Kirk Hunter Diamond Symphony Orchestra Support

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The other, older wwinds that were from Emerald should be in there.
They're not TVEC but they worked quite well for me when I was using only KH wwinds.

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what is included right now is VPro version..which is the version just before TVEC that has Ruby and Emerald combined...though I'm not sure if there is any difference with the woodwinds...

HOwever a genuine TVEC3 version would be preferable in order to have the same programming as brass and strings as well as the same reverbs
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There is no TVEC 3.1 in the download I made in Nov 2016. There is in my original (larger) Diamond download. It may be part of the size drop. I wished there was one complete and working updated version, but I'm not holding my breath.
-Matt

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Yes I think that is correct, TVEC3 woodwinds were dropped from Diamond somewhere along the line... That doesn't account completely for the size discrepancy between the older larger diamond and the current one, so there must be some other stuff that was dropped out of it also. I have owned Diamond for quite some time so I probably had that larger version laying around here at one point, but I long since deleted it assuming the latest one would be the most complete, but that appears to not be the case.
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I have received support from Kirk regarding the TVEC3 woodwinds. The Diamond rar archive on his site has now been updated to include TVEC3 woodwinds.
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Thanks Dewdman42 ...Excellent news

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nousndthem wrote:Thanks Dewdman42 ...Excellent news
Yup, except that KH website is currently offline - 502 bad gateway error .... :ud:

- Mario

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Thanks for sharing this tip. I don't understand Kontakt programming enough (yet) to understand what you did, but is there any possibility you can share your saved NKI's? I'm also curious why the TVEC4 built in mod-volume feature doesn't do what you are asking for, I thought that was the whole point of it...what is different about the way you did it?

nousndthem wrote:I've been wanting, for a long time, to get the play ability of the old Emerald Brass into the Diamond TVEC4 brass instruments, particularly the Emerald SFz patches for Trombones, FHorns and Trumpets.
The Diamond samples 'seem' to be newer, cleaner and bigger sounding that the ones in Emerald,
but the TVEC4 instruments were lacking that ability to 'push' that I got used to with Emerald.

What I really like about those Emerald Brass SFz patches is the ability to control dynamics with the mod wheel.
The Diamond TVEC4 patches are close, in that the mod wheel seems to filter and push the high end a bit but also rolls off the low end,
but doesn't add any meaty volume swell.
That's probably more realistic, but for my needs it isn't getting to where I need them to go.
I suspect I got spoiled by early Emerald brass.

If you'd like to mod these instruments then read on.

Anyway,
Here's how I did it for the TVEC4 Trombones, FHorns and Trumpets.
It didn't seem to work well with the Tuba so I skipped that one.

Note:
There are already 1, if not 2 modulators in the amplifier section assigned to CC01. I don't know what they do, but they don't swell the volume, so just be aware of those and add a new one as described below.

1) Load the instrument, open the wrench and immediately save your instrument under a new name so that the original is safe, and you can roll back if there's a problem. My method is to add a sufix with my initials that descibes the change so my new istruments
end with " " " SK_CC11_CC01.nki
2) Select Group Editor and make sure that the "Edit All Groups" button is selected, then close the group editor.
3) Find the Amplifier section and at the bottom of it choose the "Add Modulator" drop down menu, then External Sources > midi CC.
It might take a bit of time for it to get added so wait until you see the new modulator appear.

"1" will show in the first black box meaning it is CC01.
"0" will show in the second black box meaning take no action is no CC01 data is received.

In the 3rd black box called "Lag" double click on the 0 and change it to 100.
Set the slider to the left of the Lag box to something lower than 100%.

100% will mean that your instrument will be silent when the mod wheel is at Zero.

I set mine at 69.4% and it's giving me a good dynamic volume well and a decent volume when no CC01 date is present.
64.4% might seem a bit much at first, but try it with a very light touch on one note at a time and play and expressive melody.
We don't need to use full mod wheel all the time but for some quiet passages it seems it gives a bit more head room.

