The Sound Board

Which is it, I wonder?

Oh good lord, VSL have just announced that any transition to iLok means you have to download all sample content AGAIN. I think that means putting it in a new location. Not sure what happens to old projects - they say it will all magically work in the background. Here’s hoping.

https://www.vsl.info/en/tutorials/faqs/ilok

Already transitioned, and so far everything works. Old projects and templates open like before. All I had to do was to select download and install locations. Everything else was taken care of automatically. Quite impressive.

Linos wrote: ↑Mar 18, 2022 11:40 am Already transitioned, and so far everything works. Old projects and templates open like before. All I had to do was to select download and install locations. Everything else was taken care of automatically. Quite impressive.

I don’t yet seen the green dot that tells me I can make the transition yet.

What about Vienna Instruments pro? Is the pro player being discontinued or does every user get it now? In my list of products, VIpro is marked red (will not be transferrable to iLok). Also, on the product page it seems you can no longer buy it. Did I miss something about that?

FriFlo wrote: ↑Mar 18, 2022 3:01 pm What about Vienna Instruments pro? Is the pro player being discontinued or does every user get it now? In my list of products, VIpro is marked red (will not be transferrable to iLok). Also, on the product page it seems you can no longer buy it. Did I miss something about that?

You and me both. Also my SE Woodwinds Plus vols 1 and 2 are shown as being non-upgradeable.

That's really bad. Essentially those products we've bought and put into our templates are at end of life, and - sooner or later - we're gonna lose them.

Linos, glad to hear you're up and running - presumably you had no dreaded Red Dot products?

Guy Rowland wrote: ↑Mar 18, 2022 3:54 pm

FriFlo wrote: ↑Mar 18, 2022 3:01 pm What about Vienna Instruments pro? Is the pro player being discontinued or does every user get it now? In my list of products, VIpro is marked red (will not be transferrable to iLok). Also, on the product page it seems you can no longer buy it. Did I miss something about that?

You and me both. Also my SE Woodwinds Plus vols 1 and 2 are shown as being non-upgradeable.

That's really bad. Essentially those products we've bought and put into our templates are at end of life, and - sooner or later - we're gonna lose them.

Linos, glad to hear you're up and running - presumably you had no dreaded Red Dot products?

It's the opposite, you're lucky. On Vi-C, Ben mentioned that in the transition you get the full SE Vol. 1 for free if you bought part of it. So I assume the red dot is there because VSL SE vol 1 Woodwinds don't exist anymore. But you'll get the full vol. 1 instead.

The VI Pro player works normally for me on ilok. I think the comored dots are not really reliable. Just look around on Vienna Assistant once you are free to transition, and things should get clearer. If not, contact support. They are usually quick and helpful.

Ah that is much more promising news, thanks Linos. Here’s hoping it’s just scary glitches on those dots.

EDIT - yes Paul S at VSL confirmed in a reply to my grumpy post on the VSL forum. But seriously - why tell customers there stuff isn’t upgradable with a scary red dot when it is?

Yes, the dots don't seem to work, nor are they necessary. Why not just send the email when the conversion is ready?

All in all, the conversion was smooth for me. I was dreading a redo of my templates, or having to point all instances to the new libraries locations. That would have taken a lot of time. Luckily it's not necessary. If you have the disk space to download all the libraries a second time, switching to ilok is as smooth as it can be. Vienna Assistand even has a functionality 'delete all elicenser libraries'. So once your ilok libraries are all set up and work, you don't even have to clean up your disk space manually.

I was pleasantly surprised that almost everything works automatically. However, there's no need to transition now. It's probably wiser to wait for a few weeks until the kinks are ironed out, and everything is known to work as promised.

That's all terrific Linos. Paul at VSL has just agreed as it happens, they're going to rethink those dots which just terrify nervous sorts like me!

And in my case it is a nice bonus that I get the full Plus versions of SE 1 and 2, it seems.

I am so glad I read this thread to the end before I went to my VSL page! Thanks for doing that leg work!!

Linos wrote: ↑Mar 18, 2022 4:14 pm On Vi-C, Ben mentioned that in the transition you get the full SE Vol. 1 for free if you bought part of it.

Nice! Only bought the SE Strings 1 & 2 and 1+! What a nice treat! Been wanting those Woodwinds for ages but been too cheap about it.

Had my own VSL revelation this week. I thought now'd be the time to get the SE Synchronized Dimension Brass, to have a lighter, leaner version of the VI Dim Brass that I already had - and found that there isn't a discount for 'downgrading' a library. I confess that I don't understand this in the slightest. I had assumed it was some issue with converting from the VI version directly to the SE Synch one, but - no, it's VSL policy to not discount for lighter versions of things you already own.

It boggles the mind - how does this make any kind of marketing sense? I was planning a little shopping spree of my own, and nothing cures that like being told that you'd have to pay full whack as a matter of policy for samples you've already bought.

Just whinging. Carry on!

So...

Got myself on a spending spree. Upgraded my VI SE 1 & 2 to the Synchronized ones and I'm sort of blown away! The workflow of these libraries in Studio One with the Synchron player automatically populating the sound variations with the correct articulations is such a HUGE timesaver! Almost no need to build big templates anymore, load up an instrument, route it to whatever and continue writing!

The amount of detail they have thrown into all presets are astonishing. Load something, load something else, volumes match.

And since I only had the string packages to begin with this was a very big update. Brass, woodwinds, keys, percussion, drums and a very nice upright bass I must say. Now I'm hovering over a lot of "buy"-buttons on the VSL site.

Damn...

I've taken the plunge with iLok and VSL. So far so good - impressively painless in fact - though I see it's left all the old sample libraries where they were. I only use VEP 7 to access any VSL sample content, which has been updated of course. Am I safe to delete the old sample libraries?

If you have downloaded the new ones (iLok) then there is an option in Vienna Assistant to delete eLicenser libs.

Thomas Mavian wrote: ↑Apr 09, 2022 1:38 pm If you have downloaded the new ones (iLok) then there is an option in Vienna Assistant to delete eLicenser libs.

They’ve thought of everything. Thank you Thomas!

Yes, the have really thought of everything it seems.

I ended up buying Synchron Strings Pro, great sound and the workflow with Synchron Player and Studio One is amazingly good, fast and enjoyable even!

This is a bit off topic, but I got the free upgrade from SE vols 1 and 2 (and plus) woodwinds to all the sections. I’m not sure I really need any of it to be honest, and I never installed Epic Orchestra v2 which felt like 75gb of bloat. But are there any hidden gems in there (for anyone who has them)?

BTW, a nice touch was I was allowed to just download the woodwinds section so I don’t use a lot of space for the stuff I won’t use.

The Upright Bass, liked that one. Great little sketch tool.

Epic orchestra, the only "keeper" in there is the cornet I believe, haven't made up my mind on the rest of it.

Thomas Mavian wrote: ↑Apr 09, 2022 2:43 pm The Upright Bass, liked that one. Great little sketch tool.

Epic orchestra, the only "keeper" in there is the cornet I believe, haven't made up my mind on the rest of it.

The cornet was excellent in v1, so never felt the need to get it again in v2.

So.... what's everyone's take on iLok Cloud vs. the USB key?

I'm no dongle-lover (but let's perhaps not get into that ) so I was intrigued to try the cloud thing, but there seems to be an issue with substantially increased load times. And every now and then it fails to authorize entirely unless I turn off my VPN. Not a great first impression tbh.

Other than that though, my migration was smooth and uneventful. And credit to VSL for writing a software hub that's actually pretty good.

scherzo wrote: ↑Apr 13, 2022 5:27 am So.... what's everyone's take on iLok Cloud vs. the USB key?

I'm no dongle-lover (but let's perhaps not get into that ) so I was intrigued to try the cloud thing, but there seems to be an issue with substantially increased load times. And every now and then it fails to authorize entirely unless I turn off my VPN. Not a great first impression tbh.

Other than that though, my migration was smooth and uneventful. And credit to VSL for writing a software hub that's actually pretty good.

I haven't tried the Cloud with VSL yet, but been using it for PT on the macbook for a few years, along with several plugins. Obviously the huge drawback is requiring a solid net connection, otherwise it's been pretty well behaved for me. I think starting Pro Tools does take a little longer to authorise, but it's not been a big difference to me.

With VE Pro btw, it suggests you save projects after the first time you open them, and that made a big difference to load times - first time it was much slower, after the save it was back to normal.

Agree on the software hub, works great.

Never had any issues with iLok and now with VSL it's the first time for me using the cloud, no problems so far.

Assistant is very nice indeed.

Thanks guys.

If it was just the DAW taking a few more seconds to load it wouldn't be a big deal, but this seems to multiply across every instance of the player. As an example I made a small test project with about ten-ish instances of Synchron Player which took about six minutes to load. After sticking the licenses on the USB key, it went down to a much more reasonable 30 seconds. Probably not an issue if you have a set-and-forget VEP template that you load once a day (as most people here I'm guessing), but I tend to prefer native hosting and often have to disable-then-reenable stuff to work around resource constraints, so any extra waiting time becomes a bit of an annoyance.

Might be an issue on my end I suppose, although I'm not sure what other variables I can control for. Maybe their servers were having an especially bad day. Haven't decided which system the better compromise for me yet, but it's nice to have options at least.

Ah well. First world problems.