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SYNCHRON-ized Woodwinds - NEW: Free Expansion 2

How are you finding the crossfades on the oboes? The crossfades on the old oboes in particular have always been the bane of my existence, as much as I like the sound of them.

Probably best to just show you.. This is a linear modwheel crossfade from 0 to 127 (two bars) back down to 0 (another two bars). It is at quarter=60 so after 4 seconds you get through 1 bar and the crossfade is at 63 or 64ish. There are a couple spots where the rate of change seems to be faster (it seems to get louder more quickly at the top and get quieter more quickly at the bottom), but it isn't nearly as pronounced as some of the differences in level with the crossfades in the VI based oboe.
 

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  • Synchron Oboe XFade.mp3
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For comparison purposes, here is the VI SE oboe crossfade which has a sudden awkward change the moment the crossfade hits around 63 or 64. Unfortunately because the VI SE oboe doesn't loop I could only keep each note going for one bar at q=60, so I had to do the crossfades over half the time (which makes the problem seem perhaps a bit less serious than it actually is). But you can still hear the problem at about exactly 2 seconds in (sudden timbre change with amplitude increase). There is no spot like that in the Synchron crossfade in the last post.
 

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  • VI SE Oboe XFade.mp3
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I find the Sychron player is very well laid out. I always didn't like the VI player, the matrix is too confusing and I never really wrapped my head around it, such that I often just made separate tracks when I needed staccato vs legato etc. I always preferred working with keyswitches. From that perspective, the Synchron player is really simple. All I have to do is load the patch, disable the reverb and positioning stuff (because I want it to swap in for my VI winds easily), then I personally swap CC1 and CC2 so I can do crossfades with CC1, and I just hit the keyswitch for the articulation I want and go. It is so nice to be able to play both long melodies and runs with the auto speed legato without having to change anything.

It is still normalized like the old ones so you'll still have to manually adjust for like the lower register of the flute being too loud and things like that, but other than that everything is fixed. Hopefully they add a feature in Synchron to allow adjustment of loudness based on register to compensate for this in a more automated way.
Thank you very much. I pulled the trigger. Your examples really show a considerable improvement. Seems like this could be really playable vi winds at last.
 
Gosh these examples sound good. I have Synchronized SE and it has made me get back into VSL.
 
My main winds library has always been VSL SE Winds (at least for several years now). Due to the fact that the crossfades were so awkward to work with (the sudden amplitude shift at the border of CC value 64), I have tried to replace it once or twice with other libraries. However I was continually disappointed by the tone of some of the other libraries that I went to (vs VSL) and always ended up switching back to VSL SE Winds and just living with the crossfade frustration. It had gotten to the point where I see a new woodwind library (Cinematic Studio Winds, Infinite Winds) and I immediately don't want to buy it because I think it's going to be another library where I try to replace VSL with it only to end up switching back and I spent the money for nothing. So I was quite happy to see this become available, and this has fixed my big problems with earlier VI-based library.

To me, VSL really captures the unique tone of the woodwind instruments in a very detailed and realistic way. Other libraries I have tried often seem to try to remove breath noise from the samples and things like that, but once it is gone from the actual sample recording, you can't get it back if you want it, and in the process you lose some of the character of the instruments and they become more uniform-sounding than woodwinds really should be.
 
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I just took an online MIDI of the harry potter theme
I see you are comparing the new Synchronized woodwinds with the old SE, not the Full version. May I ask you the midi file, to test it with the old Full versions?

Paolo
 
I see you are comparing the new Synchronized woodwinds with the old SE, not the Full version. May I ask you the midi file, to test it with the old Full versions?

I got it here: https://moviethemes.net/music/H/Harry_Potter_And_The_Chamber_Of_Secrets__Hedwig's_Theme.mid

I deleted all but one channel, moved those MIDI events to VSL and hit play. I don't know the channel number in the MIDI file, but it should be fairly obvious by listening which channel I kept. This should help to identify the correct channel:

 
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Michael, thank you very much for the file. I tried to do a crude test with two Flute 1 legato from the old VSL VI Full library. The first one is a blend of legato and legato_fast; the other one is the legato_trill.

EDIT: I've added a version with all the available legato articulations in VI: repetition legato slow, legato normal, legato fast, legato trill. The slow melody alternates between legato slow (actually, a repetition) and normal, with the occasional trespassing to the faster ones. The faster run in the second part is mostly legato trill, with some trespassing to legato fast.

Paolo
 

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  • VSL-VI-flute-legato-fast.mp3
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  • VSL-VI-flute-legato-trill.mp3
    2.3 MB · Views: 148
  • VSL-VI-flute-legato-slo-norm-fast.mp3
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The VI full legato fast one sounds very good - didn't realize VI full had a fast legato. Not a fan of the trill solution (although I've done that before with other libs when I needed to fake this), I can hear a bit of the trill leaking in and it makes the pitch less distinct. Either way, I think having the different legato speeds makes up for the lack of runs, and I would rather be able to write what I want without being limited to selecting one of the runs they decided to record.
 
Not a fan of the trill solution (although I've done that before with other libs when I needed to fake this), I can hear a bit of the trill leaking in and it makes the pitch less distinct.
I think trill legato should only be used for very fast passages (trills, runs, arpeggios), to avoid hearing that leak.

in VI, you could arrange a matrix with selection controlled by speed. Slower speed would select normal or slow legato, medium would select the fast legato, and the highest speed would select trill legato. I would believe SYP is automatically doing something similar.

Paolo
 
The auto-speed in the Synchron Player isn’t new, it’s the same preset in VI (Pro). You could set up a matrix and select speed as controller. I’m always wondering why people think this is new. The only difference is that VI has cells/matrices, Synchron Player has dimensions/trees. VI has more options/features, Synchron Player is like an “amateur” version, easier and ready to go.

The only thing which is new: performance trills are integrated in the fast legatos and are automatically triggered by speed and your playing pattern (trills) in the background.

The good thing with VSL libraries: You always had separate legato speeds, the trills are in the full libraries. With VI Pro you can stretch the samples in order to create many variations.
 
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😍 Autumn Portrait @Guy Bacos

Beautiful. Very Debussy-esque.

Thanks :) I made a screencast of this piece, now online, you may find it interesting.


wow, long link.
 
Thanks :) I made a screencast of this piece, now online, you may find it interesting.


wow, long link.

Guy, your piece is absolutely amazing. I've been waiting for a while for the synchron woodwinds.
This player is amazing, even compared to the vienna instruments pro.

The only missing thing to me in the player is to be able to do autodivisi. I read somewhere in the vsl forum that apparently this feature is not available for any dimansion product in the synchron series, that it can only run the autodivisi by using the none synchron dimension products in the V instruments pro.

It will be amazing to be able to turn any instrument into a divisi in the synchron player.

Thanks for the screencast Guy.
 
Thanks TintoL!

I have no idea about the furure regarding the divisi.

(BTW, the screencast for "Spanish Skies" is now online.)
 
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Could anyone tell something about the mics (quantity and position) please. I could not find any information on their website.
Thanx in advance!
 
Hope you guys enjoy my arrangement for this beautiful piece by Joe Hisaishi (it's from the movie ''Kiki's Delivery Service). My first screencast too, so please feel free to let me know if you have any feedback :)

I splitted the different articulations into single lanes so it's easier to see what's happening.

And, of course, any questions feel free to ask!

 
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