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VENTUS WINDS DUDUK - $59 flash sale through April!

I have most if not all of ISM's ethnic winds which have been wonderful BUT does anyone else hear the 'phasing' (as expression is used)? To me sounds like 'two players' as expression is used - phasing between xfade layers?
 
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.

IIRC Kontakt doesn't even listen CC #121 as reset all controllers (it doesn't actually reset all controllers), it just considers it an ordinary CC. Kontakt only responds to all notes off and all sounds off, if the option in Instrument Options->Controller is checked.

So you might as well just not use CC #121 at the beginning of your MIDI files, as far as Kontakt is concerned - it serves no purpose.

I have most if not all of ISM's ethnic winds which have been wonderful BUT does anyone else hear the 'phasing' (as expression is used)? To me sounds like 'two players' as expression is used - phasing between xfade layers?

Duduk samples weren't phase-aligned, to my knowledge, so possibility of phasing when xfading velocity layers is likely.
 
When I next have some time to work with this library (hopefully Monday night), I'll focus on this more exclusively to see if I can pin it down as to what aspects can cause a perception of two players.

One thing to note if you haven't already, is that the default CC is the same for Dynamics and Vibrato -- this is usually a good default when working with existing MIDI, as it's better than a fixed Vibrato, but when tracking a part from scratch, it might be a good idea to set up two separate controllers. That would especially apply well to BC or WC input.
 
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Interesting that Kontakt doesn't internally use CC121 (though some libraries probably do).

When I'm changing sound sources, I'm usually initially taking existing MIDI (though it getgs edited, and sometimes partially or fully re-tracked), so a lot of my tracks have gone through dozens of sound sources over the years (most of them not Kontakt-based), and many started out on a Yamaha MOTIF ROMpler. So I got into certain practices early on (maybe starting in 2002) that kept me out of trouble. But time marches on, and common practices have a way of going away (silently at times).
 
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FYI: We're working on an update that will improve a few things.

1. Rather than x-faded vibrato values, when using real vibrato, as you move the slider you will hit a smooth switch point and hear a one-time transition into (or out of) vibrato. This should eliminate most phasing and it sounds great in our testing.

2. Emulated vibrato should sound a lot better now.

3. Legato transitions and general playing with vibrato should sound a lot better.
 
FYI: We're working on an update that will improve a few things.

1. Rather than x-faded vibrato values, when using real vibrato, as you move the slider you will hit a smooth switch point and hear a one-time transition into (or out of) vibrato. This should eliminate most phasing and it sounds great in our testing.

2. Emulated vibrato should sound a lot better now.

3. Legato transitions and general playing with vibrato should sound a lot better.
Done - buying it. Thanks guys.
 
One thing to note if you haven't already, is that the default CC is the same for Dynamics and Vibrato -- this is usually a good default when working with existing MIDI, as it's better than a fixed Vibrato, but when tracking a part from scratch, it might be a good idea to set up two separate controllers. That would especially apply well to BC or WC input.

The CC mapping for the morph sliders are simply the Kontakt stock MIDI Learn system. You can re-assign them any way you like with a simple right-click!
 
Right; this was not a criticism and was not suggesting a fault; it was meant to be a helpful hint to people just starting out with the library, who might not have noticed the initial dual-mapping of CC1.
 
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Glad to know I was not the only one hearing the phasing / doubling phenomenon in the walkthrough, Rob Elliott. That is what stopped me from purchasing, but otherwise, this sounds fantastic and I will definitely pick this up once that is resolved. ISW have been draining my bank account in a good way lately!
 
Glad to know I was not the only one hearing the phasing / doubling phenomenon in the walkthrough, Rob Elliott. That is what stopped me from purchasing, but otherwise, this sounds fantastic and I will definitely pick this up once that is resolved. ISW have been draining my bank account in a good way lately!

Yes - can't wait to hear the fix. They'll make it right and they'll have my freaking money. :)
 
Awesome update! I just now downloaded it, and have to leave for a gig in under an hour, but am hoping to be able to quickly edit some existing MIDI performances, using the notes that others added here, for different ways of working with the articulations.

On the first piece, where I have standard articulation and a fair amount of pitch bend, but where I didn't previously notice any phasing, the new update is quite different from before, with a much warmer timbre, more reed in the sound, and much stronger (in a good way) on note attacks.

This sounds 100% authentic to me, with no reservations.
 
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I now have magnificent phase-free results on the second piece (the third piece is discussed in Sample Talk as it gets into comparisons), with lots of articulation-switching, nice warm and reedy sound that modulates well into a more airy sound on held notes.

