Upcoming library from Spitfire Audio "Albion"

[James Steele]

Although firstly, I'd like to ask Shooshie, if you would kindly remove the Debussy flute demo from your server. I'm of course happy for you to post a link, and indeed we have updated the audio file now as unfortunately, rather than being what it was - simply a bit of fun for our bespoke library members to hear some work in progress - it has now become a method by which people who have an issue with us for some reason unknown, to try to discredit us publicly.

I can't really believe I'm reading this. I don't have a lot of time to research all this, but the way I'm reading this, a developer is selling a library, posts demos of THEIR OWN MAKING online, and then accuses potential customers of trying to "discredit them publicy" by discussing their product and demos in an online forum? I guess if you "can't stand the heat"... Your company CHOSE to enter the public square and post demos, and you don't get the feedback you want and it's "shoot the messenger time?"

It is our decision what of our own recordings we choose to place on our server for listening to...

Right... actually I just quote this again because if you didn't want those demos to be critiqued they perhaps shouldn't be posted? I don't see really what the big offense was for someone to post their opinion of the demos?

Ned has been accused here of being a stooge, working for or with Spitfire and suddenly leaping to our defence without revealing his involvement. Again, I am bewildered by this uncalled for insult. Its extraordinary!

In fact, Ned has no association with Spitfire whatsoever. I know him as a fellow VI Control forum member, along with several hundred other regulars over there, and thats it. Someone over there posted a link to this discussion, that's how he heard of it.

Actually, since you have invoked the word "libel" here, I have to be careful parsing words. Thanks for making this a lawyer game. I myself said "Since this is your fourth post in six years, I have to wonder if you have a connection to the developer here?" Frankly, given the things I have seen on the internet, it's not unheard of. Ned only came here when he needed help from this forum using Logic with a MOTU interface, then promptly disappears and never contributes squat to this forum again, until he sees a link to this topic posted on a forum that he and the developer both belong to. Ned reads that a VI he likes is being criticized and logs on for the first time in years and takes it upon himself to defend Spitfire by casting aspersions on this forum, branding the topic childish, and making the pronouncement that "soundtrack pros" [like himself I assume he's implying] will leave this forum (that he never participates in except once when in need of help) in droves. A reasonable person might "wonder" about that. Note again I used the word "connection" and posed it as a question.

Now, re Shooshie's frustration with my lack of follow up: I have no desire to 'co-operate' with some of the people here who have this approach, I'm sad to say, and who opened a one-sided discussion with a series of insults and indeed unfounded accusations that are wildly inaccurate, and frankly borderline libelous in places.

Holy crap. Wait... where is that other emoticon?

I completely disagree with your assessment here. Saying it is so doesn't make it so. It hasn't been one sided and people have a right to express their opinions. I guess I'd have to wait for the court order to reveal the identities of the people you're plan on serving and then ask to see the list of "unfounded accusations" to which you refer that are "borderline libelous?" You really, really step in it when you trot out the "libelous" word in here. Certainly you're not trying to discuss open and free discussion of a product you chose to bring to market by using a phrase that hints at legal action? That is unfortunate if that's your method for dealing with honest criticism. I read Shooshie's criticism and whether you think it might be too detailed or that it's too picky, he does back it up and clearly explains the reasons for his opinion and/or conclusions.

I'm a really easy going guy...

I'm sorry... it must have been someone else who just intimated, be it ever so slightly, potential legal liability by using the phrase "borderline libelous." That doesn't strike me as particularly "easy going."

...I'm not personally offended by any of this, its really just water off a ducks back for me.

You shouldn't be. It comes with the territory of placing a commercial offering out there and asking for people to shell out their hard earned money for something. You step into the public square, you're going to get criticism. Surely you should understand this.

I'm sad this whole thread has been so negative, and frankly, bewildered as well.

Me too. From my perspective, I think you actually may have taken the criticisms posted way to personally. You step into the public square with a product like yours and it's going to be discussed. In the end, people may disagree. Ned's approach to try to discredit and kill the messenger, isn't effective. Also characterizing criticism as "borderline libelous" does nothing to improve a situation. I used to immediately delete anyone who uttered anything that even remotely implied legal action or lawsuits in connection with something posted at this board. Since we're all taking turns at feeling self-righteous and insulted or offended, as the forum owner, let me just take my turn at the victim role by telling you how hurt and offended I am at the your insinuation of "libel" on this board.

[spitfire]

James,

As I'm sure you are aware, the accusation leveled at me was that I was guilty of fraud.

Nice that it's finally been removed!

And don't panic, just because I characterize being openly and publicly accused of fraud as being "frankly libelous" doesn't mean I have my lawyer on speed dial.

