Wow, I mean, wow. This thread is... wow! I was reading it and laughing out loud, quite literaly. But then I noticed, that there is nothing funny in here:

- few talented / not talented people with valid / not valid opinions about flawed product,

- few people with valid / not valid opinions about opinions of the first few,

- one person who thinks everything is not valid until comes from that person.

Reading this thread is like trip to mental hospital. Seriously fucked up. I see no reason why anyone from VSL should join this discussion. And apparently every Synchron Strings thread turns into this kind of cock fight. 

And on the other side VSL is patching high end, 250GB library with bandaid called Synchronized Strings. For me this is basically saying - well, our humongous library is lacking (thin sound that needs to be layered, no divisi, no portamento, fewer velocity layers of chamber strings are as good as 8 of SyS).

I don't know how SyS sales, but looking it online brings only negativity. If it doesn't hurt sales cool for VSL (similarweb shows that traffic volumes are actually awesome). They are the winners here. If it does hurt sales - guys, start talking. Because if I were potential cumstomer and ended up here. Oooh boy.

Piotr, you're probably right ... I would encourage VSL to delete this whole mess we all happily engaged in.

It actually has nothing to do with music anymore. 

On a totally irrelevant note I wanted to say hello to Simon Raven and how much I have liked his music when I had the chance to hear it various places on the internet.  Really great demos but also memorable purely as music. 

O.K., sorry to interrupt the hostility and insults.  I'll get out of the way.   

@William said:

It actually has nothing to do with music anymore. 

On a totally irrelevant note I wanted to say hello to Simon Raven and how much I have liked his music when I had the chance to hear it various places on the internet.  Really great demos but also memorable purely as music. 

 

O.K., sorry to interrupt the hostility and insults.  I'll get out of the way.   

Thanks, William 😊

@William said:

On a totally irrelevant note I wanted to say hello to Simon Raven and how much I have liked his music when I had the chance to hear it various places on the internet.  Really great demos but also memorable purely as music. 

 

+1

I first heard Simon Ravn's music around 2002, when I was just learning about sampling technology, and was quite in awe of the realism and quality of his music productions. It was a surprise seeing his name here I went back and listened to some of his recent music....Here are a couple of nice pieces:

http://simonravn.com/media/Milo-TheInventor.mp3

http://simonravn.com/media/BB-HomeAlone.mp3

Sorry, completely off topic.

Ok and now we finally all know "how to improve Synchron Strings":

1) bashing VSL for their Product

2) bashing those who dont want to bash the product but prefer to argue,

3) bashsing the whole thread

And everybody feels good than .....until he wake up again and everything stars again

Great 'discussion' and really great very "professional" intelligent and open minded community !👍 Wow!

Lets continue like that tomorrow ... ad infinitum😛

@fahl5 said:

Ok and now we finally all know "how to improve Synchron Strings":

1) bashing VSL for their Product

A side from all the ego trip posts, not a single person in this thread has bashed VSL products, you have a wild imagination fahl5, everybody here have all brought constructive criticism and appreciation to synchron because they believe in VSL and their dedication to improving their products, and I do mean everybody. People like William has been great supporters from day 1 and is still the greatest supporter of VSL, and many others as well in this thread, so cool it down with your preaching. 

Conctructive criticism does not mean bashing. Lean the difference.

Hi GuyI am impressed about your ability to really use nearly every posting you contribute here for another aggression,. or did you seriously believe that insinuateing "egotrips" of other members is what makes you to the nice guy??? Sorry its more or less another prove for the opposite.But let us stay with your courageous statement about the constructicve character of everybodies contribution:

@Veola said:

I just cannot understand how people can say there is nothing wrong with this lib? Don't you compare to other libs or listen to recordings? Don't you want something new, improved or groundbreaking from a new lib?

Is that how sounds everybodies "constructive criticism and appreciation to synchron because they believe in VSL "

If you really dont expect anything more than that from a constructive discussion, OK than now I have "learned" what kind of discussion you think are "constructiv"

To be honest when it comes to you I did not found neither any attempt to describe any possible problem of Synchron Strings nor any attempt to discuss any arguments brought by others about any problems or possible improvements.

