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Ark 2 - extreme noise

Just found other thumping sounds for Mid Strings Fast Tremolo patch (TRM-F) on the notes D#3, E3, and F3. They are quite audible if the modwheel is 70% or below. If I play them in succession, I do not need a percussion on the background to keep the ryhthm :rofl:

Seems Mid Strings patch has to be carefully exposed and preferably hidden behind other instruments to suppress the noise issues. This nki and the Pianos a3 patch are the most disappointing in the whole library so far. The crackling voice in the sustain patch in Women Choir is disturbing but still workable. Thankfully, the Brass and Winds have been fine so far. They were my main reasons for pre-ordering.

Speaking about pre-ordering, this might probably be my last time pre-ordering from OT unless some of the issues are fixed. That being said, I don't even know how they could go about that since the issues seem to be with the quality control of the samples themselves. I mean, wouldn't it make sense to do another take when the attack of a piano ensemble sounds out of sync?

I hope OT can take a second look at this library once they get their rest after this release.
 
Does anyone know what kind of updates OT released for ARK 1? I think it's on version 1.1, but I'm curious to see a list if anyone has it.

I know at some point capsule was updated to 2.5, I have that email and updated my capsule, but I don't see anything in my email history about an update the sample library. The only reason I know the sample library is at version 1.1 is because I reformatted for 2017 and had to redone load all my libraries.
 
Just found other thumping sounds for Mid Strings Fast Tremolo patch (TRM-F) on the notes D#3, E3, and F3. They are quite audible if the modwheel is 70% or below. If I play them in succession, I do not need a percussion on the background to keep the ryhthm :rofl:

Seems Mid Strings patch has to be carefully exposed and preferably hidden behind other instruments to suppress the noise issues. This nki and the Pianos a3 patch are the most disappointing in the whole library so far. The crackling voice in the sustain patch in Women Choir is disturbing but still workable. Thankfully, the Brass and Winds have been fine so far. They were my main reasons for pre-ordering.

Speaking about pre-ordering, this might probably be my last time pre-ordering from OT unless some of the issues are fixed. That being said, I don't even know how they could go about that since the issues seem to be with the quality control of the samples themselves. I mean, wouldn't it make sense to do another take when the attack of a piano ensemble sounds out of sync?

I hope OT can take a second look at this library once they get their rest after this release.
You should give Low Strings a try; pretty much all articulations have background noise.. It's worth mentioning to people watching this thread that, at least from what I found, "background noise" are mainly crackling sound of moving chairs at sample tails.
 
This is my own opinion (right or wrong). It would be nice if OT could give some interest and feedback on the points raised within this thread. Without which, I can't imagine it will help those feel confident to purchase future libraries from OT, nor those who may have shown interest.
 
This is my own opinion (right or wrong). It would be nice if OT could give some interest and feedback on the points raised within this thread. Without which, I can't imagine it will help those feel confident to purchase future libraries from OT, nor those who may have shown interest.
Since it's Christmas Eve morning in Germany I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that any time soon... ;) :cool:

I wonder, has anyone who believes this is an issue needed to be addressed opened one with OT on their https://www.orchestraltools.com/support/index.html (<b><i>Support</i></b>) site?
 
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They are aware of this thread and from what they said to me dont consider any of these issues serious. Apart from the choir glitch.

I see what you mean about noises from players fidgeting or putting their bows down, Spitfire have some of this in their samples too especially Albion.

However unless they have extra takes I cannot see that ever getting fixed as re-editing will lose the natural tails. And there is no way they are going to re-record those.

But unless you play the same notes over and over and over again, its probably not going to be that bad. I mean in isolation sure, but none of the demos jumped out and shouted these issues.
 
Just found other thumping sounds for Mid Strings Fast Tremolo patch (TRM-F) on the notes D#3, E3, and F3. They are quite audible if the modwheel is 70% or below. If I play them in succession, I do not need a percussion on the background to keep the ryhthm :rofl:

Seems Mid Strings patch has to be carefully exposed and preferably hidden behind other instruments to suppress the noise issues. This nki and the Pianos a3 patch are the most disappointing in the whole library so far. The crackling voice in the sustain patch in Women Choir is disturbing but still workable. Thankfully, the Brass and Winds have been fine so far. They were my main reasons for pre-ordering.

Speaking about pre-ordering, this might probably be my last time pre-ordering from OT unless some of the issues are fixed. That being said, I don't even know how they could go about that since the issues seem to be with the quality control of the samples themselves. I mean, wouldn't it make sense to do another take when the attack of a piano ensemble sounds out of sync?

I hope OT can take a second look at this library once they get their rest after this release.

