[NEW] VSL Duality Strings

[doctoremmet]

-Two acoustically isolated string ensembles performing simultaneously at Synchron Stage Vienna

-Large ensemble recorded on the iconic Stage A
-Smaller ensemble recorded in the smaller, dryer Stage B

-Use them in combination or separately

-Available with combined mic options and mixer presets

-Dark and bright mic setups

-Seamlessly blend the large broad ensemble with the closer-miked small ensemble

-Comprehensive collection of articulations

14+8 Violins 1
12+6 Violins 2
10+5 Violas
10+5 Cellos and
6+3 Double basses

Standard: € 425 (regular: € 595)
Full: € 695 (regular: € 960)

[Lawrence]

Impressive sounding. I look forward to a thorough walkthrough.

[doctoremmet]

Here you go

[Muziksculp]

Hi,

This Library Sounds Wonderful !

It's surely on my future to-buy-list. I also like the way they designed it, and their approach of recording the players in the two stages simultaneously in-sync. A Great idea. and from what I hear, this library is very well captured, and engineered by the VSL team.

Looking forward to listening, and watching more demos, walkthroughs, and reviews.

[Mikeybabes]

It does sound rather good, doesn't it.

I've just depleted my stock of VSL Vouchers. Sadly, I'm very busy until the weekend, when I am going to give it a damn good thrashing and see what drops out, so I'll have to patient.

If only other developers had a refund scheme like VSL, I'm sure they would attract more customers....

[Lawrence]

So, so interesting. Overall, the piano and pianissimo sound much better to me than the forte and mezzo forte , which sound sort of buzzy.

Lots of possibilities and options here though.

[Linos]

Piet, are you willing to share your first impressions of this library? I am curious to hear wat you make of it. Does it do lightfooted scherzo-esque music?

[Piet De Ridder]

It’s too soon, Linos, I’m sorry. Only installed Duality yesterday evening, just before calling it a day, and I had other things to do today (and, alas, the next few days as well), and I really do need a bit more time to explore the library, lest I say something about it now which I might regret or want to retract later.
Early next week, I should be ready, I hope, to give you a better answer.

__

[Linos]

No hurry Piet. I could try the library, as VSL offers a refund. Trying to decide if I want to put in the time, and some trusted opinions would help.

[Muziksculp]

[Piet De Ridder]

As promised, a few quick words about the Synchron Duality Strings. I could make this really quick and simply say, truthfully, “I’m seriously considering returning this to store” and be done with it, but as that’s of no use to anyone, I’ll add a few more lines.

Duality is certainly not a bad library and if you’re a synchrophant, I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to convince yourself that this is something very special indeed, but I don’t go along with that. Not that far, anyway. Like I said, Duality is not bad, not bad at all, but not uniquely great either. (Always in my opinion, of course, as is everything which follows.) To my ears, this is very much fruit grown on the VSL Synchron Strings Tree and also a typical VSL library with all the sterling qualities that many people seem to hear in these things, but also with many less appealing characteristics — mostly to do with sound and timbre — that tend to put me off almost completely.

Calling it Synchron Strings MkII would indeed sound perfectly correct to me, because what Duality most definitely isn’t, is a big and expansive leap forward from the original Synchron Strings. If you have those and maybe Synchron Elite as well, it becomes really quite difficult to find good reasons why you would consider Duality as well. Sure, there are differences, and Duality is undoubtedly a step up in several aspects — although there are also a few things in the original Synchron Strings which I prefer —, but at the same time, I could also make a blind test with the two (switching from one to the other and back again) and be 100% sure that no one would be able to name all the appearances of these two libraries, as they pass by, correctly. Only to say: the overal sound is very similar and there’s quite a bit of overlap in other areas as well.

Yes, Duality adds the chamber section, recorded simultaneously in an adjoining (much smaller and much drier) room, and while undoubtedly a useful extra — more on that below —, the combination doesn’t yield results of a quality, usefulness and timbral singularity that can’t be achieved with many other alternatives as well. Never identical of course, but close-ish.

As much I as dislike SINE (and I dislike it a little bit more with every hour I use it), I have to admit to a growing appreciation for Orchestral Tools in that they, at least, keep exploring the polychrome world of string orchestras, always looking for new perspectives, new sounds and textures, and every new library they release offers something genuinely different from what came before. You can, in other words, safely buy three or four string libraries from OT and be totally sure you’ve expanded the colour sets on your virtual strings palette with three or four very unique additions. I like that. In marked contradistinction: when buying Synchron Duality, and already owning one or more earlier Synchron String libraries, you don’t really expand on anything, except the size of your palette and some added performance options, but the range of available colours remains more or less the same.

Two minor things: (1) some of the samples in the short articulations of the violins jump around in the stereo field from one note to the next — a party trick that never ceases to annoy —, and (2) I’m aware that ribbon mics are loved for their warm, round sound, but the pair used to record the Ribbon-perspective of this library must be faulty in some way or other, because no ribbon-recording I’ve ever heard cuts the highs as much as these do. This is not a warm and round sound, this is a dull, muffled, almost lowpass-filtered-like sound. Strange. And a pity. All the more so because the overal sound of the Duality samples is already of a nature which I would describe as having a rather high degree of viscosity, and adding substantial amounts of the Ribbon-channel certainly doesn’t improve things, I find. It gives you that porridgy sampled strings sound.

With and despite all that said, I do feel I have to return to saying what I said at the beginning: Duality is certainly not a bad library. It’s got the customary VSL-consistency across all the sections, you get plenty of useful articulations (some in several variants), the various microphone channels are quite effective (for spatial and colorizing purposes), the player software has been improved as well … in short: this certainly earns its place among the major string libraries of today.

My main problem with the VSL catalog remains the overal sound and timbres of their libraries. I don’t know if it’s the engineering or the post-processing or both, but there’s something about that sound — which always has a vaguely synthetic and processed quality to it, I find — that always takes me back to how orchestral libraries used to sound 2 or 3 decades ago. Spitfire, provided they fully commit to a session (which isn’t always the case), can make pretty decent recordings and while I didn’t much like sound of the early Orchestral Tools libraries, they’ve upped their recording game considerably and are now producing libraries with what is, to my ears, some of the finest sound heard in sample libraries. VSL, I find, is no match for either in the sonic department.

As you might have gathered, Duality is not only the name of the library, it’s also the kind of view I’ve come to look at the product with. Personally speaking and almost all things considered, I don’t think it’s quite special enough to keep it, but there is one reason I might hang on to it anyway, and be able to go to bed in the knowledge that I got at least something out of my vouchers, and that is because those two chamber channels mentioned earlier, not only combine well with Duality’s main body of strings, but also perform great as a support act for other string libraries.

I have a few more days to decide.

__

[Ashermusic]

I have Synchron Strings but never use them. Nothing I am hearing hear makes me think I would feel differently about Duality.

[Lawrence]

Thanks for the review, Piet.

I have no experience with Synchron strings, but in listening to the demos I found that the softer side of Duality appealed to me more than the louder side. Any thoughts along that line?

[Piet De Ridder]

Mmm, I don’t know, Larry. To my ears the softer dynamics don’t sound noticeably better or worse than the louder ones. (I say ‘ones’ as if there are several of both, but to my ears there’s only one of each — in the legato patches, that is —, maybe there’s a third one in the middle but I don’t hear that. Meaning: expression with these patches is, alas, more a matter of volume modulation than timbre modulation.)

What you might be hearing — and it’s certainly what I’m hearing — is that ever-present synthetic quality in the sound that I mentioned earlier and which, during softer moments, can sometimes sound all nice, cozy and carpetty whereas, in louder moments, is being exposed for the rather unconvincing and at times unpleasant stringsound that it is. It really can get quite bad in certain registers, I must say. The upper register of the violins, for example, sounds pretty nice and convincing, but in the lower register there is rather a lot of that thick, paddy, synthetic viscosity I mentioned earlier.

Or maybe you heard a moment where the chamber channels were more prominent than the main strings. These chamber samples do have a tone and character which could be described as intimate and rather lovely, yes.

It’s a dashed shame I have other things to do at the moment — right smack dab in the middle of an episode of oppressive summer heat, I have to design a “Silent Night” Christmas album cover —, otherwise I’d gladly make some audio examples. Cause it’s all very well for me to keep harping on VSL’s problematic stringsound, but without telling audio examples, that’s doesn’t mean much, does it? I’ll see if I can manage to record a few fragments anyhow in the next couple of days.

__

[Lawrence]

Thanks-I do hear the intimacy in some of the demos. I don't like them much when they're louder, feeling they have a sort of "buzzy quality to them. Maybe, as you say, it's just a matter of hearing them more prominently.

[Linos]

Thank you Piet! That's very helpful. I did listen to all the demos again. And while I think they are nice, I don't hear anyhting special that sets Duality apart. I'll save me some time and not test these.

[Muziksculp]

Hi,

I'm looking forward to an in-depth review, and some real time noodling with the patches of Duality Strings, and some attempt to building a short cue with it. i.e. kind of a Daniel James aavin a look at it review would be super cool, and helpful, or any other reviewer that can cover a lot of it in depth, so we can hear the good, the-bad-and the ugly if there are any in this strings library.

Oh.. and with the regards to some of the comments about the Duality Strings Shorts sounding odd, I listened to all the demos, and videos they posted, and I don't hear anything odd, or bad about how the shorts sound in the demos, i.e. listen to this demo with some short articulations in action. I actually like the way they sound, very realistic, and natural sounding.

I also love the way the legatos sound in many of the demos they posted. Also to note that the Synchron Player is very flexible when it comes to the sonic flavor you need to dial in, and offers lots of mixer presets to try, or use as a starting point.



Cheers,
Muziksculp

[Jackdnp121]

judging from the demo I actually think this is the best :"synchron Strings" up to dated ...
but as a owner of Synchron 1 / Pro / Elite Full
still very hesitating if I should go and purchase this

[Muziksculp]

Here is another wonderful sounding demo showing VSL Synch. Duality Strings in action

[richhickey]

I did return it. While this library has a bunch of great features, like soft/normal/fast/sfz attack variants for all longs, more detaches etc, there are too many negatives for me to ignore.

The regular legatos are entirely too separated, more like portato.

The dynamic range is limited - I kept wanted more oomph for both shorts and longs and it's not there. The library just comes off as 'well heeled' and I'd like more energy and rosin.

The very clever separate smaller dry sections idea does not, in the end, IMO, work. The sections are not small enough, nor mic'ed closely enough to capture more bowing and separate player detail. Instead both B room mic signals are somewhat muddy, and when used act more like a thickening agent than anything else. Whenever I blended them in I got a less detailed, drier and flatter sound, often verging on Mellotron territory. And it makes sense that e.g. 5 cellos mid-miced in a damped closet would do little else. I always ended up leaving them out and using a blend of the A mics.

That said, I did like the A close and ribbon signals, both useful variations of the micing done for SSP and Elite.

If the energy and dynamic range were as varied as SSP and Elite I'd probably have kept them, as I do like the new features and they seem to be improving on their sampling techniques in Synchron. I still think they need to stick dummies in the other chairs or something when they record sections - there's too much slap in the room they probably don't get during full orchestra recordings.

But as it stands the dry B room is more of a gimmick, and the attitude of the recordings seems slotted into a very narrow romantic vibe, not versatile enough for me to lay out another $750 (and more than double that to complete) on VSL string recordings. It does not sound bad per se., but the fact is they've changed their approach 3 times now. Fool me once...

[Linos]

Two very good points here. As Piet writes, other developers have found ways to provide new sounds that were not available in sample libraries. VSL seems to be looking for new ways to deliver the same. With Duality, they have embraced a concept that has not been widely used in the world of orchestral recording. Neither classical nor film music has ever used the practice of recording sections in a small room with mid-range microphones and then layering them on top of a studio recording. Whereas Orchestral Tool's sampled unique sound signatures with their Tallinn and Peteris Vasks libraries.
Which leads to Rich's point about sound quality. My tastes in timbre and sound just don't match those of the engineers at VSL. VSL is such a meticulous company, with an amazing player and about the best quality control in the business. They are leaders in almost every department except, for my taste, sound. In the best libraries of Spitfire, they manage to capture an expansive, polished sound. It just sounds professional and cinematic. The samples of Orchestral Tools, although difficult to use for me because of the inconsistencies, always sound like top class studio recordings. There is something classic and versatile about them. VSL's Synchron samples often sound top-heavy and unbalanced to me. It's just not a sound signature that appeals to me. Recordings by Alan Meyerson, the engineers at Teldex, sometimes Jake Jackson, capture my imagination in a way that VSL's sounds never do.

[Piet De Ridder]

Here is another wonderful sounding demo showing VSL Synch. Duality Strings in action.

Amazing and fantastic piece of work of course, but impressive as the strings are during much of this piece, they do give, surprisingly, only a very small idea of what the library is all about. See, most of the stringwriting in this piece consists of tremolos, trills, glissandos and runs, and while no one will deny that these, in the hands of an exceptional musical talent and an highly skilled and dedicated programmer like Levente Kovacs, can sound pretty spectacular, we learn in fact very little about how the library sounds when using mostly its supply of standard articulations. It’s like judging a cake by only tasting the whipped cream and the chocolate flakes sprinkled on top.

Take the Violas sustains, for example (wisely used only sparingly by Levente). Say you have melody made up of mostly slow sustains. Using the Duality Violas legato, out of the box, this is how that will sound like. IMPORTANT: I’m not suggesting that this is the best these Violas can sound, I’m merely saying that this is what you’re up against when thinking of doing a slow legato line with the Duality Violas.
In the second part of the example, the Violas are joined by the first Violins (also legato) an octave higher. Very unpleasant sounding combination, I find. (The background is just an ensemble sustain patch. Don’t mind that.)

Again, much work, meticulous mixing and cunning programming might prevent things to sound as bad as they do here, but I think it should be clear that you got your work cut out if you want these strings, in this type of material, to sound convincing and pleasing. Work I don't really want to be faced with when buying a €695 library.

Please also note: all these examples were quickly improvised while I was thinking about and writing this post. So they’re exceedingly rough and raw, and in that sense, indeed unfair to the library. I hesitated long and hard before deciding to upload them cause they’re not only unkind to the library but, even more so, to myself as well. Anyway, the sound in these examples is the sound that greets me when I wanna start working with these strings. And it’s also the sound I was thinking of when I mentioned, in my previous posts on the subject, the sticky, glue-y, porridgy synthetic quality in many of these samples.

Second quick example: both violin sections. First the Violins I in another slow meandering phrase, followed by something else for the Violins II. Listen especially to the longer-held sustains. I’m sorry, but there’s not a single second here I like the sound of.

And I started so I might as well do the lot: here are the cellos.

Finally, the four sections together.

I have decided : I am following Rich's wise example.

_

[scherzo]

'Rough and raw' can be very illuminating and revealing, I find. Many thanks for the examples and thoughts!

I feel like the Synchron string family was off to a troubled start. I have Strings 1 and Pro and roll my own presets using patches from both. There's a lot I like about them - they're very flexible and, as with many things VSL, will blaze through or do an at least passable job at rendering material that many other libraries have a hard time with - but I do struggle with the sound at times. It's also a bit of a Frankensteinian mess of a library, with SS1 and Pro (and the Cantabile update in between them) having been made with very different design and recording philosophies. The inconsistencies (timbral, spatial, design-wise) aren't so bad I can't work with them, but it's enough to annoy me a little.

My first thought seeing Duality Strings was that it felt like VSL rolling out a new string line that incorporates the lessons learned from past attempts and with promises to 'do it right this time'. Which I'll admit has a certain appeal. Many of the examples and demos sound pretty good to me, but in other places they sound, well, not-so-good - and in exactly the same way that SS1/SSP already annoy me on occasion. I'm certainly not hearing €425 worth of better and/or different from what I already have.

Not sure what to think of the Duality concept. I do like to layer strings on occasion, but to my mind, half the point is to select different libraries with complimentary performance and timbral qualities and have them driven by different midi data (this needs to be done with care, of course, so as to not make a blurry mess of things). Having a different ensemble in a different room available as basically another mic position sounds like it would be a lot less useful. Does seem kinda gimmicky, in fact. But I suppose I wouldn't know without actually trying it.

But I think I'll sit this one out. (And save money for Abbey Road, perhaps.)

[Muziksculp]

HI,

By Just listening to some of the Duality Strings demos, and comparing them with the Synchron Strings Pro demos, I surely hear a more pleasing, warmer, rounder timbre, more natural sounding, when I listen to Duality Strings, and compare them to Synchron Strings Pro, or Synchron Strings I.

The VSL Engineer who recorded Duality Strings, mentions that the smaller B-Stage section is there to add more warmth, and definition. But I think (Warmth) is what I hear the B-Section contributing to the A-Stage Strings, and a bit more definition but not a lot of definition from what I heard so far. Maybe some demos of the B-Section playing alone would be helpful to better evaluate them. Oh.. they might be the best Disco Strings in town.



Since I don't have the library yet to test it out at this time, It's all about what I hear from what's posted, but I'm planning to install the demo in the coming days on my current (11 year old PC). I'm also in the middle of putting my Primary 11 year old Desktop Studio PC into a retirement home, and have a new powerful custom PC built for me during this month. So, a bit of a crazy time dealing with transitioning to a new PC. But surely looking forward to the new PC.

Cheers,
Muziksculp

[richhickey]

I neglected to mention that VSL was great about the return, reissued my vouchers etc right away. They are to be commended for this excellent (and unfortunately, rare) approach to letting you assess their libraries.