Something with Synchron player is pretty nice. The concept is brilliant, the design is ok. But from a musical performance point of view I have to admit complaints are more than justified.
The idea of managing slurs articulations and dynamics with overlappings, XF and scripts (then with manipulation of a limited set of samples) was obviously dictated by the need of saving resources to be dedicated to multi MIC management, and was also designed to link effects to different type of sustain (e.g. slur to different vibratos, marcatos, fp etc.). Ok but...
Now the problem is that a WET set of samples, will open problems with release and reverb levels, and despite the hard work of developers, still the player is doing very unpleasent things, I'm starting to doubt will ever be possible to fix:
- the "legato blur" controller is increasing the "wet" feeling to unacceptable level, with strange resonances and long tails. In my very humble opinion it's not adding realism to the legato, the opposite it makes it sound more like a scripted legato.
- the legato-slur some people is criticizing so much, is in my opinion sounding a bit weird because now the slurs are stand alone samples linking with scripts to pretty alien sustains samples, and probably this is the source of some unnatural effect. It was definitely "reinvented". Maybe not yet in a superior or better way, unfortunately.
- the algorithmic reverb should be turned off to get the "real" sound, but if you do it, the "naked" connections of different samples are exposed and not always sounding well enough... (that's what VSL calls "sweetening" the Synchron Stage sound...)
- the Cellos have some pretty strange resonances (sound like open strings ringing forever despite note-off, but in theory, with reverb turned off and release samples to zero, they should disappear... instead they sound even more evident and kind of synth wave... not sure what they are and where they come from, but they are definitely disturbing).
Of course I still hope the VSL software developers (I consider them simply the best team in the industry, and pieces of software like MIR and VE are proving it) will improve the product step by step and maybe future versions will be really better. Now the product in my very humble opinion doesn't match all the promises, and of course doesn't match expectation of several faithful users. Crossing fingers and looking forward to next bug fixes...
