What's new

Infinite Series (Aaron Venture) thread

I honestly find it incredibly silly to be mad at Aaron because you choose to wait for a library instead of purchasing another. It's been clear that the development for this is a tough one, and considering the current situation, there are lots of reasons it could be delayed.
I honestly find there is nothing silly in assuming a poster inscription "2021" to mean just that. We don't know the situation, we don't know whether its a delay, we don't know the reasons.
 
I’ve been around the [Which Brass??] merry-go-round quite a bit in the past few days. Berlin, Synchron, CSB, Cine - or Infinite?

I’m starting to lean Infinite, because while if the project is **Trailermuzic McDeadline** and the need is to work loud, fast, with quick realism, I have no doubt that I’d be [super] happy with any, particularly Synchron which is just bursting with shiny, punchy power and detail.

However, my compositional brain is often in the chamber orchestra, avant-garde space and I don’t see another major brass package that feels like it could handle that to the same degree of depth as Infinite. (Yes, @doctoremmet, Xsample is in that realm and if @Hans Josef deigns ever to have another sale, I’ll be looking very hard at it.) It seems to be a signal indication of its flexibility that Infinite can do a credible job of the swaggering rips and flutters in the Bond theme, an extended virtuosic trumpet solo, classical standards *and* Trailermuzic.com.

But Now: what about the “sonority problem?” It does seem as if some ensemble patches in Infinite ring the IRs in a slightly false way from time to time; certain moments sound just a little static and synthy; but is that a solvable problem with some finessing or playing in of individual parts, or is it a frequent issue? @Soundbed definitlely interested in your comments as well here b/c if I recall you have IB and use it.
 
@Soundbed definitlely interested in your comments
hi!

Haven't played with the brass for a while. I've been trying to learn better strings writing lately. I am a very rhythm-oriented person and this forum has re-introduced me to counterpoint and harmony. So as a getting-older adult I'm trying to re-learn some harmonic and contrapuntal vocabulary ... which, while perfectly appropriate for brass has me hankering for string legato and lyrical woodwinds more than the punctuated, braaamsy brass I've done for the past couple years.

So...

I was playing with Infinite Woodwinds last night.

And it was really making me question whether I want to spend on Berlin Woodwinds.

?

But here's the brutally short answer, today:

Infinite Woodwinds is amazing — absolutely amazing — with short notes and fast or note-changing passages. I basically was slamming the keyboard in a syncopated way and making jazz that (yes with a little finesse of the MIDI) would have fooled many. Getting something lifelike or just super cool sounding was a huge release and I spent a ton of time jamming.

Not only "fast" passages. Any time a note transition to another note, Infinite Woodwinds is fabulous, and I remember IB being great with that as well. Fabulous really seems like the bestest word for it.

And every new note is great too.

So, any short note, or, new note (transition) is great.

BUT ...

When I was going for longer more lyrical things, it was close and not quite what I wanted to be smoking.

For a beat or two, at a moderate tempo, holding notes sounds fine, even great.

But as soon as I held a note for "a while" it felt like I needed more hands to control ... something.

And ultimately it either sounded like it needed a human's "breath" — or — to be less "static" as you say, which is to say moving in a too-predictable fashion.

Which some people abbreviate as synthy but I don't like that word as much as saying "too predictable". Synths can sound great and unpredictable and organic and wonderful and lovely so calling disliked orchestral instruments synthy as a criticism seems like an unnecessary slight to the many wonderful synth performers on the planet.

:emoji_angel: (that's supposed to be an angel emoticon ... it sort of looks like a cotton top tamarin with a halo on my screen, but what do I know about heaven?)


And yet I don't want random fluctuations in sustained notes, of course.

I want a player with years of experience to craft my phrases.

Sadly I am not (usually) that player.

It makes me feel like I could probably do some "expressive" vibrato automation or progressive vibrato ... and maybe I could. But I would hope a sampled package would have a player that does that for me (I would hope).

So, I am left again trying to figure out if I want to use Infinite Woodwinds for anything that involves more transitions and note starts than long, held notes (proportionally) or learning how to automate whatever it takes to give life to held notes (it's not only the mod wheel).

The above was a meditation on Infinite Woodwinds ... it might apply to Infinite Brass as well. Certainly not meant as a criticism, but more as an attempt to reach out to the infinite and try to figure out when I want "those Williams' piccolo runs" what to reach for ... in fact, I usually don't write longer held woodwind parts anyway.

So maybe it's fine. It's fine. Players only have so much breath. They have to stop playing to breathe sometime, right? I'll simply write lines that don't have a lot of sustained held notes. Or if I do, I might buy a sample package where there's a sampled player who has spent more years than me learning how to breathe into their instrument and make it sound like wisdom.

What do I know of heaven?
 
Last edited:
@Soundbed that’s a great (and unexpectedly moving) answer. Doesn’t help my issues, but great nonetheless. :laugh: I had forgotten that you’ve been moving in a more woodwindwardly direction recently. We’re in agreement on the tone of IW - that one really does have some pretty obvious sonority issues and I’m more than happy enough with the experienced wisdom issuing from the pipes of the Cinewinds series that I’m not looking elsewhere (other than Xsamples) for those for now.

IB, however, at least *seems* to have crossed a bit of a Rubicon with the last update, such that I now hear more plausibility than before. I’m wondering whether that’s the experience of those using it, and whether it holds up in a small ensemble situation, using the “extended” techniques that are possible with this style of VI.

I’m settled into the expectation that I’m going to need to go breath controller or iPad or leap motion to really have any hope of playing these instruments effectively. I have just enough experience (or hubris) to think that might result in something more than unlistenable noise. ;)
 
@Soundbed that’s a great (and unexpectedly moving) answer. Doesn’t help my issues, but great nonetheless. :laugh: I had forgotten that you’ve been moving in a more woodwindwardly direction recently. We’re in agreement on the tone of IW - that one really does have some pretty obvious sonority issues and I’m more than happy enough with the experienced wisdom issuing from the pipes of the Cinewinds series that I’m not looking elsewhere (other than Xsamples) for those for now.

IB, however, at least *seems* to have crossed a bit of a Rubicon with the last update, such that I now hear more plausibility than before. I’m wondering whether that’s the experience of those using it, and whether it holds up in a small ensemble situation, using the “extended” techniques that are possible with this style of VI.

I’m settled into the expectation that I’m going to need to go breath controller or iPad or leap motion to really have any hope of playing these instruments effectively. I have just enough experience (or hubris) to think that might result in something more than unlistenable noise. ;)
sounds like you're more or less on board, and it's only a matter of time.

happy my offering to the Internets didn't dissuade you.

i might need to grab a wind controller as well. i wasn't sure if i needed one ... ... but i assume i do...? (I don't have one, yet).

my four years of french horn in high school band taught me that 16 year old me didn't know intonation for shiz.

*jump cut*

I think my last set of thoughts about IB basically consisted of ... "it's infinite!" like I could re-play the same part over and over and get a different sound each time, which was so different from all my other sample instruments that it was worth the experience, for me ... I mean maybe not holy grail but definitely wow
 
So about adding movement to the woodwinds, I think the kind of movement we may want, especially in the oboe family, isn't so much changing vibrato or dynamics, but formants. I am saying this after realizing that Audio Modeling woodwinds have a formant slider which is essential to avoid the same issue.

I wonder if we can just set a movable EQ and automate it to get more or less the same effect. Move the frequency up and down slowly to emulate formant shift. Been meaning to try this out, but haven't had time. If anyone else would like to try this...
 
I cheated a little bit @Soundbed as I’m supposed to be PC building, but I loaded up eh/bassoon and french horn, and I think the longs have to be phrased with vibrato speed and vibrato and dynamics to sell you the way a traditionally recorded player does in a library. Which comes with its strengths for a few reasons, but I'll agree think traditional libraries are better designed to much more effortlessly give you realistic performances on slower passages, the way the players tend to phrase when being sampled I think lends itself to slow. So workflow wise I tentatively agree it’s much easier to program slow music with e.g. Cinewinds, BWW etc, and the space is also generally a plus.

Caveat being the phrasing won’t always be how you want, and so while you’d have to program all of the phrasing in Infinite, you’d be able to “lean” into certain lines in a way not really possible before, and personally I think the English Horn and bassoon sound really fantastic in Infinite, what was part of what made me think, “okay, this is the one”.

