With the Synchron series, VSL have changed their game. The original VI series was released starting from year 2002. Boulez and Stockhausen where in their mid 70s – aged, but still alive and kicking. Bernard Haitink and Claudio Abbado were leading their orchestras. Jerry Goldsmith was composing the fifth Star Trek movie, while John Williams was still working on the first Harry Potter. The best orchestral libraries we had, at the time, were the ones from Peter Siedlaczek and Miroslav Vitous, and VSL was the glorification of the ending century's orchestral sound.

Twenty years after, many things have changed in orchestral music. The panorama of orchestral film music has been greatly simplified, with a move toward atmospheric music, influenced by electronic rock, moving away from the old melodic, classical-inspired one. Modern classical music has become either more radical (and reserved to an even more niche audience) or extremely simplified, with the extremely popular 'neo-romantic' composers. The audience mixup has changed, with wider access to Western orchestral music to younger listeners coming from different cultures. Classical music performing has become a bit more 'pop', less nuanced, more shiny and spectacular, more immediately communicative. What it has gained is that orchestral music is now more a universal lingua franca, than the expression of a specific culture.

VSL started a series that is more in line with the modern times. Remaking their collection is a huge undertaking, that will take years, if not a full decade. But they found a way to ferry the old libraries to the sound of nowadays. They made the old samples match the shiny sound of the new libraries. Attacks were made more 'nervous'. Softer versions were added for more atmospheric pieces. A set of high-quality digital effects allowed modern sound-shaping and refining. The instruments were placed in a huge space, to go from classical intimate to modern cinematic.

You can turn convolution and artificial reverb off, but I still feel that the new libraries sound different. Yes, they are still them. But it is a bit like looking at Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian, versus him in A New Hope.

Paolo

@PaoloT said:

Twenty years after, many things have changed in orchestral music. 

Of course, this is always a good thing, when music evolves, develops and new ways of listening, composing and expressions are rising. 

My VI Symphonic CUbe and MIR is my Vinyl, that stands the test of time. But as with all old, all Vinyl, it is dedicated to a certain corner and certain age of the arts and for me that is fine. But SYNCHRON and BBO, for me again, is the way of the YT generation of BangBoomBang and it is loosing all subtleties. Just my 2cents. And to pick up your picture: 

To quote also a cinematic picture, I feel like at the end of "Mr. Hollands Opus", where not the written Symphony was the goal, but the way alongside and all the peoples live that you touched (or that have touched you) 

I dont want to highjack this threat, enough said. 

@PaoloT said:

With the Synchron series, VSL have changed their game. The original VI series was released starting from year 2002.

[...] VSL started a series that is more in line with the modern times. [...]

Paolo

Beautiful posting. Thanks, Paolo!

Thank you for reading it, Dietz. But now I feel old, and I think I will hide in the most remote corner of the choir in the Pernegg roompack!

Paolo

The Vienna Instruments are not 20 years old - the original software running the instruments was Gigastudio, an early sampling platform I still have nightmares about.  Vienna Instruments came out much later and was a great advance that has steadily advanced more since then.  Anyone who thinks Synchron or Vienna Instruments software are difficult and unintuitive should try a moldering copy of Gigastudio and write back from the Institute from the Criminally Insane which they will soon be imprisoned within. 

Synchron exists mainly to provide people with a baked-in reverb that uses the hall the company acquired and records scores in. This is  a little ironic, since VSL was originally touted as being great because you could use it with any reverb of your choice instead of being locked in to one - like East West Quantum Leap Orchestra which was its main competitor originally.  Now, the Synchron system does the same approach (with much better sounds of course) using the acoustics of the hall that the instruments were recorded in.  The player is excellent of course, but the previously listed advantages of Synchron over VI are non-advantages  practically speaking, because VI can do anything in music.  What more do you need than that? 

