I am amazed at how we can now, as a single person create a sound that is often very close to the real thing. In fact, to be honest, VSL especially with altiverb, sounds better than a lot of orchestral recordings. Performance is another thing, but VSL is allowing us to replace the orchestra, the engineers, the space used, setting up all the microphones, etc etc and bring it all back to one person. When I say replace, I mean, it might take me two days to put a peice together, but I am doing all those other people jobs - the jobs of all the musicians, and I coud never achieve this sound otherwise, I don't have the resources. So in effect, VSL is not losing jobs for orchestras, because I would never have paid an orchestra anyway - but now I can achieve this amazing sound. It's really incredible to me I wouldn't have dreamed it even a few years ago and yet here it is. When I watch 32 simultaneous stereo instances of EXS 24 jump on the meters in Logic all with pristine VSL samples running, and this amazing full beautiful sound coming out of the monitors I"m just amazed and like "look at this incredible technology what we can do with it now days" and where will it go - I'm just so excited about the possibilities. I can't wait until I can write string lines like John williams did in harry potter (those incredibly fast wonderful string lines). Just amazing. and I"m sure the VSL team will make it possible as they continue to expand on these amazing tools. I for one, as and when the money becomes available, will purchase probably nearly everything they put out especially in the way of traditional orchestra. It's just fantastic. I can't wait for the 24bit versions of everything to be released.
Miklos.