The Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) is a producer of samples of orchestral Instruments recorded by members of the Vienna Philharmonic. For recording the samples, VSL uses the Silent Stage, a recording studio specially constructed for this purpose. The number of recorded samples currently is about 1.75 million. VSL's products include legato and repetition articulations. VSL's Vienna Instruments Symphonic Cube contains a full orchestra made up of ten collections that can also be acquired separately: solo strings, chamber strings, two collections of orchestral strings, harps, two collections of woodwinds, two collections of brass (one of which includes Wagner tuba), and percussion.

Imagine waking up one morning and saying to yourself, “I'm not happy with what's out there. I think I'll just…sample an orchestra.” Austrian musician/composer Herb Tucmandl took this notion several hundred steps further: The Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) is by far the largest and most ambitious sample library ever developed: Even the initial 16-bit/44.1kHz version comes on 14 double-layer DVDs, taking up 94 GB — yes, gigabytes — of hard disk storage. Anyone who's heard the library's online demos knows that VSL is something special, in both quality and quantity. Every instrument has been meticulously recorded in stereo, playing a staggering number of articulations, making it possible to sequence highly expressive and realistic orchestral performances. Variations include notes of various lengths, all kinds of dynamics (accents, crescendos/decrescendos, etc.), and effects such as tremolo strings and flutter-tongued winds and brass, trills, rolls — all recorded at various tempos and mapped to the keyboard in different combinations.

THE RECORDINGS
A low noise floor is especially important for sample recording. VSL was recorded in the Silent Stage, a custom room essentially devoid of reverb. (See sidebar on page 108 for more on the VSL facilities.) It has early reflections — the instruments are recorded with plenty of air — but reverb tails would have prevented the Legato tool from working properly. Plus, not having reverb allows you to add your own and blend the VSL instruments with others very easily.
So if you hear the VSL dry, it sounds completely wrong! But it's not intended to be heard that way. Only after running it through a good reverb program do you realize just how outstanding the recording quality is across the entire library: miked closely enough to be detailed, back far enough to sound right in an orchestral context, well-managed dynamics; it's just really satisfying to play. I've been getting excellent results running VSL instruments through some of the hall programs in Audio Ease's Altiverb, a sampling/convolution reverb processor.
Looking at the individual sections, the strings are powerful, large sections, re-corded with just the right amount of rosin. Sampled harps are usually recorded with mics way too close, but not this one: It's just outstanding. The brass is more refined than gritty, but it still has power to go with its clarity; both solo and four-person sections are available.
For now, the woodwinds are all solo, but VSL is planning to release alternative performances for making choirs. Piccolo is really the only standard orchestral instrument missing from the initial release, but it will be among the instruments in the forthcoming Pro Edition, along with solo strings and many other instruments and articulations. (I heard a beta of the solo violin from that set and it's absolutely stunning.)
The percussion is uniformly spectacular, and it includes some really nice exotic instruments such as spring drum and Japanese singing bowls. There are samples of cymbal rolls played with various weapons, but cymbal crescendos are missing from the collection.

THE LEARNING CURVE
The VSL is likely to inspire awe when you first load up some of its instruments and start playing. That's especially true after you first try the portmento strings in the Performance set, which are that set's most dramatic feature.
After that first blush, though, it took me a few days to feel confident getting around the library, almost like learning a familiar, but new, instrument. The library is organized with consistency throughout all of the instruments. In fact, you can pretty much substitute the instrument being played by a sequencer track without much performance tweaking.
For real-time control, the VSL uses keyswitches and the mod wheel only; no other controllers are used (although you can use Controller 11, Expression, as a volume control in both Giga and EXS). Key-switches are on-the-fly program changes, triggered by notes in an unused region of the keyboard.
The first programs in the file list for most of the instruments are Basic Instruments, which are “toolbox” programs that make concessions to lower the RAM requirements and therefore allow you to load a lot of programs. (Even though they play the bulk of the samples from a disk, streaming samplers still need “head-start” RAM buffers, and memory for loading programs is the first resource you run out of.)
The regular, high-quality programs add additional samples to the ones used by the Basic instruments: They're sampled at every note instead of every other one, and they have more velocity layers. To give you an idea of the VSL's depth, let's use the violins as an example.
The violin has about 20 “bundle” files — .gig files or EXS folders — each containing about 20 programs. These consist of three kinds of staccato notes, each with two variations (up/down bows, in this case).
Then there are combination programs that might employ mod wheel crossfades between layers, or keyswitching between different articulations or between the two variations. Plus, there are programs with release samples that are triggered by note-offs when you release the keys.
The programs that offer the most real-time control — and, in general, use the most RAM — include the Dynamic Layer programs, which use the mod wheel to fade between two to four layers (instead of keyboard velocity). The transitions between the string layers are exceptionally smooth, but the brass transitions don't work quite as well.
This is especially true in the EXS24 Dynamic Layer brass programs, which tend to be programmed with slightly rougher transitions between zones than their Giga counterparts. But you really need to switch zones in between two brass notes anyway, because louder, buzzy brass notes don't crossfade politely to smooth quieter ones (or vice versa). Plus, you'll sometimes hear one or more players making quick intonation adjustments, especially on the lower notes; you can't crossfade into that.
As an alternative to using the mod wheel to move dynamics, you can use actual crescendo and diminuendo performances, mod wheel crossfading between the two when necessary (and that does work well). While you can't control how quickly the brass gets into and out of the buzzy tonal range, there are recordings of different lengths to choose from.
In general, the VSL plays very well at the keyboard. My biggest complaint about the mapping is that some of the short-string programs bite all of a sudden when you trigger the higher-velocity layers. However, the folks at VSL have demonstrated that they're both interested in and responsive to user suggestions.
Users complained that the strings aren't looped, making them hard to use for suspense cues. The company is looping them. The Performance legato violins don't go all the way up to high C. VSL is recording more samples to extend the range. The oboe is German-style, not the more goat-like French sound that we're used to, although samples from a French-style oboe player are planned. And so on.

CONCLUSION
Sample library reviews usually conclude with comments like, “I was surprised at how much of this disc was actually usable.” Well, the VSL is miles beyond those considerations: Every articulation of every instrument is not just usable, it's for real.
Taking nothing away from the other excellent libraries on the market, I consider the VSL one of the most important products in the history of modern music technology. Reviewers are supposed to keep their distance, but even with my eyes wide open, I have to confess to having fallen madly in love with it. It's awesome and inspiring to work with.