VSL team, please, make a range of humanizing parameters in SY player same as (not smaller then) in VIPro

Also feature requests for SY player:
Indication of impulse Bypass mode for impulse button on the mixer
Master Impulse bypass button in mixer

@Mathematics said:

Synchron upgrade to Bundle owners should rather be an addition to, rather than a replacement.

I believe you misunderstand things. Paul can confirm, but I think he's specifically said that the Synchron series upgrades do NOT replace your VI series, they are additional products. You can run either one.

Hi,

The VI Special Editions and SYNCHRON-ized Special Editions are independent products, each with their own license and sample content, with additional sample content for all 4 volumes and with more than attractive upgrade/crossgrade prices. 

So you can keep your original VI Series files around (also to open older projects) and work with your SYNCHRON-ized Special Editions from now on OR additionally. Simply as you like :)

Best, 
Paul 

Hello VSL,

I want to come back to my second post in this thread, concerning some of the features in the Synchron Player.

Is it possible to have the stretch feature and interval map?

These are the only reasons why I'm NOT USING and UPGRADING to the SY-libraries (Dimension Brass & Strings). Especially interval map is the essential controller of my matrices/presets when it comes to playability.

You would really make me happy if these will be integrated in the future. 😃

@littlewierdo said:

[...] Honestly, its high time that the MIR Pro engine should be free anyway, especially considering you cant do anything with the engine itself. Yes, MIR Pro would have to be upgraded to support more than two microphone positions, however, I consider that a huge bonus, one that MIR Pro desperately needs. Compared to other convolution reverbs on the market, the lack of more than 2 microphone positions leaves MIR Pro a bit behind. This isnt to say MIR Pro isnt amazing, but it certainly needs an upgrade in number of mic placement positions.

Great to hear that you like MIR Pro! I know that there is always room for improvement, but let's get a few things straight:

- MIR as a whole "thinks" Ambisonics, thus you can de-code up to eight individual microphone capsules of both microphone positions. Most Venues offer four (at least three) Main Mic positions you can choose from, some of them oriented in more than one main axis.

- After all these years there is still not a single competitor's product on the market which is able to deal with literally thousands of individual impulse responses from a real stage or studio, allowing for free source-placement and rotation (of both the source and the microphones!) - let alone in (close to) real-time.

- Plus, there is no comparable (IR-based) product which is able to take into account the directivity of the recorded sources, much less the actually measured frequency profiles of real instruments.

... I would _love_ to make MIR a free product, but looking at the 15+ years of development which were necessary to realize the features mentioned above (and all the other ones, too), I would say that it's highly unlikely this will happen any time soon.

Kind regards,

I want to be clear, I was referring to the engine, not the roompacks. I understand charging for roompacks. In other words, when you buy a roompack, I think you should get the engine, even if the engine is the limited 24 channel version and have to pay to upgrade for more than 24 channels (similar to how Instruments and Instruments Pro work - if I buy a soundfont, I get a feature rich engine free (ie. Vienna Instruments), then I can pay to unlock a few additional features ie. Vienna Instruments Pro).

At no point did I say MIR wasnt amazing. It absolutely is, probably one of the best convo reverbs out there. Its very flexible and customizable, it just makes no sense to charge for an engine that you can do nothing with.

I also am unsure how effective MIR is with anything non-vienna, or let alone the Synchron libraries for that matter, I havent had a chance to do much with it since I have been trying to pass Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry classes this past Fall and Spring semesters. Rest assured, Ill mess with it some more over the summer.

A few days ago I ordered the Synchronized Special Edition bundle upgrade from the VI SE bundle. It was such a good price ($160 US) I couldn't pass it up.

I must say that after some initial play-around with the Synchron Player I have begun to appreciate it's capabilities and usefulness.

Just wondering, I use mir pro in each channel that represents one instrument or set of intruments and by that i can decide where my 2 Mic position to, so why do we need to have MIR Pro support multiple mic positioning if i can use it the way i described it above? so if i decide i would have 32 channels for my song, then i can have at least 32 mic positions

What am i missing?

-John

Because 2 mic positions per instrument doesnt capture the full room sound. Im sure Ill get pushback on this, but in our church, we place microphones at the instrument location, and microphones in the left, right, and rear balconies. The result is astonishing, and since audio coming into these balcony microphones contains a mix of all instruments, there are nuances that you just dont get having each instrument mic'd in its own, isolated channel.

Having re-read what I typed several months ago, I wasnt exactly clear on this, but I dont want 4 mic positions for 1 single instrument, I would like 3 additional microphone positions that emulate all of the sound being produced by all instrumentation at the same time. Hence, a microphone on the stage would capture that instrument, relatively isolated from all the other instruments. The other 3 microphones placed say in the balconies on the left and rear would capture and produce the audio one would hear if they were standing at that microphone position while the entire orchestra is playing (these microphones would not merely capture the sound of just one instrument, they would capture the sound produced by any instrument that is currently playing).

As I understand it, the processing is done on a per instrument basis, so, if I place a microphone in the balcony and I dont tie it to say the timpani, isolating that microphone will result in not hearing the timpanis at all.

In the business, we call these room microphones, and I would like the ability to place at least 3, and have them function like a room microphone would in a live setting.