Now, test that the mod wheel is now adding the amount of swell to the volume of the instrument that you want to hear.
Adjust the slider percentage to get the amount of swell that you want.
If all is good save your changed instrument.
MacPro 5,1 12core x 3.46ghz-96gb MacOS 12.2 (opencore), X32+AES16e-50

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Dewdman42 wrote:TVEC4 I'm also curious why the built in mod-volume feature doesn't do what you are asking for, I thought that was the whole point of it...what is different about the way you did it?
First see this post:
viewtopic.php?f=225&t=371373&start=210#p6808154

I'm going from memory below, so some might not be accurate:

The "stock" TVEC 3, 4 and also some other newer than the Giga version of Emerald but older than TVEC
programming (at least in the the version of Diamond I have) was often all balled up and not paying attention to
*traditional midi standard specifications*
like:

---
CC07 = Volume (but external volume as in coming from the DAW track)
CC11 = Expression (but external expression as in coming from the DAW track)
CC01 = Mod Wheel (but external modulation as in coming from the DAW track)

All 3 of these need to be separate and independent in order to have maximum control.
---

Mod wheel can be used to add an *EXTRA* layer of volume control,
but when it's linked or learned to CC07 inside of the instrument, or CC11, or CC11 is linked or learned to CC07, then we're sacrificing one or more levels of control because of, what I would call, poor programming.

My rationale on how to use all 3:

CC07 is the global long term volume mix for the whole track.
It controls the global volume.
CC07 can change the volume of a passage where CC11 or CC01*** was used without disrupting the expression or excitement. All of those uses of CC11 and CC01 are still intact and just get tuned up or down. CC07 works outside and above CC11 and CC01.

CC11
always works *within* CC07 (that's the way the midi spec is designed) and is used for volume changes also,
but changes that are (well doh!) expression ... like the fine tuning of a phrase in a performance but of course also for the whole track for that instrument.

CC01*** (always works withn both CC07 AND CC11)
when assigned to create a swell*** as in the way brass players push more to get crescendo,
or also momentary excitement for any other instrument, is great to have right there under your fingers.

If and when CC11 or CC01 are midi learned to CC07 inside of a Kontakt instrument,
or worse yet scripted ( Thank God that wasn't the case) we loose one or more levels of control.
-----
So, I've been fixing as I go when I find a problem.
------------------
How I use them.
(CC01)
Quick pass playing the part sometimes riding mod wheel (CC01) to get a general performance.
Lets call that the performers dynamic control.

(CC11)
My Keyboard controller has CC11 assigned to a fader.
After the tracks are cut I might hear ... "oh ... that cello is too loud for about 12 bars but it slowly gets right in place at bar 14.
I arm the track to record and use the CC11 fader, writing expression to the cello track to put them were they need to be.
So, lets call that the Conductors dynamic control. I shook my CC11 stick at the Cellos and they learned what to do for that section where they were too loud.

(CC07)
Final midi mix before audio mix. I'll use CC07 to level out the parts even more.
------------------
So there you have it as to what was wrong in my opinion.

If you want the .nki files then you'll have to get KH to post a reply to this saying that it's ok for me to share my changes.
If that happens then I'll upload a bunch of stuff to my site that anyone can get.

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Let’s leave cc7 out of the discussion for the time being it’s just a volume knob nothing more.

Under the covers something is used to effect the velocity layer of the samples that will be used. Typically that is note velocity but TVEC can be configured to use mod wheel to effect this instead of velocity. This is preferable for a few reasons, for one thing it’s more controllable in many ways. For another it’s possible in some some libraries to have the mod wheel change the sample layer that is used over time as you hold the notes, crossfading different samples in and out and getting sustained dynamic changes. This is not cc7 volume level, its sample cross fading and/or other programmatic manipulation of the tone over time. I thought that is what TVEC was programmed to do with the mod wheel already, maybe a bad assumption.

Cc11 expression is yet another aspect that some instruments use to typically make tonal changes such as brightening the tone without neccessarily raising the volume. It sounds like you are saying you want that brightness control but it’s not clear to me what you did. If all you wanted is a swell then it seems the TVEC modvol feature should have given you that already. What parameters did you connect cc11 to?
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redundant post
Last edited by nousndthem on Fri Mar 02, 2018 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Dewdman42 wrote:Let’s leave cc7 out of the discussion for the time being it’s just a volume knob nothing more.
That would be fine as long as it's real purpose is not defeated by CC11 being midi learned to the volume control of the Kontakt instrument, which ALWAYS uses CC07.
Dewdman42 wrote: Under the covers something is used to effect the velocity layer of the samples that will be used. Typically that is note velocity but TVEC can be configured to use mod wheel to effect this instead of velocity.
I've never seen Modulation be able to effect velocity. I've seen velocity being disabled and CC01 being substituted but there again I think we have 1 option of control being taken away.

