EXCLUSIVES

Vienna Symphonic Library
By David Hutchinson

June 2004

Introduction

This is the first of four reviews that focus on the Vienna Symphonic Library and related software. The Pro Edition is a massive 238 Gb sample library of orchestral instruments, very likely the most ambitious undertaking of its kind. This article introduces the Pro Edition and reviews the installation process and Redmatica's ExsManager Pro tool. Subsequent reviews will focus on the sample content itself: strings, brass/woodwinds, and percussion/performance tool.

Mission and Scope

In building one of the world's largest sample libraries, the producers of the Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) have a single overriding aim - "to enable composers, arrangers and music producers to reproduce every nuance that [orchestral] soloists and ensembles are capable of playing." To achieve this ambitious goal, VSL has built a specialized "silent stage" for the pristine recording of both single note samples and performance elements of a wide range of orchestral instruments, including small ensembles and rare solo instruments.

More an ongoing mission than a single definable product, the VSL library today comprises hundreds of thousands of samples which are culled into various sample library collections: the First edition, the new and affordable Horizons series, and the top-of-the-line Pro edition (reviewed here). In addition to a user forum and project news, the VSL Web site (listed below) boasts an on-line music encyclopedia that provides a plethora of performance tips for each of the instruments VSL has sampled.

Eventually, the VSL library will comprise more than one and half million samples. The current Pro Edition is formatted for Emagic's EXS24MkII software sampler on the Macintosh (and Tascam's Gigasampler on Windows). Priced at $5990, this library is not within everyone's budget. However, as part of the new Horizon series, VSL has recently released Opus 1 ($1095), a streamlined version of the much larger Pro Edition that comprises carefully selected string, brass, woodwind, percussion, and performance element samples. Also due in 2004 is the second edition of the Pro Edition which will be the first to ship on hard disk. The current version ships on 16 jam packed DVD-ROMs and requires several hours for installation.

Installation Process

The Pro Edition arrived as four separate titles (each is also available for individual purchase): Strings ($1520, 2 DVDs, 30000 samples, 25 Gb), Brass & Woodwinds ($1420, 4 DVDs, 77300 samples, 48 Gb), Percussion ($880, 2 DVDs, 23200 samples, 30 Gb), and Performance Set ($2870, 8 DVDs, 261000 samples, 125 Gb). Also in the package were two manuals totaling over 900 pages.
Using a 867DP G4 PowerMac with 1 Gb RAM as our test computer, we copied the Zip files from each of the 16 DVDs on to a dedicated 300 Gb internal hard drive. (An external FireWire drive can also be used to host the VSL library, although disk streaming may not be quite as optimized.) After several hours of copying the DVD content over to the hard drive, we were ready to batch unzip the compressed instrument and sample files (a few at a time) using Aladdin's StuffIt Expander tool. (We did this by selecting several Zip files in the Finder and dragging them on to the StuffIt Expander icon in the Dock. Expander unzipped them each in turn.) Given the multi gigabyte size of many of these files, this also took several hours to complete.

Our next task was to move the now uncompressed EXS24MkII instrument files over to the dedicated EXS24MkII sample library folder we had earlier created on our dedicated VSL hard drive. We did the same with the VSL samples themselves, making sure we moved each instrument group to the correct sub-folder. This was a relatively painless process as each of VSL's instrument and sample folders are uniquely numbered. Moving the performance element instruments and samples into the already existing string, woodwind, brass, and percussion folders did require our careful attention however.

To complete the installation process, we replaced the existing EXS24MkII instrument and sampler folders in Emagic Logic's application folder with aliases to the new instrument and sampler folders on our dedicated VSL hard drive.

Redmatica's ExsManager Pro

Although eager to start auditioning the VSL samples, we prolonged our wait just a little while longer while we relinked each of the VSL instrument files to the samples they referenced. Although not required, this is a strongly recommended procedure that speeds up the EXS24MkII's sample load times dramatically. We could have used Emagic Logic itself to do this, but Redmatica's dedicated EXS24MkII sample management tool, ExsManager Pro 2.5 ($100), promised a much speedier and far simpler solution with no manual labor on our part. Once we specified the two folder locations for VSL's instruments and samples, the relink process was underway and in just over six minutes over 400000 samples were analyzed and relinked to their parent instruments.

With the installation process complete and the VSL library now optimized for Emagic's EXS24MkII, we were ready to launch Logic and start exploring the almost 10000 solo and ensemble orchestral instruments that comprise the Pro Edition.

Contact: Vienna Symphonic Library, http://www.vsl.co.at. North American Distributor: Ilio Entertainment, http://www.ilio.com. Redmatica: http://www.redmatica.com. Pros: Well organized instrument and sample folders; two detailed and attractively designed manuals; superb VSL Web site; fast and simple relinking of instruments to samples using ExsManager Pro. Cons: Multi hour installation process.