I'm from the UK, we prefer to solve our differences down the pub over a pint of flat, warm beer.

Glad you like the flute now shooshie.

Cheers!

Paul

[davedempsey]

I like the flute now as well Paul ...thought all along that it had far and away the best timbre but the lack of musicality in the demo was a real concern. When I listen to very old recordings of great vocalists and musicians from before I was born it's certainly not the audio quality that makes it pleasurable and the obvious genius of those long since departed is not diminished by the lo-fi quality. So I'd encourage you to never post demos of your sample libraries that fail to show it in it's best light.

There is, however, one matter that I fear we will never resolve...that being the irrefutable truth that beer should always be cold and never flat

[Shooshie]

James,

As I'm sure you are aware, the accusation leveled at me was that I was guilty of fraud.

Nice that it's finally been removed!

I apologized for using that word, and I did remove it so that it would not be there to do any future damage. But let's tell the whole truth. I did not accuse you of fraud. The context was about the disconnect between the claims in your PR vs. the demos; one could not listen to the demos and still take the claims seriously.

That, I said, created "something like fraudulent advertising." Not a good choice of words, to be sure, but yet not that far from the mark when considered IN CONTEXT. I changed the words -- on a different day I would never have used them. But if you're going to continue to harp on this out of context, I'm at least going to explain that context each time I see your claim. Taking it out of context and saying I accused you of fraud puts it in a whole different light to any except the most black & white thinkers. If adjectives and context have absolutely no meaning, then you'd be more accurate. But I did not accuse you of fraud. The point was that I felt terribly deceived. And factoring in the $15,000 price of the woodwinds, to get a flute that sounded like THAT? Well, you can call it what you want. Until yesterday, one week later, when you finally showed that your library can do what the better modern libraries can do, I honestly did not know whether your claims were deceiving or not. Now, I'm happy to know that you have indeed created a very fine library. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's probably better than others in that same price range. VSL certainly isn't as good.

Shooshie

[James Steele]

James,

As I'm sure you are aware, the accusation leveled at me was that I was guilty of fraud.

Actually it wasn't so simple as that. Shooshie did remove it, but he explained the context, and you're representation of his remarks here isn't quite accurate.

And don't panic, just because I characterize being openly and publicly accused of fraud as being "frankly libelous" doesn't mean I have my lawyer on speed dial.

Not panicking... just irritated. Frankly I wouldn't panic because you wouldn't have a leg to stand on bringing some sort of libel suit. It would be silly. However, you introduced the word "libelous" into the conversation... albeit "borderline libelous" was the phrase I believe you used.

I'm from the UK, we prefer to solve our differences down the pub over a pint of flat, warm beer.

Same here. Well, perhaps without the "flat, warm" part so much.

[Dan Worley]

I'm from the UK, we prefer to solve our differences down the pub over a pint of flat, warm beer.

Same here. Well, perhaps without the "flat, warm" part so much.

Just wondering: Does Coors have Warm-Activated bottles and cans over there?

c-ya,

Dan Worley

[toodamnhip]

The fact that they recorded this all to tape doesn't even make sense to
me. I can see the value of recording rock and roll to tape but orchestral
instruments? That's where digital recording is, to me, a necessity, not
an option. Recording orchestral instruments to tape in this day and age
strikes me as pedantic and just plain-ass dumb.

But doesn't it sound great to be able to say, "each sound is hand-crafted on a Studer A-800 Mark III 24 track recorder with Ampex 499 Grand Master Gold Tape." Marketing departments eat that stuff up.

Does it work the same to say "recorded to genuine Apple DIMMS and saved to a Hitachi 3TB SATA drive?" I mean, we want each sample to get as much hand-crafting as possible when we're about to spend £10,000 on a collection of woodwinds, you know?



Shoos

You guys aren't seriously minimizing the benefit of pristinely recorded audio going to tape are you?

There is a gorgeous "fatness" and warmth to real tape , especially on a perfectly set up machine. For yrs, people bitch about digital and now we are going the opposite way and complaining about tape?

If we take tape hiss and UN edibility away from tape. none of us would ever have gone digital.

Tape WAS wonderful without the problems of hiss, UN editablity and machine calibration, tape wearing out, no un limited un dos...etc..
No one left tape due to tape not sounding good. Tape, when done right, was wonderful. Come on guys!!!

If you miss that "digital sound", you can always run it through an 828 3 or 4 times to re-disintegrate it back to digital bits and pieces...lol...

You all make me laugh!!

Even though you are all totally wrong on this one, I still luv ya...
Dave


ps.

I am not defending this library as far as a "library" goes, I have not decided. But I do love the idea of audio being recorded to perfect analogue machines.

[melenko]

You're right, but Shooshie also when he was talking about expression. The sound/timber of this flute is great, not the rendering...

[James Steele]

Wow... that's an interesting topic. Except for hiss and uneditability, tape was great. Kinda like saying except for being frigid and a nag, my ex-wife was awesome. (I kid... I kid...)

I know the point you're trying to make. Hiss was more or less taken care of (I thought) with the introduction of Dolby SR. I heard wickedly quiet playback from 24-track machines when run through Dolby SR modules. The editability thing is a different matter, of course.

Correct me if I'm wrong though, I'm just a rock n roll guy with no pretense of understanding the classical recording world, but I thought preserving dynamic range was at the top of the list and I thought that the classical world loved the high-end digital machines and ditching tape? I mean nobody really wanted to saturate the tape to get a "really fat cello, man!" or did I miss something? I thought tape was something only older rocker's pined wistfully for? Is this a generational thing or just a flavor thing? Like people who remember like the sound of orchestras that were recorded to tape?

I have to admit something. There's been some projects I've been working on where I have tape sim plugs and other coloration types of things going on and find that I prefer the cleanness of digital after A/B'ing it. That of course again raises the issue that these things are source-dependent and really depends on the source and the context. I had always understood that classical music valued headroom and being uncolored above all. Is that incorrect?

[bdr]

James,

As I'm sure you are aware, the accusation leveled at me was that I was guilty of fraud.

Nice that it's finally been removed!

And don't panic, just because I characterize being openly and publicly accused of fraud as being "frankly libelous" doesn't mean I have my lawyer on speed dial.

I'm from the UK, we prefer to solve our differences down the pub over a pint of flat, warm beer.

Glad you like the flute now shooshie.

Cheers!

Paul

Boddingtons!!

[Shooshie]

Boddingtons!!

Now we're getting into the "strangeways" that these things can go.

[toodamnhip]

Wow... that's an interesting topic. Except for hiss and uneditability, tape was great. Kinda like saying except for being frigid and a nag, my ex-wife was awesome. (I kid... I kid...)

I know the point you're trying to make. Hiss was more or less taken care of (I thought) with the introduction of Dolby SR. I heard wickedly quiet playback from 24-track machines when run through Dolby SR modules. The editability thing is a different matter, of course.

Correct me if I'm wrong though, I'm just a rock n roll guy with no pretense of understanding the classical recording world, but I thought preserving dynamic range was at the top of the list and I thought that the classical world loved the high-end digital machines and ditching tape? I mean nobody really wanted to saturate the tape to get a "really fat cello, man!" or did I miss something? I thought tape was something only older rocker's pined wistfully for? Is this a generational thing or just a flavor thing? Like people who remember like the sound of orchestras that were recorded to tape?

I have to admit something. There's been some projects I've been working on where I have tape sim plugs and other coloration types of things going on and find that I prefer the cleanness of digital after A/B'ing it. That of course again raises the issue that these things are source-dependent and really depends on the source and the context. I had always understood that classical music valued headroom and being uncolored above all. Is that incorrect?

You are right, it is SOURCE dependent.

The thing I refer to about tape is "analog", meaning, continuous.

You can;t beat that continuity of sound and richness that perfectly calibrated tape can give. I don;t ever use tape, but if I could, I would. It's just too hard nowadays. But if I could, I would, especially if I still had the budgets for proper assistants calibrating and making love to perfect machines, all working perfectly. I would suppose that this company pampered their machines in such a perfect manner.
In any event, perfect analog without any of it's drawbacks, is usually the best sound audio could ever achieve. I think the sound is just more "solid", more 3 dimensional...ie continuous, ie analog.
If one took out the noise floor of tape, one wouldn't have to worry so much about dynamic range.
A well set up machine, plus an understanding of the source material most likely eliminates tape hiss.

For example, if you have a whole concerto to set a preamp level for then, you might have to have a bad signal to noise ratio on quiet notes to allow head room for the loud sections.
But in the world of building a sample library, I would guess that the engineer can adjust the pre amp on quiet samples, and then turn the gain down when sampling louder hits and performances. He could tweek the signal to noise ratio for any given set of samples.
Thus, head room, on a "note-by-note" sampling basis might be less an issue and therefore, you have quiet notes without hiss and loud notes without tape saturation, thus, all the sweetness of tape without hiss or compression ie..alteration.

With all of those "artifacts" taken out of the equation, it is my guess that theoretically, all you are then working at a level of quality which is the amazing sound, richness and analog continuity of tape, without breaking sound into moments of time or.."bits".

