Philharmonik demo over at sonic state!!

[smart]

Dave, I'd kill to be able to play like you.

[Squids]

Dave, I'd kill to be able to play like you.

Thanks. I'd kill a small defensless rabbit to be able to play like Lyle Mays. (sorry wabbit)

[Beardedone]

smart wrote:
Dave, I'd kill to be able to play like you.


Thanks. I'd kill a small defensless rabbit to be able to play like Lyle Mays. (sorry wabbit)

With pistols Dave?

[Squids]

smart wrote:
Dave, I'd kill to be able to play like you.


Thanks. I'd kill a small defensless rabbit to be able to play like Lyle Mays. (sorry wabbit)

With pistols Dave?

No pistols. I am not into guns (fishing gear is as violent a hunter as I get). However, to play like Lyle I would kill maybe one small fluffy defenseless rabbit with my bare hands. Maybe eat him raw too. I mean, it would be terrible and my animal rights friends would be really pissed off at me but I'd be bypassing years of practice on the keyboard and gaining incredible knowledge of music and a great style and musical sensibility. They'd have to understand!

Okay, I am kidding. No rabbit slaying for me. On a serious note, thanks for the compliments. I was just making that stuff up on the spot it wasn't even exactly what I had in mind but you get put on the spot with these videos (and you have to talk too). So, I do my best. I am glad you like seeing and hearing these things in action. It's funny because across the hall was Apple with their jam pack for symphonic stufff and they had this prepared sequence thing we heard over and over... but then myself or someone else would play just one combi patch from Miroslav Philharmonik and you never knew what was going to happen! Moody, aggressive, romantic, sad, mysterious, majestic and we were playing to the crowd. You can't do that with a prepared sequence. All you can do is turn it up. Miroslav Philharmonik you can PLAY. It's not hard to play either. I bet it is MUCH easier than most of you think and when you have it in your hands (notice I said "when"... a little Jedi mind trick Those aren't the plug-ins you were looking for) you'll realize what I am talking about.

[nexussynth]

I've just listened to the new demo. I really think the MV library has never sounded better! What impresses me the most is how easily a broad orchestral sound was achieved in real time!

I used to like to fool around with the "Orchestra" tutti sounds in the original Siedlaczak CD-ROM but they sound dated now. This 'combi' approach does seem to actually work. I have layered samples from other collections even QLSO and it never gels like this one.

There is a less agressive sound to Philharmonik then one gets with QLSO which makes it a nice alternative to that library while augmenting it, I suspect.

I would very much like to hear a demo of the choir sounds. Those are lacking in the other currently available libraries except for a little smattering in QLSO Silver.

Though I would never give up my other libraries, I like the fact that one can sketch out a piece that is almost 'there' witout too much fuss. I find I prefer that to working soley in the Pianoroll!

I just might buy this one!

Wonder about the crossgrade though. Do ST2 owners get the nice new skin of Philharmonik? Or are we stuck with the utility look of ST2?

Might be worth the extra money to get the better looking one! (ST2 hurts my eyes )

btw, great playing on the demo! I am a lousy keyboardist but I can fool around on the keys and get something good. I am hoping that the reverb plugin was not contributing too much to the overall impression.

Again, it would be nice to hear some demos of exposed instruments and sections with the built-in reverb.

I think this will be a success if the demo is an indication.

[Kim Lajoie]

Wonder about the crossgrade though. Do ST2 owners get the nice new skin of Philharmonik? Or are we stuck with the utility look of ST2?

You get both. The new skin is actually a dedicated plugin for Philharmonik. So if you crossgrade from ST2, you can use the inspiring new GUI for Philharmonik, or you can integrate the Philharmonik sounds with all your other ST2 sounds in the ST2 plugin.

Forever,




Kim.

[nexussynth]

Wonder about the crossgrade though. Do ST2 owners get the nice new skin of Philharmonik? Or are we stuck with the utility look of ST2?

You get both. The new skin is actually a dedicated plugin for Philharmonik. So if you crossgrade from ST2, you can use the inspiring new GUI for Philharmonik, or you can integrate the Philharmonik sounds with all your other ST2 sounds in the ST2 plugin.

Forever,


Kim.

Oh thats great! I was hoping they would do that.

I have listened to the demo a few more times and I think that the CSR reverb is fantastic. I have always favored the sound of the Lex 480L over any of the convolution reverbs. I was dissapointed when impulseverb became so popular because I knew the development of studio-type reverbs would stop.

This shows I wasn't alone! The 480L is top for midi orchestral compostions. I used to be able to rent one a long time ago but that is way gone now.

I hope again, that the Philharmonik was not being juiced up by a world-class reverb. A famous engineer once remarked "you could play a pig f**ting through a terrific reverb and it would impress people"

Not that I think the Philharmonik would sound that bad! (no way).

