4XT's that work flawlessly). Unfortunately, 128 MB is the max, and that's not very useful for the VSL 95 GB library. [;)]

Lee Blaske

William,

I'm very grateful for your recent posts. Nothing sells a product better than a happy or impressed user.

I'm interested to note your comment about the timpani rolls and tremolo strings. In a previous thread about loops: http://235.deatech.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=189">http://235.deatech.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=189

you said:

that having loop points crammed down your throat is extremely undesirable. I don't care who does them or what clever little system you use - I don't want them.

I'm sure people are going to find that loops are essential in certain cases.

Regards - Colin

Yes, I did expect to use loops, but like to do them myself. I guess I am a bit weird in that respect.

I don't say this out of criticism but just as something noticeable - I get the impression that other people in this forum are used to loading almost all (or as many as possible) of their samples simultaneously, and want to continue doing that, and so have to have huge amounts of hardware power.

I've never wanted to do that I guess because of being an orchestrator and writing everything without hearing ANYTHING until the first rehearsal. Being able to audition just one line of a composition on a sampler seems almost luxurious to me.

You have to record one track at a time anyway. And if you have four or five hardware samplers you can have every single long and short note sample that VSL has for violins, for example, all in RAM. That is quite possible. Especially if you've looped them. And actually, it is a very rare piece of music that would need every single sample. Actually, I estimate you could get an extremely expressive performance of just about everything normally done by violins with around 500 megs of samples. It's true that you can't have all the strings simultaneously, but it is the same difference to me whether I have them on a midi channel in the sampler or on an audio track that can easily be re-recorded from an edited midi performance.

But I'm not trying to hang onto old samplers out of devotion. It is just I believe people are not as dependent upon one company - in this case Gigastudio - as that company would like them to think. And any Mac user who likes the EXS24 should probably be patient and get that version, unless like me they intend to reprogram the library for their own oddball system.

I also like to work on a per-instrument basis regarding samplers. I mean, I just usually load the samples for one instrument and work over it until I´m done with that track and convert it to audio. Then move into the next instrument.
After all, I already checked how all the hamonies sound together in my notation program and the overall composition is 100% done. It just MIDI sequncing to make the sounds sound real what I´m doing at this stage, so working with just one instrument and the previously done on audio is perfectly valid to me.

I do make incremental saves in case I have to refix some little stuff done previously.

To William & Netvudu,

I find that I generally work quite differently. I might be working on the theme for a TV series, composing the logo, and knowing that I must later create a few underscores and stings. So, I keep the composition in MIDI form, and never commit individual tracks to audio, as I'm constantly cutting and pasting data, and also revising and improving my compositions.

I do take your point though and am pleased to find that Logic v6 (announced at NAMM) has a track "Freeze" function, which allows you to temporarily commit an audio instrument track into audio to free up the CPU if it's overloaded. I imagine this could be handy with VSL too, to free up RAM as well, but with the additional bounus of being able to un-Freeze at any time and alter data.

I think that by February or March, when I have Logic 6 and VSL, I'll have the best toys in the world!

Regards - Colin

the freeze/unfreeze stuff sounds like a terrific idea. Unfortunately I´m on a PC, which leaves me out of Logic (besides, even admitting it´s a very powerful sequencer, I always thought it had a very bad name: I couldn´t find the logic on its interface. Still, this is a matter of personal taste).

So, I hope Cubase goes for the same feature soon.

Freeze/unfreeze will only work with Audio plug in effects, and Virtual Instruments. It would never work with gigastudio on a seperate machine.

Ive gotten into the routine of bouncing everything I'm not working on to stereo fairly constantly, but keeping everything in MIDI form. I find that I'm listening back so many times, that jsut recording the listen back once or twice over itself does the trick quite well, without introducing any more time to the process.

It would work with EXS24, though, wouldn't it?

Lee Blaske

yup it would


Doh, I thought I read somethign about someone not being able to wait about how it could really help with gigastudio, but I must have misread....