I totally agree. It is not just the noise from the string patches, but also different crackling noises in a lot of other patches. I can already name more than 10 different of these in under an hour of going through the patches. And these are not like a bit of noise, but like real annoying stuff like a crackle noise that gives the attack of the note a different sound than the others or that double trigger piano note I wrote before. Or also all that noise on the low patches that C-Wave wrote above.
Some of the patches I can only use for a quiet layer on top of other instruments where these noise problems aren`t audible. This is not why I actually bought it.
I still understand the different opinions here and agree with most of them, also the point that the whole library is a fantastic concept and has a lot of inspiration in it. Also that some kind of noise in a low level recording is normal.

I am just a disappointed in the fact, that OT wasn`t able to remove these different noise and crackle problems before the release. A bit of imperfection in samples is cool, but if it gets this obvious, I am really irritated (and I know my clients might be too).
Probably won`t pre-order again too. I better pay a bit more for a library that I can fully use.
 
Do you know what this thread reminds me of? As an avid photography hobbyist, I'm a frequent reader on some photography forums... and every time there's a new lens or a new body that comes out, there are folks who pore over every technical detail and endlessly debate the relative merits and compromises of the equipment. They'll view a photo at 100% ("pixel peeping" as it's called, which, unless you're printing a billboard, is more or less pointless) and find something to complain about, without fail. I'm not saying it's a bad thing — on the contrary, I think it keeps the manufacturers honest to know they're being scrutinized so closely.

But at the same time... no matter the technical shortcomings, it's still possible to make beautiful photos with that equipment. It's entirely in the skill and eye of the person operating it. In other words, it's not the gear that would be holding someone back.

The parallels here are obvious. You can take a sample from the library, remove it from all context and criticize it to death. Or you can use the library and write something beautiful if you have the talent. We've listened to the demos, and we KNOW it's capable of sounding amazing in skilled hands.

Show me a well-written piece mocked up with this library that is ruined by extraneous noise. If that happens, then I'd wholeheartedly agree OT needs to address it. Until then, I think they're right in considering this a nonissue.

Go forth and write... and don't miss the forest for the trees.
 
Do you know what this thread reminds me of? As an avid photography hobbyist, I'm a frequent reader on some photography forums... and every time there's a new lens or a new body that comes out, there are folks who pore over every technical detail and endlessly debate the relative merits and compromises of the equipment. They'll view a photo at 100% ("pixel peeping" as it's called, which, unless you're printing a billboard, is more or less pointless) and find something to complain about, without fail. I'm not saying it's a bad thing — on the contrary, I think it keeps the manufacturers honest to know they're being scrutinized so closely.

But at the same time... no matter the technical shortcomings, it's still possible to make beautiful photos with that equipment. It's entirely in the skill and eye of the person operating it. In other words, it's not the gear that would be holding someone back.

The parallels here are obvious. You can take a sample from the library, remove it from all context and criticize it to death. Or you can use the library and write something beautiful if you have the talent. We've listened to the demos, and we KNOW it's capable of sounding amazing in skilled hands.

Show me a well-written piece mocked up with this library that is ruined by extraneous noise. If that happens, then I'd wholeheartedly agree OT needs to address it. Until then, I think they're right in considering this a nonissue.

Go forth and write... and don't miss the forest for the trees.
+1

I'm an amateur photographer too and this happens a lot on PotN... still a fantastic web Forum though.
 
I would like to see a little more curation from devs on release samples in particular. There are incredible tools such as RX5 available today that can remove transient noise - Alb 5 suffers from poor release regions (in fact it looks like the release points were set via batch processing versus by listening, and adjusting by hand).
 
There's an old axiom in photography. Never stick a really expensive lens on a crap camera. Why? Because the picture will be worse than if the lens was the same quality as the camera. Because with a really good lens, the camera can't reconcile all the detail that's coming in, and it shows up all the deficiencies of the camera. Like noise.
Equally, a great camera shows up all the deficiencies of a crap lens.
So if you've got a really good monitoring and sound system attached to your DAW, then any extraneous noise in a sample library will be amplified more than if your sound system is crap.
Music editors and sound engineers usually have pretty good sound systems.
 
Just got this downloaded and installed today and I have to agree: the noise on the string sustains is unbelievable, even on my laptop speakers without headphones.
 
Do you know what this thread reminds me of? As an avid photography hobbyist, I'm a frequent reader on some photography forums... and every time there's a new lens or a new body that comes out, there are folks who pore over every technical detail and endlessly debate the relative merits and compromises of the equipment. They'll view a photo at 100% ("pixel peeping" as it's called, which, unless you're printing a billboard, is more or less pointless) and find something to complain about, without fail. I'm not saying it's a bad thing — on the contrary, I think it keeps the manufacturers honest to know they're being scrutinized so closely.

But at the same time... no matter the technical shortcomings, it's still possible to make beautiful photos with that equipment. It's entirely in the skill and eye of the person operating it. In other words, it's not the gear that would be holding someone back.

The parallels here are obvious. You can take a sample from the library, remove it from all context and criticize it to death. Or you can use the library and write something beautiful if you have the talent. We've listened to the demos, and we KNOW it's capable of sounding amazing in skilled hands.

Show me a well-written piece mocked up with this library that is ruined by extraneous noise. If that happens, then I'd wholeheartedly agree OT needs to address it. Until then, I think they're right in considering this a nonissue.

Go forth and write... and don't miss the forest for the trees.

I don't think anyone is denying the fact that you can write incredible music with Ark 2. Just by listening to the demos, one can hear the remarkable potential it has. I think the common theme here is that there are just enough artifacts in this library for it to be distracting, which poses an issue when It comes time to compose, and also causes some regret, because of the money that was spent.

Since you're a photographer, imagine trying to take a shot of a beautiful sunset with a brand new lens, but there are noticeable black spots right in the center of the shot. You may begin to wonder If your lens is defective, or maybe quality control just missed a couple of things, or maybe it actually was purposely designed that way, but knowing that you can't return the lens, you're either stuck with it producing black spots on your photos, or you rely on editing software that compromises the overall quality of the photo. Sure, the overall image that you just took is certainly beautiful, but knowing that there are artifacts in that image, even if they are ones that the general public won't notice, you too may begin to regret your buying decision.

I think it's safe to assume that most people here are certainly aware of the common anomalies found in sample libraries, but every so often, a library comes out that has so many anomalies that it strikes a nerve. I'm not saying that Ark 2 is that library (i dont own it), but I am suggesting that when there are enough complaints about odd noises in sample libraries, I can't help but wonder If statements like, "It adds realism!" or, "It sounds amazing in the right hands!" are being used to dismiss those complaints, or are being used to offer a different perspective.
 
I just did some testing of the specific noise issues raised in this thread for myself. Speaking only for myself, I don't think the majority of them are any sort of serious impediment to using the library.

However, one glaring exception is the "thumps" in the Strings Mid Tremolo Fast articulation, which appear on most of the notes, not just D#3 thru F3 as was reported here earlier. You have to hold each note for about six seconds before it appears, but frankly it sounds like bad loop points, really bad in fact. I have to agree that this articulation is not usable for any long held tremolo notes in its current state. That's pretty disappointing.

EDIT: Yes, I feel certain the particular problems I mentioned above are due to bad loop points. I opened up the patch editor in Kontakt for the Mid Strings Fast Trems patch and looked at one of the raw samples, and the end loop point was clearly nowhere near a zero crossing even though the loop start was right on a zero crossing, which will inevitably cause a noise. Furthermore, I tried adjusting the end point by hand to a nearby zero crossing and was able to get rid of the noise.

Kudos to OT for making their patches able to be edited. But it is most unfortunate that they didn't deal with these issues themselves before the release. I surely do hope they will do so in an official patch.
 
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Cinematic Strings 2 or some Loegria patches have release samples so noisy you have to turn them off or tweak release just to be able to use them, so this Ark 2 situation is not something special. But I agree developers could do something about that.
 
This is just a general misunderstanding of what signal to noise ratio is.
If you record really quiet stuff, as they did with this release, signal to noise ratio decreases as noise level is fixed (It depends on the equipment used and the environment where the recordings took place)
What they did is to add some gain to those samples to make the library more usable, meaning, signal level increases, but sadly noise level increases too.
What happens here is that those samples should be used as true ppp, while the OT guys are trying to use them in a different context, and that's why this thread exists.
If you want to use ppp samples in loud music, recordings should be done using mics with exceptionally high signal to noise ratios, and in highly anechoic environments.
I personally don't like this approach (like VSL), and it seems that neither the OT guys do, so there's nothing to do here.
 
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This is just a general misunderstanding of what signal to noise ratio is.
If you record really quiet stuff, as they did with this release, signal to noise ratio decreases as noise level is fixed (It depends on the equipment used and the environment where the recordings took place)
What they did is to add some gain to those samples to make the library more usable, meaning, signal level increases, but sadly noise level increases too.
What happens here is that those samples should be used as true ppp, while the OT guys are trying to use them in a different context, and that's why this thread exists.
If you want to use ppp samples in loud music, recordings should be done using mics with exceptionally high signal to noise ratios, and in highly anechoic environments.
I personally don't like this approach (like VSL), so there's nothing to do here.

For the complaints about general background noise level, chairs moving, etc., I pretty much agree with you. I don't agree about the loop point glitches I described in my last message, though …. those aren't acceptable in any sample library (much less a relatively high-end one like this) and really should be fixed.
 
For the complaints about general background noise level, chairs moving, etc., I pretty much agree with you. I don't agree about the loop point glitches I described in my last message, though …. those aren't acceptable in any sample library (much less a relatively high-end one like this) and really should be fixed.

Yep, bad loop points are all kinds of bad, a relatively easy fix and should be sorted asap.
 
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