If the music being delivered is samples, especially if you can play it in, I think Infinite is a good selection for a final render if you're willing to take the time. Any long+short+dynamic (“lyrical”, maybe) passages I think the infinite workflow would even be easier, and the results with no crossfading and phasing are, to me, pretty shockingly good. No other sample library has legatos that work this well, aside from JB's 8^)

And since I didn't say it explicitly, I think the vibrato sounds really good. I started laughing after a few minutes of playing the EH because the performance was.... pretty much the best I've ever heard from a sample library, ever, I got giddy. I can do most of the same things I can do on an actual oboe/english horn, in terms of phrasing, in this library. The only thing missing is below, and it is such a small fish (but no small fish for Aaron)
 
Last edited:
So about adding movement to the woodwinds, I think the kind of movement we may want, especially in the oboe family, isn't so much changing vibrato or dynamics, but formants. I am saying this after realizing that Audio Modeling woodwinds have a formant slider which is essential to avoid the same issue.

I wonder if we can just set a movable EQ and automate it to get more or less the same effect. Move the frequency up and down slowly to emulate formant shift. Been meaning to try this out, but haven't had time. If anyone else would like to try this...
This was something I almost wrote as my only criticism, and I think it would have to be a filter indeed since the sample count would increase exponentially otherwise. And no matter how it was implemented, it wouldn’t be super easy workflow wise unless you could control it with “bite” input in reverse; for instance on the double reeds I’d like to be able to open their mouth a bit more lol. Well, sometimes; part of phrasing is formant manipulation or “vocalization” which is sometimes more of a blending thing but also sometimes a color thing, it’s like the “sub-dynamics” slider, you can open up the sound before actually opening up the sound to make dynamic growth even more expressive, or at the same dynamic just use a fuller vs. a more relaxed (I hesitate to use the word “thinner”) timbre as another tool for expression
 
Last edited:
This was something I almost wrote as my only criticism, and I think it would have to be a filter indeed since the sample count would increase exponentially otherwise. And no matter how it was implemented, it wouldn’t be super easy workflow wise unless you could control it with “bite” input in reverse; for instance on the double reeds I’d like to be able to open their mouth a bit more lol. Well, sometimes; part of phrasing is formant manipulation or “vocalization” which is sometimes more of a blending thing but also sometimes a color thing, it’s like the “sub-dynamics” slider, you can open up the sound before actually opening up the sound to make dynamic growth even more expressive, or at the same dynamic just use a fuller vs. a more relaxed (I hesitate to use the word “thinner”) timbre as another tool for expression
Good points - From AV's video, I notice there's a slider that lets you reduce dynamic range such that timbre but not level changes with modwheel/breath/etc input. This struck me as a kind of "solo mode switch," for points where the instrument is front and center and you need to be free to modulate more without changing level. Does using it help with this?
 
Good points - From AV's video, I notice there's a slider that lets you reduce dynamic range such that timbre but not level changes with modwheel/breath/etc input. This struck me as a kind of "solo mode switch," for points where the instrument is front and center and you need to be free to modulate more without changing level. Does using it help with this?
It may at some dynamics, I’ll have to experiment. On a macro-scale it sounds similar to a filter being opened up, but on a micro scale and especially at specific dynamic levels it might do something useful. I'm back to building my PC now, which I need to finish tonight, so it'll be probably days or even a week before I can get back to testing nitty gritty stuff like this. All in all honestly I am pretty floored with how good infinite sounds when it's performed.

Wouldn't a compressor help in this case?
That's basically how dynamics sliders are likened in the libraries they're included in, the benefit (or difference) being that it's on the per-sample level so there is no time-related element to it, it just levels out the volume differences at the source.

What might be interesting is observing how the harmonic content changes depending on mouth+throat cavity shape and size. It might be a little complex for something like infinite, or maybe not (and I'm not sure if it's worth it for Aaron to work on it, at least right now) but it's definitely in modelling territory
 
So, the samples in IB seem to have multiple attacks in them. Take a Cimbasso for instance. If I play a very slow attack with maximum dynamic, I don't get a smooth continuous sound, but a complex attack with kind of a "tonguing" in between.

Is this a natural characteristic of brass instruments? I don't hear this kind of attack in other libraries.
 
