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I've finally had some time to experiment more with the Sonivox Orchestral Companion libs that I've gotten my mitts on lately, i.e. Strings, Brass and Woodwinds.

And what can I say. I love the sound of these samples (YMMV of course, as I have a weird fetish for older orchestral libs, and I have some experience with Sonivox's stuff from the M-Audio-branded ProSessions discs from years ago) and it's simply a damn shame that the player frontend is such a clunky, buggy mess. I mean what the hell were they thinking?
  • It has no disk streaming, which forces me to use up almost half of my 16GB of RAM for just loading all the basic sections. I'm guessing that if I added all solo instruments as well, I'd have no RAM left for loading anything else. But who needs percussion, harp, piano, choirs and stuff anyway, right?
  • The plugins are monotimbral, so you'll need a separate instance for every section and instrument.
  • There's an awful lot of unsightly clicking and crackling going on, for no apparent reason.
  • The velocity response feels off and there's no way to adjust it from within the plugins.
  • The Transpose knob doesn't actually transpose -- it pitch shifts the patches!
  • The keyswitches are fixed at the -1 octave and can't be edited, which means you'll need an 88 key controller (if even that helps) to be able to switch articulations while playing in the high register.
  • The release tails can't be switched off.
  • It has synth features like amp, pitch and filter LFO's and a built in delay and chorus -- but no potentially useful synth features like pitch envelope, legato mode and glide.
And... probably more. Just thinking of all these problems makes me sad so I'll stop there.

This is some really pathetic stuff. The samples sound great but the way they're packaged just makes the whole suite borderline useless for anyone except maybe people looking for a quick "orchestra synth" type of instrument for their pop songs. Which is really too bad, as this could have been a great collection of affordable orchestral VI's.

Up until now I was considering ripping the notes manually from the scrambled plugins (strings & winds) but I honestly don't know if it's worth the trouble even trying. With all the crackling going on it's likely a lost cause. I'm going to cut my losses and just map what I might need from the brass as SFZ and/or TX and then wash my hands of this mess.
Maybe try e-mailing Sonivox. They might be willing to release their samples since it looks like they are desperately trying to retire the library in a final blaze of glory or something like that.

Make sure you mention you made Sonatina and add lots of winks and nods. Wink
(12-31-2016, 12:51 AM)Samulis Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe try e-mailing Sonivox. They might be willing to release their samples since it looks like they are desperately trying to retire the library in a final blaze of glory or something like that.

Make sure you mention you made Sonatina and add lots of winks and nods. Wink

Good idea!

I'll send an email to NI while I'm at it, I'm sure they'll give me a free version of Kontakt. Maybe Vienna is in a holiday mood as well... ?

Seriously, I think I'm going to offer my services as a sampling development/reality check consultant to Sonivox. Quite obviously there's a vacancy there.
BUUUUURRRRNNN...

You're probably right, but I have too much faith in my fellow humans sometimes to think that when something no longer has purpose it might be released to help grow the public domain. If any of my products ever are hopelessly obsolete, I plan to stick them in the public domain after a few years and maybe a "Classic Versilian Studios" bundle... or at the very least send them to a competent human being to remix/redo in a modern sampler format and re-release for $$ instead of milking their broken sorry bloated hides. *cough cough*
(12-31-2016, 12:55 AM)Mattias Wrote: [ -> ]I'll send an email to NI while I'm at it, I'm sure they'll give me a free version of Kontakt. Maybe Vienna is in a holiday mood as well... ?

Mmmmmm, I've heard of obviously crazier ploys working.

I called up fairly well-known DAW company with some issues and as a result I got put on the beta for two of their products. As long as I do the work, I basically have free NFR copies of the software.

In addition, a few polite letters to some independent sample developers has got me signed up as a beta tester and demo composer.

Except for the guys at a well-known company that sounds a lot like "Brrrrr - Silly ON!".  In addition to a grueling physical, I was forced to split my soul into 7 pieces.  But the library is totally sweet, so it was worth it... ;-)
(12-31-2016, 08:43 AM)kmlandre Wrote: [ -> ]Except for the guys at a well-known company that sounds a lot like "Brrrrr - Silly ON!".  In addition to a grueling physical, I was forced to split my soul into 7 pieces.  But the library is totally sweet, so it was worth it... ;-)

I don't think I've ever heard of that one.  Dodgy

"Here at Versilian we practice positive deniability."
(12-31-2016, 12:51 AM)Samulis Wrote: [ -> ]Maybe try e-mailing Sonivox. They might be willing to release their samples since it looks like they are desperately trying to retire the library in a final blaze of glory or something like that.

Make sure you mention you made Sonatina and add lots of winks and nods. Wink
For what it's worth, I had a terrible time trying to get help from Sonivox via email when I first tried the extremely buggy demos of these libs. I've communicated with a number of developers and had generally pleasant experiences but Sonivox' customer support is extremely "corporate," convoluted, and cold. In the end I tried for days and literally got nowhere with them. They ignored all of my questions and threw advertisements and buzzwords back at me. At one point, when I explained that the legato and modwheel dynamics simply didn't work at all, they directed me to a third party freeware MIDI controller plugin (the equivalent of something that came with my DAW and that I already use extensively). I still have no idea why or how it was supposed to help.
(01-01-2017, 06:52 PM)Nayrb Wrote: [ -> ]For what it's worth, I had a terrible time trying to get help from Sonivox via email when I first tried the extremely buggy demos of these libs. I've communicated with a number of developers and had generally pleasant experiences but Sonivox' customer support is extremely "corporate," convoluted, and cold. In the end I tried for days and literally got nowhere with them. They ignored all of my questions and threw advertisements and buzzwords back at me. At one point, when I explained that the legato and modwheel dynamics simply didn't work at all, they directed me to a third party freeware MIDI controller plugin (the equivalent of something that came with my DAW and that I already use extensively). I still have no idea why or how it was supposed to help.

Reminds me of a certain fun time I had "correcting" their marketing jargon-
http://scoringcentral.mattiaswestlund.ne...60#pid1060
(01-01-2017, 07:15 PM)Samulis Wrote: [ -> ]
(01-01-2017, 06:52 PM)Nayrb Wrote: [ -> ]For what it's worth, I had a terrible time trying to get help from Sonivox via email when I first tried the extremely buggy demos of these libs. I've communicated with a number of developers and had generally pleasant experiences but Sonivox' customer support is extremely "corporate," convoluted, and cold. In the end I tried for days and literally got nowhere with them. They ignored all of my questions and threw advertisements and buzzwords back at me. At one point, when I explained that the legato and modwheel dynamics simply didn't work at all, they directed me to a third party freeware MIDI controller plugin (the equivalent of something that came with my DAW and that I already use extensively). I still have no idea why or how it was supposed to help.

Reminds me of a certain fun time I had "correcting" their marketing jargon-
http://scoringcentral.mattiaswestlund.ne...60#pid1060

Ha! "Orchestrally-correct"

That reminded me of college. The original seemed like they hired seven-years-ago me to come up with something for an assignment and I was trying too hard to impress them.
Maybe we should approach a desperate sample developer (like, obviously, Sonivox) about doing a crowdfunding campaign to release their libs into the public domain, or at least under some non-copyrighted license?

I mean, if they're willing to sell their stuff for $1...
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