What is the normal behavior of Realivox Ladies in Kontakt?

[jppineau]

Hello,

I am looking for some comparative input about some behaviors I've experienced with my newly installed Ladies from Realivox.

1- No matter how big or small the patches may be, there is an initial loading time of at least 60-75 seconds for the program only, being it in standalone mode or in my DAW. Once the first module has loaded into Kontakt (ver.5.7.1), I can change patches in 2 seconds with the appropriate data amount. I can also add other instances of the same Ladies in 2-3 seconds. The long delay only happens at the first time I ask for RVox Ladies. Simply put, my system is fairly potent, with 3 dedicated SSD's, 32G DDR4@3200ghz, Intel i7 7700K processor, so everything else goes very fast. This is the only library or VST that takes that long. It may just be a bad install or... the state of the things.

2- When opening a patch for the first time, there's always a blanked phrase key switch that seems to be linked to the last edit I did before saving or exiting. I have to open the articulation page to reset it and, hopefully, that particular phrase appears in the Phrase builder window, so I can reassign it to the appropriate key switch.

3- Many times, the ending consonants that I want to try or add to another articulation won't emit any sound in an existing patch and, yes, I click "Load/Purge" buttons frantically. For this one, I have not found a clear pattern, but I am still new to Realivox Ladies.

So, are these known bugs and current behavior or I have some ghost hidden somewhere in the machine?

Thanks for your inputs and sharings.

[Mike Greene]

You're right that we need to better integrate the "latest" phrase to the front page of the GUI. Between Blue and the Ladies, we're zeroing on on what's the best overall methodology.

Ending consonants should work pretty easily. If you start with the "Realivox Ladies - All" instrument (or whatever the big one is called), they should work instantly with no need to hit the Load button. Bear in mind, though, that the ending consonant can only go onto the last consonant of a phrase.

For loading times, it should only take a full minute for the "All" instrument. The Oo-Ah" instrument is much quicker, as is any instrument where you have fewer articulations and/or few singers active. Bear in mind, though, that you need to hit the "Load" button to clear all the unused stuff, and then hit "Save as."

I hope that helps and that you have fun with the Ladies!

[jppineau]

Ending consonants should work pretty easily. If you start with the "Realivox Ladies - All" instrument (or whatever the big one is called), they should work instantly with no need to hit the Load button. Bear in mind, though, that the ending consonant can only go onto the last consonant of a phrase.

Thanks again, Mike!

As we might expect, there is no problem with exchanging end consonants within the "All" instrument, but the phenomenon appears on a stripped down patch like the ones I've created for my projects. Once reduced to, let's say 450MB, if I want to add something to my patch and make use of a new (unloaded) end consonant, I have to add it to some phoneme in the Phrase Builder window at the end of it all. After that, I thought I only had to click "Load" to, well, load the new samples... but it has to be assigned to a key switch before hitting "Load", otherwise it won't sound in the phrase editing process. This applies to the end consonants only, at this point of my experiments, as the other phonemes load at the command. Once we get aware of this, that's just an extra manipulation but that could be mentioned in the user's manual.

For the loading time, it is funny to observe that this happens only when I begin my first session. If I close the DAW program and reopen it after a while on the same project without rebooting, it will load everything in less than 10 seconds all samples included.

And YES, I have some fun learning it and working on my first jingle project with the girls. Even though my language is French, I can obtain some decent pronunciations from the English library, provided I can find the correct phonemes, and I can accentuate some syllables or consonants that need to pop up a little more via the DAW's waveform editor.

Another question : what is the dynamic processing applied on the samples? Just curious to know how much they are processed or raw. They react very well with the current settings I am using in the FX chains, actually.

Thanks for taking care!

Jean-Pierre

[Mike Greene]

... I thought I only had to click "Load" to, well, load the new samples... but it has to be assigned to a key switch before hitting "Load", otherwise it won't sound in the phrase editing process.

I didn't know that! That's something we'll fix, so the ending consonants will load whether or not they've been assigned to a keyswitch.

Funny, I remember now that as I coded the Load button, I figured all it needed to do was scan the keyswitches. I forgot to have it scan the current phrase as well. D-oh!

Another question : what is the dynamic processing applied on the samples? Just curious to know how much they are processed or raw. They react very well with the current settings I am using in the FX chains, actually.