I’ve been around the [Which Brass??] merry-go-round quite a bit in the past few days. Berlin, Synchron, CSB, Cine - or Infinite?

I’m starting to lean Infinite, because while if the project is **Trailermuzic McDeadline** and the need is to work loud, fast, with quick realism, I have no doubt that I’d be [super] happy with any, particularly Synchron which is just bursting with shiny, punchy power and detail.

However, my compositional brain is often in the chamber orchestra, avant-garde space and I don’t see another major brass package that feels like it could handle that to the same degree of depth as Infinite. (Yes, @doctoremmet, Xsample is in that realm and if @Hans Josef deigns ever to have another sale, I’ll be looking very hard at it.) It seems to be a signal indication of its flexibility that Infinite can do a credible job of the swaggering rips and flutters in the Bond theme, an extended virtuosic trumpet solo, classical standards *and* Trailermuzic.com.

But Now: what about the “sonority problem?” It does seem as if some ensemble patches in Infinite ring the IRs in a slightly false way from time to time; certain moments sound just a little static and synthy; but is that a solvable problem with some finessing or playing in of individual parts, or is it a frequent issue? @Soundbed definitlely interested in your comments as well here b/c if I recall you have IB and use it.
I know you didn't specifically ask for my opinion, but I will give it anyway and do with it what you will.

First of all, there are no ensemble patches in Infinite, you create you're own by playing multiple solo instruments. This creates the effect of an ensemble playing together, but without the real-world intricacies that playing in an ensemble comes with which makes the sound of Infinite less real (since it's not recorded as an ensemble), and in some cases, even hard to work with if you're going for absolute realism. But then again, traditionally recorded libraries have plenty of other problems when it comes to realism.

What you do get in return is the ability to do true divisi, flexible ensemble size, phase-aligned samples, and much more.

It's hard to say where the sonority of Infinite lands compared to other libraries or recordings because it's a lot more complex to sum up in a couple of words. For one, each instrument is different and some sound better than others. For example, the trumpets sound great but if you have trumpets a2 playing in the higher dynamic range they can sometimes sound a bit phasey in the upper-frequencies I find. Phase is not inherently bad, it's a real-world phenomenon that is what creates the sound of an ensemble. But natural phase, what we hear when playing listening to a recording in a real space, sounds much better and... well, natural than the digital phase that we often get with samples when crossfading or having overlapping instruments. Sound waves in a real space with a real ensemble bounce of each other and cancel each outer out in extremely complex ways that are hard to mimic in the digital domain - at least as of now.

I find the horns sound great when played as an ensemble as do the trombones as do the trumpets and as do most of the other instruments - but not always since Infinite doesn't playback the same way every time sometimes you get more phase and sometimes less, but I've never found it to be extremely bad.

The fact that all the players in each group (horns, trumpets, trombones, etc) sound very much the same without a big difference in tone between them only adds to the problem because the signals are too similar. This is somewhat helped by the multitude of different impulse responses which all sound slightly different. That's why it's important to never have two instruments use the same IR or you will get pretty bad phasing.

Something to keep in mind is that the closer miced the instruments playing in unison are, the more phasing you will most likely get. This is true in real life as well. Adding reverb which is usually somewhat non-linear will make each instrument sound more different making it less likely to have an unpleasant phase.

To answer your question:
I would venture a guess and say that what most people find "synthy" is the phasey sound that sometimes is apparent in the ensemble sound of Infinite. Aaron is always working to improve things and I think it can only get better. Playing in each part with slight timing and CC variation will help mitigate the problem a lot.

Here's a little mockup I made. The first version is Berlin Brass playing John Williams's "Olympic Fanfare" (That one is made by someone here on the forum. I won't mention any names in case they don't want me to) and the second is Infinite Brass (Made by me). I had to humanize this by hand because I'm not a good enough player, nor a patient enough person to play in each part separately so it could probably sound better. The audio files are normalized to the same values but BB still turned out quite guess it's because of the heavier low-end and percussion.

I had some problems with the aforementioned phasing I was talking about earlier. It's still there and I'm not 100% satisfied with it. If I have more time I might get back into it to see if I can get it sounding even better.

Ignore the last part in my version, it's very unfinished.
 

Attachments

  • BB - Olympic Fanfare.mp3
    981.9 KB
  • IB - Olympic Fanfare.mp3
    1.1 MB
I know you didn't specifically ask for my opinion, but I will give it anyway and do with it what you will.

First of all, there are no ensemble patches in Infinite, you create you're own by playing multiple solo instruments. This creates the effect of an ensemble playing together, but without the real-world intricacies that playing in an ensemble comes with which makes the sound of Infinite less real (since it's not recorded as an ensemble), and in some cases, even hard to work with if you're going for absolute realism. But then again, traditionally recorded libraries have plenty of other problems when it comes to realism.

What you do get in return is the ability to do true divisi, flexible ensemble size, phase-aligned samples, and much more.

It's hard to say where the sonority of Infinite lands compared to other libraries or recordings because it's a lot more complex to sum up in a couple of words. For one, each instrument is different and some sound better than others. For example, the trumpets sound great but if you have trumpets a2 playing in the higher dynamic range they can sometimes sound a bit phasey in the upper-frequencies I find. Phase is not inherently bad, it's a real-world phenomenon that is what creates the sound of an ensemble. But natural phase, what we hear when playing listening to a recording in a real space, sounds much better and... well, natural than the digital phase that we often get with samples when crossfading or having overlapping instruments. Sound waves in a real space with a real ensemble bounce of each other and cancel each outer out in extremely complex ways that are hard to mimic in the digital domain - at least as of now.

I find the horns sound great when played as an ensemble as do the trombones as do the trumpets and as do most of the other instruments - but not always since Infinite doesn't playback the same way every time sometimes you get more phase and sometimes less, but I've never found it to be extremely bad.

The fact that all the players in each group (horns, trumpets, trombones, etc) sound very much the same without a big difference in tone between them only adds to the problem because the signals are too similar. This is somewhat helped by the multitude of different impulse responses which all sound slightly different. That's why it's important to never have two instruments use the same IR or you will get pretty bad phasing.

Something to keep in mind is that the closer miced the instruments playing in unison are, the more phasing you will most likely get. This is true in real life as well. Adding reverb which is usually somewhat non-linear will make each instrument sound more different making it less likely to have an unpleasant phase.

To answer your question:
I would venture a guess and say that what most people find "synthy" is the phasey sound that sometimes is apparent in the ensemble sound of Infinite. Aaron is always working to improve things and I think it can only get better. Playing in each part with slight timing and CC variation will help mitigate the problem a lot.

Here's a little mockup I made. The first version is Berlin Brass playing John Williams's "Olympic Fanfare" (That one is made by someone here on the forum. I won't mention any names in case they don't want me to) and the second is Infinite Brass (Made by me). I had to humanize this by hand because I'm not a good enough player, nor a patient enough person to play in each part separately so it could probably sound better. The audio files are normalized to the same values but BB still turned out quite guess it's because of the heavier low-end and percussion.

I had some problems with the aforementioned phasing I was talking about earlier. It's still there and I'm not 100% satisfied with it. If I have more time I might get back into it to see if I can get it sounding even better.

Ignore the last part in my version, it's very unfinished.
Great tips, excellent mockup. Sounds wonderful! My preference of the two for sure, no competition. But some of this may be due to the MIDI work and mixing, too. Either way, a great look for Infinite.

The ensemble-in-real-life set of sound phenomena are why I bought a regular brass library to use as well, but I’m not sure I’ll even need it. Century, Abbey Road OF which I already had and Infinite.
 
Great tips, excellent mockup. Sounds wonderful! My preference of the two for sure, no competition. But some of this may be due to the MIDI work and mixing, too. Either way, a great look for Infinite.

The ensemble-in-real-life set of sound phenomena are why I bought a regular brass library to use as well, but I’m not sure I’ll even need it. Century, Abbey Road OF which I already had and Infinite.
I definitely layer Infinite with whatever I have at hand or whatever my friends or clients have. No shame in it and if done tastefully you should barely notice it and a2 won't sound like a4, it will just add a little extra something to the sound without really making it sound much bigger or make it muddy.

I don't own Abbey Road Orchestral Foundations but was thinking about getting it because I think it would blend very nicely with Infinite and add a little extra something that I would like. But then again, I really hate the new players some developers seem to think are a good idea so I decided against it and won't abandon my principles.
 
Top Bottom