Im am deeply impressed by VSL Solo Strings. They are nearly perfect musical. Is a upgrade to VI Pro really worth it though? I know that there is a bunch of great features but does the vibrato speed manipulation and other factors sound realistic enough or should I just stick to VI free version?
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My compliments to the developers of VSL
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There are a few posts like this out there already, so your answer might already be in one of them. Personally though I have yet to hear of a feature in VI Pro that I just need to have. So many people say great things about it so I'm really interested in it, but every time I look at the feature list, I think...do I need that?
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Hi,
This sounds like you´ll like the free demo version of VI PRO, available on the product page (click "try").
These demo licenses work for 30 days/30 starts.
Once the 30 starts are used up, you can recharge them as often as you like by clicking "Maintenance" in the eLicenser Control Center (within 30 days).
Here are the video tutorials for VI PRO (quite some).
The main features people seem to like:
- polyphonic legato
- SSD ready (up to 10 times faster loading speed)
- HUMANIZE (play around with this cool feature, it makes such a difference!!)
- up to 16 slots to stack instruments
- 5 Inspiration Presets for the Special Editions that show how you could create very useful multi-layered instruments
There is indeed much much more, but these are the famous no-brainers [;)]Make sure you applied the Library Updates for DVD products and for Single Instruments to take advantage of all the features.
Best,
Paul
Paul Kopf Head of Product Marketing, Social Media and Support -
This was a no brainer for me. I personally couldn't live without ALL of the features mentioned. I recently picked up an Angelbird SSD2GO twin (purple/silver) with my personalized Blogospherianman Logo Lazered on the top purple drive. OMG Fast!!! This has allowed me to load 10x faster and use a 1/10 of the RAM by lowering the Pre cache. A Must have for Dimension Strings! Wouldn't be possible without VI Pro and Angelbird. ;)
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Personally, I would not want to be without VI Pro. Humanize can be a real help, but the feature I have found most valuable is the stretching feature. That feature allows you to create all kinds of variations for the existing articulations. It has been of particular value for me with solo strings, allowing the following: different types of legatos, both slower and faster; different portamento speeds, again both slower and faster; longer and shorter detaches, longer sustained notes (careful bow use can allow for longer sustains), and shorter staccatos. Being able to create all those variations gets one much closer to what a good player can actually do with a bow.
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Doesnt stretching lower the quality of the sample? Like makes it artificial? Im testing VI Pro.
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Generally, stretching probably works better with non-vibrato articulations. It also very much depends on on the given articulation. For some articulations, it doesn't seem to work that well, while working fine with others. But, again, when considering a real player, a given bowstroke might be used only once in a phrase, and that one usage can very much contrinbute to the musicality of the phrase without drawing undue attention. As has often been said, to emulate realism, frequent changes in articulations are necessary.
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I don't notice any degradation or anything artificial. This one feature totally brought me back to using VSL again over many of the newer libraries I'd been working with.
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"Doesnt stretching lower the quality of the sample?"
Two points.
Back in the day when RAM was so precious, sample libraries would take a small number of samples and stretch them over wide spaces of the keyboard. It was better than nothing, but yes, it was artificial.
VSL on the other hand samples every note, often many times over. So stretching is much less noticeable.
Secondly, you can only stretch notes from 50% to 150%. (And you can also chose how much of the sample to stretch -- often just the attack.)
As noted, non-vibrato sounds stretch better. But even with a dynamic sample with vibrato, you can shave or add a half-second to the duration with no loss of realism. And mid-length attacks stretch very well, filling in gaps between detache and staccato, for example.
In theory (I've never tried this, but) you could stagger the attacks (swoops) of a legato over eight Dimension violins and play them together for what could be very fluid joining of notes, and that variegation could be multiplied with the Humanize feature per performance.
So stretching in VSL's universe is more about making useful, more believable sounds, not wringing the washcloth of limited RAM.
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All good points, and just to clarify, VSL is not stretching the pitch of notes up or down the keyboard, it's just adjusting note duration.
