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  • Instruments in Unison

    I was looking through the instruments represented in the Orchestral Cube and noticed you have Solo Brass and then Trumpet, Trombone, and Horn Ensembles.

    As you know, different sounds are achieved with 1 trumpet, 2 trumpets, and 3 trumpets simultaneously, as well as 1 horn vs. 2 horns, vs. 3 horns vs. 4 horns. Are the different combinations of #'s of instruments doubled up taken into account? I hope the only options are not solo vs. 3 or 4 instrument ensemble.

    Of course it's possible to double up instruments in the sequencer, but this doesn't sound the same as actually recording two trumpets playing in unison.

    What I would like to see is actually three or four different recordings of each instrument doing everything so that I can simply have one line in my sequencer playing Trumpet 1, another playing Trumpet 2, and another playing Trumpet 3, and then when two or more of them are playing the same note, it all mixes naturally because the sample sets for the three trumpets are all different. Are you doing something like that?

  • Hi Peter!
    Very well observed... and yes, we agree, 1 or more instruments make a different sound.
    And we are of course also planning to release alternative solo-instruments on the long run, so you´ll have e.g. 2 solo-trumpets (so 2 players, 2 instruments, what really makes the real-life-difference, instead of recording the same instrument with the same player in different recordings, which would ALWAYS phase in the same velocity).

    What we are NOW trying to achieve is to release bundles for the most important instruments and instrument goups with the most important playing techniques. There´s so much more to come, it´s just a question of when (this also depends a lot on the feedback we get...).
    The pro release will include more instruments and more playing-techniques for the instruments that have already been released.

    As you may have noticed reading our instrument list, this is a huge database already, and it won´t get any smaller...

    We´re on it and open to any suggestions.

    All the best, Paul

    Paul Kopf Product Manager VSL
  • That sounds good. I know what you mean about the fact that even the same person playing the note twice will create phasing problems if you try to combine them to produce two sounds in unison.

    If I understand you right, you're saying that this capability will be there but not necessarily in full force for the first release. I do hope you make as much of an effort toward this as possible though soon, because I really think it's one of the keys (and big shortcomings of many libraries) to a realistic sound.

    It would also be nice if your MIDI performance tool automatically recognized when you have multiple channels assigned to the same instrument, and knew to play Trumpet #1, Trumpet #2, etc. I can't wait to see how this MIDI performance tool works. I hope it's really good.

    Also I'm thinking of writing a full fledged Finale plugin to work with Vienna once I get my hands on it. Hopefully I can make something that will play your Finale score flawlessly, legatos and all. I am curious if you'd be interested in buying something like if it works very well to sell with your library, or if you are exclusively doing everything in house.