Discuss Notion Music Composition Software here.
8 posts
Page 1 of 1
I was inspired by a recent post here to test out the new Prime Edition library from Vienna Symphonic Libraries since they have developed presets for use with Notion 6. They also offer a free demo of the library (https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Starter_Editions/Synchron_Prime_Edition), completely functional for 30 days.

My basic question: Is VSL Prime Edition a good option for those who might be looking for an all-in-one entry level library for use with Notion that works out of the box?

Kudos to VSL for putting these presets together! It's a lot of work to make a collection of presets for an entire orchestral library, and I found the presets to be thorough and robust in terms of articulations and techniques, and Notion played back the sounds correctly (with one exception, which might be a matter of taste in terms of the programming of the strings library, which I dig into deeper below).

But first, the root of the matter, the sound:

Here's a short test piece (an excerpt from Ralph Vaughan Williams' March "Seventeen Come Sunday" from his English Folk Song Suite) played by Notion's native instruments:

phpBB [audio]


And here's the same piece played by Notion using the VSL Prime Presets:

phpBB [audio]


The Notion Native Score is here for those interested:
I - March.notion
(956.96 KiB) Downloaded 96 times

I chose this excerpt (apologies for the shortness of it but I had the score at hand) for the variety of instruments, and the variety of articulations within the instruments (staccatos, pizzicatos in the strings, mutes in the horns, a good variation of dynamic range, etc.). Some may be interested in what I consider niche functions (jazz horn techniques, harmonics in strings, etc.) but this was meant to be general in nature and applicable to a wide range of orchestral music. Both pieces are recorded out of the box, with only some minor tweaking of the settings of the VSL Prime humanization functions.

My first conclusion regarding the sound is that despite its age, the Notion Native Library is still pretty damned good! That's a matter of taste, of course, but it holds its own in a direct comparison. Also, I've found that using a more robust professional grade reverb with the Notion libraries can make quite a difference in sound quality (the sample above was recorded using the native Notion reverb to best duplicate what is capable using out of the box Notion tools).

So now regarding my impressions of VSL Prime Edition with Notion:

The presets are very easy to use. Sounds are initiated in the normal way using Notion's Score Setup command. The patches are very responsive to articulation and technique changes that are encountered in the score, and playback feels very natural.

VSL are pioneers in the field of sampled instrument libraries. The sample recordings are immaculate and of the highest quality. The Synchron Player is very stable and robust, developed to a point of maturity now, and the user interface is deep but easily mastered and very nice graphically.

One big disappointment: There are no solo strings in the VSL Prime Edition. This is an area where Notion's Native library is sorely lacking (the solo violin in Notion is notoriously bad) and I was looking forward to testing out some nicer solo strings, but they're just not there. Not sure what VSL was thinking with this.

There are a few distinct advantages of the VSL Prime Edition over Notion's native library:

One is that the instruments are recorded in situ (meaning that they were recorded with the players sitting in the correct location in the Synchron Soundstage where the recording was made). As a result, there is no need to pan each individual instrument in the orchestra the way that's necessary with Notion Native instruments. This could be quite a timesaver for a full orchestral production, but might not make that much difference for pieces using smaller ensembles since you might want to customize the placement of each instrument anyway.

Sound quality of some instruments is much better than Notion's own.

There is a Humanize function (adjustable for both delay and tuning) built into the Prime Edition libraries. This is a real plus in my opinion for adding a more human feel to productions, and it's a much more effective and precise approach than simply using the randomize tool in Notion to try to get some of the same effect. The VSL instruments use a sophisticated algorithmic function that can humanize both tuning and delay (completely addressable in the interface), and it works in a very deep robust way to modify these to emulate human playing.

The overall memory footprint of the Prime Edition library is not that big for a modern total orchestral library (about 66 gb total storage space required). This might make it an excellent option for those using a laptop as their music production workstation.

Instrument sections are pretty complete in the Prime Edition library, and can be expanded with additional individual instruments and collections.

Some drawbacks of VSL Prime Edition:

I noticed a (perhaps not surprisingly) significant hit to performance of Notion using this library (lots of spinning at unexpected times, slow start after hitting play, etc.). It may be that I need to play with audio buffer settings in Notion, but it just seems that Notion has some trouble handling the Synchron VST player (maybe because the playback engine in Notion is older than the hills?). I have a pretty good machine but it is getting a bit long in the tooth and newer processors may handle the combination of Notion and 17 Synchron players all working together better. I'd be curious if others find they are having the same results. (n.b. In a follow-on communication with the developer of the presets at VSL they indicated that their template for use with Vienna Ensemble (free version) with Notion seems to work pretty well in addressing the performance issues. I have yet to try it, but have used VE with Notion successfully in the past).

It seems that it's not possible to use the VSL Presets for Prime Edition to assign different instruments to multiple voices in a staff, which is pretty straightforward using Notion Native instruments. I found I had to duplicate the Rhythm staff in this piece three times and split the instruments out into individual staves to get them to sound.

And finally, a very specific issue mentioned at the beginning of this review: The scripting for pizzicato strings in VSL Prime Edition is set up so that they use a snap pizz at higher dynamics, yet the snap comes in at a piano passage (you can hear it plainly in the recording as a very loud pizz pluck at the very first part of the passage of pizzicatos, the balance are normal and sound fine). I have yet to figure out how to override this or adjust it, but I'll keep working at it. I also have some philosophical issue with this approach. I don't believe that a string player ever snaps the pizz at higher dynamics, unless the score specifically calls for snapping. I think most of the time they still pluck, they just bend the string more. But that might be a matter of subjective opinion and taste. (n.b. The aforementioned VSL expert said that this is a programming error that has since been fixed in the newer versions of the Presets).

