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  4. Should demos be flattering?

  • Should demos be flattering?

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    Evan's thread is now nicely off course, so I thought that I'd bring up this (serious) question.

    To my mind there are two slightly conflicting issues here:

    1) As a sample library consumer I want to know two things; what is the best that a product can sound and how much effort is required to make it sound like this. I'm tired of hearing great demos and then finding that I need a course in advanced computer programming to get anywhere near this sound. I want something to work for most music that I write/orchestrate/arrange with the minimum of effort, as I want to be spending most of the time on the composition. However, I also want to know that if hire someone to mix the project that they can carry on from where I leave off and not be hampered be the sounds that I use. Therefore I think that I need to hear demos played without much (if any) reverb or mixing and as near to real-time as possible. However, I also need to hear finished products that show off the sounds to their best advantage and, if possible, MIDI files to go with these so that I can see how much effort has gone into it all.

    2) The company has to sell product. It is to their advantage to produce demos that are as flattering as possible so that people are bowled over by the sound and don't stop to think about the effort that goes into making this sound. Therefore these demos need to be tweaked to the maximum and mixed to within an inch of their lives. It is not to any company's advantage to let potential customers hear something that might show their product in a bad light.

    OK, so we have a potential conflict of interest here; I want to hear raw, and the company should do everything they can to avoid this.

    However, VSL (IMO) has done both of these. There are many demos that have been done with earlier products that show the great sound that can be achieved, but we also have some new demos, both real time and tweaked, that show the strength of the new product. In my experience this is a unique situation where a company has gone to extreme lengths to show the cracks (if any). Obviously they have been a bit careful with the choice of demo material, but I think that it is admirable that they have gone as far as they have.

    Now as to whether or not any of the demos are flattering. I think that there are demos that show the potential of the new product (I'm particularly fond of Jay's Bloch) and this is enhanced by the "real-time" demos, rather than hindered.

    Thoughts anyone?

    DG
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    Good to see you've taken some time out from Christian's sanity cult. [[:|]]


    Good question this, and as was briefly pondered in the other thread, there is a conflict of interest in terms of user preference. Some would like the finished product, others the raw play in, and companies want to sell product, so the better the demo, the better PR.

    Me, i'd like both. For the same piece.

    And i think it's important to remember that producing/engineering a work to completion is as much a skill/ability within itself, with interpretation as variable as the music itself. 100 Engineers will produce 100 different resultts, right?

    I also think it's a strength of the excellence of tone and consistency within VSL, that they could afford to do both. Add to that the playability of the VI, and personally, i don't think they'd suffer at all by posting 'before and after' demos.


    Regards,

    Alex.



    [:)]
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    @hermitage59 said:

    Good to see you've taken some time out from Christian's sanity cult. [[:|]]

    hehe - I see your droning quite a bit on this comment. I'm beginning to fear that you may have missed my intention with it.

    Anyway I want both. I want to hear the samples as they are, but I also want to hear them in a highly produced context. I think VSL have mastered this quite well. You can listen to teh fully orchestrated demos, or the more naked and raw VI demos. These demos make very clear what these samples can do, and the fact that no other libraries do something similar is a testiment to the high quality of VSL's product... No other library could pull this off.
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    I have been re-interested in this library because of the real time capabilities demonstrated within the demos. When Vienna Instruments was introduced at NAMM years ago, impressive as the sounds were, I knew that programming 'the beast' would take more effort than I was willing to invest. But now with the new GUI I see this as another instrument to practice, and practicing an instument is something I can relate to.
    Start practicing... and in a few years, with the updates and further evolution of the GUI, the sound will be coming from your heart and not your head. That's my goal anyway.
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    In a world where disk through-put times are peak, never sustained...

    Where gas mileage is determined on closed tracks in optimal conditions, nowhere near what you'll see on the road....

    Where small athletes claim to be 230 lbs, and fat ones under 300....

    Where "your profits may triple!" when your profits may grow three-tenths of one percent....

    Where the whole of advertising copy comes from Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss ("This is the best of all possible worlds.")....

    Where a ninety minute "uproarious comedy" has forty seconds of laughs....

    In a world like that, I say thank you VSL for playing fairly with raw demos. We're not chimpanzees. A veteran user of samples can hear a live demo and know what it could sound like on their rig, through their eq, in their arrangements, with their compositional talents in their chosen medium.

