I'm also in full agreement on the flexibility, versatility, and endless possibilities the dry samples/Mir provide to sculpt and shape the sound you need for a wide variety of genres/styles.  I do have the Synchron Strings, but as of yet, have not found them to be more useable than the dry libraries.  There are idiosyncrasies, owing primarily to the way the extra velocity layers seem to affect the ease/playability of the Synchron Strings, that in no way improve my workflow, but rather hinder it.  My interest in the Synchron Strings when they were first advertised, was the ease of use; my hope was that they would enable me to realise my musical ideas more quickly.  Instead, I find that they have the opposite effect, requiring significantly more time to shape/sculpt a convincing performance, and one that still does not give me the same aesthetic satisfaction that VSL's original libraries do.  

In my opinion, VSL could borrow from the slogan of a breakfast cereal:  Kelogg's Corn Flakes was marketed as "the original and best" despite dozens of flashy/sugary/fun-shaped cereals that looked more appealing on the box.  It's what's inside that counts, and VSL's dry samples, as William and others have stated, just "work."

Dave

Count me in👍😃👍😃

Still waiting for that Boys choir 😴 for starters.

@jasensmith said:

Count me in Still waiting for that Boys choir for starters.

@jasensmith said:

Count me in Still waiting for that Boys choir for starters.

more important is the full palette of vowels for the existing singers, while I of course will wellcome all sampled "Wiener Sängerknaben" but please not again only with "Ah" and "Uh".

@jasensmith said:

Count me in Still waiting for that Boys choir for starters.

@LAJ said:

I agree that Ahs and Uhs are not enough in these days when you look to the latest competitors products. BTW, the Genesis Children‘s choir from audiobro seems to be interesting. But I did not have the time for an intense listening yet.

Yes I also noticed that they seem to be more serious than the average of Choir-sampleproducers, but currently it is still not more than the boys available yet. Might become interesting if they ever provide also a normal Choir and soloists in that quality (since Singing is such a matter of personal character you realy cant have enough different solosinger-Libraries). Currently I dont have enough occasion for a Boy choir, but will keep an eye on it. (unless our VSL Choir and soloists will finally provide the missing vowels 😛)

@jasensmith said:

Count me in👍😃👍😃

Still waiting for that Boys choir 😴 for starters.

I and others have been asking for a Boys choir going on ten years now and still no joy.  I don't know.  I'm thinking maybe Austria has some strict child labor laws that are throwing up obstacles to this project.  Then again, the Vienna Boys Choir is undoubtedly the most famous boys choir in the world so they're probably pretty busy.

Although, I should be careful what I ask for because if VSL releases the Boys Choir next month or something I'm going to be obligated to whip out the credit card and pay up since I've been bitching for this for so long.

@jasensmith said:

Although, I should be careful what I ask for because if VSL releases the Boys Choir next month or something I'm going to be obligated to whip out the credit card and pay up since I've been bitching for this for so long.

I fear, your credit card should be ready in any way from the moment on you discovered VSL, ....

....they are stil busy😛

@Casiquire said:

For people like me who prefer dry and aren't crazy about the sound of the strings, it would be sad to see the greatest creator of libraries that perfectly fit my workflow abandon it.

That the Synchron-Series realises a completly new acoustic concept, will allow to keep the (most) previous VI products still available. That's why I dont see any reasons to fear that they abandon it if that should mean stop selling and supporting those products.

But the Synchron Series as it started is obviously a huge Project with a lot of stuff already still in the pipeline to complete the whole. Since those are much more basic and necessary Things to complete the Synchron orchestra than some additional historic instruments or additional dimensionstring patches, I just expect that it is much more realistic and reasonable, that the Synchron-Series Project will have a priority in the next time over any further silentstage library to be developed and recorded.

Nevertheless, if ever they still have any unpublished Silentstage recordings trhan more VI-Products are much more realistic to be published sooner or later.

Btw: The synchron-series is in my humble by far not just a "wet" library. It is nearly completly up to the user how wet or how dry he makes his mix. As already diescussed inanother thread it is no problem to handle them as dry only instruments for your own way to create the ambiance you are looking for.

The only difference is that you also can ad the original real ambiance of a realy nice Orchestral Recording studio in a very detailed way and are not completly dependend from additional synthetic reverbration, which you nevertheless can ad as every studio recording engineer is always free to ad to his studiorecordings.

