Thanks for your answers everyone. The keyboard I use on my computer is a Keystation 88es. It's been fine so far but don't know if I can take advantage of the Imperial with it.
Your thoughts anyone? Thanks for the help by the way.
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@clemenshaas said:
the ideal master keyboard will most probably be vienna grand, once it´s available...Hi Clemens
Is this just wishful thinking or have I missed an announcement somewhere of VSL's intent to produce a master keyboard?
There would appear to be a lack of choice when it comes to currently available MKs and a tried and tested, dedicated (obviously not exclusive) VSL model would be something I'd look out for. I am very interested in Vienna Imperial but as has been pointed out already, I doubt if my present MK, a Studiologic, would do it justice.
Have been disappointed with the Bosendorfer from a personal point of view. Nothing to do with it's quality, more the results I have been able to get from it, especially in the lower midi velocity regions. Not to mention my own shortcomings as a player. [:$]
A lot of the demos are brilliant, as is Jay's Scriabin for the Imperial, but an upgrade to a better keyboard looks a must.
Colin
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500gb of uncompressed data.
Jeepers.
This is the bit I don't get... 500GB of data compressed to 50GB.
"The Library contains 500 GB of uncompressed sample data in 44.1kHz/24-bit. Due to a specifically developed optimization process, the Vienna Imperial engine decompresses the samples in real-time, so that they take up only 50 GB of space on your hard disk."
I don't know of any compression algorithms that offer 10 to 1 compression without affecting the data and the sound quality. Apple's lossless is 2 to 1 and a typical iTunes download is 10 to 1 but at mp3 (well ac3) quality. But and 10 to 1 and no loss of data or quality how is this so? If it were possible iTunes downloads could be provided at CD quality at 140bps but they can't be.
Julian
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@ct1961 said:
Saying that Julian, with the relatively low cost of a 500GB hard drive these days( got the latest barracuda for under £50) there can't be any good reason for VSL to compromise on quality surely?Low cost for Harddisk space, yes. But the cost for distributing such a large amount of data as DVDs might be substantial. And juggling this amount of DVDs is horrible. One could ship HDDs instead or offer downloads (see above...)
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@ct1961 said:
Saying that Julian, with the relatively low cost of a 500GB hard drive these days( got the latest barracuda for under £50) there can't be any good reason for VSL to compromise on quality surely?
Colin
If you can reduce the data amount stored on a hard disc without affecting the quality there are 2 good points excluding distribution costs.
The data takes up less space, and when streaming hundreds of voices simultaneously the data busses (whether SATA, Firewire, SCSI or USB) have much less chance of being saturated - however there is a trade off in increased CPU demand decoding the audio on the fly.
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless. If they have truly developed a 10-1 algorithm that is lossless then they surely would make more money licensing this to the computer industry than income from the rest of the VSL library put together.
Julian
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@ct1961 said:
Saying that Julian, with the relatively low cost of a 500GB hard drive these days( got the latest barracuda for under £50) there can't be any good reason for VSL to compromise on quality surely?
Colin
If you can reduce the data amount stored on a hard disc without affecting the quality there are 2 good points excluding distribution costs.
The data takes up less space, and when streaming hundreds of voices simultaneously the data busses (whether SATA, Firewire, SCSI or USB) have much less chance of being saturated - however there is a trade off in increased CPU demand decoding the audio on the fly.
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless. If they have truly developed a 10-1 algorithm that is lossless then they surely would make more money licensing this to the computer industry than income from the rest of the VSL library put together.
Julian
Don't understand the technicalities of it Julian, but I can't see VSL throwing an inferior product at us when the whole idea is to produce a market leading brand. Or not? Who's on the night shift at VSL? [:)]
Colin
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@ct1961 said:
Is this just wishful thinking or have I missed an announcement somewhere of VSL's intent to produce a master keyboard?
i think both. as vsl showed a prototype of vienna grand, this could be regarded as kind of an announcement. and i sure do wish it will be released sometime...
i was very looking forward to boesendorfers ceus-master and tried to get a prototype for a film project, but as there were just two prototypes in the whole wide world then, they sent me a ceus grand 280 instead - pity me! 😊 (thanks again, guys)
i guess with yamaha taking over boesendorfer, the ceus-master project was transferred to vsl, as recording of vienna imperial was planned anyway and this would make a good overall product, and probably vsl users are kind of a target group for such a keyboard, maybe more then are "traditional" boesendorfer-customers.
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it depends on what price seems reasonable to you. a good grand piano mechanic is not cheap. i would expect the price for something like a vienna grand around 15k.
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it may be useful to have a look at the yamaha range of products.
vienna grand will be much cooler, but i´m quite satisfied with my yus-5. good masterkeyboard, and a really really good piano as well.
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@clemenshaas said:
it depends on what price seems reasonable to you. a good grand piano mechanic is not cheap. i would expect the price for something like a vienna grand around 15k.
Sounds reasonable to me. [:O]
I mean, we are talking 15k if the Italians opt out of the Euro and reintroduce the lire. Yes?
Colin
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@julian said:
However I'm still interested in the 10-1 VSL compression claim - no one else, to my knowledge, has got beyond 2-1 without affecting data integrity i.e. not lossless.I suspect that the high compression ratio is due to the (highly repetitive) nature of the data being compressed.
Consider how (very) low quality sample libraries work (or the early ones) - a library might just have one sample for a pitch sampled at velocity 50. To play the same note at velocity 100 it would just double the amplitude of that sample, which although far from perfect is a reasonable approximation. So for compression purposes, if you do have a sample for velocity 100 what you could store rather than that sample itself is the difference between the velocity 100 sample and the velocity 50 sample with the amplitude doubled.
Now whilst that may not achieve a 10-1 compression, consider the difference between a velocity 51 sample and the velocity 50 sample (with an appropriate increase in amplitude) - the differences here would be pretty small (possibly larger than 10-1).
Similar compression can be achieved for pitch - instead of storing the entire c2 sample, store the difference between the c2 sample and the c1 sample with the speed doubled.
Now, I don't know if the VSL compression techniques are based on the above - but the above reasoning is enough to persuade me that it is plausible that there are characteristics in the sort of data needed in a sample library which can be taken advantage of to achieve higher compression ratios than are normally possible in generic more data sets.
Matthew
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@clemenshaas said:
it may be useful to have a look at the yamaha range of products.
vienna grand will be much cooler, but i´m quite satisfied with my yus-5. good masterkeyboard, and a really really good piano as well.
Cheers. Will check it out tomorrow and hopefully won't require any further medical assistance as a result of your last post.
Colin
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@ct1961 said:
Is this just wishful thinking or have I missed an announcement somewhere of VSL's intent to produce a master keyboard?
I know they had something at NAMM but I was under the impression that was a one-off proof of concept intended more as a publicity aid? The various reports from NAMM decribe it as "Vienna Orchestral Piano prototype, Vienna's first hardware concept study"
If VSL do produce a midi keyboard, I hope it is a little more like a conventional midi keyboard in size and shape, and less like a 7 foot grand piano in size and shape, since I don't have room for the latter!
Matthew