What the !!! Has anyone even seen this!!??

[Sascha Franck]

I remember the fuzz about this instrument from a year ago when the first audio demo was posted.
Quite f**king impressive already, nice to see this released. Gonna check the demo later on.
This is gonna be a freaking relief for mobile people (like me) using laptops which usually won't run xxlarge libraries too well without a lot of hassle.

As far as the pricing goes: I probably won't buy it any day soon because I simply don't need woodwinds and brasses in top quality too much for what I'm doing. However, if I did, I'd get it in a heartbeat and I think the price can be justified. Sure, we could always argue whether it'd sell more units at a lower price, but from what I can see so far, the current pricing scheme seems to be working quite well.
After all, this is an instrument for highly professional useage and once you're in that league, you should easily be able to afford it. Just as I, as a "professional" guitar player (whatever that means), am able to afford my guitars (and amps) - which, btw, all cost quite more than this instrument (just a proper refretting job, including some adjustements, a new nut and what not, will set me short around 150-300 Euros, depending on the guitar model).
Yes, we could argue until the cows come home how this is unfair to the advancing home producer. To learn their job, they need to have access to the best tools out there etc... but really, compare it to us folks who need a real "physical" instrument to get anything done (and actually, guitar players are still the cheapskaters, just imagine being a drummer...) and there's no way one could complain about the pricing range of a highly professional virtual instrument anymore.
Oh yeah, I hear ya - "but it doesn't take any physical efforts to duplicate the instrument" and all that. Well, most of the price of any instrument doesn't come from it's actual physical value (which, while talking about guitars, should be pretty low) but from the "development value". And that's just the same with software instruments.

And well, as far as strings goes: Pretty please, yes! If anything, I could do with a fine set of strings. If they were available, I'd probably get them.
I may even get the woodwinds, brasses and what not one day. But so far, I simply don't need them too much, so a cheaper library (which I already own) will have to do for a while.

Anyways, can't say too much without checking out the demo first, but so far this seems to be a true revolution in the real instruments software replication area. Absoutely stunning.

[philipc]

I downloaded the demo last night and I think this software is just jaw dropping. Fantastic!

Are there any plans to create Tassman style capabilities, i.e. sound design/custom instrument function.

Perhaps not to the extent of Tassman which is pretty deep but the ability to create new and physically impossible instruments with this kind of sound quality would be fantastic!

[joshhunsaker]

I assume those at the top of the price range, know damn well what they are doing. Especially, Adobe, Apple

*cough* the gimp *cough*debian linux

what about...microsoft?
the funny thing about them is that Bill Gates never invented the idea of an os gui. Interesting though that everyone attributes the whole "windows" paradigm to him when in actuality he ripped the idea directly from apple off of what was supposed to be a 'partnership'.

Oh, but it doesn't end there. Apple naturally stole the idea from a bird-brained xerox of all companies (i guess being stupid is about as bad as being sly...)

The point is that these people who "know what they are doing" many times leave a legacy that probably could have been done much better by more competent people with the same vision without all the backstabbing coporatism. You might realize that each successive version of windows takes more and more system reasources to run and is less backwards compatible than the version before it. Linux is the exact opposite. The kernel requires less and less ram and cpu load to sustain with each succeeding release and is, was (and always will be) more secure than any other operating system.

I think it's a choice between making your code open to benefit the world or not. Linux gets better everyday because everyone can access the code and fiddle around. Everything else? well, we know the answer to that.

[Mighty Pea]

Just to put this all into perspective... You're arguing that The Gimp is MORE competent than Photoshop?

[spaceman]

Anyone who says that has no clue what so ever

[Ben H]

I downloaded the demo last night and I think this software is just jaw dropping. Fantastic!

Are there any plans to create Tassman style capabilities, i.e. sound design/custom instrument function.

Perhaps not to the extent of Tassman which is pretty deep but the ability to create new and physically impossible instruments with this kind of sound quality would be fantastic!

Arne has said "probably not" as there are already a number of tools that exist for creating new instruments that don't exist.

He has said that he will instead concerntrate on modeling authentic and playable real-world instruments.

[Karmacomposer]

I downloaded the demo last night and I think this software is just jaw dropping. Fantastic!

Are there any plans to create Tassman style capabilities, i.e. sound design/custom instrument function.

Perhaps not to the extent of Tassman which is pretty deep but the ability to create new and physically impossible instruments with this kind of sound quality would be fantastic!

Arne has said "probably not" as there are already a number of tools that exist for creating new instruments that don't exist.

He has said that he will instead concerntrate on modeling authentic and playable real-world instruments.

Nusofting/Dash Signature has a cool little app/synth called modelonia, and while NEVER being associated with the sound quality and realism of WIVI, allows you to create EXACTLY what you just asked for. Check it out. I own a copy and it is AWESOME. Imagine a 100 foot flute with a french horn body using a reed. Just too much fun for words.

Mike

[Karmacomposer]

I assume those at the top of the price range, know damn well what they are doing. Especially, Adobe, Apple

*cough* the gimp *cough*debian linux

what about...microsoft?
the funny thing about them is that Bill Gates never invented the idea of an os gui. Interesting though that everyone attributes the whole "windows" paradigm to him when in actuality he ripped the idea directly from apple off of what was supposed to be a 'partnership'.

Oh, but it doesn't end there. Apple naturally stole the idea from a bird-brained xerox of all companies (i guess being stupid is about as bad as being sly...)

The point is that these people who "know what they are doing" many times leave a legacy that probably could have been done much better by more competent people with the same vision without all the backstabbing coporatism. You might realize that each successive version of windows takes more and more system reasources to run and is less backwards compatible than the version before it. Linux is the exact opposite. The kernel requires less and less ram and cpu load to sustain with each succeeding release and is, was (and always will be) more secure than any other operating system.

I think it's a choice between making your code open to benefit the world or not. Linux gets better everyday because everyone can access the code and fiddle around. Everything else? well, we know the answer to that.

. . . at least your facts are correct. However, shall we not make this a argument over who is a bigger thief, Bill gates or Steve Jobs?

Mike

[monsterbeetle]

What is really funny with this wallander instruments is that it literally tears Arturia Brass apart, which was supposedly developed by the best Br4inZ of the computer music research lab in Paris called IRCAM

Wallander comes from nowhere and just kicks some serious ass!

[james0tucson]

Just to put this all into perspective... You're arguing that The Gimp is MORE competent than Photoshop?

Just as Devil's Advocate here... In some ways it is. Gimp's scripting and linkage interfaces provide things that Photoshop does not. For a while, Gimp's 24-bit Alpha-channel support on PNG actually did work better than Photoshop. The GTK interface is, IMHO, a more modern and elegant system than the antique MDI that Photoshop uses. It takes a lot longer to startup PS/CS2 than Gimp on the same hardware (this definitely makes Gimp superior for certain things!).

Anyway, no, Gimp is nowhere near Photoshop once you are doing the things professional photographers and designers do with it, especially those working in print. My shop (research lab) publishes two full-colour magazines with all kinds of photos, graphs, advertisments, and the people who put that together use Photoshop, Illustrator, and -- get this -- a desk and razor blades.

But the thing to realize about Gimp is that it comes close to being as good as, or maybe with a little tweaking, better than, Photoshop Elements, it costs nothing, nobody forced you to use it, and it didn't kick your dog (though there are people who treat it and other open source software *exactly* as if it kicked their dog and drove off with their girlfriend on the back of its motorbike.)

[skank]

Maaaaaan oh man, bit late with reply but this is AWESOME!

Can never understand the haters though

[Bob Nova]

Price is almost irrelevant here.

This is a breakthrough VSTi. If you use these types of sounds in your work and need that level of expressiveness, and who doesnt?...then you almost have to buy this thing.

It's all about the sound, playability and useability.If you cant afford this, tell us where the money for your computer came from.Seriously, we're not talking thousands like some of the Vienna libraries or something.

