Vienna Instruments Pro

[Leanna Perr]

YesI've spent some time in the deeper end of a Vienna instrument, and I do know about the slot editor. In a basic ADSR, the decay (not delay) graduates the envelope down to a sustain level once the attack is played out. I don't think that exists in a VI.

I sometimes cross-envelope crescendo and diminuendo sounds so that the volume stays somewhat steadier. (That is, the envelope closes down on the crescendo, or opens up on the diminuendo. Delay is very helpful to this end.) The timbre still evolves, and the resulting sound can be a surprisingly "alive" for stacking strings, particularly cross-enveloped solos under sustained ensemble. I did this quite a bit with my EXS Vienna instruments, with the help of Keymap.

It has its limits, as by definition, the cres/dim patches just stop sounding after they're played through and the sustains continue. But it has been a mainstay in my arsenal, and I have yet to find a way to mimic this in VE Pro. This is the only reason I'm holding on to EXS Vienna patches.

I just put a sustain in the 2nd slot and xFade into it after the diminuendo or the crescendo. You can even be really clever and do the cresc/dim by velocity and the sus by velocity xFade in order to match timbre.

Thanks DG. What you're describing is a good way to crescendo into a sustain or hold a quieter sustain after a louder entrance of the note. I cross-envelope to add life underneath a sustain. In this illusion, you can't really hear the cresc/dim coming or going. Optimally, it just sounds like a sustain wth more life, like individuals making different but concerted choices.

With the use of a velocity driven attack parameter, I can approximate a gradual attack into a diminuendo. As the sample grows quieter, the attack unfolds, and the final effect is not unlike what I get in EXS. This has the extra benefit of acting like an added attack, since a harder velocity opens the attack envelope more quickly, and you hear the bite of the opening diminuendo.

I'd like to stress that these sounds don't fare so well by themselves. Salt is vital to a recipe, but it's not a good meal. These sounds that I'm describing can provide body and evolving timbre underneath a sustain. With MIR, they also can be placed about the stage and wet/dryed to taste. I've always liked detailed strings, where we can just make out a stray solo player here and there.

First: Vienna Ensemble (Pro) is not a player. It is a Instrument host that can offload the instrument hosting from your DAW and even to slave machines in your network. You can add VST effects and mix and route everything to your DAW. Also Vienna MIR works best within VEP. It's a very cool tool and can optimize your template and workflow.

Synchron player is the newest sample player and is used for the synchron series instruments. It has a different approach: articulations are organized with a tree-structure instead of multiple matrices like in Instruments. Also it has much better support for multi-mic sampled instruments.

In short: If you buy an instrument from the VI series, you will use the Instruments (Pro) player, if from Synchron Series you will use the Synchron player.

And on top of that whether you use VI or Synchron or both, VE Pro is a nice addition.

You did not really ask for advice and I am sure you can decide perfectly on your own, but let me just throw this in: The Vienna Synchron player is amazing and much more user friendly than anything else I have ever used.

I'm in the same situation. I already purchased Chamber Strings and Solo Strings and I'm close to switch to Synchron Player. I'm just hesitating, because I'm wondering, If I would be able to also create a direct sound with for example Synchronized Dimension Strings. Is it possible to blend out the room of the Synchron Stage to get a dry and direct sound? This would be important for me, because I use the strings additionally in current productions and in many cases I have to get them in the mix by using different reverbs.

Our proprietary sample player Vienna Instruments Pro comes with every VI Series library*, free of charge.

Vienna Instruments Pro allows you to combine hundreds of articulations on one MIDI track, and switch easily between them. Our proprietary Performance Detection analyzes intervals, repeated notes, patterns, and even playing speed in real-time, and automatically summons the appropriate articulation or nuance.

Vienna Instruments Pro improves your workflow dramatically, making your creative process faster and easier, and also adding human behavior to your music. Customize all presets and articulations to your preferred way of creating music, stack multiple instruments in a single instance of Vienna Instruments Pro, play them with polyphonic legato, and breathe even more life into the samples by controlling the performance accuracy of your virtual musicians in real-time, at the touch of a single fader.

No, you can't assign an LFO for vibrato. Most instruments that are normally played with vibrato come with vibrato and non-vibrato patches, so you can choose which to use, or keyswitch between them. there are also progressive vibrato patches for some instruments.