I've only very recently invested in VSL libraries. I got on board with the Special Editions Bundle, added Sp Ed pack 5, and only yesterday bought the Synchronised Woodwinds.

Previously I'd been stand off-ish with VSL, largely due to the fact I travel a great deal, and the VSL dongle policy. With their new insurance scheme that was no longer an issue for me so I jumped in when the Synchronised Special Editions were launched.

I went for the Synchronised versions over the VI, for a number of reasons, but high in my thinking was that I would not have to look at investing in the VI Pro Player, and MIR, and also it was a little more expensive to go this route.

I could have bought the VI versions, and then upgraded for pretty low prices to the Synchronised versions. But I didn't - and I'm now wondering whether that was a mistake.

Is there any reason why people like myself cannot move from the Synchron version to the VI version for the same sort of cost it is to go the other way ?

BTW I am really enjoying the Special Editions.

I am in a similar position. Some time ago I bought SE V1+ bundle. I had some other things going on, so some months later I started to set up the template when I discovered they were making the SYNC versions of SE. Sadly I missed the intro prices, but the upgrade prices don't seem too bad. My question though is, is it worth it? I don't have MIR or VI Pro, so I know in that sense it would be. But are the samples actually improved that much? 

I purchased the Smart Orchestra so I could have something to mess around with in Sync, and I'm wondering which libraries some of the samples in that came from. The legato flute in there sounds much more smooth than the one in SE V1. Same goes for a few other legato patches as well. 

The main reason I'm asking is because I don't want to stpend a ton of time making a template, then having to go and remake it.  

To answer the person above me's question, I don't think you can go back the other way because going to Sync is seen as an upgrade and I think they are focusing all of their attention on Sync now. 

If you email support, they will work something out with you. They should have an upgrade path, but the way Vienna (in my opinion, mistakenly) looks at it is, going from VI to Synchron is an upgrade, going from Synchron to VI is not an upgrade. The one thing I can tell you is, regardless of their policy and what they say on the forums, they are interested in making a sale and they will give you a good price, probably near equivalent to the upgrade from VI to Synchron path.

As to whether it is worth it, in my opinion, it is. Synchron is great for having an out of the box good sound. Synchron however is very epic, Hollywood movie soundtrack sounding, which is not always what I am looking for. VI on the other hand provides a more subdued sound that I can, if I choose, make sound more Hollywood'ish, or, I can use less a less "epic" timbre for when I am writing for a more "classical" feel. After all, Im not always looking to have people feel like they are listening to a soundtrack.

The coronet is one of the special gems in the VI collection, by far, it is my favourite solo instrument, followed by the classic oboe, and the flexibility these instruments offer in the VI version far surpasses the synchron versions. By having a less wet and heavily eq'd version of these two solo instruments, I am able to use these two solo instruments for a more soft and mellow tone than what the Synchron versions allow.

I might also add, VI is incredible with MIR Pro.

The biggest issues with VI instruments however is, they dont sound good out of the box. They will require some pre-tweaking. If you are willing to spend some money, Vienna provides easily set presets that make them sound good, but it will cost you. For starters, Instruments Pro ($160) is a must with VI instruments. Given that they are giving away the features of VI Pro in Synchron, I am still unsure why they are selling VI Pro, but it is what it is. The premium features offered in VI Pro range from humanization to (unbelievably, you have to purchase VI Pro for this next feature) polyphonic legato, and some very useful functionality like time-stretching. You will also want either Ensemble 7 Pro or Vienna Suite for the useful eq and compression presets. I would recommend Ensemble 7 personally, as I dont feel like Vienna Suite offers anything appreciable that Ensemble 7 Pro doesnt offer, especially for the 3x price difference. Finally, you will need a good reverb engine. MIRx is ok, albeit quite expensive for what it is (almost zero settings & cannot be used outside of Vienna Instruments), but it sounds quite good. It is also worth noting that they still do not have a Synchron stage MIRx roompack available, so it is a bit tricky getting VI instruments to blend with Synchron instruments if you are using MIRx. MIR Pro on the other hand is the top reverb engine choice for orchestral instrumentation, but is the most expensive reverb engine on the market, with altiverb coming in at about 66% of the price difference, and, MIR Pro offers a Synchron roompack, so you can make VI instruments blend perfectly with Synchron instruments.

In short, be prepared to spend some serious cash on VI instruments, outside of the purchase for the VI instruments. I have both Synchron and VI instrument special editions 1-7 and 1+ and 2+, VI pro, VEP 6 Pro (three licenses), VEP 7 Pro (1 license), Smart Orchestra, Smart Spheres and its addon, MIRx complete room pack, and MIR Pro unlimited + all of its roompacks. I only mention what I have purchased licenses for so you know that everything I am saying is coming from experience. You can expect to spend an additional $320 minimum for Instruments Pro and Ensemble 7 Pro at a minimum, then potentially another close to $500 for MIRx complete, or $1600+ for MIR Pro complete, but what you get in the long run is far more flexibility than what Synchron offers, at the cost of price and time that must be spent tweaking each instrument to make them sound good (which is much easier / faster to do with the purchase of Ensemble Pro and MIR Pro).