In short I still believe the Synchron player aswell as the synchron series is a huge step ahaed and is just starting to be released. I personally can't see any advantages of the VI-Player over the Synchron player and would even wellcome to finally have the whole VSL-World in the Synchron, or at least as much as possible. And I also believe that the Synchron-Series as a whole will raise the quality of orchestral-samples in so many aspects that it is worth to wait for the whole thing.

+1

The specific additional VI I feel need to be sampled and programmed consistently with the previous VI series are:

Dimension Stings III with ponticello sustain and tremolo, glissandi, spiccato, sampled trills like the Orchestral strings extending beyond half and whole tone intervals (performance trills are no substitute for sampled trills most of the time) and ideally a series of unusual string effects. Having FX on Dimension strings would be mind-blowing. 

Historic winds - SACKBUTTS!  Absolutely essential for so many historic era performances. 

Historic Percussion - the only option now is to use modern percussion instruments - like modern mechanical timpani etc. - a very lame compromise for totally different sounding authentic historical drums and cymbals.

Historic Strings such as Viola de gamba, rebec, theorbo etc. etc. - tons of possibilities there.

It would be completely wrong to do these important additions with a system that did not fit into the previous vast body of samples, so it is essential to produce these first as additional VI.    

YES!!! In a heartbeat. And a Dimension Strings IV with all this played sordino.

"Dimension Stings III with ponticello sustain and tremolo, glissandi, spiccato, sampled trills like the Orchestral strings extending beyond half and whole tone intervals (performance trills are no substitute for sampled trills most of the time) and ideally a series of unusual string effects. Having FX on Dimension strings would be mind-blowing."

@Casiquire said:

There are people who don't want to get into VSL because they don't like dry libraries,

And, you know, that's a crying shame because IMHO the "wetness" of the library doesn't matter all that much..  It's the flexibility that dry samples provide not to mention the user friendly player which was carefully designed with intuitiveness in mind.  Well, if these people don't want to "get into VSL" that just means more VSL for me but I'm sure VSL would appreciate the extra business. 

I simply do not understand this obsession some people have with wet libraries.  They've erroneously convinced themselves that samples smothered in reverb are more realistic and sonically superior.  I don't buy that for a minute.

So VSL, I prevail upon you, do not retire the Silent Stage.  Thank you. 

In my humble opinion the alternative dry = silentstage and wet = synchron simplifys reduce the different character of both projects in a more or less false way:

The silentstage is no at all "dry": it is a studio ambiance which gives room enough to add additional tools for an artificial ambiance.

The Synchron Series is not at all simply "wet" or only meant for those who always expect the whole ambiance being part of the recorded samples: The Synchron-Studio is also a Studio (with obviously long tradition as Filmscoring studio). Yes you do have in Synchron series a very detailed acces to controle the anount of the real studio ambiance which should part of the recordiung you are programming. But it is also in this meaning still a studio, that nothing prevents you from adding aditional tools for shaping the ambiance you are looking for. Moreover already the Synchron-Player and many of its presets ad an artificial algorithmic reverb, while as long you run them in VEpro you can of course place everything you get out of a synchronplayer in your MIR or any other aditional ambiance tool.

In short: Synchron is not "less" possibility it is just "more" and that means in many aspects (not only the ambiance) much more details available and the more the whole series will be released I am sure exactly this aspect will become more and more obvious.

No, that is total misinformation - the silent Stage is definitely dry.

It was designed to be absolutely as silent and non-reverberant as possible in order to allow total freedom of additional reverbs of any kind. This is its great value. It adds almost no color or ambience to the recordings.  The fact that it can be scientifically analyzed in a lab as having "reverb" that is barely detectable by the human ear doesn't translate into what one hears in a simple musical sense, which is a totally dry sound.  The proof of this is that no one ever uses the Silent Stage samples in an actual performance without adding some kind of reverb - they would sound far too dry.  But this allows any kind of reverb from hardware to MIR to Moog analog delay to be used.   

@Another User said:

In short: Synchron is not "less" possibility it is just "more" and that means in many aspects (not only the ambiance) much more details available and the more the whole series will be released I am sure exactly this aspect will become more and more obvious.

In short: that's your opinion. We have a different one. (Personally I totally agree with William for instance).

Anyway we should stop this neverending polemic and just listen to fair and well explained whishes of others. Don't be afraid... you will get your Synchron things, and there is no reward in a VI vs. Synchron battle. 

Yes, I have no desire to downgrade Synchron, I am just making a positive statement about the great VI series.