Just take a look on what many of your postings here has as their very personal major topic that you criticise and than ask yourself what kind of "trip" would you call that.

Wow, Steffen, you really don't have any worklife do you. Way too much time on your hands obviously. You really should get a job. Or maybe go back and stare proudly at your degree diploma and render some more useless classical pieces. Your presence here is just getting more and more embarrassing.

What VSL should do to "improve" SyS is frankly re-record 80% of it. But they could do it at 40-50% of the time spent on the original and get a much better library.

They should:

- Record fewer dynamic layers. Half as many would do, the proof is in SyS that all those layers don't pay off.

- Record fewer different vibrato types. Non-vib and "espressivo" would be enough. Nobody likes the standard vibrato in the library it seems. Also, you don't need to do as many non-vib dynamic layers as you do vibrato. 3 nonvib, 4-5 vib would be plenty enough.

- Record less precise staccatos. And do both staccatos and spiccatos for better flexibility.

- Rehearse a little music with the musicians before recording the samples. And tell them to carry that into the samples as good as they can and not care about being too perfect, but more being musical. A little coaching should help on the sound, get more life into the samples.

- Then there is the sound. That is a tough one. The room sounds like it does I guess. But there are quite some ugly resonance going on. Don't remember exactly where but typically you get problems in the lower mid-mid end from 500-1200hz. Violins generally have some harsh stuff going on at 1500+3500hz but that's managable with EQ so I wouldn't focus on that. I would see if the room needs treatment to handle the lower frequencies.

That could be a "Synchron Strings - reworked". Still a huge undertaking but would take less than 50% of the time of the original library to do. That is the only way SyS will have a chance to become a great string library; doing re-recordings. Sorry, no way around it. And that probably won't happen - not for the next 5 years+. They might decide to go back and record another string library, but I am sure they won't spend so many resources to re-do and fix SyS 1.

@Simon Ravn said:

Wow, Steffen, you really don't have any worklife do you. Way too much time on your hands obviously. You really should get a job. Or maybe go back and stare proudly at your degree diploma and render some more useless classical pieces. Your presence here is just getting more and more embarrassing.

Bravo another splendid example of "constructive criticism and appreciation to synchron" this is so full of topic related pure facts and so free of ugly and aggressive personal insinuations, that I understand, that you are the one who really can help to make this world a better place. Wow!

@Simon Ravn said:

Wow, Steffen, you really don't have any worklife do you. Way too much time on your hands obviously. You really should get a job. Or maybe go back and stare proudly at your degree diploma and render some more useless classical pieces. Your presence here is just getting more and more embarrassing.

Bravo another splendid example of "constructive criticism and appreciation to synchron" this is so full of topic related pure facts and so free of ugly and aggressive personal insinuations, that I understand, that you are the one who really can help to make this world a better place. Wow!

I actually added to the post just after posting. But of course you are hovering over this like a hawk. But there you have it: My constructive criticism.

Ok I understand top summarize your constructive suggestions "how to improve Synchroin Strings" you say

@Another User said:

I actually added to the post just after posting. But of course you are hovering over this like a hawk. But there you have it: My constructive criticism.

Still one question: You kept your completely offtopic and aggressive personal insinuation against me for exactly what constructive reason?

fahl5, it's not our fault that you're obviously incapable of reading comprehension, amongst other things. Your whole act here is incredibly cheap. All of the posts you stupidly picked apart and selectively quoted actually contained pointed and concrete criticism.

You're picking quotes out of context on purpose. Your mindset is that of an 14 year old child arguing on the internet. You're the only thing that's wrong in this thread. You're the only person who keeps coming back and pollutes the forum with more useless "contributions", and this whole thread would be 300% more constructive without your pathetic meddling and confrontational nonsense.

