×
What's new
By:

VSL Mystery release??? (UPDATE: Synchron Duality Strings)

mducharme said:
Does anybody know why the Duality Strings default master volumes are all over the place in the default patches?

For instance when loading the standalone player:

Violins 1: default volume 90
Violins 2: default volume 90
Violas: default volume 90
Cellos: default volume 64
Double Bass: default volume 71

I find this a little odd as normally I would expect the same master volume in each instrument to give the correct balance. I'm not sure if I should be setting my DAW / Dorico tracks to these MIDI volumes to match the default patches or not.
Click to expand...
I also find this very odd, because these libraries were (or should be) recorded in situ and at the same gain levels. If it were done right, you wouldn't need any volume balance, isn't it? But I don't know for sure. I know that Spitfire doesn't touch the values at all, at least with the SSO range (from what I read here in the forum). Curious is that when I use these values for the VI instruments it's a 100% match, and these were recorded centered and not in situ. Very odd...

I did very time-consuming tests comparing the Synchron settings with my VI instruments in MIR Pro and also with other libraries I have (Spitfire, Cinesamples, EastWest). The balances that VSL has chosen are right and should not be touched. You have to keep in mind that other libraries may have compressors and other processing going on – but neglecting this, everything sounds nearly identical to me balance-wise.

The only "problem" (if it's a problem to you) is that you have to consider that all Synchron mixer presets are different, even inside one instrument group. Of course, with this you get balance problems. If instrument A has the Decca tree center at -4.5 and instrument B has it at -10 everything is out of balance, in my opinion. In reality you can't have various settings while recording the orchestra. My very first step always is to make the tree values the same.

I know that VSL's approach is to capture the instruments as neutral as possible. But I'm not so sure if this is the right decision when capturing an entire orchestra. I have no problem with that, because it offers flexibility. I also read in the VSL forum that they used different tree setups for the instruments... maybe that's also the reason why everything can't sound balanced or cohesive.
 
matthieuL said:
In SSP, the default CC7 volumes are :
- V1 101
- V2 95
- Vla 95
- Cello 95
- Basses 71
I always felt the Basses are weak, I usually raise them by 3dB. The strange thing is that in the Ensemble patch, the Basses are ok (and around 3dB more than in the Basses patch).

But even with this correction I find that some ranges/notes still are weak. For me it's very difficult to have warm and well balanced basses in a string writing with SSP, I have to cheat all the time.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I won’t even use them. I find because of the bases I can’t balance the library properly so I use other libraries for the foundation
 
Pixelpoet1985 said:
I also find this very odd, because these libraries were (or should be) recorded in situ and at the same gain levels. If it were done right, you wouldn't need any volume balance, isn't it? But I don't know for sure. I know that Spitfire doesn't touch the values at all, at least with the SSO range (from what I read here in the forum). Curious is that when I use these values for the VI instruments it's a 100% match, and these were recorded centered and not in situ. Very odd...
Click to expand...
This is very speculative, but since all the sections aren't in the same room playing at the same time and listening to each other, i could easily imagine their levels not being perfectly balanced without some tweaking. Maybe most devs do this tweaking to the audio data itself and we don't even see it, and VSL is being extra-transparent?
 
I went into the weekend thinking I was going to try out the Duality Strings demo, but after downloading ~260 GB of samples, all attempts to install the ~100 MB Synchron Player cause Vienna Assistant to crash. Has anyone else run into this?

Mac Pro 7,1 w/ macOS Ventura
 
bfreepro said:
You’re back!?!!!?!!
Click to expand...

VSL Mystery release??? (UPDATE: Synchron Duality Strings)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom