KVR Audio

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 1:51 pm

Sascha Franck wrote:
DevonB wrote:Come on, 32 gigs isn't the biggest. EWQL Platinum is 65 gigs, and VSL Complete is 238 gigs. Now that's a lot of samples.
Sure - but these are aiming at quite something else.

Ok, explain? Both contain lots of instruments with high sample counts. Because those are orchestral it's ok, but it's not if it's guitar, pianos, rhodes, etc?

Devon

torhan · Post by **torhan** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:03 pm

I did a quick count of instruments/patches:

15 acoustic drum kits
10 acoustic guitars
11 choirs
15 electric bass
46 electric guitars
22 electric drum kits
5 ethnic perc
24 ethnic pitched
128 GM Bank
13 keyboard/mallet
19 new age ensembles
30 orchestral
21 pianos
10 brass
8 alto sax
7 bari sax
10 trombones
1 flugel horn
5 salsa trumpet
2 soprano sax
9 tenor sax
23 trumpet
2 tuba
75 drones
14 synth bass
11 synth leads
41 synth pads
25 organs

That's about 600 instruments.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:06 pm

DevonB wrote:Ok, explain? Both contain lots of instruments with high sample counts. Because those are orchestral it's ok, but it's not if it's guitar, pianos, rhodes, etc?

From my experience, "natural" instruments kinda require a more or less huge amount of samples being used - so I think it's OK for all those (even if I'm rather convinced something such as, say, a Rhodes can be sampled properly without all that many samples too, in case you take care about proper looppoints and the options the target samplers may offer).

I do however think it's rather pointless to sample all aspects of a given synth. With the quality of nowadays softsamplers it's quite easier (and more flexible) to rebuild, say, a filter sweeping envelope on the target sampler.

Oh yes, I know - this requires good programming skills for all the possible target samplers (and the Kompakt interface, which seems to be everybody's favourite today, is quite limited).

So, from a sample library company's point of view, it might make sense to do it that way. Something like "what you sampled is what you get". So things will sound all identical on all sorts of different samplers.

However, it doesn't make sense to advertise the sheer amount of GBs used as a plus - because in many cases it's not. Let alone that these things are a pain to handle, should you use a laptop mainly.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:09 pm

torhan wrote: That's about 600 instruments.

Hm - OK.
Currently I've got 5572 EXS sampler instruments on my machine. They're using up 6.5 GB of space.
Does that mean they're bad then?

Hewitt Huntwork · Post by **Hewitt Huntwork** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:09 pm

DevonB wrote:
Sascha Franck wrote:
DevonB wrote:Come on, 32 gigs isn't the biggest. EWQL Platinum is 65 gigs, and VSL Complete is 238 gigs. Now that's a lot of samples.
Sure - but these are aiming at quite something else.
Ok, explain? Both contain lots of instruments with high sample counts. Because those are orchestral it's ok, but it's not if it's guitar, pianos, rhodes, etc?

Devon

Devon, I have to agree that those don't count... I'm not sure why. I think many of us piddly end-users only acknowledge their existence in some vestigial part of the brain.

So, for now, 32 gigs is the largest sample-based instrument there is. Dig?

TrekStar · Post by **TrekStar** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:11 pm

It's lame imo...pretty lame. vsti developpers have no ideas more nowadays. trying to replace quality/creativity with quantity.

ObsoleteAcc99 · Post by **ObsoleteAcc99** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:14 pm

[DELETED]

torhan · Post by **torhan** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:16 pm

Sascha Franck wrote:
torhan wrote: That's about 600 instruments.
Hm - OK.
Currently I've got 5572 EXS sampler instruments on my machine. They're using up 6.5 GB of space.
Does that mean they're bad then?

Couldn't tell you. I was just stating facts, no opinions here from me, until I here it in action.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 3:26 pm

ttoz wrote:
DevonB wrote:
It's strange though, I'm of the school that 'bigger usually is better', and rarely proven wrong in accordance with my tastes.
Devon
except you love Ravity

I did say 'rarely' and not 'never'.

I love my Korg NS5r *VERY* much, and it's only 12 megs too.

In some cases though, it's not how big it is, it's how ya use it.

Devon

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 3:30 pm

Sascha Franck wrote:
torhan wrote: That's about 600 instruments.
Hm - OK.
Currently I've got 5572 EXS sampler instruments on my machine. They're using up 6.5 GB of space.
Does that mean they're bad then?

Bad? Maybe not. Limited? Could be. Considering that list is mostly natural instruments, I think it falls into your first bit of natural instruments need more samples arguement.

Really, the size doesn't matter. If it sounds good to your ears, and you can write with it, get to it! I typically like bigger, but as ttoz was kind enough to point out, ravity is small and I think it's awesome too. Depends on how it's used. Big could also be a waste, but I'm quite familiar with Nick Phoenix's work, and is usually nothing less than stellar material. I'll be looking forward to its release.

Devon

Jeremy_NSL · Post by **Jeremy_NSL** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 3:41 pm

Sounds interesting. Its just too bad they chose the kompakt engine for a $1000 plugin! Seriously, if they want to compete with the top hardware romplers they need to make huge strides with the core technology - not just throw GBs at the problem and hope we buy bigger HDDs... Not to mention RAM upgrades cause I'm guessing writing a full track with this will be pushing you for 2gb+, even with DFD.

And on another front, I wonder what the licencing agreement is? It would be truly ridiculous to buy a $1000 plug you can't easily resell.

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 4:42 pm

DevonB wrote: Bad? Maybe not. Limited? Could be. Considering that list is mostly natural instruments, I think it falls into your first bit of natural instruments need more samples arguement.

Admittedly they are not a lot of naturally sounding patches and there's also a whole lot of variations of some basic patches.

Still, I think that nowadays library producers don't take enough of advances offered by the playback engines. A good exception from this might be Stylus RMX - but the usual Kompakt powered libraries don't offer much more than some basic envelopes, a bit of pitch LFO for ModWheel action and perhaps a bit of velocity driven filter cutoff.
Rather poor, especially when you're dealing with synth patches.
As said, it's all OK in case you only need natural sounds.
But in case of this Colossus thing, as there's quite some none-natural sounds they would've done better with a dedicated playback engine I think.

However, it's too expensive for me anyways, so why argue about it...

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 5:35 pm

floyd wrote:And on another front, I wonder what the licencing agreement is? It would be truly ridiculous to buy a $1000 plug you can't easily resell.

Can't resell EWQL Platinum and that's $3000. Can't resell VSL, and that's up to $5990. I look at how much I bought my EMu64 hardware sampler for ($2600+ around there), and 64 megs of ram ($800ish) and CDRom ($225ish), and I sold it for $400 I think? Losing the $1000 because I don't like it anymore still seems like a bargain. But that's me. If you do this for a living, making back your $1000 might very well be a very easy prospect.

Devon

electro · Post by **electro** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 5:37 pm

deleted.

Alan Lastufka · Post by **Alan Lastufka** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 4:20 pm

removed.

Quantum Leap Colossus -- yikes!