Special Edition Volume 1 String Portamentos sound muted?

[EricWatkins]

I can't say enough good about this library, being my first VSL library but, The 1st violins, 2nd violins, violas, and celli ALL sound muted or distant when I keyswitch to the portamento version of the legato.  I mean it's like night and day, the difference in tone.  Is this a programming bug?  Anyone else?  It almost sounds like someone accidentally put the Con Sordino versions into the patch instead of the correct portamentos.

[Sandrew]

I came here for the exact same reason. The sound of the SYNCHRON-ized portamento string patches is so much darker than the legato ones (or any other) that it's almost impossible to use them side by side.

[Paul]

Hi, 

The portamento of our Solo Strings was played on the string of the starting tone, which is why, especially with bigger intervals, the lower string is also part of the performance. This can result in a "darker" sound and can be audible when switching between different patches. 

A more advanved approach with full control over all available strings was realized with our Dimension Strings, where you can pick which string you'd like to perform the legato transitions on. 

Best, 
Paul

[Sandrew]

Hey Paul,

Thanks for your answer and a happy new year!

While what you suggested is exactly what I thought at first, too, for me the difference in color seems to be far too enormeous to be related to the played string. Especially with very small intervalls upwards, for example, where I would expect little to no difference to a "normal" legato note. Also, the "Orchestral Strings" are the only one where the difference in color is audible at all to me. I find no such effect whatsoever with the "Apassionata Strings", "Chamber Strings", "Solo Strings" or "Dimension Strings".

Now that I've listened to it again more closely it seams to be not a muted string sound, but rather some kind of low pass filter effect, maybe a sample-rate related or compression related issue to me. Would be great if you guys could check those samples again, for it would be a shame to not be able to work with those beautiful Orchestral Strings to their full potential.

[EricWatkins]

I have to agree whole-heartedly. I am LOVING my new investments in VSL overall, but something certainly went wrong with those particular samples.

[Sandrew]

Hey dear folks at VSL

I was wandering if I could get a statement regarding the status of the issue described in this thread. Is this something you are looking into (or plan to do so some time soon) or do you not consider it to be a bug? I am only asking because I work on a project and would consider changing the libraries I use depending on your stance towards the issue (which would be a major effort already at this point).

I don't know if this is any help, but this morning I found the same phenomenon occuring in the Chamber "Cellos 3 PLUS", but after checking with the Chamber "Cellos 3", where everything was fine, and reloading the PLUS version, the problem was gone. I did not have the same luck with the Orchestral Strings, where the problem remained after multiple attempts to reload both the normal and the PLUS versions. I can however not eliminate the possibility that i might have accidentally loaded a wrong patch in the first place.

Also it suspect that not all velocity levels of the patches are affected, because the sound color difference seems most noticable in the midle range (around velocity 50) not so much below 30 (but still) and less and less towards 127.

[Paul]

Hello Sandrew, 

There are no plans to add any recordings to these standard instruments at this point, so I'm afraid nothing will change here. 

But you can always send me a short example, as sequencer project and mp3, so I can check: support@vsl.co.at

Best, 
Paul

[Sandrew]

Hi Paul,

I sent some audio files and a Cubase project file with some explanations to the email address.

Thank you for looking into that.

[Paul]

Hi, 

Good news: We found out what was wrong and fixed it with this Library Update!

Thanks for your persistence, not sure how this one could slip through 😳.

Changelog is available here.

Best, 
Paul

[Sandrew]

Great, this is a major improvement for me! Thanks for all the good work you guys are doing.

I guess these are things than come along major software changes like the new(ish) SYNCHRON player and this will probably not be the last case as more and more people start to use the new platform and discover stuff. After all it must be utterly impossible for the developers to test and verify every little thing thoroughly in a project of the scope of the VSL.

[Paul]

Hi Sandrew, 

Happy that this changes things. 

We are actually taking a lot of time to check and make sure that everything fits, but some bugs slip through. 
We'll do our best to fix them quickly, so it's always good to get some pointers there. 

Enjoy!

Paul