It would be interesting to hear this companies engineers speak of how they did all of this and why. But that might be giving up trade secrets.

And perhaps they don;t tweek pre amp levels and instead use Cedar to eliminate the noise floor. That kind of quality could also give pure analog without artifact.

[Shooshie]

You know? Most of it's just talk. When you put it to the test, a panel of listeners who have absolutely no way of knowing what they're hearing, plus a facilitator who is also blind to what he is playing, in other words a double-blind study, what you get is quite different from the mellifluous verbiage used to describe either format. We're always hearing about the sweetness of analog, the continuity, the beautiful saturation of tape, and yadda yadda yadda, but getting people to like what you record has so little to do with these things that I deem them irrelevant. Digital gives you the ability to do pretty much anything you want with it. Tape does not. Therefore, in the hands of a primo mixing artist/engineer, there is simply no comparison. Digital wins by a thousandfold. I have created the sweetness of tape in digital. I've created the beautiful saturation in digital. (by "created" I mean that I've used tools at my disposal to garner these effects) I did so not to imitate tape or analog, but simply in moving the music and sound to the point where my ears started screaming "yeah! That's what I'm talking about!"

With tape, one could use various compressors, EQ's, and reverbs, but editing was largely with razor blades, or on 24 track, it meant bouncing to an empty track, and every bounce compounded the noise. These limitations do not garner encouragement to experiment with the mix. They lock engineers into a pretty set routine, and the client/observer's wishes were largely rebuffed with indifference, because it would mean deviating from that routine. There were exceptions, of course. I'm sure no sane engineer would have gone along with Freddy Mercury's experiments when he was creating Bohemian Rhapsody, and even his bandmates thought him a little whack, but generally speaking, most recordings from 1960 to 1980 followed a pretty narrow prescription which was mainly governed by the need to fit the sound into analog groove space on vinyl. That was more science than art. Digital disposes of all the shackles. Experiment to your heart's content. Just keep it under zero dB, and let the mastering guy have a laughing chance at overriding your naivete before sending it off for duplication.

Digital sound, recorded at 88K or upward, is virtually indistinguishable from analog in the real world of speaker cones, metals, plastics, and air. These things do not return to their resting position between each sample. If they do, then you're not using the right amplifier. There may be scientific setups that can do that, but not your typical music rack. Even if it CAN do that, our ears cannot. We put it all together in a smooth, analog response.

Then there is the conceit that recording first to analog tape, THEN digitizing it, is somehow better than just digitizing it. If there was any discernible difference in the previous paragraph, when you move from A to D, you've lost whatever it was, except that now you've captured the noise in the analog domain and added it to the digital domain. If the analog colored the sound, then now you've captured that. There are plugins for that. EQ's, compressors, stuff that enables you to get the sound you want. Any sound you want that is physically possible to get can be gotten through the tools made for digital sound.

Folks, we've got at our disposal a set of tools of incredible utility never dreamed of during the height of analog recording -- mid 1960's to mid 1970's. Enjoy them! You can paint sound in ways never thought possible. I guess the debate over superiority of one over the other will never cease, but I'm telling you, if you put it to the test: double blind studies without leading the jury (play equivalent examples of each snippet), you will find that people prefer the one with the least noise, the greatest range of dynamics, the most power, least distortion, and truest fidelity, not to mention the greatest creativity. I'll wager that I know the one they'll choose.

Shooshie

[labman]

Folks, we've got at our disposal a set of tools of incredible utility never dreamed of during the height of analog recording -- mid 1960's to mid 1970's. Enjoy them!
Shooshie

Yeah ! What he said. Lately I have been feeling sorta melancholy that we have these tools at the relative end of my career, rather than the start. So all you young whippersnappers better start creating, mixing and writing some amazing stuff!

BTW the rest of that post Shoosh really resonated here too.

[spitfire]

Its VERY interesting..

We recorded to protools through Prisms at 96k.

We split the signals so that one path ran from the preamps to tape (SR etc etc) then off the playback head into Prisms then tools. The other path ran straight into tools through (more) Prisms.

So I'm in the odd position of being able to A/B full mic setup multitracks straight digital and tape. With a huge variety of sources.

I can say, I am amazed at the discernible 'fatness' and resonant low end of the tape tracks.

I can also say, I never believed there would be that much difference, but Christian was very keen we tried it. I was amazed. The difference was much more audible at Air on the superb monitoring there, but its very audible still in my place.

Interestingly, in my experience of classical, (I was a classical artist 'in my youth') the abandonment of tape was more driven by the ability to edit, to some extent almost beyond all common sense. I've seen an EDL for a repertoire Symphony that had so many edits in you'd think it was a boy band single.