In all seriousness, string vibrato is a very complicated thing to understand. Without being a player I doubt that most people could produce anything realistic with an LFO type vibrato. The other thing to remember is that a non-vibrato sample with an LFO vibrato will not sound the same as a recorded vibrato, due to the fact that a violin reacts differently to a player using vibrato, causing different sympathetic vibrations. Don't get me wrong, a virtual instruments that can accomplish all of this would be great, but I think that it is a lot more complicated that it appears on the surface. There are also many other things that need to be addressed, such as bow changes and change of position patches. Currently we are a long way away from all that.

The vibrato on the Strad is very lifelike - it's based on convolution technology rather than adding a synthetic pitch wobble to the samples. I can't see VSL going in that direction at this stage, having spent so much time and effort providing vib, non-vib and progressive vib versions of so many instruments. Also I doubt the Strad technique would work on ensembles, where every player employs a different vibrato.

So load the orchestral string patch in the upper cell and the corresponding solo string patch to the lower part of cell. Activate the crossfading between upper and lower part. With the Cell-XF fader you can mix the sound of the two parts. So you're able to mix the vibrato solo string with the non-vibrato orchestra strings.

Understood. Your ear should be a little more tuned in than mine in that respect. Still, I enjoy playing it, but it is pretty difficult to get a good [fairly] realistic sound unless you're a decent keys player.

DG, on the question of realism I defer to (and respect) your long experience playing the instrument. But would you not agree that the Strad vibrato sounds more real than LFO pitch modulation? I guess you've experimented with the Strad yourself?

I'm still having issues getting VSL libraries to load properly since switching to iLok and a new Apple Studio computer. I wondering if placing the location of my Vienna Instruments in a different location than Vienna Instrument Pro expects could be a factor. (I foolishly chose something other than "default" when I downloaded the libraries.) Fortunately, Vienna Assistant makes moving them fast and easy.

I realize that I can rescan the location after moving them, and I have done that. Particularly working with preexisting works of a large size (operas and orchestral works) Vienna Instruments Pro (running under Vienna Ensemble Pro) can't seem to locate the instruments. I can't tell if the choice of VST or AU3 in these older works is making a difference.

I'm still having some issues getting set up, but I am still working on writing an opera libretto, and I'm sure I'll iron out the Sibelius/Vienna Instrument Pro issues soon. I am taking Bill's suggestion about moving the sample content to a separate drive. The Apple Studio has four Thunderbolt ports, so I'm adding a SanDisk 1Tb Thunderbolt SSD to the system tomorrow. Seems like a great idea.

Problems all solved. Partly my fault for not understanding the iLok activation better. But the new updates of Vienna Assistant and VSL Sibelius Soundset also made a difference. I used the updated Vienna Assistant to uninstall and reinstall some of the Instrument Libraries (such as Solo Voices and Special Editions). Everything working beautifully now.

Vienna Symphonic Library GmbH (VSL) is a developer[1] of sample libraries and music production software for classical orchestral music. The company is located in a landmark protected building, called Synchron Stage Vienna based in the Austrian capital's 23rd district.

The Vienna Symphonic Library provides virtual instruments and the digital recreation of the acoustics of famous concert halls such as the Konzerthaus and the Groe Sendesaal at Austrian Public Radio ORF's broadcasting house, both in Vienna, and the Sage Gateshead concert hall in England. The technique used is impulse response resulting in an authentic digital convolution reverb. The virtual instruments are based on digital samples of solo voices and instruments as well as orchestral ensembles. The VSL software acts as an interface for the music composer to play the real instruments on a MIDI keyboard.

The company was founded in Vienna in October 2000 by Herbert "Herb" Tucmandl.[2] In the 1990s, Tucmandl, a former cellist (as a substitute member with the Vienna Philharmonic, amongst others), later cameraman, director and composer used some of the available first-generation sample libraries for the creation of his own film scores. Because the sounds available at the time did not meet his requirements, he developed his own concept for an authentic-sounding sample library for orchestral music. His idea stood out for his approach of recording not only single notes but also tone combinations (e.g. legato) and tone repetitions. Through their combination, they allowed users lively interpretations for the first time. He tested his concept with the cello himself and convinced the investor Markus Kopf with the tonal results.[3][4]

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