"Hollywood Strings includes a lot of instruments that rely on cross fading between samples instead of selecting which sample to play based on the MIDI Velocity parameter of each note. And these cross-fades can be controlled by the Mod Wheel, or CC 11, or both at once. Such an approach gives the composer much more in the way of continuous control over both the loudness and the timbre. But this control comes with a price: greater use of the computer’s resources, especially the RAM and the processors. As is mentioned in some of the instrument descriptions below, PLAY might be playing up to 14 concurrent samples for each note (not including release trails)."
So, think about it, with these patches you could be playing back "14 concurrent samples for each note (not including release trails)" - there is not another virtual instrument collection in the world that does that. We optimized PLAY to the physical limits of the system, using multicore processors, etc. etc. The biggest gain was swapping hard drives for faster drives, and in this regard SSD is hands down the best solution, but not essential, only one of the demo creators used SSD.
Does that mean Hollywood Strings won't PLAY on a standard system with 7200 rpm drives - no - majority of it will (and we have light patches as well), but of course we need to increase the ram buffer to do that, and unfortunately that results in "longer load times", and probably less instruments loaded, requiring more bouncing (rendering) to your audio sequencer where you will mix. For these systems, to use the other mic positions you will probably have to do multiple passes, bounce the other mic positions, and mix these in your audio sequencer as well.
For Mac users there is a "high memory allocation" option in "settings" that will load even more into ram (resulting in even longer load times). These are provided for the large legato patches on smaller systems (assuming you have a good amount of ram), but don't use this setting for anything else.
All of this was required to achieve the detail you are hearing. There is an insane amount of programming and sample manipulation going on, we're even adjusting everything based on the speed and dynamics of your performance; we are literally trying to read your mind, interpret your performance, selecting the right combination of scripts and samples in "real time", which hopefully results in your compositions coming to life more so than using previous collections.
Certainly the feedback we've gotten to date from users indicates they are really enjoying HS, and believe it is a next generation product.
Je te conseille... Les deux!
Elles sont vraiment complementaires. Tu pourras les essayer toute les deux quand tu viendras - Compositeur .org - Forum des Compositeurs : Musique et Composition
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