VRSound nylon string guitar--anyone have this?

[Jake Johnson]

The demo sounds good. I was wondering if anyone has it, and could give us his or her impression. Here\'s the demo, for the interested:

http://www.vrsound.com/GS/Rich_AcNylon.mp3 (\"http://www.vrsound.com/GS/Rich_AcNylon.mp3\")

[Joanne Babunovic]

Hi Jake,

I don\'t have this, but very much like the sound. So present, and perfect for projects that need a nylon lead. But as Sharmy says, I guess you need to hear several varying applications before judging, which is likely why you are seeking an owner\'s opinion.

Thanks for the demo.

[carlmsmith]

Glad to see you posting this topic, Jake. Hope more people get to hear this and, even if no one has the software (yet), some of the heavyweights here may be able to make some valuable comments.

I know, its only $59 bucks, but I have a drawer full of inexpensive giga libs that sounded good in the demos but don\'t seem that great when you have them at hand. Its kind of the old county fair trick where a guy is demonstrating kitchen devices that slice,dice, peel, julienne, and do everything but sit up and talk. Then you get it home and its a just another potato peeler.

Still, I\'m so impressed I may just take the plunge. I\'m a classical guitar player, and enthusiast, but have little in the way of giga tweaking skills. It might be worth the effort, though. I\'m thinking classical solo guitar, maybe with instrumental sweeteners, a la the latest VLS demo.

Cheers,
Carl

[sporter]

I\'ve got it. It is a very, very rich full sound and works great for leads. Drop me a PM, and I\'ll send you a snippet of a tune I used it on. I highly recommend it.

[Alexcremers]

For the price they\'re asking I want it. But what\'s up, no VISA?

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Alex Cremers

[Markus S]

Nice surprise, very beautiful.... thanks for posting the hint....

[sporter]

Here\'s a link to the snippet...this is by no means a classical guitar piece, just a very simple pop-like tune with the VRSound Nylon...but at least it might give you an idea.:

http://www.sportersstudio.com/Songs/cs.mp3 (\"http://www.sportersstudio.com/Songs/cs.mp3\")

[Jake Johnson]

Sporter--

I couldn\'t hear the guitar in this demo at all. Was what I thought was a piano the guitar?

[sporter]

Originally posted by Jake Johnson:
Sporter--

I couldn\'t hear the guitar in this demo at all. Was what I thought was a piano the guitar? <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">The intro is piano. Then the guitar comes in. It\'s back in the mix, but it is the lead melody instrument. I was trying to keep my lack of guitar playing skills to a minimum.. images/icons/smile.gif

[Jake Johnson]

Noone else has this sample set? Oh, well, I was hoping to hear other pieces using it...

[Alexcremers]

Originally posted by Jake Johnson:
Noone else has this sample set? Oh, well, I was hoping to hear other pieces using it... <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Nope, looks like you are going to buy it so that I can listen to another demo. Whatayasay?

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Alex Cremers

[Hans Grubner]

Other demo:

http://www.vsl.co.at/static/horizon_demos/player_ho_aranjuez.html (\"http://www.vsl.co.at/static/horizon_demos/player_ho_aranjuez.html\")

Hmm???

[Hans Grubner]

(Sorry--it was VSL not vr-sound)

[carlmsmith]

Yes, Hans that was the new VSL demo I was referencing in my post. Quite nice blend of instruments with the guitar toward the end. That guitar lib has a huge amount of articulations, but it is about 4 times the price of the VRsound.

Carl

[Oksi Moron]

Originally posted by Jake Johnson:
Noone else has this sample set? <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Jake,

I sent you a PM last night with one or two thoughts -- probably useless -- about this. I do own the VRSound guitar.

Greg

[Philippe Heritier]

Plz Osky What do you think about this vrsound guitar ???

[carlmsmith]

Yeah Oksi- what do you think? You can tell US. We won\'t tell.

I recorded the mp3 and played it for my classical guitar teacher Friday. His jaw dropped! (He thought it was excellent). And then I had to follow it....

Carl

[Oksi Moron]

Originally posted by carlmsmith:
Yeah Oksi- what do you think? You can tell US. We won\'t tell.

I recorded the mp3 and played it for my classical guitar teacher Friday. His jaw dropped! (He thought it was excellent). And then I had to follow it....

Carl <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">OK -- you asked for it. I wrote this rant earlier today and then decided it was just too stupid to post.


Originally posted by Philippe Heritier:
Plz Osky What do you think about this vrsound guitar ??? <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Seems to me that the people who are vacillating over whether to buy the VRSound guitar or the VSL guitar are just the people who would probably be very happy with the VRSound guitar. In other words, they\'d like to have a pretty nice-sounding nylon guitar to add as a color instrument to jazz and pop arrangements.

The VRSound \"library\" is actually a single does-it-all patch. Nothing wrong with that, IMHO. Low velocities use a \"flesh\" attack; high velocities a \"nail\" attack. There are release samples that simulate the sound of right-hand finger damping and/or left-hand string release. There are finger-squeak samples mapped to out-of-range high keys. There are six open string samples mapped to out-of-range low keys. There are slur (hammer-on/pull-off) samples that can be invoked by throwing the mod wheel high. There\'s no attempt at all to control vibrato, and there are no samples with recorded vibrato.

The samples appear to have been recorded at just one pluck point along the string. In other words, no over-the-soundhole, near-the-bridge, or buffed samples. There\'s a folder in the sample pool that\'s labeled \"acnyhmon,\" but the samples contained in it don\'t sound like harmonics to me, and it would appear to me that they might not actually be mapped to any regions.

There\'s a fair amount of noise in the underlying samples, which is why I imagine the programmer decided to apply lowpass filtering even to the high-velocity layers. Adds to the overall \"warmth\" of the instrument.

If I were into doing pop/jazz arrangements featuring \"nylon guitar\" lines, I think I could get a lot of miles out of this library.

[begin rant]

But, being a classical guitarist who knows just how hard it is to hold the attention of even other guitarists (or maybe *especially* other guitarists) for the length of a solo recital, using every expressive trick possible, I fantasize about having a virtual classical guitar so flexible in expressiveness that it might be possible (in theory, at least) to do a whole solo album with it that would be worth listening to more than once. VRSound is not that library, and it remains to be seen whether the VSL is, either.

I\'ve sampled my own guitar for that purpose -- every \"articulation\" I thought I might want, on every fret of every string -- but so far it has only given me an appreciation for what\'s still missing. Could be that sampling\'s just not the way to go for solo classical guitar. I keep an eye out for new developments on the physical modeling front on the HUT site in Finland (http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/demos/).

The HUT researchers at least seem to understand that modeling the attacks is a big part of the game. Classical guitarists spend years learning how to control and vary their attacks.

One aspect of classical guitar attacks that seems to buffalo most sample programmers is the several milliseconds of wispy pre-attack \"tail\" or \"beak\" that precedes the main attack. Most sample programmers seem to just lop that off, maybe because they\'re afraid it\'ll make the attack seem too slow, as indeed it sometimes does. But a lot of the character of the attack is in that pre-attack. Recently I came across an academic paper (http://www.duruoz.com/Interests/article_.pdf) that explains what it is. It\'s the longitudinal vibration started on the string as the flesh/nail combination crosses the string.

Anyway, lop it off at your peril. So far as I can tell, after several years of prayer and meditation on the matter, it\'s part of what keeps a plucked attack from sounding like a hammered one.

The VRSound patch, interestingly, leaves this wispy pre-attack in on the low-velocity \"flesh\" samples, but lops it off on the high-velocity \"nail\" ones. I can empathize with a design decision like that, although I think it oversimplifies the reality of the matter.

The VSL guitar looks like the first commercial attempt, ever, in the direction of giving crazies like me our fantasy virtual guitar, and I\'ve already decided to reward them for their craziness by ordering it. But VSL is at the extreme high end of brute-force approaches to instrument modeling, and, as I feel I learned from my own sampling experiments, it might be possible to pile up a few thousand samples and still not capture the evanescent nature of the instrument.

There -- aren\'t you sorry you asked?

Greg

[Jake Johnson]

Thanks for the review--I\'d rather read a full discussion than a brief one that leaves out details. (And I still like the sound of the VRSounds guitar...)

[Philippe Heritier]

Great Oksi

Thanx again for your reply

[carlmsmith]

OK -- you asked for it. I wrote this rant earlier today and then decided it was just too stupid to post. -Oksi

Not stupid at all- very erudite as a matter of fact, and very much appreciated. I\'m not at all surprised you found the VRsound lib lacking and/or incomplete. Its pretty much a given here that an instrumentalist here never finds a library of HIS INSTRUMENT totally worthy! You have just too much of an ear for it.

Thanks for sharing-
Carl

[Alexcremers]

Oksi wrote:


One aspect of classical guitar attacks that seems to buffalo most sample programmers is the several milliseconds of wispy pre-attack \"tail\" or \"beak\" that precedes the main attack. Most sample programmers seem to just lop that off, maybe because they\'re afraid it\'ll make the attack seem too slow, as indeed it sometimes does. But a lot of the character of the attack is in that pre-attack.<font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">A very good point and very true. I tried it once and it sounded more realistic. However the timing of the notes when playing becomes terrible.
So I edited the \"beak\" by removing its middle part so I still have the beak\'s attack and ending. It helps. You have to edit the samples, otherwise it is unplayable. Except for very slow solo lines, then you may leave them intact.

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Alex Cremers

[franz]

\"acnyhmon\" stands for:
acoustic nylon hammer-on and the samples are used on hi velocity for the modwheel on layer. pull-of samples are on the low velocity.

I personally believe that it is not possible to sample a guitar to the satisfaction of guitarists. This sample is meant to help non guitar playing arrangers to add a \"very decent sounding\" nylon guitar to their arrangments. OR demo \"what I hear\" to the guitarist. In many cases this guitar has been mistaken for the real thing because of the extremely realistic sound due to the binaural recording.
The noise mostly stems from the Neve mike pre which is a very good sounding thing but noises a little. In order to keep the build up in check I used a bit of filter on the tail ends of the release.

[fmfgs]

As a former lute and classical guitar player I totally agree with oski\'s statement on the state of the art of guitar sampling. But I think the situation is the same for all sampling attempts of solo instruments out there: If you master a instrument, you not only know all possible nuances of the instrument, you also want them at the right place in your performance. So when I was listening to the aranjuez demo found in this thread, I asked myself what the harp player was doing in the beginning of the piece, because I know exactly how that piece sounds if you play it on a real guitar. The same must happen to a professional wind player when he is listening to wind samples and so on.
Nevertheless, I ordered the VSL guitar and will see, what I can do with it. Luckily, our customers and the normal audience is much less demanding than we are...
fmfgs

[Jake Johnson]

fmfgs:

Do you have any impressions of the VRSounds guitar? Have you tried it? (Sounds very convincing to me. I\'ve played steel string for 28 years, and played a nylon string for 5 years.)

[fmfgs]

My only impression comes from the demo. Since You asked, I spent a couple of minutes in remastering and can say, after some stereo placement, fft filtering and room I like it. Not for classical solo performance, but for modern styles. If I had paypal, I would actualy buy it for that price...
Sorry that I cannot give You a real first hand judgement.
fmfgs