Synful has announced the release of version 2.5.1 of Synful Orchestra, which features the new French Horns first seen in the 2.5 beta released a few weeks ago.

The new Synful Orchestra 2.5 French Horns are an important step in the evolution of Synful's RPM technology. For most playing just set the Expression Brassiness control to a desired level and play in a normal style. Synful produces natural slurs, attacks, and varying note shapes automatically. Solo horn or sections from 2 to 16 players are easy - just turn the Number of Players knob. Like all Synful Orchestra instruments, you can arrange the players anywhere on the virtual concert stage, and when you play harmony in a section the players distribute themselves over the notes of the chord - automatic divisi. You can change continuously from a very dark sound to an extremely brassy sound. Realistic slurs, glisses, rips, trills, dramatic crescendi and dimuendi are simple and intuitive.

The new French Horns are the first fully expressive instruments to use Synful's second generation RPM Synful synthesis engine. The new French horns do not use Delay for Expression. Everything you play live is the final product. The horns are based on new 24 bit recordings which have been translated to a new generation additive synthesis format.

Changes in 2.5.1 (since the 2.5.x beta):

• Added vibrato depth control to the new French Horn. The trill control has been moved to the place of the wah control and the harms tilt slider becomes the wah control when a mute or stopped Playing Mode is selected.
• Added the ability to change banks without sending a new MIDI program change message. This means you can, for example, create a "pizz" symbol in Finale or Sibelius which just sends a bank change and will work for all the string programs. See the updated section Control Parameters in Programs and Playing Modes in the Help or users guide for details.
• Made MIDI program 127 a "no change" program. If you make a bank change and then send a MIDI program change 127 the program will remain unchanged but the bank will change. Also good for creating "pizz" etc. symbols in Finale and Sibelius.
• Fixed a bug that caused some short notes to have abnormally abrupt releases.
• Rebalanced some notes that did not have even loudness.
• Updated horn demo files so that Mozart example plays in the correct key of Eb -- not Bb as before.