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VENTUS WINDS DUDUK - $59 flash sale through April!

Tried to buy it just now but received PHP error at checkout, so the discount wasn't applied. PM sent to your admin account with attached screenshot.
 
Keka, The Unarchiver, UnRarX, and StuffitExpander, all failed on macOS Mojave.

As Keka is what I remember having to use previously with ISW's RAR files, and is the only one that doesn't actually say the file is incompatible (all of my archivers are up-to-date BTW), I am attaching a screen shot of the error message, which is repeatable.
 

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Our editor had no issues opening this with Keka 1.1.17 on 10.11.6 El Capitan... we'll see about testing on other Macs, but these files shouldn't be any different than previous ones we've created. Is it possible your downloads didn't finish?
 
Someone grab this and review it please.
I'd love to hear this vs. Eduardo's vs. Ilya's duduk and hear pros and cons.
 
The re-download is complete, and this time, double-clicking vs. dragging to an app icon, which causes the default UnRarX to load, seems to be working without error. It will take a few minutes to complete though. And UnRarX can't check for updates without encountering server errors, so may not be the latest version.
 
It is installed and authorized now.

The note range is slightly different from some other libraries, which may indicate a different model and tuning chosen. According to trustworthy sites, the Armenian version (or tradition) of the Duduk is most often in C. Not usually true of other national variants.

All I can say for now, is that the starting note is one pitch lower on the ISW library but also extends higher at the other end than my previous library choice, so it is nice to now have an extended range, regardless of which instrument tuning it corresponds to.

It may be premature to make such a judgment, but I suspect the ISW library used a very high-grade artisan professional instrument (and player).
 
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It may be premature to make such a judgment, but I suspect the ISW library used a higher-grade artisan professional instrument (and player).


Hi Mark,

Impact Soundworks employs some offline repitch algorithms to artificially extend the range of our instruments in many cases. We see no detriment to this as the authentic range is untouched and the same quality as normal. As for why we decide to do it, as composers it can often be frustrating when you hit the end range of an instrument because of the key you're writing the song in. We like to provide range enhancement just so those kinds of situations happen just a tad less.
 
@Mark Schmieder thank you so much for your thoughts.
I will ponder about getting this. Don't have a Duduk yet but neither really anything else that's eastern.
If you happen to compare some midi performances over the next days/weeks I'd be happy if you could notify me when you upload something or give an update here :)
 
Hi Andrew, I love the instrument and you guys have never disappointed. Will certainly grab this sometime soon.
 
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Bear with me as I'm pretty tired at past 2am, but everything I did (starting past midnight) is repeatable; I'm simply too fatigued to take screen shots to thoroughly document the problem I encountered.

I ALWAYS start every MIDI track with CC121, and All Notes Off. It is extremely rare that this causes problems, and it certainly avoids a lot of issues. But I had to remove CC121 as the last few CC's are reserved for internal use by the library.

There is no sound if I leave it in place, and the GUI gets corrupted in weird ways that don't reset unless I quit my DAW (removing Kontakt and re-adding it, isn't enough). I checked my disc to make sure nothing got corrupted, then tried it in Kontakt on the desktop, and all was well, so I realized that the overwrites that CC121 does, affect an entire DAW session but at least do not destroy the library samples or presets.

I'll just have to make a note to leave out my usual MIDI Reset instructions when using this library.

My positive impressions, and comparisons, will be in the next post, to diminish confusion.
 
This is a wonderful library, and I am very glad that I bought it now vs. waiting, as I was on the edge of wrapping up some pieces that use Armenian Duduk prominently.

For one piece, I use manually triggered ornamentations. I do not see this as an available feature in Ventus Duduk; just sensitivity settings for automated and/or randomized ornamentations (as well as some specific articulations that perhaps act as ornamentations and are even more fine-tuned than what Tarilonte offers in his library, where one has to hold the key switch for the duration).

For another piece, I do not use ornamentations, but instead used the WX5 with lots of pitch bend, for a dizzying effect, as I am also interacting with Zurna and Shehnai in that piece, in a bit of a drone style. This was a perfect match for Ventus Duduk, as the tone is richer and deeper and a bit more expressive overall, but I did find that I had to use half as much pitch bend as usual, even at the default note bend range. But that just means this library can be very versatile in addressing real world playing techniques.

Familiarity with the Console and TACT tabs from using other Ventus series libraries is a big help. I turn off the reverb and that improves matters a great deal. Not sure if these are script access to Kontakt's built-in stuff, or custom stuff added by ISW. I did leave the EQ in place, after many comparisons with different playing styles, dynamics, and pitch ranges, as I found that the provided EQ preset very subtly diminishes low-boomy resonance, adds some warmth and bite, and cuts through a bit better.

I'm too tired to continue as it is now 230am, but tomorrow I will try the additional articulations listed in the TACT tab, as I suspect those will give me even more musical results than the auto-ornamentation (and randomization) approach.
 
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Hi Mark,

First, for CC 121, that CC is used by the script to create asynchronous note programming, which is what allows the ability to play harmonized and polyphonic legato with a greatly simplified engine code (simpler engine code is more reliable, robust, and less prone to bugs, and easier to add new features on top of in the future). Without getting into the details, it's an obscure Kontakt trick to enable a software design pattern which is normally impossible in Kontakt scripting.

We didn't anticipate people using the "Reset All Controllers" message and we can find another CC for an undefined purpose. However, there isn't a truly perfect solution, as in every conceivable universe, someone is bound to try and use every CC number for some reason or other. We felt the reserved/defined CC's at the end of the list were of better use than undefined ones that users may frequently map on their controllers, but we can reconsider this, or at the very least, offer users a way to configure the library to choose what CC's it uses.

Secondly, I'm not sure what the confusion is regarding ornaments. Every ornament is freely accessible using the latching (red) keyswitches directly under the playable range. Mousing over each one tells you the name, and additional you can use TACT to convert them to "Tarilonte"-style nonlatching keyswitches or use other rules like velocity to trigger them instead. It is worth noting, if you click on the "VEL" tab in TACT, you will notice a few ornamentations have velocity layers. In Trills, for example, the velocity you play decides the trill interval. In Bend Up, it controls speed.

The weighted probability ornament system is a holdover from the previous Ventus engine. I personally don't really have a use for it, since I prefer to manually choose the articulations I use, but I'm sure some people find it entertaining!
 
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Well, as I said, it was well past 2am my time, and I had run out of energy to try to concentrate on the TACT part, but also stated that I thought it likely that these referred to specific ornamentations. It's just not the terminology I'm use to for those, so as I was fading for the night, I was ready to sign off. I'll give them a try in a day or two; today is a gig-filled day.

I'm not suggesting you change the CC's; it was simply a surprise to me for reserved CC's to be used for something else, and to become dangerous if in MIDI that is being compared across libraries and thus is likely to have Reset All Controllers at the start.

Given the needs of your engine, I think that Reset All Controllers would be problematic regardless of specific CC's used internally, so one just has to be aware of this, and adjust one's MIDI. As soon as I looked at the assigned MIDI CC's in Kontakt's side panel (I didn't see them in the user manual after three readings, but this could be due to fatigue), I saw the internal assignments and realized that CC121 should not be used and was the cause of the GUI blow-up.
 
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