So in conclusion, to answer my initial question, is VSL Prime Edition a good alternate for someone looking for an all in one orchestral library that works out of the box? I'd say yes, for sure, if you're tired of the Notion native sounds or are looking for that extra bit of realism that you might get from a more robust library, it's definitely worth looking at. The lack of solo strings is disappointing. It's not cheap (about $470) compared to Notion's free libraries and very reasonable expansions, but then that's not that pricey for an all-in-one orchestral library. The real plus is that it will play back articulations and techniques correctly, without worry or fuss, and so could be really useful for the user that wants to hear natural sounding playback while using Notion as a composition tool without the bother of MIDI programming, rulesets, or exporting to another DAW.

I'd definitely recommend downloading the library and trying it out to see if your computer can handle it, and hats off to VSL for offering a free download of the complete library to test. I think in this age every library manufacturer should do the same.
Last edited by michaelmyers1 on Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

iMac (Retina 5K 27", 2019) 3.6 ghz I9 8-core 64 gb RAM Fusion Drive
with small AOC monitor for additional display
macOS Ventura 13.4
2 - 500 gb + 2 - 1 tb external SSD for sample libraries
M Audio AirHub audio interface
Nektar Panorama P1 control surface
Nektar Impact 49-key MIDI keyboard
Focal CMS40 near-field monitors
JBL LSR310S subwoofer
Notion 6 + Studio One 5 Pro

http://www.tensivity.com
User avatar
by gabrielgudenus1 on Fri May 27, 2022 12:03 am
Hello

This is Gabriel from VSL. I created the Prime Edition Presets for Notion.
Thanks for the in depth review, and for the report regarding the snap pizzicato. This was indeed a defect in the Notion preset which has been fixed by now.
Regarding the performance topic, we provide a Template that runs with our Free Vienna Ensemble software which increases the amount of parallel tracks quite a lot. (Details in the manual of the presets)

Don't forget that you can try Prime Edition still 30 days for free. I'll try to check this forum more regular in case you find anything else

All the best

Gabriel
User avatar
by eoinroe on Sat Jul 09, 2022 6:59 am
Hello,

Have you noticed the problem with the template when copying music from one instrument part to another? When I tried this it copies the music and the entire instrument. So copying the melody from the oboe to the 1st violins will result in the Synchron Player instance for the 1st violins switching to the oboe.

I mentioned this to VSL and they said that they thought it was Notion specific. However, when doing the same thing with any of the default Notion templates this problem does not occur.

Best wishes,
Eoin
User avatar
by michaelmyers1 on Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:07 pm
eoinroe wroteHello,

Have you noticed the problem with the template when copying music from one instrument part to another? When I tried this it copies the music and the entire instrument. So copying the melody from the oboe to the 1st violins will result in the Synchron Player instance for the 1st violins switching to the oboe.

I mentioned this to VSL and they said that they thought it was Notion specific. However, when doing the same thing with any of the default Notion templates this problem does not occur.

Best wishes,
Eoin

That's interesting. My trial period ran out so I can no longer test, but glad to see others are. I'd suggest a Notion support ticket regarding this issue and that could inform the VSL folks.

iMac (Retina 5K 27", 2019) 3.6 ghz I9 8-core 64 gb RAM Fusion Drive
with small AOC monitor for additional display
macOS Ventura 13.4
2 - 500 gb + 2 - 1 tb external SSD for sample libraries
M Audio AirHub audio interface
Nektar Panorama P1 control surface
Nektar Impact 49-key MIDI keyboard
Focal CMS40 near-field monitors
JBL LSR310S subwoofer
Notion 6 + Studio One 5 Pro

http://www.tensivity.com
User avatar
by eoinroe on Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:29 am
I just created a Notion support ticket.

In case you are interested, here is a video demonstrating the issue:

phpBB [video]


The second half of the video shows a slightly different problem that occurs when copying only the notes.

Best wishes,
Eoin
User avatar
by gabrielgudenus1 on Sat Aug 13, 2022 6:08 am
Hi All

I just wanted to let you know, that this topic has been identified. If you go on "View" -> "Show hidden elements" you see the Commands for the Vienna Ensemble Instrument switches. If these are copied - so are the instrument channels.

I am still looking for any feedback or additional topics to improve

All the best!

Gabriel
User avatar
by aduki on Sat Nov 26, 2022 8:52 am
Hi Gabriel

Thanks for doing these presets, really useful.

I have a problem: when I load violins 2 and look at which patch is loaded from Prime, it is violins 1...
Violins 1 loads violins 1 as expected.
Is that what you are seeing?

Thanks

PS I should say this is using the cog wheel in score set up to change an existing score

EDIT: ah OK I see the problem here...the VSL presets will not be called up when going Score Set Up > Cog Wheel next to a track method on an existing score. Sometimes it works but other times not.
Please fix if possible
User avatar
by aduki on Sat Nov 26, 2022 9:52 am
OK I found a workaround- temporarily assign the instrument to any standard Notion Instrument and then go back and assign it to the Prime instrument you want and it will change to that instrument.

Also on further investigation this is a problem only coming [i]from[i] another VSL instrument. So if I have the oboe from Synchronized SE1 already instantiated, then it will not change to a Prime oboe without the workaround. Also should say this is on a Mac...

8 posts
Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests