I’ve been really impressed with what vsl have been producing lately, especially the BBO series, and really look forward to demoing the strings! Thank you for being the only company I know to offer demos, and even a return policy!! Other developers should take note, as i thought I had enough brass until I demoed the BBO offerings heard the clarity and depth of these new samples and was sold! Well done VSL!
Realize it’s probably because their prices are so high. OT Berlin Percussion + Berlin Timpani is around $690 ($420 when on sale or bought with other Berlin instruments), VSL Perc I & II is briefly $916 (and that’s the deep discount intro sale price for only the standard libraries as it’s normally $1,457 for the standard libraries and while both full libraries are currently at $1,724 they normally go for $2,707!!!), CinePerc is often $350 onsale ($699), and Spitfire JB Percussion is often $240 onsale sometimes much lower in a collection ($399).
Bear in mind, VSL does not include marimba, claves, mark tree, bell tree, more than one snare drum, bongos, congas, waterphone, timbales, cowbells, or any ethnic drums other than taikos, and no double stroke rolls.
Now, IMHO I do feel like the VSL taikos are phenomenal (best ever) and the bass drums, toms, mallets, bells, cymbals, gongs, and timpani are all excellent. But that’s a lot of money for so many missing standard nuts and bolts traditional percussion instruments, which I’m assuming get released in a Synchron Perc III or a Synchron World Ethnic Percussion for even more money.
I very much like the Synchron Player but I prefer Spitfire’s UACC implementation inside Kontakt since I don’t like using keyswitches and wish that the UACC popup menu list was included in the new Spitfire Player apps so I could program them more easily and quickly.
I own VSL Perc I & II standard, CinePerc, and Spitfire JB Percussion, which are all good. IMHO I don’t think anyone needs more than one of these percussion libraries. I will be using all of them to get different flavors and tones but that’s a luxury and can’t figure out yet which will be my go to Perc library in most cases. IMHO Air Lyndhurst has the best room tone followed by the soundstage at Sony then farther down the list the sound of the Teldex stage. Although I’m sadly not really a fan of the sound of the Synchron stage the Synchron Percussions do sound excellent.
As far as value goes it’s hard to figure out if the new Synchron Percussions are worth so much more money
than their competitors.
I don’t regret buying them at all as they are very good, but as much as I can understand why VSL feels it deserves some kind of a premium, the only ones who can truly afford them are the top A-list composers who get all their VI libraries for free by giving VSL and other developers a brief one sentence endorsement. Too many composers make little to no money, so these super wealthy A-list composers who deeply rely on these VI libraries are the ones who should be paying far more than the list price of these libraries as all of us are subsidizing their business. Because so many composers who barely make a living buy these libraries the developers can offer them at sort of attainable prices for the masses but that means super wealthy composers either don’t have to pay that much to buy & use these libraries or again they get them for free and pay nothing.
This is the rich get richer at play, an unfortunate reality of life. What if the wealthiest composers paid a usage fee based on the budget of the film ie. $100 million production budget means they pay each developer $10,000. There are probably making $1-3 million in creative fees just to do that film so $50,000 in usage fees to 5 VI developers (ie. VSL, Spitfire, OT, Cinesamples, CSS) would result in lower prices for the rest of us. This will never happen, but fair is fair!