No need for TVEC to do a Velocity Layer cross fade. I first became aware of CC01 doing crossfades with Giga Studio. It doesn't effect velocity, it cross fades between velocity sample layers inside of the instrument.
Dewdman42 wrote: This is preferable for a few reasons, for one thing it’s more controllable in many ways. For another it’s possible in some some libraries to have the mod wheel change the sample layer that is used over time as you hold the notes, crossfading different samples in and out and getting sustained dynamic changes.
Yes. But it's not necessary to disable velocity to do it, and takes away the ability to 'pop' very specific notes into that upper velocity (brighter in some instances) range, at will.
That doesn't me we still can't ride a whole slew of medium to low velocity notes with the mod wheel to get that more gradual colour change.
Dewdman42 wrote: This is not cc7 volume level, its sample cross fading and/or other programmatic manipulation of the tone over time. I thought that is what TVEC was programmed to do with the mod wheel already, maybe a bad assumption.
Yes. TVEC is doing that somewhat. But, in my opinion, not as effectively as it was done with the Emerald Giga Studio version. The samples are better it seems in the TVEC instruments, but the cross fades weren't as good for me.
The older Emerald Giga instruments, not the ones included with Diamond, but the ones that I used in Giga Studio were perfect and exceptional.
I spent a long time getting my favorite Emerald brass and string instruments repaired to work correctly after Kontakt failed to convert them properly. I've also fixed some of the ones included in Diamond to work the way the Giga versions worked.
Dewdman42 wrote: Cc11 expression is yet another aspect that some instruments use to typically make tonal changes such as brightening the tone without neccessarily raising the volume. It sounds like you are saying you want that brightness control but it’s not clear to me what you did. If all you wanted is a swell then it seems the TVEC modvol feature should have given you that already. What parameters did you connect cc11 to?
I've not been looking for any brightness changes or tonal changes or expecting CC11 to effect tone.
CC11 for me, needs to be expression (volume inside of CC07) only.
I've also not seen any instruments that use CC11 to do tonal changes. Not to say they don't exist, I just don't own any.

Cross fading layers with CC01 is where I'd expect to see tonal changes, or maybe using it to open/close a filter, but I, personally, haven't seen CC01 filter changes with sample based orchestral instruments. There may be some out there but I haven't seen them.

If CC11 is being used for anything other than external expression sent from the midi track then I'd call it bad programming because it ignores the standard midi specification.

In my opinion, a programmer that is aware of the midi spec. would use any of the undefined CC numbers to do a job like that (or map it to CC01 which is very typical in my experience).
There are more than enough undefined CC numbers available.

From here: http://nickfever.com/music/midi-cc-list

Undefined are:
3
9
14-15
20-31
85-90
102-119

Or a broader search if you want to verfiy those undefined numbers:
https://www.google.com/search?safe=off& ... cKx7saZY20

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So are you saying that in TVEC cc11 is linked to cc7 by default? Is it linked to anything else? I don’t like the idea of ANYTHING being linked to cc7 honestly.

I was not meaning to say that mod wheel changes note velocity. I was meaning to say that normally with most instruments when you play notes, the note velocity chooses a sample to play. If you have a sampled instrument, there are multiple samples at at various levels of loudness and the note velocity chooses which of those samples to play, the soft samples or the loud or something in between. That is referred to as “velocity layering”, since note velocity is determining which samples to play or in most cases there are not 127 samples for every possible note velocity, so the note velocity will direct the instrument through 127 layers of programming that achieves a similar result of making the sound louder or softer in a way that tonally makes sense since every instrument changes tone as it gets louder and softer. Bla bla bla. That is “normally”...

Some instruments, such as gpo and TVEC, provide an option to use mod wheel INSTEAD OF note velocity to make the determination of what “velocity layer” to play. In TVEC that is the modvol feature, at least so I thought. As explained already, the main reason to use mod wheel instead of note velocity to determine the sample layers used is so that as you hold notes you can change the mod wheel which would not merely change the cc7 volume but actually would crossfade between the “velocity layers” of the instrument. This is particular needed for brass to get realistic crescendos on held notes.

Ok so back to TVEC, are you familiar with the modvol feature in TVEC, how is mod wheel being used to effect things by default? Are you saying the mod wheel is merely linked to cc7 and nothing else?
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at this point you have kind of thrown out a lot of information about many things and I'm confused about what you changed or why you needed to change it, and since you can't share the NKI, I guess I will just let it go. Enjoy it whatever it is you did. If you can think of a way to explain in simpler terms how you improved TVEC I am genuinely interested, but it seems like we're missing each other in the discussion somehow and its becoming way too complicated to understand. cheers
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Dewdman42 wrote:So are you saying that in TVEC cc11 is linked to cc7 by default? Is it linked to anything else? I don’t like the idea of ANYTHING being linked to cc7 honestly.
I found that all tvec 4 instruments had CC11 midi learned to the volume control on the front of the inst in Kontakt.

Everything is pretty obvious in the 2 tutorials I posted on how to make the changes I did and I've explained it a few times why I've changed what I have.

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