Hello VSL-Team and hello everyone else,

Since today, there are several midi-recordings of famous classical or film music done with the vsl and shown as official demos here. I really like to know, what intention lies behind that.

I mean, they are worlds away from original recordings in terms of musical liveliness, sound quality and the overall atmosphere. The usual listener will not enjoy them - he will allways hear, that there is something wrong with it, especially if he knows the live recordings. For me, its seems to be a kind of self-adulation, but in fact, it casts no good light on the library and software of the vsl to me, also compared to results that can be achieved with other film- and mockup-oriented virtual instruments of the market. I own several instruments of vsl myself and also have vep and vienna suite - and i'm quite happy with them in the musical scope they can be used. But to produce existing scores of orchestral music to demo them is the wrong way in my opinion.

VSL has its strengths in the solo instruments and their versatility, caused by the neutral and dry recording. They will never blend enough together to form a believable orchestra, whatever MIR or other technologies will be achieved. So what I want to suggest: Present the instruments as they are recorded: prisitine and exposed. Take a look at the demos of the download instruments and you hear the problem. Apart from the unified demos of Mr. Kaufmann (which are not very useful, cause the music is not adjusted to the character of the specific instrument) most of the demos sound very processed and synthetic and its impossible for me to evaluate the sound of the respective instrument, that is to be shown. To show the possibilities of the VSL sounding together in the MIR or every other environment, please do music, where the instruments can show their strengths and not there weaknesses. Here I must remember to the very first demos of VSL in the beginning of the library (it seems only the intro of the Blue Danube is still online these days). Even today they come across much more comfortable than many of the newer demos.

So finally I straggle a bit from my opening statements, but what of it... Please take this post as constructive criticism by a professional user that knows and uses VSL and many other available virtual instruments.

Best regards

- Sascha

For me the re-creation of existing music is the most important part of VSLs demos. it is the only way that a comparison with a real orchestra can be done. The last thing I want to hear is another load of cr*p written by some media composer with little or no talent, consisting of low booms and taikos. [:P]

As as as I'm concerned demos should not only show what the product can do, but also hint towards the things that it finds difficult. I have no interest in listening to them as music (sorry folks). They are demos. I also have no interest in listening to demos form other companies as music, because by and large it isn't music; just derivative cliché ridden noise.

I understand your point of view, but I have yet to hear products from any other company that can come close to what I do with VSL (mostly).

DG

@info_27018 said:

 I really like to know, what intention lies behind that.

I mean, they are worlds away from original recordings in terms of musical liveliness, sound quality and the overall atmosphere. The usual listener will not enjoy them - he will allways hear, that there is something wrong with it, especially if he knows the live recordings.

Well because eventually, the listener will not be able to tell the difference between a VSL demo and a real orchestra.

Surely the ultimate goal of VSL (and other virtual instrument libraries) will be to be able to create a virtual orchestra indistinguishable from a real orchestra.

When that will happen I wouldn't like to guess (and also not the point of this thread), but by producing a demo of such a well known piece (possibly the most well know orchestral piece on the planet?!) it gives a great indication of where we are at in terms of that goal.

EVERYONE knows the Star Wars piece from start to finish, but not everyone has heard say, a solo English Horn played in a concert hall in Germany. So how would we be able to judge how good the VSL sound was by just hearing individual instruments?

However, I do take Sascha's point in that perhaps, (along with the fabulous demos that Herb and the team painstakinly create, and I am very grateful for these!) we could also have along side these the chance to hear 'dry' recordings of solo instruments and chamber pieces, and then that same piece with say, Vienna Suite effects, and then the same piece with MIR, and so on.Perhaps? I'm not sure - I'm just thinking off the top of my head...

This way we would have a basis to compare, in the same way we can compare by hearing the Star Wars theme.

Anyway that's enough from me!!

May The Forc...

...oh I can't! [H]

knievel

@Another User said:

As as as I'm concerned demos should not only show what the product can do, but also hint towards the things that it finds difficult. I have no interest in listening to them as music (sorry folks). They are demos. 

Again, a very perspicacious comment.

Jay Bacal is the master, but I don't think it is the familiarity of the work in question that impinges on this demo - the Mussorgsky, the Stravinsky, the Ravel, and the Beethoven in my opinion were more successful approximations/renditions. In fact, the brass is rather impressive in this; in my opinion the strings are not all that way up to J.B.'s usual standards and, in my view again, the orchestra needed appreciably more breathing space for the timbres to fully unfurl; a little more reverb perhaps?

I bought the Vienna Instruments Symphonic Cube because of Jay Bacal's demos.

I think it was a very courageous move on the part of VSL to record an interpretation (demo) of a well known popular symphonic film score such as Star Wars.  I thought the same thing about the E.T. MIR demo too.  What makes a well known symphonic film score a much more difficult challenge for a sample library is the fact that most film scores are recorded only once, usually the master used for the film, and our ears become accostumed to that one recording.  A true fan of Classical music, on the other hand, probably has various recordings of the same classic pieces.  For example, I have eleven different interpretations of Beethovan's 5th Piano Concerto.  So I think our ears are a little more forgiving when it comes to Classical interpretations using samples. 

I agree with DG and Errikos.  If you don't have some kind of standard to make a comparison then companies will take the easy way out.  They'll demo some amorphous atonal garbbage drowning in reverb that neither impress anybody or inspire anybody to try and recreate.  I bet there are some people out there who listened to this fine rendition and said to themself, "Self, I could do better than that" (not me of course). 

@info_27018 said:

VSL has its strengths in the solo instruments and their versatility, caused by the neutral and dry recording. They will never blend enough together to form a believable orchestra, whatever MIR or other technologies will be achieved. So what I want to suggest: Present the instruments as they are recorded: prisitine and exposed.  

OK I see your point but then you're not demonstrating the instrument to it's full potential.  Remember, VSL isn't just marketing to full time working orchestral composers they are selling to Pop music producers, Jazz artists, recording engineers, hobbyists and the like.  They have to demo the instrument to it's full potential.

Hi there.

Again a great piece of work for for a great masterpiece;

congratulations!!!, that's amazing O°

I tried to go for it few month ago and I'm trying to finish (lack of knowledge I must confess haha!!! the Exact Opposite of Jay ;o)

Anyway I Used altiverb for the mix but I chose to head in a more "studio like" direction.

But I think there is still much work to do.

Here is the version of Star Wars Suite :

http://dl.free.fr/lB8ZeKxfP

Let me know what I should do to improve it ;o)

Regards,

Nicos

There are two kind of demos:

-Those that use the sampled orchestra as an instruments with its own strength and weaknesses. All the sample companies provide them. The music is just written in such a way to bypass any shortcomings and sound always "good".

-Those that emulate music composed for real orchestra. That is a many times more unforgiving task. More so, in the case of this star wars arrangement, were the score is stuffed with virtuosic passages all over the place. No existing sample-sets can achieve this totally believable.

And no sample company -except Vsl- is daring to present them even.

So, dont take this too serious. Jay Bacal has done soo many mind bogling demos. This one might not be the best one from him.

On the other hand, I am pretty certain that this version can be improved upon in many small details with the existing samples.

Would be nice to get the midi file of it.

@veetguitar said:

There are two kind of demos:

-Those that use the sampled orchestra as an instruments with its own strength and weaknesses. All the sample companies provide them. The music is just written in such a way to bypass any shortcomings and sound always "good".

-Those that emulate music composed for real orchestra. That is a many times more unforgiving task. More so, in the case of this star wars arrangement, were the score is stuffed with virtuosic passages all over the place. No existing sample-sets can achieve this totally believable.

And no sample company -except Vsl- is daring to present them even.

I couldn't agree more! But I am not so confident, that a majority of users are able to see that, so I think this demo is a bad choice for marketing vsl.

Actually, there has been a mock-up of the starwars theme (not as long as this one) posted by a user here in the VSL forum, that was much better soundwise, when I remember correctly. I wonder, if he used VSL samples alone!?

On the bright side, this one reminds us of some weak spots of the VSL library that need fixing: mostly mutes, I would say. Also, it becomes more and more obvious to me there is no better way to achieve great sounding mock-ups, than combining different libraries with VSL. Especially the string runs do not sound good to me.

Hello all

2 points from my side as well.

1. Maybe we are not used to listen to this fames piece as we got it here - just all instruments in a studio.

The film track is mixed more conventional: spectacular, sensational, close, far, dry, wet - a dramatic mix.

In 2007 I tried to copy (for learning "how to mix big orchestras") the sound of this piece as well BK_Starwars_Snippets.mp3.

It's not a really demo. Several instruments should be improved, but it shall show the other way of mixing.

So I think we speak more about the unconventional mix of this new VSL-demo-piece here as we believe.

2. More than one time I have thrown away a piece with such a lot of instruments... The reason is probably that we normally treat each instrument for itself.

And even if we did our job as good as possible for each of them the final result can be without the certain spirit we hoped to get.

Unfortunately we often don't know why. We worked very hard for hours - nevertheless, the result isn't that good.

The problem of us (sample-musicians) is, that we can't play the orchestra as one instrument in the mean time.

Maybe this happened with Jay's piece here a bit too - even if he used MIR, VIPro, the Humanizer, the new Brass Library, ...

The war hasn't found its way into this piece...

It was mentioned above, that VSL sounds good with solo instruments. Maybe it is the circumstance that we can have more influence on one

ore two instruments to create the musically spirit we always are looking for.

Beat

.

.