    VSL is selling tools to create, not creations.

    So I agree with the consensus here. Between the nakedness of live demos and the more thoroughly processed pieces, we have as fair a representation of a sample library as we may get without VSL just flat out letting us use it for free for a given period (which is exactly what they do with Level 2 samples).

    VSL has only made two mis-steps in their short, awesome career. 1."You'll never pay for the same sample twice." Oops. I don't think they would have phrased their promise quite the same way had they envisioned VI from the beginning. But technology makes fools of us all. And if the letter of the law was not economically feasible, VSL continued to be true to the spirit of that law. And 2. Syncrosoft, which is still a work in progress.

    I find these two oversights easily overstated and quite forgivable. Overall, I'm amazed at how unedited this forum continues to be.
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    @DG said:

    Evan's thread is now nicely off course, so I thought that I'd bring up this (serious) question.

    To my mind there are two slightly conflicting issues here:

    1) As a sample library consumer I want to know two things; what is the best that a product can sound and how much effort is required to make it sound like this. I'm tired of hearing great demos and then finding that I need a course in advanced computer programming to get anywhere near this sound. I want something to work for most music that I write/orchestrate/arrange with the minimum of effort, as I want to be spending most of the time on the composition. However, I also want to know that if hire someone to mix the project that they can carry on from where I leave off and not be hampered be the sounds that I use. Therefore I think that I need to hear demos played without much (if any) reverb or mixing and as near to real-time as possible. However, I also need to hear finished products that show off the sounds to their best advantage and, if possible, MIDI files to go with these so that I can see how much effort has gone into it all.DG


    Spending time on composition for a musician that writes is what it's all about. Unfortunately or otherwise, today's lone writers nearly always have to do it - not only as the actual notes - but also as the actual sound at the same time. I said before - once you have sample libraries etc available to producers and directors as an audience - you can't uninvent the bomb.

    And like you say - you have to get to a certain amount of grip with mastering tools to get that sparkle on the sound. That's what gives, apart from good orchestration, the sound.
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    I vote for both "finished" and "raw" demos, with MIDI files as well. Now that VI is a bit more standard in its organization, sharing demo files as instructional tools is much easier.

    This would solve, at least in part, the problem of "scattered" or otherwise "scant" documentation. Although VSL is in the business of selling a product and not "creations", as stated by Plowman (a statement with which I agree), there is however a middle ground with a lack of "how-to's" that would benefit a new user and sell the products as well. There are no advanced courses in using VI, so the desire for more under-the-hood files- raw and finished with MIDI project data cannot be underestimated.

    That is not to overlook what has already been provided in this regard, which itself goes beyond what other manufacturers have cared to offer (which is largely nothing). Yet, because VI is such a revolutionary concept, I assert that we're hardly at the point of document saturation.

    Don't get me wrong-- I congratulate and thank VSL for this product. But I confess that I get stuck with some legato or articulation combinations (after much experimentation with patch swapping) that work but are not quite ideal. I may, like DG, choose to outsource a mix, but that would be for different reaons from why I'd elect to do so at this time. I do seem to be spending an unusual amount of time tweaking the simplest of features well in advance of working with more complex ones-- or even mixing.

    I'm still very upbeat, though woodlakesound mentioned something that has crossed my mind in one way or another-- it takes time, even years. Given that fact along with the dilemma of what docs files ought to be or ought not to be available, it's clear that I'll continue working in a relatvie vacuum until such time my own level of fluency and mastery have been more clearly assimilated.
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    @DG said:


    Thoughts anyone?
    DG


    Yes Daryl Griffith,
    "Jay's Bloch" ---> is there somewhere a demo of Bloch, Ernest (1880-1959)?

    .
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    and...

    I wish VSL, that they sell products, so they make profit, and have a future i can profit from too. I look forward to hear what they come up with next. It's beyond imagination what all can be pre-recorded to library to be used by us.

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    @DG said:


    Thoughts anyone?
    DG


    Yes Daryl Griffith,
    "Jay's Bloch" ---> is there somewhere a demo of Bloch, Ernest (1880-1959)?

    .

    Ha, ha.......

    DG
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    howdy doody

    [:)]