What would the price of the CSR be?? Hope it's not over $250. That would put it out of my league and many others too I suspect. Kind of defeating the purpose of a "Lexicon for the rest of us".

[Kim Lajoie]

Not that I think the Philharmonik would sound that bad! (no way).

I played an early version of it an NAMM a few months ago, and it sounded amazing. Personally, I'm VERY excited by it, and I can't wait for it to be finished!

What would the price of the CSR be?? Hope it's not over $250. That would put it out of my league and many others too I suspect. Kind of defeating the purpose of a "Lexicon for the rest of us".

It'll be $399. Probably less if you buy boxed from a bricks-and-mortar store, or if you're a happy esoundz customer.

Forever,




Kim.

[Squids]

CSR is $399 but street price would range in the low 300 area. Compared to a $10,000 480L or whatever it costs that's a good deal! It has more than that sort of sound too. But, you're right about the concern over missing out on virtual "high end" digital studio reverbs when the buzz of convolution hit. I LOVE convolution but it is a different thing. A really deep high end reverb like this can make anything sound good.

But, one of the things SR prides itself on and is one of the main differences between our sounds and many raw hardware workstation sounds or sounds from some other developers is that SR sounds are made to be good even dry so that when you put on some good effects they can sound even better! (as opposed to some sounds that ONLY sound good because of the effects and when you take them off the sound becomes unusable). So, the programming we did on MV and Miroslav's own quality production in the first place (not to mention the performances of the musicians sampled and the acoustics of the place it was recorded at) all contribute to a great sound even without the CSR. But, it gels so nicely with CSR that we're even thinking about making some kind of bundle of the two products together in some way or another (or crossgrade discount... anything that will incent people to get BOTH because they are such a nice combination as you can see/hear).

More and more IK has been doing high end cutting edge products for all of the major platforms. The elements of your "what would otherwise be" your dream physical studio if you could afford all of that gear in hardware and all of the instruments you might dream of filling that studio with too. I used to rent that and other outboard gear that T-Racks emulates (like a Fairchild for instance) and not only was that expense to do but it's not easy to do anywhere in the world or any time you want! To own them is something reserved for lucky few. That's why having really good quality elements of the studio like this is so worth three or four hundred bucks. I've spent that just a few days renting! I've spent that in just two hours of some of the studios we sample in!

[DevonB]

CSR is $399 but street price would range in the low 300 area. Compared to a $10,000 480L or whatever it costs that's a good deal!

480L was about $5000 or $6000 without the LARC (I know I'm mixing the price up with the TC Electronic M5000), and the 960 was $13,500.

Devon

[Armadillo]

that was incredible awesome. Can't believe the whole orchestra plays just by you using two hands. I must have watch this thing 5 times now.

[Squids]

that was incredible awesome. Can't believe the whole orchestra plays just by you using two hands. I must have watch this thing 5 times now.

Thanks. It is like a dream come true for me in terms of giving that feeling of being a conductor. I've conducted sample sessions with large strings before (I actually conducted East West's Ultimate Strings sessions back in the day). But, I can't REALLY conduct so being at the keyboard and controlling the dynamics and the mixing of the different orchestral elements in real time is a really cool experience!

Miroslav Philharmonik is very different from the other orchestral products out there. We're not trying to break any scientific key switching technique breakthroughs or compete with the "who has the most gigabytes" thing either. In reality that can mean taking up a lot of resources and hard drive space plus time with manuals and learning complex techniques etc. Not to knock that, but this is a different approach. With Philharmonik it is more about instant gratification! A wide variety of solo and ensemble strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion and choirs have performance articulations to choose from and layer together or compose with multitimbrally. Some allow you to bend fluidly using Stretch and others have the ability to adjust the tempo of a real tremolo or vibrato via time stretch tempo control. Some just sound good because of the adjustable velocity to amp envelope attack and dynamics built into the sound. Some sounds are just good because they were well recorded and played with musicality and emotion in the first place!

A lot of those kinds of things can't be expressed in "specs" so it is just something that people will have to discover about this product that is different and makes it stand out (that and the good price for a high end respected orchestral and choir archive of course).

But, I am beginning to think that me talking about it and especially playing it in demos like this gets more of that across. That's very encouraging. I mean, if you like this video then imagine many HUNDREDS of other combi patches just like this one except maybe you instantly want to sound like a chamber orchestra or any particular era of classical music or different moods of film scores and all kinds of interesting stuff!

This sort of programming comes from combi patches we used to make for hardware keyboard workstations where you have an instant layered orchestra. The difference is that most hardware keyboard workstations had limited orchestral material on board and not nearly the megabytes allocated for it to be fully realistic like this. So, it is a lot of fun (just like it was with Sonik Synth 2) to be making big combi patches with uncompromise sized elements.