Most comprehensive World Percussion library yet? (Vir2)

[mhschmieder]

http://www.vir2.com/4DCGI/vir2/products ... .html?1393

Wow, look at the instrument list! [ I can't listen to audio demos until I get home ]

This includes just about everything, including Brasilian repinique and surdo, which are hard to come by, and a full taiko kit.

The details matter, but if this is a deep library and not shallow, I can see this filling some holes as well as replacing other stuff like BFD Percussion -- though the velocity layers of the BFD add-on might be hard to beat except in specialised one-or-two-instrument libraries.

At any rate, if this library does a good job in general and isn't an uneven collection, the holes that it fills could well be worth the street price (whatever that ends up being).

Vir2 really has been putting out a lot of comprehensive product this year. I don't own any of their libraries yet, but am watching closely...

[kgdrum]

Hi MHS,
I have VIone,
I grabbed it during a GC sale earlier in the year($99),it is actually a nice library.
I will warn you ,the installation/authorization procedure they employ is quite torturous
If you can get past this they make very nice products.
KG

[mhschmieder]

So do you know if these more comprehensive products they've been putting out are derived from VI.ONE or different sample sessions?

I wasn't impressed with the depth of VI.ONE when it first came out, but could see how it was trying to be a catch-all library for people needing that, sort of like Quantum Leap Goliath (which nevertheless has a few surprising areas of depth).

I'm guessing that if anything, they did massive sessions a few years ago and stripped them down into smaller samplings to populate their initial product offering. This seems a common technique in the industry.

I recently got Stormdrum 2 for free in a two-for-one promotional, after hesitating for a long time. I am pleased to report that it is very deep and expressive, so my concerns were unfounded. I am hoping the same to be true of this library, because I have especially been needing a full batterie of Brasilian percussion for some time, and have been unhappy with the other options that are out there (and BFD Percussion chose not to cover Brasilian percussion, while perversely including useless stuff like cardboard boxes and "the kitchen sink").

[kgdrum]

So do you know if these more comprehensive products they've been putting out are derived from VI.ONE or different sample sessions?

I don't know



[/quote]I wasn't impressed with the depth of VI.ONE when it first came out, but could see how it was trying to be a catch-all library for people needing that, sort of like Quantum Leap Goliath (which nevertheless has a few surprising areas of depth).[/quote]

for $99 it is pretty good actually quite good FOR $399 or whatever it lists for I agree with you it would be a bit underwhelming.


[/quote]
I recently got Stormdrum 2 for free in a two-for-one promotional, after hesitating for a long time. I am pleased to report that it is very deep and expressive, so my concerns were unfounded. [/quote]


you can play this library on a G4? that is amazing!I would not have thought this would be possible.


I have been curious about Mojo but reports seem mixed .I wish I could find a good Funk Horn section library.
KG

[Tonio]

Listened to the demos. Not impressed ....or confused : why would they use those "tunes" to demo a percussion library which is mostly ambient stuff? I don't get it??

OH, and the picture of the conga is laughable-its subpar of LP's lowest line, hopefully that is not the representation of the actual percussion instruments captured

Marimbula (Colombia)??

We need a good demo, any over @ VI Control?

T

[mhschmieder]

Actually, this is yet another one of my complaints about most percussion samples out there currently (including fxpansion's), is that they mostly chose sub-part instruments to source.

Actually, the fxpansion library is way less guilty of that than most, but many companies show such lack of understanding of world percussion that they sample what most of us would consider toys vs. professional instruments. And it DOES make a difference in the usability of the library.

[Tonio]

MH, did you listen to the demos?

T

[mhschmieder]

I can't listen to audio at work, but just got home a few minutes ago and listened to the six audio demos just now.

Truly dreadful. But that's how I've felt about all of that vendor's demos so far. They advertise multiple velocity layers, but the demos sound very one-dimensional and lacking expression or depth.

I figure it's just a bad demo. So many vendors know how to sample but aren't very musical themselves, and have bizarre notions of how to use non-Western instruments.

Note that the Taiko library takes up most of the disc space, and is 2/3 the size of the one made by Sonica for BFD2.1.

Even so, if they post any demos using the surdo and other hard-to-find percussion instruments, I may feel compelled to pick this up at some point.

Anyway, demos do affect me, and maybe more than they should. The other day I had to choose between Tonehammer's Kalimba or one from Orange Tree Samples. The latter was larger and more full-featured, but the demo sounded inauthentic to me (I have owned several traditional and modern sanzas and kalimbas over the years). I went with Tonehammer. A similar comparison has me biasing in favour of their Hang Drum over Soniccouture's.

I do think demos can be telling, because if the vendor is clueless about musical uses and traditional contexts of the instruments they are sampling, they cannot be depended upon to make the right choices in how to sample the instrument.

[David Polich]

I think it's time for me, the Davester, to take a little
ride up to Simi Valley, walk in to Big Fish Audio's offices
and inform them that I will do some product demos for them
in exchange for their products. No one in customer service
seems to know who is in charge of sound design there, and
e-mails I send get no response, so perhaps a personal visit
is in order.

I'll use my Michael Jackson gig calling card in my pitch -
I usually don't talk about it but sometimes it pays to pull
it out.

