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Infinite Series (Aaron Venture) thread

Thank you! And from the demo videos I understand that dynamics CC is mostly used, and others are used rarely and for effects only, is that right? So 99% of the time you only need velocity and dynamics

I think it's useful to control vibrato depth on a secondary CC.

Can you edit multiple lanes of CC at the same time in your DAW? In Cubase it's easily possible, so it's just as convenient to have many lanes as it is to have only one lane. I usually have note velocity, two CC controls, and even pitch bend, all in the note editor simultaneously.
 
I think it's useful to control vibrato depth on a secondary CC.

Can you edit multiple lanes of CC at the same time in your DAW? In Cubase it's easily possible, so it's just as convenient to have many lanes as it is to have only one lane. I usually have note velocity, two CC controls, and even pitch bend, all in the note editor simultaneously.
Aye. I have it set up so that there's a shortcut for different lane combinations. Press 1 and I get velocity + modulation.
Press 2 and I get vibrato depth and speed
Etc etc

Makes life so easy. Ps I even managed, with someone's help on this forum, to get it so that if I press a key, it opens up all the flutes in the editor (same for other instruments)

Drawing it in couldn't get easier. Now I just need to try to get cubase through my touchscreen pen tablet that I can use a pen to draw.
 
how'd you manage that?
I will post some screenshots of the logical editor that allows you to do that. Truth is, I have no idea how to do it, but a few forum members solved it for me! I'm not in the same city as my computer right now so might take a few days. However, there is a thread here where they made the instructions for me, so I'll link you to that sooner. SUPER time saver!
 
So, Infinite Woodwinds is just kicking and screaming for some Ravel, right? Here's a 20-second quick one for you. Enjoy!

...thanks for that @shawnsingh. I really appreciate that as I am about to buy something and it's come down to AV IB and Winds or SynchronPro. I have until Monday to decide.
Snippets like that are incredibly helpful to me as I am writing concert music these days. The Ravel is a favourite work of mine.
 
Could somebody render me some lines with the saxophones from IW?
Nothing fancy, just to have an idea of how it sounds for some lyrical stuff (maybe some Shostakovitch?), and some jazzy, punchy lines, staccato stuff? That would be very appreciated :)
 
I'm a bit at the end of my options at the moment. I have to admit I'm not the best in mixing, but I know my way around the plug-ins quite well, but here goes:

Although I love the playability of the library, what bothers me is the overall sound of the libraries, especially IW. I've tried EQ, different settings in Kontakt for the instruments (mics, halls, studio with my own reverb), played with early and late reflections under the hood, but I can't get it to sound right.
For IB I have to say that trumpets, horns and tuba are okay, but I simply can't get the Trombone to sound right in louder phrases, even when I don't exceed CC1 at a max of 100.

The woodwinds are much more difficult as I think almost all instruments (except English horn, the bassoon family and the bass clarinet), do have a thin sound, or don't have the piercing high register you would expect for flute, piccolo, and clarinets. The oboe lacks body and the clarinets and soprano and alto saxophone sound synthetic.

Personally I really love the sound of the VSL Woodwinds, it would be a dream come true if I could get IW to sound the same, or at least something comparable.

Please don't read my post as a complaint to Aaron and the great job he does, but as a request for tips to get a great sound.
 
I'm a bit at the end of my options at the moment. I have to admit I'm not the best in mixing, but I know my way around the plug-ins quite well, but here goes:

Although I love the playability of the library, what bothers me is the overall sound of the libraries, especially IW. I've tried EQ, different settings in Kontakt for the instruments (mics, halls, studio with my own reverb), played with early and late reflections under the hood, but I can't get it to sound right.
For IB I have to say that trumpets, horns and tuba are okay, but I simply can't get the Trombone to sound right in louder phrases, even when I don't exceed CC1 at a max of 100.

The woodwinds are much more difficult as I think almost all instruments (except English horn, the bassoon family and the bass clarinet), do have a thin sound, or don't have the piercing high register you would expect for flute, piccolo, and clarinets. The oboe lacks body and the clarinets and soprano and alto saxophone sound synthetic.

Personally I really love the sound of the VSL Woodwinds, it would be a dream come true if I could get IW to sound the same, or at least something comparable.

Please don't read my post as a complaint to Aaron and the great job he does, but as a request for tips to get a great sound.

Why not post an example? It's much easier for us to assess what the problems you are having might be and how you might remedy them if we might actually hear the problems.

I do see this a lot; people complain or say that they are having trouble and then they don't even post any audio examples of the issues they are having, making it almost impossible to know if it's a mix problem, an instrument problem, or a user problem. Why not just do a few quick examples with the instruments you want help with and see if someone can help you?
 
I'm a bit at the end of my options at the moment. I have to admit I'm not the best in mixing, but I know my way around the plug-ins quite well, but here goes:

Although I love the playability of the library, what bothers me is the overall sound of the libraries, especially IW. I've tried EQ, different settings in Kontakt for the instruments (mics, halls, studio with my own reverb), played with early and late reflections under the hood, but I can't get it to sound right.
For IB I have to say that trumpets, horns and tuba are okay, but I simply can't get the Trombone to sound right in louder phrases, even when I don't exceed CC1 at a max of 100.