None of us here has any interest in arguing with each other. Our opinions on specific aspects of the library might differ, but none of that would stand in the way of a civil discussion. Without your transgressions, no one would be arguing here and you wouldn't see a single out-of-line post. Actually everyone's totally fed up with the bickering, but you wont stop, because William is 100% right - you're the type of sociopath that enjoys this kind of stuff.

You're ruining it for everybody, and you're making this forum an ugly place. This observation alone probably makes you glee deep down inside. You should be banned. Period. The only reason it's not happening is because you probably bought every VSL product under the sun. And it just shows how much the ignore function is needed.

Ok and this is how it sounds when Jimmy Hellfire tries to contribute to the discussion "how to improve Synchron Strings" in a topic related and constructive way:

@JimmyHellfire said:

fahl5, it's not our fault that you're obviously incapable of reading comprehension, amongst other things. Your whole act here is incredibly cheap. All of the posts you stupidly picked apart and selectively quoted actually contained pointed and concrete criticism.

You're picking quotes out of context on purpose. Your mindset is that of an 14 year old child arguing on the internet. You're the only thing that's wrong in this thread. You're the only person who keeps coming back and pollutes the forum with more useless "contributions", and this whole thread would be 300% more constructive without your pathetic meddling and confrontational nonsense.

None of us here has any interest in arguing with each other. Our opinions on specific aspects of the library might differ, but none of that would stand in the way of a civil discussion. Without your transgressions, no one would be arguing here and you wouldn't see a single out-of-line post. Actually everyone's totally fed up with the bickering, but you wont stop, because William is 100% right - you're the type of sociopath that enjoys this kind of stuff.

You're ruining it for everybody, and you're making this forum an ugly place. This observation alone probably makes you glee deep down inside. You should be banned. Period. The only reason it's not happening is because you probably bought every VSL product under the sun. And it just shows how much the ignore function is needed.

Btw.: nice to hear that William and you are good friends again we all remember well how wonderful constructive your discussions with William always have been.

@kamil said:

Ffahl5 ... Ik denk niet dat er reden is voor dit debat.

@fahl5 said:

Still one question: You kept your completely offtopic and aggressive personal insinuation against me for exactly what constructive reason?

I am not gonna feed you - call your mum.

A last comment on-topic, before taking a pause:

- I think VSL product management and development team is a very strong and educated one. I suppose they are perfectly aware of the limits and unexpected issues of the project. Anyway it's a pity we got the technical debate polluted by human factors, because our feedback should be very useful: every developer is abitually self-indulgent with his own baby, and even when the  issues are technically well known, still the customers feedback helps to prioritize and sort the space for improvement.

- the overal sound quality of the result, has unfortunately distracted the attention from the other interesting components of the Sinchron Strings project: the player and the patch structure. I think the idea and the software are powerful and good (e.g. the tree structure and the automatic coherence of articulations grouped by "playing style" etc.).

- I think some of the recording concepts were also brilliant and were providing immediate benefit: the dynamic uniformity and the rich variations managed by scripts. I suspect, as other did, that unfortunately some of the "news" like the auto-gain control or the wet-samples processing were creating artifacts the sound engineers and developers were not expecting and are not yet mastering. It's definitely the reason for the long development time and the delays. I still remember it was the very same with Dimension strings, and not all the issues with the samples of Dimension were finally fixed, but at least the VI Pro player and the final patches of Dimension strings arrived to the standard we all know, respect and love.

- Last but not least, I suppose, from some feedback of developers, and from the official communication of VSL marketing, that the hidden problem was and probably still is also human resources constrain: even working day and night, the amount of work the VSL team was facing with new projects and productions seems to be overwelming. I hope time will help to settle down the huge amount of news and refine the software and samples as they always did in the past.

Crossing fingers and looking forward.

... and fahl5, stop sending me PMs. Not gonna read or respond to them.

@Simon Ravn said:

... and fahl5, stop sending me PMs. Not gonna read or respond to them.

To be serious ... let's keep it "subject-based".