Well, I was curious to know what VSL Synchron Player's Tree Structure offers that is an improvement over the Matrix System of VI-Pro 2 ? I personally don't see any specific improvement/s except that the Synchron Patches have full names, and are easier to find/organize in the tree. But that could have easily been done in a Matrix System.
What are your thoughts on this ?
I think the tree system is a bad idea. Instead of the fixed 3-D (matrix/X/Y) of VI Pro you now have arbitrary and varying depth trees. One way to think about it is: every articulation has an address. In VIPro that's always M.X.Y, in syn player it's a.b.c.d...N Now you assign 5-6 CCs or whatever to the different depths. Where will you be when you change the 'b' CC? In the matrix system you could
see in advance where you'll end up (if within the same matrix). What if you're on an articulation that uses a.b.c and move to one that uses a.b.c.d.e - where did you leave e? Fancy rules for what happens are hard to predict/remember and impossible to see.
I guess they are emphasizing some potential fluidity for live playing but that will require a) extensive tree design and controller mapping and b) lots of experience to gain the muscle memory to be fluid. And even if you can do that, what do you end up with in your DAW? A ton of CC's and no hope in correlating them to sounds, and an editing nightmare. Never mind trying to enter CC/switches directly into the DAW. Perhaps they presume everyone using a DAW directly just sets things up in the UI and then triggers the UI's send-MIDI? It still makes a mess.
In fact, the 3-D system of VI Pro is
already a challenge for DAW use. I wish the player had a 1-D mode, just named slots in a (sometimes long) list triggered by a single CC or program change. A second dimension, if any, would only be something automatic like speed/velocity. This would be more in line with Spitfire's UACC, and, even if not universal, would be a lot easier to manage in a DAW when editing directly or assigning to articulation/expression maps. For most of their instruments, a majority of the articulations would fit in one list.
As it stands, multi-dimensional articulation addressing adds complexity everywhere down the line - editing, articulation systems (Logic's can't yet send multi CC) etc.
VSL already has so many great samples and tools, which I value highly. Some of them present real challenges for ease-of-use (tons of articulations) but are part of what makes them great. If they want to become more approachable while still delivering on their core value propositions (dry samples, MIR) I think they should consider:
- Include some flavor of MIR/x so it's not an additional thing without which everyone struggles.
- Add a 1-D mode to the VIPro player, with lots of well-considered and uniform presets for their existing libs.
- Extensively embrace and support the articulation systems of every major DAW/Notation program that has one.
Synchron concerns me. Does VSL think dry samples are over? I don't.