I always compress as I record, so these samples do have some compression. I don't usually record with EQ, though. However, I might have EQ'd one or more of them for the library. I can't remember right now. Definitely some compression, though.

[jppineau]

Hi Mike!

I've been away from producing for awhile. Now back in the studio, I am trying to add some sounds from The Ladies to a small work. I think I've found another glitch... I've built a simple patch with only the vowels as a preset backing group, something like your LITE version. Each vowel is assigned to a key. In Poly Mode, all the sounds work fine excepted the "Mmm" when triggered in legato or normal détaché. For the "Mmm"s, with 5-6 singers loaded, I loose voices on a very short period of time until nothing sounds at all, with, sometimes, a note sounding for 2-3 seconds alone after complete release. I have to wait 2-3 seconds without touching the keyboard to hear them back. The polyphony I am actually using doesn't exceed the dual voices mode. I have the latest version of Kontakt (5.80) and a fairly decent computer. The other vowels play normally. At this point, it is unplayable. I have not managed to try every combinations to isolate a gremlin or a possible context. The computer is i7 7700, 3 SSD's, 32G of ram and the ASIO is related to my Tascam 4800. DAW is Sonar Platinum.

Any suggestion? At this point, it is impossible to get lower expectations.

[Mike Greene]

Hi Mike!

I've been away from producing for awhile. Now back in the studio, I am trying to add some sounds from The Ladies to a small work. I think I've found another glitch... I've built a simple patch with only the vowels as a preset backing group, something like your LITE version. Each vowel is assigned to a key. In Poly Mode, all the sounds work fine excepted the "Mmm" when triggered in legato or normal détaché. For the "Mmm"s, with 5-6 singers loaded, I loose voices on a very short period of time until nothing sounds at all, with, sometimes, a note sounding for 2-3 seconds alone after complete release. I have to wait 2-3 seconds without touching the keyboard to hear them back. The polyphony I am actually using doesn't exceed the dual voices mode. I have the latest version of Kontakt (5.80) and a fairly decent computer. The other vowels play normally. At this point, it is unplayable. I have not managed to try every combinations to isolate a gremlin or a possible context. The computer is i7 7700, 3 SSD's, 32G of ram and the ASIO is related to my Tascam 4800. DAW is Sonar Platinum.

Any suggestion? At this point, it is impossible to get lower expectations.

Wow, this is really weird. I tested this just now and got the same results you did. Poly legato is fine for oo or mm with one singer, and oo is fine for multiple singers, but with mm, multiple singers causes problems. That makes no sense. I'm seeing error message about "wrong group index", though, so that gives me a place to start.

It's not your system, this is definitely a Ladies scripting issue, so no need to try to tweak your system.

Give me a week or two to get to this. If you don't hear back from me here, send me an email to remind me. Then I'll send you a new file with the fix.

[scottfa]

Hi, since this "mmmm" problem will affectc all purchasers of the Ladies, how do we get the file?
On a more general note, how can we tell if we have the latest patch/version?
I am unclear on the logistics of implimenting any fixes.
Thanks.

[Mike Greene]

Finally, I have it! My apologies for the delay with this. I've been out of town for much of the summer, plus we were already in the process of doing a minor update, so things got a bit messy. I finally have something I can send, though, so for anyone needing this, send me an email and I'll give you the goods. (A more complete update will be later, so there won't be any announcements or emails for this "in progress" update.)

There are a few notes:

1. There are a couple other improvements we had already started which require newer Kontakt features, so this update requires at least Kontakt 5.6.8. Any 5.7 or 5.8 version will also work, of course, but if you are still on Kontakt 5.2, this update won’t work.

2. There are a few other general fixes, including:
a. Poly Legato now works with Mmm when more than one singer is active
b. Better updating/coordinating of the Articulations displays on the Main and Articulations pages
c. Corrected updating of the Attack/Release sliders when changing singers
d. Vibrato Speed lower limit performance corrected. (Previously glitched at 0.)
e. “H” Attack slider now effects Hmm. (It previously worked for Ha, Ho, etc,. but not Hmm)
f. Fixed a bug so ending consonants no longer disappear when hitting the Load button

3. On the Settings Page, there is now a button for “Auto Load/Purge”. There is no documentation for this, but it’s pretty self-explanatory. If the button is on, then as you add/delete singers or syllables, it automatically loads/deletes the samples. The default position for this button is off, so it won’t do anything unless you turn it on.