actually, I think the biggest improvement for VSL would be a simpler way to find articulations. I have a lot of orchestral libraries and VIs, EWQLSO included, and VSL is by far the trickiest to find your way around.

so a user-friendliness enhancement would keep VSL ahead IMHO

just my two cents.

Nigel

@herb said:

Which competition? [H]

best
Herb

The competition is: will Symphonic Cube or QLSOP Pro be released first?
I support VSL!
ciao
Sergino

Why not go for the better one? [:D]

PolarBear

Re: epic strings

I'm still looking for good reference as to what you mean with this sound, as also requested already here:
http://community.vsl.co.at/viewtopic.php?t=3671&start=30

Perhaps someone can give me a tip?

I still cannot understand how mixing chamber strings with section strings can lead to "epic strings" sound. Chamber or solo instrtuments always add more definition and detail, which is IMHO quite oposite to smooth, lush sound of large strings section (like 18+16 Vn.I+II). So for "epic sound" we actually need less detail and more magic (and I don't mean EQ[:)]

Anyway, it's good to see emerging competition of giant orchestral libraries.
Exciting race [:D]

I wonder what Herb has in his sleev for Symphonic Cube?

Abel,

Exactly what I said in a similar post. Chamber strings will not increase the size of the strings, only their intimateness.

Evan Evans

P.S. EWQLSO uses QLegato. Apparently it is not purely a gimick, but it's creator also goes on record saying it is not using intervallic recording like VSL, and cannot compare. But it is somethign advanced and impressive, SO SAYS NICK.

@evanevans said:

EWQLSO uses QLegato. Apparently it is not purely a gimick, but it's creator also goes on record saying it is not using intervallic recording like VSL, and cannot compare. But it is somethign advanced and impressive, SO SAYS NICK.

Interesting, I guess that's some sort of real-time envelope manipulation + pitch bending then? I've often wondered if that would actually work. I still have to believe that the full recordings create a much better sound. Despite the occasional problems of mismatches, using true recordings has the advantage of using a wider variety of samples, and thus creates a more natural sounds (sometimes slight variations and flaws can work to your advantage).

You cannot do pitch bending to create legato! That is a synthesized grotesquerie because all components of the sound - fundamental, harmonics, transients, noise, everything - are "bent" at the same time. Utterly unlike legato acoustically or musically.

"QLegato" doesn't use intervals? What the hell does it use? Ironic, especially in light of GS3, with which you can create your own real legato instruments.

" 'QLegato' doesn't use intervals? What the hell does it use?"

Nick Phoenix answers this question... kind of... through the Northern Sounds forum:

"QLegato is not interval sampling as in VSL. It is a method of playing, sampling and editing that has never been done before. There is a different technique employed depending on the instrument. It produces attacks identical to those heard in the middle of a phrase. However there is no bending of the note. It sounds like 95% of the legato notes heard in the middle of a phrase. I sampled octave and other slides to take care of moments where a true legato slide is needed. In practice, it is very effective and works well for slow or fast material. And of course it will radically decrease the time needed to make smooth lines. In truth, it has sonic and practical advantages over interval sampling and it has disadvantages. It is not time dependent, so you won't here sucking or fakeness when you play fast, but you also don't get the automatic sliding of the note. You'll have to use specific articulations for that and they will never be as good as if you sampled all of the intervals. You will really like it. It's not just a gimmick. It also has the advantage of immaculate tuning, which is part of it's charm and a blessing for the editors and programmers."

It's interesting. Three libraries -- VSL, East West, and Garritan Strings -- each have their own approach to solving the riddle of sampled legato.

Garritan didn't solve the riddle. Garritan strings legato is artificial "masking samples" which translates as: they took some of the middle of the same notes and blurred them over the spot where you hear the gap between single note samples. It is artificial legato.

This Nick Phoenix statement is so vague it sounds like hype. The only way to do legato is by sampling the actual authentic transitions between notes - which is awesomely difficult in recording. And that is exactly why these people are not doing it. If they have some "better" way of doing it - fine. But it is a fake. It is not what violins and cellos and other actual acoustic instruments do.

William,

It is NOT the only way to do legato. Nick has another way altogether. Even bending notes IS a way of doing legato. There are other ways besides VSL to attempt legato.

I had to interject because your statements cannot be proven true. Just scientifically. Sure, I understand your personal sentiments though on the subject, and I perhaps agree.

[;)]

Evan Evans

More often than not, I find myself layering the QLSO 18 violin patches with my VSL Pro Edtion. The violin section of VSL is simply too small for anything approaching epic.

Sometimes this ends up giving things a synthy sound, sometimes it works OK. But it isn't ideal. Much better to have it all coming out of the same library.

Herb's suggesting of layering helps articulate sounds, but nothing replaces a larger section in the first place.

I notice this the most as I play in the higher registers.

That's because the tuning is TOO perfect.In the high registers of a real section the tuning can be ,albeit momentarily,quite wild,especially on bigger intervalic leaps.I think that's one secret of authenticity:to somehow "mess up" that perfection. One way would be to duplicate the line,place it lower in the mix and constantly adjust the tuning,exaggerating it at key moments,like those big interval leaps,ie;when you hit the target note there should sometimes be a moment of tuning chaos,before the section settles into the correct pitch.I've found this technique goes a long way towards added realism.

@tom@aerovons.com said:

Herb's suggesting of layering helps articulate sounds, but nothing replaces a larger section in the first place.

Uhm, just HOW huge is the regular 'Hollywood' orchestra when it comes to the amount of players? is it that much bigger? I think the sound is influenced more by how it was recorded. Just look at Epic Horns, they had to experiment with the players' positions a lot (and the mics too probably) to get 'the' sound they wanted.

Hi Herb,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortuneately I can't try these combinations because I only have the Pro Orchestra and not the Performance set.
I guess I'm not so much after the 'epic" sound as a more natural sound. I think Christian puts his finger on it, probably for different reasons than what I will enlarge upon.

@Christian Marcussen said:

Well.. the strings dont have to be epic. Just revisited.

The reason I put a vote in for epic strings is that I feel chances of getting that are larger

Wagner has some pretty 'epic' string lines in the Ring, but there are only 16X1st and 16X2nd violins.

To my ears the "sound" of the violins, especially in the upper registers, can sound rather dull, lifeless and fatiguing at times. I don't know whether this is a problem of distortion artifacts in the post processing particularly noticeable in Violins, or whether the "Silent Stage" has sucked some "life essence" out of the initial recording. Maybe its my ears, but I notice two other major libraries don't suffer this problem. Sure, they sound different, different players and different hall acoustics, but...

Of course others will disagree, and certainly the legato and repetition samples you provide, help add realism in another way.

My opinion of course.

I am hoping that Gigapulse in GS3 or MIR may solve this problem for me by reconstructing that which was not recorded in the first place - ambience and reverb. But I can see a problem here which you or someone else may be able to dispel. First I quote from the MIR definition:

' the "stage" of a concert hall can be subdivided into a number of sectors and from each sector a special impulse can be released in up to seven directions. The impulse response can then be recorded using surround techniques from ideal positions in the hall. After the impulses are processed, the user simply places defined instruments and instrument groups of the Vienna Symphonic Library onto this virtual stage - with the help of an intuitive graphic interface. '

Now I can see how this could work for say two clarinetists sitting side by side, a point source for all intensive purposes, but when it comes to the violins, they're quite disperse and occupy nearly half of the concert stage - definitely not a point source. The lead violinst is front centre stage, one of his or her associates is at the extreme left front stage near the hall wall, yet another half way back near the wall, with others in between going back to centre left stage. Then the 2nd violins are nearly just as disperse going back to almost 2/3rds rear centre stage in front of some of the woodwinds.