[brok landers]

brok,

That sounds awkward, as I'm pretty sure others aren't experiencing these issues in any graphics mode. Especially in Software rendering mode it should work on just about any PC setup, because that mode uses native Windows graphics to draw the GUI. Btw, what OS are you on, XP? You're not running Windows on Linux through WINE or something like that?

well, it could be that my card is the issue ... it's a matrox g550, it's old, but i _never_ had problems with it whatsoever ... the drivers are the newest ...
i'm a sounddesigner, so i have to install a _lot_ of software that i get from developers, and even if there are fancy 3d room models, sofar i never had any problems with the grapfics ... even blender runs the creations and the software fine without problems ...
however, i was able (accidentially) to one time only select the instruments, and go through them, all i can say is: wow ...
i also realized, that this thing laughs at the cpu (at least with monophonic playing), very impressed with that ...
how did you manage to make the reverb (as it's a convo, isn't it) to use close to none cpu???
btw, the reverb is simply brilliant ... unbelievable ...

About the pricing discussion. The price wasn't set to meet what people could afford to pay, but in the end we did some serious market research, and market is much too small for charging $100. Add to that, WIVI is a niched technically advanced application with lots of features the average user isn't familiar with, and this requires a lot of high-level technical support. What I'm trying to say is, the "sell four times as many for one fourth of the price" only works if you have an unlimited market (i.e. toothpaste ) and no expenses attached to the unit, such as support requirements. So while I understand the price is too high for some people, it's not a question of being good-hearted or not, it's a question of being able to sustain the project financially.

As a sidenote, I must also add that I think it's a bit unfair to compare WIVI to an educational version of Kontakt 2 for $179, when the original street price of Kontakt 2 was (and still is where I'm from) about $600.

wallander, i'm not sure why you explain _me_, as i always was on _your_ side, defending your politics ...
read all my posts, or ask mike (karmacomposer) ...
in fact, i declared your software to really revolutionize the industry.
in short, i love it, i'd buy it right away, if it did work on my system ...
which of course could be my fault, like i said ...

again, congrats on thisone!
as mike said, and i can only say he nailled it:
you'll have a homerun with this!

[Wallander]

wallander, i'm not sure why you explain _me_ ...

Sorry brok, only the first paragraph was directed at you. I edited my post and switched the order of the paragraphs so that there won't be any misunderstandings.

Hmm, it's still odd about your graphics card. I googled your card briefly, and I saw that it's targeted at Direct3D 8, and WIVI uses Direct3D 9, but I should also add that we've run WIVI successfully on much worse/older cards than that. Did you say this also happends in Software rendering mode? In that mode there really shouldn't be a compatibility problem. The graphics mode is switched through WIVI settings, which can be found from the Start menu.

The internal reverb is synthetic, but it processes early reflections and direct sound separately. A convolution reverb was originally planned, but we ended up with a synthetic reverb partly because it's so much more efficient. Another reason was that it's very easy to hook up WIVI to a external convolution reverb, such as IR1 or AltiVerb. But if you use synthetic reverb with WIVI it's much harder to get nice results. Since a lot of people will want to run WIVI with low CPU load and no delay, it made sense to include a synthetic reverb tailored for WIVI.

Are there any plans to create Tassman style capabilities, i.e. sound design/custom instrument function.

There are a lot of functionality already within WIVI that can be used to create experimental/semi-realistic instruments. But creating instruments from scratch is much, much more difficult, not very straightforward and requires a lot of external in-house tools, and there are no plans on releasing those.

[frequency_algorithm]

This might be a "breakthrough vsti" or whatever, but it does not sound realistic at all, it sounds cheesy and fake. I listened to all the demos on that site, and they sound very bad, I don't think many people would use that type of quality in their music, unless they were beginner, or they didn't care, which is not many people. All these posts about how good this thing sounds are false. If you compare this sound to a guy actually playing an instrument, you will see this thing sounds like shit. For example, here's what a real, cheap high school violinist cheaply recorded for 80 bucks sounds like in a real hiphop production. All cheaply done for way less than that library with a cheap ass violin.

http://www.groovygrooves.com/video/turn ... iolin-duet