Articulation Presets for Vienna Instruments (new product)

[mhschmieder]

https://www.articulate-preset.com/support

I am working my way through the user manual and the demo pack, which is only matrices and not presets, and trying to decide if it's worth switching to this workflow vs. my own custom presets, as it finds a clever way to gather a lot more articulations into simultaneous availability and also goes a long way towards trying to make more of the phrasing in Vienna Instruments be automated by how the parts are played or scored.

Interested in feedback from others.

One concern I have is that there are a lot of gaps in which instruments and libraries are covered at the moment, and I might not enjoy mixing two work styles, even if just waiting for updates from the vendor.

I have managed to make do with patch-based (vs. matrix-based) preset grids so far, but I'm intrigued by how this vendor came up with a comprehensive mapping scheme that allows for way more coverage while being essentially uniform across instruments (accounting for differences in playing technique, of course).

At the same time, this won't apply to Synchron Player, but I don't see myself buying the Synchron-ized versions of the older libraries vs. focusing on the new material, which isn't always my top choice anyway (especially the percussion, which is more detailed than the old library but is one I'm finding doesn't cut through the mix nearly as well, for stuff like timpani and celesta for instance).

One of the most intriguing aspects of this preset library is that it switches between section sizes as necessary. I suppose since everything was recorded in the same hall, that should work (though these presets are not exposed in the demo pack), but I've never thought of doing that before as the timbre sounds so different to me between Appassionata Strings, Dimension Strings, Orchestral Strings, Chamber Strings and Solo Strings.

[mhschmieder]

Looking at their shop, it's a little confusing what the product differentiation is in terms of overlap. For instance, does Symphonic Cube refer to owning every library (that is currently supported)? VSL themselves don't use that term anymore; that comes from the Gigasampler days. But the images are for Vienna Instruments (or VI Pro) so clearly this isn't for legacy products.

[mhschmieder]

I think it was stated that it's OK to link elsewhere under certain conditions, so here's the vi-control discussion, in which the vendor is suddenly quite active after a bit of quiet:

https://vi-control.net/community/thread ... ary.77635/

So now I think we have a better understanding of the purpose of these presets, which are to gather everything possible so that you can have complex parts all on one track, and to avoid key switches as those mess up notation editors (unless you pull them out to a separate track, as many of us do).

I'm still not convinced I would benefit from these presets, as they are not as intuitive as the Vienna Instruments Presets in terms of quickly seeing what's available (and I make my own anyway vs. using the ones they provide), but as there is a consistent approach across the entire set, perhaps a steep learning curve would be rewarded with longer-term productivity gains.

The price seems reasonable for the effort put in by the vendor, but so far no one has asked about the pricing scheme and whether the products are separate or contain each other.

[toodamnhip]

It seems this area of programming is catching on. Thats great. I hope MOTU takes notice and gets with the “program”...lol....