As I see it, and hopefully someone will point out the errors of my thoughts, that you will have to divide this space up into at least 8 areas and then assign 8 instances of Gigapulse or MIR? If so, would you then be more accurate by using 8 small chamber sections of violins with different settings for Gigapulse to approximate the hall reverb from the violins? Sorry, I don't have GS3 yet and all this may be redundant, and I'm not a sound engineer.

Apart from the sound of the violins, love the library.

@strawinsky said:

That's because the tuning is TOO perfect.In the high registers of a real section the tuning can be ,albeit momentarily,quite wild,especially on bigger intervalic leaps.

Yes I think that's a very good point actually.

With regard to the title of this thread 'Competition', actually a better name for it would have been 'Niche Markets' in my view. Each sample developer cannot be all things to all men, simply based on costs and man-power alone. You would wind up with massive trade-offs and then the frustration would really set in. The possiblities of how you sample individual sectons of orchestras, for example, I would think are absolutely endless. This business about Epic Strings is a little confusing from where I sit.

Can someone give me an example of what Epic Strings sounds like? What piece of music has Epic String sounds in it? Surely this is a misnoma! Are we talking about 'sound' or 'orchestration'. We covered the so-called Hollywood string sound ages ago and I thought it was generally agreed it was more to do with orchestration. For example, last night I watched Cape Fear with the great Bernard Herrmann's original score. Hardly what you would call Epic Strings, and anyway, the score doesn't work as well in this second version of the film. It almost sounds disjointed because of the way that Scorcese 'cut' and shot his version. It's good, but it's not as good as the original imo, and in this case a different score would have been more appropriate.

However, Robert De Niro had Epic teeth. He spent $5000 getting his teeth 'distressed' for the part and then $20,000 getting them put right again afterwards.

Now that's what I call Epic. [[;)]]

That's what I call toothache.

this is what i call epic strings imo :

http://annecywebtv.free.fr/mus/fditds.mp3

http://annecywebtv.free.fr/anm.mp3

And you can say everything, there is nothing else but violins, cellos/basses, and of course some brass, may be some woodwinds, but i doubt they take a large part in that strings sound
if somebody can achieve a violin sound like that with VSL so, tell us [:)]

Those cues have a nice sound. What are they?

The first one is largely a matter of a lot of divisi, and has a lot of instruments besides strings and some voices in it, so that adds to the fullness. I think you could get this sound with pure orchestration using VSL.

The second one with mainly strings is very full and rich sounding. An excellent mix obviously - clear, but with a huge amount of ambience. A lot of low end adds to the effect, aided by the timpani. This has some contrapuntal lines within which add to the size as well. There is also a shimmering surface of vibrato and portamento that becomes alternately audible over the large section uniformity which makes the sound very expressive. It is beautifully played. I agree this would be very difficult to emulate in samples - with any library!

Though the biggest, "Epic" strings sound I've ever heard is in Tchaikovsky: the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies - the Sixth especially. That is one of the most extreme, huge, and intense sounds of the string ensemble ever scored. Especially if played by an orchestra famous for its lush strings like the Philadelphia. Another famous one - Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, played by a large ensemble as it often is. On those pieces, the size of the strings is achieved not only by scoring techniques or size of ensemble, but also by the simple musical expressiveness - the intensity of the actual musical emotion, which strings can bring out perhaps more than any other instruments.

If we can perform the first cue with VSL this is very good, i should give it a try but since i don't know the whole orchestration... [:)] this will be difficult.

And about the cues there are mainly modern film soundtracks, the first is a theme from one of the 5 star wars actually out ... i think it's from the return of the jedi or may be the empire strike back i can't remember exactly and the second comes from Gladiator soundtrack by hans zimmer.

The first is from Return of the Jedi. Luke fighting Vader ...

I beleive the last one is James Horner or Hans Zimmer