Virharmonic what is it ?
- Thread starter yagoda
- Start date
In some sense, it's the complete opposite end of the spectrum from AV.
Where AV which uses a lot of modelling techniques, VH uses *only* pristinely recorded arcs. The advantage of this is the gloriousness of the sound - there's no timbral blurring or jerkiness from cross fading, no phase distortion from phase alignment, just pristinely, viscerally real performances. You will more or less never hear anything in the sound that betrays this as a sample library rather that a real, passionate, performer.
The downside of this of course is that you can't control the crossfade the dynamics, or control the vibrato - because inevitable the progressive vibrato and dynamics etc need to be baked right into the sample with this approach.
VH addresses this by sampling a *lot* of arcs, techniques, dyamics, styles, legatos at different speeds etc - I have entire orchestral with a fraction of the number of samples as a single CH cello.
But it's still, obviously, limited. I'm not sure the VH strings will ever be all that good for in a quarter setting, for instance, since a big part of the musicality of musicians in an ensemble like this is the "watching each other's elbow" effect - which means that the shift to progressive vibrato, or timing of a crescendo or decrescendo needs to be very carefully timed (though not necessarily identical). And this is where you need to turn to an appraoch that uses modelling teniques - like simulated vibrato (which sounds crappy in most contexts with solo strings imo, ie embertone, Chris Hein), or vibrato crossfading (ie Spitfire) which is bumpy and, though it can sound pretty good in some contexts, very limited.
These kinds of trade offs are entirely endemic to the current state of the art in sampling.
Where AV which uses a lot of modelling techniques, VH uses *only* pristinely recorded arcs. The advantage of this is the gloriousness of the sound - there's no timbral blurring or jerkiness from cross fading, no phase distortion from phase alignment, just pristinely, viscerally real performances. You will more or less never hear anything in the sound that betrays this as a sample library rather that a real, passionate, performer.
The downside of this of course is that you can't control the crossfade the dynamics, or control the vibrato - because inevitable the progressive vibrato and dynamics etc need to be baked right into the sample with this approach.
VH addresses this by sampling a *lot* of arcs, techniques, dyamics, styles, legatos at different speeds etc - I have entire orchestral with a fraction of the number of samples as a single CH cello.
But it's still, obviously, limited. I'm not sure the VH strings will ever be all that good for in a quarter setting, for instance, since a big part of the musicality of musicians in an ensemble like this is the "watching each other's elbow" effect - which means that the shift to progressive vibrato, or timing of a crescendo or decrescendo needs to be very carefully timed (though not necessarily identical). And this is where you need to turn to an appraoch that uses modelling teniques - like simulated vibrato (which sounds crappy in most contexts with solo strings imo, ie embertone, Chris Hein), or vibrato crossfading (ie Spitfire) which is bumpy and, though it can sound pretty good in some contexts, very limited.
These kinds of trade offs are entirely endemic to the current state of the art in sampling.
jesussaddle
Senior Member
Yes. But if they offered a package with a few different vibrato styles and you could switch between them, or vibratos maybe geared towards different tempos. The extreme vibrato (depth and speed) is one way to go, but I feel like they could offer more choices for this in the future. I'm constantly using the "no vibrato" keyswitch in their software BTW - it works really well. Chris Hein
