I hesitated, waiting for serious criticisms. Didn't see any; bought it. Now as happy as a pig in clover! Seriously, at this introductory price it's a no-brainer. (Hope VSL sees the light and keeps it at this price if not even lower; I believe it could then become a worldwide go-to library that everybody buys (if only there was an effective alternative to the key dongle).
Acoustics.
This is the first time I've been able to get some fairly authentic impressions of Synchron Stage acoustics, and I love it. In my fantasy it's what I'd build as my ideal scoring stage. Compared to Air (Lyndhurst) Studios in London, where the James Bond scores as well as a certain well-known British brand of sample libraries are recorded, Synchron offers the best-behaved acoustic foundation upon which further (simulated) reverb can be added to taste.
When recording, it's practically impossible to hide the acoustics of a converted large church such as the Air building. But although Synchron Stage has superbly generous physical floor area and height, early reverb returns are beautifully tamed and civilised, and - where articulation envelopes permit - linger just long enough to afford a good psychoacoustic sense of very generous stage space. In any concert hall the physical stage zone typically has a substantial effect on the overall sense of acoustic space; I doubt there is a concert hall whose actual stage is physically as large and yet acoustically as well-behaved as Synchron.
Scoring stages have the word "stage" for good reason: they're not intended to provide the entire acoustic environment for all applications. They usually serve as just a foundation - a stage without an auditorium. If you want to hear auditorium reverb late-returns of, say, a large concert hall, large church, cathedral, etc, they can easily and effectively be added to Synchron's wonderfully polite, flexible and accommodating early-returns foundation, using your favourite reverb plugins. On the other hand it's hardly ever possible to downsize recorded-reverb convincingly with subsequent processing. Scoring stages - including Synchron - were designed with large-scale productions in mind, rather than chamber and salon music.
Seating and Spatialisation
My biggest worry before buying SSPro was that it might have very firm baked-in seating positions, such that it would be horribly difficult if not impossible to try and move section positions without wrecking or severely injuring the recorded stereo information. But in fact it's all good! Although the instrument sections were recorded in VSL's choice of stage positions, the Decca Tree's rich and wide stereo characteristics are such that apparent stage positions (defined only very weakly if at all by the tree) can be altered and firmed up very easily and convincingly by subsequent processing. The section-oriented Mid stereo pairs don't present any problems either, when re-positioning sections. (I'm talking only about the regular library here.)
In the factory presets, Power-Pan and Balance controls have been set up to yield a stereo image of VSL's suggested seating plan. Well of course the first thing I did was re-centre the stereo mic channels and then apply binaural panning to set up my preferred stereo sound stage (similar to Wiener Phil's plan). I'm very happy to report beautiful results.
For each instrument section, using a mix of only the Mid stereo pair and Main (Decca Tree) stereo pair (each pair binaurally panned somewhat differently), I couldn't wish for better stereo width and richness. I'm not yet sure about adding Main-C (Decca tree centre mono mic) to the mix; I don't sense any gap or sparseness in the stereo field centre, which (according to the old hands) was where the Decca centre mono mic was traditionally used for filling.
Former Decca engineer John Pellowe summed up the effect of the Decca Tree: "localisation cues were missing but the sound was fantastic". Well nowadays we have binaural panning to provide excellent localisation cues, and even then, oh my goodness, the Decca Tree sound is still fantastic.
The only minor quibble I have with the library's audio - though I'm still exploring this - is that Close mics seem to be very nearly mono and can tend to sound a tad congested, claustrophobic and somewhat artificial. Also, using a binaural panner to try to open up the stereo width of Close channels tends to result in some weird phasey effects - not a good idea. Perhaps the Close channel is a tightly-squeezed mix of several close instrument mics for each section, I don't know. I think I'd prefer a close-mic stereo pair for each section (instrument ensemble) to reflect the reality that the section has considerable width at close distance, but I'm aware it would entail some contradictory requirements for mic placements in a live room. I have yet to find a suitable use for the Close mic channel, but I'm super happy with all other aspects of SSPro audio.
Don't hesitate. Buy this library.
