Opinions please: Is Vienna Suite also a good choice for non-symphony, pop, rock, CCM projects?

[MIDIPanic]

Greetings. I am new user. So far I have purchased the Vienna Ensemble Pro to allow me to use my 64 bit plug-ins in Ableton Live for live performances and creating backing tracks. VE Pro is Amazing! I’m thoroughly impressed with the all of the Vienna products. Question: My projects mostly involve pop, rock, contemporary Christian-type productions rather than strings or other symphony elements. I am looking to add some premium effects plug-ins. Do you think that the Vienna Suite would be useful in my situation? Or is the Vienna Suite specifically tuned for symphony productions only? Should I instead look for more generic effects plug-ins like those marketed by Lexicon or Waves? Thanks for any suggestions.

[Dietz]

Welcome MIDIPanic (... nice user name, BTW! ;-) ...),

Thanks for your friendly words, and thanks for your interest in Vienna Suite! Always appreciated.

Obviously I'm not an unbiased source, but please allow for a few words of explanation: Vienna Suite contains a bundle of innovative hi-end audio processors, created from ground up, aiming for pristine audio quality, efficiency and ease of use. DSP-wise, there is nothing in them that wouldn't be useful in all kinds of audio production, be it orchestral music, pop, rock, hiphop, electronic, acoustic jazz ... as well as spoken words, post production, sound design, audio restauration .... you name it. (A personal sidenote: Apart from my involvement with VSL I'm a freelancing audio and mixing engineer with credits on several hundred albums. Since the first release of Vienna Suite two years ago I've used these plugins in more or less all productions I worked on, in most - if not all - of the aforementioned categories ;-) ...)

The only part of the bundle that leans towards orchestral music is most likely the huge amount (500+) of presets my colleagues and I have created for it. Of course we have tried to offer as many options as possible especially for Vienna Instruments-users, that's why we have concentrated on orchestral instruments in most cases, but these presets won't hinder you from finding perfect settings for all other signal-sources, too.

... my personal favorites are VS Master EQ, Hybrid Reverb, Multiband Limiter, and of course the much acclaimed VS Compressor (which is able to produce subtle  volume levelling as well as truly _mighty_ sounds, especially in "FAT" mode. 8-))

Kind regards,

[MIDIPanic]

Thank you for the quick and thoroughly informative reply! Thank you for confirming that I’m not crazy in thinking that the Vienna Suite can be my “go-to” resource for all of my projects, regardless of genre. I know that Vienna Instruments focuses primarily on the symphony community. But I am so glad I “discovered” how the tools you have created for the symphony community add a quality and polish to my non-symphony projects that take them to the next level. And beyond that, it is a joy to work with such beautifully crafted interfaces that are more intuitive and - because of the graphs and animations – are much easier to use and more pleasing on the eye than the largely built-in effects that I have been using (such as those in Komplete, Reason, Ableton and Omnisphere). Hopefully more folks like me will “discover” the quality and power of tools like VE Pro and Vienna Suite for use in their non-symphony productions. I am definitely trying to spread the word among my colleagues who may not have tried your products. If it doesn’t detract from the company’s focus, it might be nice to include an informational video devoted to showing the Vienna Suite and VE Pro used in the other settings you mentioned (such as pop, rock, hiphop, electronic, etc.) to give potential users a vision of how these magnificent tools are also applicable in non-symphony applications.

[Dietz]

Thanks!

BTW - please visit your VSL-forum's Profile to change the "Content Editor" to "enhanced" in the Community-tab - otherwise your messages will lose their formatting when posted (... one of the peculiarities of our legendary forum engine [8-)] )

Kind regards,

[civilization 3]

I make music that isn't symphonic in any strict sense, but orchestrate often in a more jazz setting and use textures from hard rock often, and some of it is based in what people would like to call 'soundscape' territory, and I find that Vienna Suite is fantastic, and obviates a lot of the tools out there for a lot of mixing tasks, for me anyway. The compressors and EQs are 'transparent' and not what some would choose for warming up the digital kind of coldness, BUT they feature a 'Fat' setting, which sort of emulates tape saturation. The exciter is a very precise way of adding distortion to sources as well.

I couldn't recommend it more highly, regardless of genre.

In terms of bang for the buck, Waves isn't the best and IMO VS beats it badly. Nowadays I rarely reach for other processing.

[MIDIPanic]

@Dietz said:

BTW - please visit your VSL-forum's Profile to change the "Content Editor" to "enhanced" in the Community-tab - otherwise your messages will lose their formatting when posted (... one of the peculiarities of our legendary forum engine

Yes! Thanks for the suggestion! Alas, I did try both the "Standard" and "Enhanced" editor settings but they are not compatible with my browser and/or OS (Win 7 64 bit; Internet Explorer 32 bit). The cursor does not appear in the text box using the mouse, and even when I tab into the editor box, my text does not appear in the preview (plus keyboard keys like “Home” and “End” don’t work in the editor). For now I will try to at least remember to manually enter the HTML “p” (paragraph) tags for the convenience of other forum readers (like I did to separate the paragraph below).As you probably already know, the other problem is incompatibilities of the website with mobile devices. I cannot scroll down in the forum on my iPhone, so I am unable to read new posts when I am away from my desktop computer. Not a big problem for me. But you might want to have your web developers test the site using the newer desktop and mobile device browsers. But it is a common problem. I have even more problems accessing some areas of the Native Instruments website from my phone because of their heavy use of Flash.

[MIDIPanic]

@civilization 3 said:

I make music that isn't symphonic in any strict sense, but orchestrate often in a more jazz setting and use textures from hard rock often, and some of it is based in what people would like to call 'soundscape' territory, and I find that Vienna Suite is fantastic, and obviates a lot of the tools out there for a lot of mixing tasks, for me anyway. The compressors and EQs are 'transparent' and not what some would choose for warming up the digital kind of coldness, BUT they feature a 'Fat' setting, which sort of emulates tape saturation. The exciter is a very precise way of adding distortion to sources as well.

I couldn't recommend it more highly, regardless of genre.

In terms of bang for the buck, Waves isn't the best and IMO VS beats it badly. Nowadays I rarely reach for other processing.

Thanks ‘civilization 3’! It is reassuring to have the encouragement of yet another user whose needs are similar to mine. And I agree that the price of the Suite is “sweet” compared with the other options for putting together a top-shelf set of effects and analysis tools, regardless of genre.

[Dietz]

@MIDIPanic said:

[...]

As you probably already know, the other problem is incompatibilities of the website with mobile devices. I cannot scroll down in the forum on my iPhone, so I am unable to read new posts when I am away from my desktop computer. Not a big problem for me. But you might want to have your web developers test the site using the newer desktop and mobile device browsers. [...]

I'm not an iPhone user, but I seem to remember that one can scroll the forum with two fingers. Another solution would be Opera Mini as an alternative browser (... the layout gets a bit scrambled, but everything is accessible).

HTH,

[MIDIPanic]

@Dietz said:

… one can scroll the forum with two fingers…

HTH,

HTH – Absolutely!! I'm a HOPE-less idiot and need all the HELP I can get! 😉 I didn't even think to use the two-finger gestures in frames. Duh! Works great!

BTW. Just ordered Vienna Suite from Guitar Center here in the US (they have a $100.00 off, 30 Year Anniversary promotion this week). Can’t wait!