The woodwinds are much more difficult as I think almost all instruments (except English horn, the bassoon family and the bass clarinet), do have a thin sound, or don't have the piercing high register you would expect for flute, piccolo, and clarinets. The oboe lacks body and the clarinets and soprano and alto saxophone sound synthetic.

Personally I really love the sound of the VSL Woodwinds, it would be a dream come true if I could get IW to sound the same, or at least something comparable.

Please don't read my post as a complaint to Aaron and the great job he does, but as a request for tips to get a great sound.

My first impression with the flutes was similar to that. I was comparing it to Hollywood Winds which have way more air noise in the samples and that was kind of my subjective realism standard.

Then I started listening to several recordings I wanted to emulate with IW and realized flute tones varies a lot from recording to recording and many times it sounds closer to what I hear in IW rather than HWW.

So, I think maybe the realistic tone is a bit of a subjective perception based on the samples we are used to hearing.

Then, there's the realistic expression factor. IW lacking much of the baked in expression in most libraries requires you to play/program it more carefully. The first step I took was to download many of the midi files present in this thread and Aaron's site. I was amazed at how expressive and real sounding the library can be after loading those midi files on my DAW.

I'm currently trying to emulate the phrases used in the Bogano theme from Fallen Order. I'm getting closer with IW than anything I tried before. Here is the track, I think it has an amazing use of winds.

As a last word and a testament to the subjectivity of the topic: Many of the instruments you name in IW as realistic were named by a few as the more unrealistic.

 
Anyone else having severe performance issues in REAPER when playing in several instruments at the same time?
I can't even play in all 6 horns at once without REAPER starting to crackle at 256 samples (in Cubase I can do the same thing at 128 samples at it doesn't even break a sweat).

I remember REAPER having severe performance issues when record arming multiple tracks, but not being able to record at least 6-8 instruments at once would be quite a limitation.
 
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Anyone else having severe performance issues in REAPER when playing in several instruments at the same time?
I can't even play in all 6 horns at once without REAPER starting to crackle at 256 samples (in Cubase I can do the same thing at 128 samples at it doesn't even break a sweat).

I remember REAPER having severe performance issues when record arming multiple tracks, but not being able to record at least 6-8 instruments at once would be quite a limitation.
Yeah, it seems to be Mozarteum that's doing it. when I switch to Bersa the issue seems to go away.
 
Yeah, it seems to be Mozarteum that's doing it. when I switch to Bersa the issue seems to go away.
Not for me unfortunately, but I'm also 99.9% sure that it's a REAPER issue and not one of the library.

Does anyone know of any secret options in the REAPER preferences that will improve performance with multiple armed tracks?
 
Not for me unfortunately, but I'm also 99.9% sure that it's a REAPER issue and not one of the library.

Does anyone know of any secret options in the REAPER preferences that will improve performance with multiple armed tracks?
Aaron told me to make sure multithreading was enabled, but I don't really know what that is and how to turn it on.
 
Reaper is the most performant host of VST that I have ever tried. If you haven't messed up your Preferences, there's nothing you need to do in Reaper.

In Kontakt / Options / Engine / Multiprocessor support (when running as a VST): I have that set to off right now.

This means when one audio cycle starts, Reaper is in charge of distributing the workload among the CPU cores -- each Kontakt instance will run in its own core and will do no attempt to use others by itself. When running this way, it is very important to keep few instruments in a Kontakt instance. For instance, I believe I can run 5 or 6 Infinite Brass in one Kontakt instance (meaning one core), but certainly not 7. This is with only one impulse response -- I always use the mixed mics to save CPU. The number of instruments may be different according to your CPU.

Maximum performance would come from one Kontakt instance, one instrument playing. This would allow more flexibility for Reaper to distribute work to the CPU cores.

The CPU usage I see in the Kontakt instance is the usage of a single core. But when it reaches 60% I get crackles. This is because Windows is not a real-time operating system and it interrupts audio processing to do other things. So you must not count on using more than 60%. Interrupts become less of an issue when one raises the buffer size.

How many cores does your machine have? If you are running on a laptop with 2 cores and 4 threads (ignore the number of threads), 10 or 12 Infinite instruments would definitely max it out.

I went into the BIOS and disabled multithreading (AMD calls this by a different name) in the CPU because it does not help audio. At least watching usage of the cores is now simpler (half the information).

For those running Windows, there's a setting in the operating system that is very important, for it to favor background rather than foreground tasks. Audio counts as background.

There's a famous video that explains the real-time stuff to normal humans in about 30 minutes. I might find that for you later if you think you want it.
 
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Aaron told me to make sure multithreading was enabled, but I don't really know what that is and how to turn it on.

The option is in Preferences -> Audio -> Buffering. It's related to the amount of CPUs being used.

I have Reaper and IW. I just tested recording on 10 instruments, had to change the buffer from 128 to 512 (not ideal at all for recording) but it's working fine.
 
Is there an analogous feature in Reaper like Asio Guard in Cubase?

I get breaks and spikes a lot, but if I de-select all tracks (or select a completely unrelated track that doesn't play any MIDI or audio at that time), all the audio processing goes into the "non-priority" buffer and works without problems.
 
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