Velocity Sensitivity

[koalaboy]

Hi all,

As I'm now actually installing SS2, ST2.5XL and SM, I thought I'd ask the question, as I encountered this in the demo...

Most of the sounds seem to require me to fairly heavily 'hit' the keys on my Novation KS5 to get a decent sound out, compared to just about every other VST I have. One of my most used is Truepianos, which allows really delicate & strong playing, without any modification.

I know I can manually alter the velocity curve for each sound, between around 6 choices, although I seem to end up on 'flat' because not many of them actually make a suitable difference.

Is there any 'tweak' I can make globally, or anything I might be missing that can solve this ? I just can't see why all of the ST-powered instruments are so much quieter and require much higher velocities, and yet I'm sure if this was a common problem, it would have been picked up by now. I know the engine is capable of stunning sounds, and I'd just like to be able to play them with better dynamics.

Many thanks,

Michael.

[koalaboy]

Replying to myself

It seems that I had Truepianos using a customised velocity 'dynamic' curve. The other VSTs seems more sympathetic, but I don't notice dynamics as much on those, as they're mainly synths.

I'd still like a customisable global curve (rather than a selection of a few) - the Truepianos example is really good. However, I'll try and get MIDI-OX or something in the meantime to adjust my keyboard on the fly (the KS5 is very poor, with just 'hard' and 'soft' - I could use my CP300, but it's a bit further away).

Any help still appreciated

[DarkStar]

Yep, i've noticed that too.

Not a global solution, I'm afraid, but what I've done is:

Turning down the Amp knob in the Velocity section (from a value of, say, 40 down to 10-15).

And if you like the result, save it as a new User Preset, with a name slightly different from the original.
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Hmm, saving a new User preset here takes 20-30 seconds; from the disk activity it sounds like a full Relist is happening. Anyone-else get this?

[Edit: typo]

[Squids]

A lot of times you can change the velocity of the controller itself for a more global result.

[Kim Lajoie]

Turning down the velocity->amp control is usually what I do when I need a more "consistent" velocity control.

On the other hand, I actually prefer the levels to be a bit lower. When I've got a full compliment of 16 tracks going at once (plus audio tracks!) defaulting to a lower level means I can easily add more layers without overloading my mix.

Hmm, saving a new User preset here takes 20-30 seconds; from the disk activity it sounds like a full Relist is happening. Anyone-else get this?

I believe this only happens the first time after you open the ST2 instance. Saving child presets after the first one should be very quick.

-Kim.

[koalaboy]

Thanks for all of the suggestions.

I've going to try using FLStudio for my MIDI recording, as it has a great velocity curve setup (which works better for me than the Live plugin). With this, I am getting really beautiful sounds (as expected) from ST, SS and SM (here I am thinking I'm Vangelis ).

If you ever want to implement a more customisable curve on the ST engine, FLS is the one to copy

Did I mention how wonderful SampleMoog is ?

[DarkStar]

Hmm, saving a new User preset here takes 20-30 seconds; from the disk activity it sounds like a full Relist is happening. Anyone-else get this?

I believe this only happens the first time after you open the ST2 instance. Saving child presets after the first one should be very quick.

'Fraid not, I tried saving several new User Presets.
- the first one took 50 seconds
- subsequent ones took 38 seconds
- for confirmation, I clicked [Relist], that took 38 seconds too.

I've sent in a Support Ticket (problem report) to IK MM