I think it is all about context. They sound great by themselves on one note. There has to be a way to put things in proper context though. Performance patches are the best leap forward in corect context so far. PErhaps mir is the next leap?

@JBacal said:

One additional area that I think helps improve the high violins is the near total avoidance of straight unchanging tone. If one makes liberal use of crescendos, diminuendos, portamentos, sfz etc. -- the sound becomes much more "alive." And when the sound is alive and expressive, I think we are more forgiving of any harshness in the timbre.
Jay

Did you read that post from Bruce at NS? Render everything to audio - I didn't really understand that to be honest. Why would one do that? Surely you need to get the sound right in the beginning?

Your above quote is true - but it takes a lot of time and tracks.

Besides just orchestration itself, which if poor will actually CAUSE the strings to sound bad - actually acoustically bad - this point of Jay's is very true also. It reminds me of an analysis of a string line I did once, and one of the main things I noticed, to a surprising degree, was how INCONSISTENT the levels were. The sound level went up and down radically depending on the note, without any written crescendos. It was simply the expressiveness of the playing. Now contrast this to a typical sample performance. Assume the line is marked f in the score. What do most people do? Use all f samples. And these samples are recorded with almost superhuman consistency (because of the extraordinary quality of musicians combined with the focus of the sampling session) in isolation from any musical line. Think about how utterly unnatural this really is, how completely unlike what happens normally in a line that is marked f. And this is just dynamic or volume level. So I think these inconsistencies are hugely important in creating a sense of reality.

BTW Jay did all this with solo strings to an unprecedented degree on the Ravel performance.

@PaulR said:

Your above quote is true - but it takes a lot of time and tracks.

If playing a real violin didn't require studying for 15 years from the age of six, it would be a lot faster than working with samples. [:)]

Alas at my age, samples (extremely time consuming though they are) offer me my only opportunity to "play" this magnificent instrument.

Of course, if someday there is an easier and faster way to achieve the same or better results i'll be the first in line to use it. [[;)]]

Cheers,
Jay

yea just hook yourself into the matrix thingy and your set.

@PaulR said:

[...] Did you read that post from Bruce at NS? Render everything to audio - I didn't really understand that to be honest. Why would one do that? Surely you need to get the sound right in the beginning?

Your above quote is true - but it takes a lot of time and tracks.

What Bruce is trying to tell us on NortherSounds.com is that the "pure" programming with our samples has to be treated like a typical multi-channel recording. Performance is the first part, mixing the second. I think Bruce means that it is easier to focus on the mixing-(read: sound)-aspects when you have one _finshed_ track for one instrument or ensemble.

Actually this is the way we do more or less all of our demos and productions here at the Vienna Symphonic Library.

I never have wanted to "record" or dub to a final master directly out of MIDI programming since when you do that, you lose the mix which allows another entire arsenal of tools to work with. You also make it necessary to have an enormous and flawlessly running computer system... [[:|]]

"yea just hook yourself into the matrix thingy and your set." - magates

This brings up the question what if this were possible? What if you did not need technical knowledge, but could just "think" art. Woud it be as good as the accomplishment of a master?

Wonderful topic Bill, and in direct relation to sample performance.

For those who started experimenting with samples many years ago, as did I, the quality often had us cursing, and spening large amounts of time re recording, and experimenting, trying to get that real sound. In a way, the 'roughness' added to the humanity of what we heard, and gave samples, in particular strings, a unique sound, not always true in pitch or quality of even sustained tone, but human nevertheless. And although the humanity was welcome, aiding the overall sound, more often than not, the uneveness of recording, or articulation, meant huge chunks of time taken with finessing the final product. And orchestral performances left a large gap in credibility between a sampled recording and one with live muso's playing a group from notes.
Now, finally, we have a consistent set of sampled sounds that we can rely on to be mp when we require, with consistent tone.
But is this enough? No. And it's not VSL that provide the limitation, on the contrary, they provide the quality and consistency that enables us to perform with confidence, knowing the relative values of volume, tone, and articulation are constant.
The thinness of strings isn't a recording error, but a perception of an instrument (s) from a perfomers POV. That is, we hear the strings as thin, becuase we hear 'live' with many inconsistencies, and variations, however subtle they may be. The action of drawing a bow across a string is not one of controlled friction within the context of a performance, but just one part. The player will emphasise, however slightly, the first beat of a bar, or cut that second staccato a little shorter because he's mentally preparing for that next stretch of hand position. And there are preconceptions of how a certain piece of music should be played, according to the conductors wishes, and performances from others. All of this affects the 'mental aural picture' the performer has, and he or she will play accordingly.
The first violin player may hear a fine section performance of the 1812, and decide the next time he plays he will lean more into the offbeat quavers in the descent before the finale, just because it sounds different.
Sustained notes are most difficult because (a) WE play them with too much consistency, (b) WE don't have set firmly enough in our minds the performance or tone and articulation we want, and (c) WE tend to play to the samples, instead of working to extract the performance we truly want. If you ask a violinist to play a top C several times, each time will be different. And the variation of tone, bow pressure, and the players own assumption of what you want will produce that which we seek, humanity, and a thicker sound, not lost in the mix. It's always been my practise for years, based on experience and the wisdom of others, to record violin sections not once, but two or three times, each time played live, and each sample section with it's own variation in pitch and bow sustain consistency.
And when i finally get to purchase VSL, my first task will be to construct violin sections from the original samples into, 1st Vi a, 1st violin b, 1st violin c. etc. Each with changes by a tick or two in pitch, and ech line played live, as my own variation in performance will give enough difference to create that human element.
(Assuming of course that i'm human!)

Regards,

Alex.

I thing William has set up a very important point. Thje violins are the worst and until now I have always avoid using violin sections. I tried to find an answer to the problem elsewhere (having perhaps a wrong hypothesis about the reason of the problem, but anyway):

http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/showthread.php?t=2241&highlight=string+section

Thank you also for others of your good points. LG

lgrohn, the superlative "worst" seems to indicate that everything is "bad" about our samples. Is this really the way you feel about our work ....? What a pity. :-/

@Dietz said:

lgrohn, the superlative "worst" seems to indicate that everything is "bad" about our samples. Is this really the way you feel about our work ....? What a pity. :-/

I wouldn't take it to heart, lgrohn feels that way about all libraries, so you are not alone [8-)]

DG

@Dietz said:

lgrohn, the superlative "worst" seems to indicate that everything is "bad" about our samples. Is this really the way you feel about our work ....? What a pity. :-/

No, no. Perhaps the proper word would have been "the most difficult", compared to horns etc. Sorry. As a user of EWQL and owner (but not user anymore) of Garritan, I still think that VSL still has the best demos.

I guess that this has happened to everybody:

When you have got one of these great new software it is so much better what one has used earlier ( I used Roland JV1010). But after some months of use one starts to get to know some limitations. I think critical people should be listened because that's one way for future development.

By the way, EWEQL just cancelled my writing rights on their forum. Garritan did it last spring. They just couldn't stand someone writing of the limitations of their products. Am I near of that on VSL Forum, yet?

@lgrohn said:

[...] By the way, EWEQL just cancelled my writing rights on their forum. Garritan did it last spring. They just couldn't stand someone writing of the limitations of their products. Am I near of that on VSL Forum, yet?

What makes you think so?

@lgrohn said:

[...] By the way, EWEQL just cancelled my writing rights on their forum. Garritan did it last spring. They just couldn't stand someone writing of the limitations of their products. Am I near of that on VSL Forum, yet?

What makes you think so?Actually nothing. But I just always try to be honest, even on the risk of being cancelled. And of course, many times I am just wrong and would enjoy if I am corrected. I call it learning.

We all enjoy a vivid discussion here on these boards, and I think it's safe to say that we can stand an healthy amount of criticism. The only point when things got ugly was when the same wrong or meaningless statements were repeated over and over again, or personal attacks got out of hand.

So - don't hesitate to let us know what you think, but be prepared that we have _our_ strong opinions, too! [;)]

All the best,

@lgrohn said:

[...] By the way, EWEQL just cancelled my writing rights on their forum. Garritan did it last spring. They just couldn't stand someone writing of the limitations of their products. Am I near of that on VSL Forum, yet?