The main thing I had to get a hang of, is the necessary note gap for articulations to take effect, as legato mode and note overlap, effectively prevents the articulation from being triggered. This is actually an excellent decision, as the real instrument would require adjustments in order to achieve the articulations anyway, and it avoids having to do constant articulation-switching rather than allowing other triggers to combine in deciding whether the ornamentation has time to play or not (or if it does so subtly/rapidly).

Now that I'm more aware of this aspect, I may need to go back to some of my other Ventus Winds tracks to make sure I achieved what I expected, but I think I have generally re-played tracks from scratch once I've finalized sound source selection for a project after some initial MIDI tweaks of cached MIDI performances.

I have not tried this library with my Yamaha WX5 Wind Controller yet. That might be a ways out.
 
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I am pretty sure the Expressive Mouth Vibrato in Ancient Era Persia is not attainable here, but there may be some combination of settings I haven't thought of yet. I've done some pretty deep editing by now, and am not really able to emulate that sound, on held notes, where it can sound almost frantic, but isn't a trill b y any means, or even what I would think of as pitch L
Maybe with a WX5 hooked up, I could try to play this part over again from scratch, using my own intuitive mouth-based expressiveness to modulate the sound as before.

The Tarilonte patch does react differently based on note length and initial note attack level. It sounds similar to me, to playing a real-life ocarina, and rapidly changing the air pressure, resulting in pitch fluctuation that is extreme up-and-down and almost chaotic around the center pitch, but still is not quite what I would think of as lipping a note up or down.

Anyway, that's why I need to do a WX5 experiment, to see if modulating the dynamics during a held note can achieve something similar here. Certainly the vibrato control, even when fine-tuned or switched to emulation mode where there's more parameters, doesn't do the trick. And I tried Legato Portamento across the velocity range, but I don't think that can do it either.

It's not normally an effect that I would want, but for this specific piece, it's exactly what I need. I might otherwise gravitate towards a Shehnai, except that it's a shrill instrument that has a very low dynamic range as it doesn't produce sound below a fairly high level of air.

I may experiment with some quick-and-dirty hand-drawn CC curves. But I suspect this is some sort of random effect in the Ancient Era Persia library, that is triggering pre-recorded ornamentations at different velocity levels. If so, I may be able to just edit the specifics of the trill settings in the TACT panel. But I don't think we can layer multiple settings to be triggered at different velocity or CC levels.

Please note that I do not in any way consider this a weakness of the Ventus Duduk library; I am simply trying to find analogues of every setting from Ancient Era Persia, to simplify to fewer templates in my workflow, and to inform those who may be wavering based on specific needs, who don't yet have this new library.
Please take notice of the fact that Impact Soundworks pays a fee to be in the top tier commercial announcements and that if you want to compare it to other devs please use the designated forum sections

Thanks
 
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I have now deleted all of my comments that include comparisons of any sort (except for the first one, as the vendor and associated programmers replied to those comments), but it probably would have been better to just alert me to this forum rule, than to quote the very content that I now realize should be deleted (and which I have now purged). But then, I am generally against quoting posts anyway as it freezes comments that have been corrected or removed, which can often cause confusion or compound a problem.

Please let me know if it was also against forum rules to talk about some of the features here vs. in the Samples discussion forum, and to have discussed my discoveries as I began working with the library. Someone else had asked specifically for a comparison, so I thought it was OK to talk about products in their announcement threads as long as one remains respectful of the primary vendor for the product announcement itself. My bad.
 
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I now have magnificent phase-free results on the second piece (the third piece is discussed in Sample Talk as it gets into comparisons), with lots of articulation-switching, nice warm and reedy sound that modulates well into a more airy sound on held notes.

The main thing I had to get a hang of, is the necessary note gap for articulations to take effect, as legato mode and note overlap, effectively prevents the articulation from being triggered. This is actually an excellent decision, as the real instrument would require adjustments in order to achieve the articulations anyway, and it avoids having to do constant articulation-switching rather than allowing other triggers to combine in deciding whether the ornamentation has time to play or not (or if it does so subtly/rapidly).

Now that I'm more aware of this aspect, I may need to go back to some of my other Ventus Winds tracks to make sure I achieved what I expected, but I think I have generally re-played tracks from scratch once I've finalized sound source selection for a project after some initial MIDI tweaks of cached MIDI performances.

I have not tried this library with my Yamaha WX5 Wind Controller yet. That might be a ways out.

We may introduce a force ornament keyswitch which you can simply hold to bypass the instrument ignoring ornament types when mid-legato. It isn't particularly difficult to do and may show up in the next update.
 
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