[dosuna11]

I think it's time for me, the Davester, to take a little
ride up to Simi Valley, walk in to Big Fish Audio's offices
and inform them that I will do some product demos for them
in exchange for their products. No one in customer service
seems to know who is in charge of sound design there, and
e-mails I send get no response, so perhaps a personal visit
is in order.

I'll use my Michael Jackson gig calling card in my pitch -
I usually don't talk about it but sometimes it pays to pull
it out.

Please! I use some of their stuff and the demos on the sight... well it's hard to judge by.
Thanks

[Tonio]

The other day I had to choose between Tonehammer's Kalimba or one from Orange Tree Samples. The latter was larger and more full-featured, but the demo sounded inauthentic to me (I have owned several traditional and modern sanzas and kalimbas over the years). I went with Tonehammer. .

Wow , you have a Sanza? reminds me of a Matepe I had seen before. I really have an affection for lamellaphones. I have a Hugh Tracey treble kalimba that is fun to play.

There's an interesting mbira Vi thats out there for free-sonicoture? that I use on occasion.

What I would like to see is a VI of pans (steel drums) the whole ensemble.

T

[mhschmieder]

I have the free Soniccouture Mbira library and it was a good placeholder. I no longer own my Sanza as I divested myself of most of my hand percussion a few years back, feeling them impractical in the studio as only occasional instruments vs. a serious gigging pasttime.

The Soniccouture library stretches the samples but in a mix you wouldn't notice. The Tonehammer Kalimba library is actually very authentic and doesn't sound like a modern commerical Kalimba at all. It's overly buzzy in the low notes, but many real-life Sanzas and Mbiras are inconsistent across their range, and they only sampled a 7-note one so must have stretched the samples in a few places.

As for steel drums, I used to own one but didn't know much about them and so it got damaged (incredibly easy to do -- they are VERY fragile in terms of maintaining their carefully "tuned" pitches!). I no longer have it, but love that sound. I think I like the Hang Drum even better though, as it's like an extended range Steel Drum with elements of an Udu to its back side.

As for Big Fish, I hope the visit proves fruitful.

I pull my card now and then also, but primarily when I know the information I get will help others as well (as would your visit to Big Fish) -- I feel a bit sleazy about taking advantage of my business relations with Pixar, ILM, Lucasfilm, and others, to push my personal stuff.

[mhschmieder]

Rather than continue the off-topic discussion of various chromatic percussion and sanza-derived instruments in the Steinway Piano topic (I'm not the guilty one who started the OT but I would rather not continue the dilution of that thread), I found this more focused discussion from a few years back that specifically mentioned the Colombian Marimbula that has given me such grief of late.

I spent a couple of hours tonight, and made final decisions on how to deal with this instrument, after failing to find a way to get Kontakt to point the empty key map in Vir2's Global Impact: World Percussion to the missing samples (which are presumably part of the second .NKX file in the set).

You can actually get a usable preset for the Marimbula in the Vir2 collection, if you load full banks (either "Pitched" if by type, or "South America" is by region -- but the latter is a much larger set) and then cycle through the list until you hit the Marimbula patch. You won't get a GUI to go with it, or any scripting, but you can at least play and/or record, unlike the unmapped Individual Instrument presets for Marimbula (I still haven't heard back from Vir2, three weeks after alerting them to this issue).

After much careful listening, and also comparing velocity handling, I have determined that Eduardo Tarilonte's Forest Kingdom II (not sure if the first rev has it as my upgrade overwrote the old one), has a more usable Marimbula (spelled Marimbola and listed under the Percussion category), as it has better mic balance for the three basic elements of the sound (the sizzle, the slap, and the boomy low resonance). There are some recording and.or playing mistakes in the Vir2 sample set (maybe even the mic got hit by mistake, on some notes?).

The Vir2 version clearly has Round Robin, so might still be better if exposed in solo mode, but due to a lot of inconsistencies -- as well as it being recorded in a way that the hand slap on the cajon-like platform that the metal keys are mounted on ends up being the loudest sound (and not consistent from note to note) -- it ends up not sounding as authentic as what I hear in YouTube sound samples of real marimbulas.

The Forest Kingdom version is a bit boomy due to probably being close miked and thus picking up more of the low resonance from the sound holes, but that can easily be dialed out in production, and also adds more flexibility as it is part of what the instrument is about (especially outdoors).

In the end, I decided to keep my placeholder Bass Sanza track and double it with the new Marimbola track from Forest Kingdom II. Actually, tripled or quadrupled if one also considers the similar lines in the upright bass and the marimba. This makes for the most authentic overall sound for something that strives towards a Cumbia feel (with more traditional jazz and New Orleans overtones).

Overall, Vir2's World Impact has proven very useful, but like most catch-all libraries, it has its bugs that don't get addressed, and inconsistencies in detail between various instruments (either in how played, how recorded, or how executed via scripting and mapping). Definitely worth it during the sales (when they crop up).

An additional note on Marimbula vs. Bass Sanza: it's actually an octave yet further down in scale, which is why it's nice to double them. The Forest Kingdom version either sampled a larger one with more range or stretched the samples to provide two full octave or more compared to Vir2's more authentic and limited range. I only use the bottom octave though as the upper octave just doesn't sound right. And the Forest Kingdom version is clearly not Round Robin, but that's not so important when it's heavily layered in a thick mix.