What makes you think so?Actually nothing. But I just always try to be honest, even on the risk of being cancelled. And of course, many times I am just wrong and would enjoy if I am corrected. I call it learning.

Lgrohn... VSL is also the best comapny when it comes to its forums. They take far more critisism and positive comments about competing libraries than any other company. They have such enourmous class, and in the time i've been here I have only seen one or two bannings. Hell someone posting here is known to try obtain illigit versions of VSL (and posibly owning a few) and still has not been banned. So I think you can take it easy [:)]

" Thje violins are the worst and until now I have always avoid using violin sections. " - lgrohn

I changed the name of this thread because lgrohn really distorts what I was trying to discuss. The violins sound great out of the box. I am not talking about their sound in isolation, I AM TALKING ABOUT THEIR USE IN PIECES OF MUSIC.

This thread is not critical of any sample library (except that one another company sells that I didn't name) but rather of the use of violins or strings in general resulting in a thin sound.

I am trying to get ideas on the treatment of sampled strings, particularly violins, in both midi and mixing. The kind of thing Jay wrote is exactly what I am hoping people might want to discuss, not a bunch of negative trashing posts and bickering.

It is a very good subject, and jbacal and others have the beginning of the answer, perhaps: much wider use of dynamic, timbral, and pitch expressiveness. One difficulty I have been having is trying to 'espressivize' a line as a solo, when any live player would be responding to the whole mass of music into which the line might fit. I still don't think that simply eq'ing the whole of a string line makes sense, though modifying individual recorded notes as part of making them expressive might work (but getting us perilously close to the same total length of time involved as the 15 years of violin study)

Easy, easy, dear forum members - no hard feelings in this thread. [:)]

*****

William, the quest for "the" string sound is probably as old as orchestral recording itself. Leaving the more obvious main factors like the composition, the arrangement, the performance and the acoustics of the surrounding room aside for a moment, I dare to suggest that even in seemingly puristic productions the techniques of sculpturing this sound were always used to their fullest extent; the style of doing so was dependant on the respective era, of course.

Given the "raw" nature of our samples (in the best sense of the word), many ways of audio-processing make sense. This ranges from simple, static EQing to sophisticated DSP like convolution - the latter not only for reverberation, but also to mimic a certain signal path, or even "dry" resonances.

Personally, I tend to use a combination of several tools. Most of the time I start with some basic EQing, emphasizing the "body" of each section, while getting rid of the (mostly scale-dependant) resonances that colour the sound too much. The next step ist to tame the "shrillness" (is this a word?) between 2 and 4 kHz. This is _very_ much dependant on the arrangement: Sometimes it is necessary to cut here two or even three small frequency bands by 8 or even 12 dB; on other occasions, this would make the overall impression too dark and indirect, and a broad dip by 3 dB centered around 3.5 kHz is more than enough. More often than not, I add some kind of harmonic distortion, be it from analogue equipment (older tube gear comes to mind) or on behalf of saturation coming from tape-emulations or the like. This blurs the pureness of the harmonics in a good way and adds interest and variation to the sound.

In pieces with extreme dynamic changes from pp to ff it is sometimes impossible to find one setting for all occasions. In these cases, I like to use dynamic EQs (resp. multiband compressors) that reduce the volume of a certain frequency range only if a certain threshold is reached. This seems to be tricky, but the results are self-explanatory once you try it.

While it seems to be contradictory to what I just described, I sometimes _add_ some very high treble to violin-sections, for example a soft shelving EQ above 12 kHz or higher. Here, the quality of the EQ is crucial, of course - this is true for virtual orchestration as well as for live recordings.

The final step is some kind of reverberation, most of the time. Your options range from a very clear, unobtrusive synthetic reverb, just to add that certin feeling of "air", to samples of real halls - rich and full of character. Again, you should treat the reverb as a signal of its own (like an engineer would optimize the ambience-tracks of his recordings). Use EQs and all sonic tools you feel that are necessary (but not more [;)] ...). The crucial point is the balance between dry and wet signal. You may understand that there are hardly any guidelines for this, as it depends totally on the context.

****

I hope this gives you some starting points for your own solutions. - As this thread has turned towards a more technical POV now, I will move it to the "Mixing and PostPro"-section of our forum, where other users will most likely look for this topic first.

All the best,