I have been using it since it first appeared and evolved my own system somewhat like what Holgmeister mentioned, customizing all the setups of patches and incorporating MIR when it became available. The great advantage of VI is that it allows you to totally construct your own instruments from the patch level with incredible ease. I have never even once used the massive already set up presets or even matrices. I've always had the attitude, why load a dozen short note articulations when everything in a piece I am playing is legato? So why load every possible sound the instrument can make  instead of construct an instrument tailor made for your own composition, and therefore ideally tweaked for the music? The great thing about VI is how you can create everything from the ground up for your orchestral setup, including the characteristics of the hall or reverb that are radically changeable. It is the ultimate do-it-yourself sample library, even though it is based on the masterfully played and recorded instruments that make up the articulations.  

This is not what everyone wants of course. Many people want everything set up for them in advance and that is what Synchron and other similar libraries today are designed to do.   And one can use it in any number of ways, but I really take issue with the concept that Synchron is new and up to date and Vienna Instruments is old and out of date - that is total bullshit, because VI is based ultimately on the real deciding factor of any sample library - musical performance of great players. That is front and center with Vienna Instruments in the absolute purity of the Silent Stage which gives you total access to every single note of the millions recorded by VSL.  And the player allows total control of how you use those notes, how you control the parameters, and you can tweak easily the controls as well.

In short the Vienna Instruments is a true masterpiece of software engineering and  the idea that it is old-fashioned and out of date is ludicrous. Synchron is another approach to playing the instruments using baked in reverb, and very well designed.  But it is NOT superior, just a different approach, and I really think this downgrading of one in comparison to the other is just plain stupid. 

@William said:

Synchron exists mainly to provide people with a baked-in reverb that uses the hall the company acquired and records scores in..........

This is  a little ironic, since VSL was originally touted as being great because you could use it with any reverb of your choice instead of being locked in to one - like East West Quantum Leap Orchestra which was its main competitor originally.  Now, the Synchron system does the same approach (with much better sounds of course) using the acoustics of the hall that the instruments were recorded in.

.....the absolute purity of the Silent Stage which gives you total access to every single note of the millions recorded by VSL.  And the player allows total control of how you use those notes, how you control the parameters, and you can tweak easily the controls as well.

Yes, William, that is exactly my thought. And it was the reason a long time ago why I choose VI over East West and since then ever did. It was the total, detail control over everything and at the end created your own sound. It was a real new approach with the dry silent stage over the Hollywood idea of big and wet sounds. With MIR, you had any detail a room can offer and with new approaches of hybrid reverbs it became even more adventourous.

It was the opposite of baked in reverbs that caters to actual fashions. But people seems to love it and that is fine as well. 

@PaoloT said:

With the Synchron series, VSL have changed their game. The original VI series was released starting from year 2002.

[...] VSL started a series that is more in line with the modern times. [...]

Paolo

Beautiful posting. Thanks, Paolo!

Paolo- 

..."more in line with modern times."

How is that ?  

Paolo,

So they are both good.  But apparently, we are supposed to think that VI is old and from the obsolete past, and Synchron is "modern times"?   

William, as far as I can see, nowhere in my post I considered the old bad and the new good. Not to sound defensive, but being in my early Fifties, I'm probably to be included among the good ol' boys, a former revolutionary now suspected to be a conservative.

It's just that the clock is ticking, and I'm worried for the future of orchestral music. In an age where the speakers at the public culture channels identify the music of Beethoven as fascist, and music faculties have replaced hardcore music analysis with sessions on discussion about points of view about music listening, I'm happy to see that orchestral music can still be relevant, and be appreciated by those that will be here when I'll be gone for a long vacation.

Latin literature was no longer relevant, or even hostile, and it is esteemed that we lost 90% of it. Monteverdi scores were used as furniture padding when perceived as obsolete. Making orchestral music compatible with the modern times is probably the only way to make the past compositions still useful and appreciated in the next future. If the orchestral sound texture is as current as the sound of grunge guitars and beatboxes, there is a chance for it to survive.

It is a fact that the "old" VI series was made in its time, and the "new" Synchron series is made in this time. They carry their own time's signature. Whichever I like the most is something that will not stop the time passing.

Paolo

I think both Synchron and VI are great.   The company is just moving in a different direction and the sample libraries are to some extent becoming just part of its recording projects though hopefully still be functional into the future.