Recording - March 2010 - 46

PLUG-IN OUTLET Vienna Suite By Devon Brent The Vienna Symphonic Library folks seem to be expanding their horizons (no pun intended aiming at their Horizon sample series). Not only do they offer some of the largest sample libraries in the world, now they have an effects suite called Vienna Suite. Vienna Suite consists of nine individual plug-ins; Analyzer, Compressor, Convolution Reverb, Equalizer, Master Equalizer, Exciter, Limiter, Multiband Limiter, and Power Pan. Let’s take a gander over each aptly named plug-in in their Version 1.1 guise, in alphabetical order. Analyzer I found Vienna’s 120-band analog modeled spectrum analyzer to be visually slick, and a very handy tool to have. Peak hold, multiple reaction speeds of the analyzer, frequency-to-note correlation, displaying the loudest frequency in the mix as a note wherever the cursor happens to be floating; all this makes it to be one of the best and friendliest analyzers I’ve used on a DAW. Very well done. Convolution Reverb While I’ve worked with many terrible algorithmic reverbs over the years, convolution reverbs are hard to get really ‘wrong’. Since convolution relies on some type of pre-recorded audio being fed into it, the results are typically as good as the prerecorded source material. That being said, the limited selection that is provided with this plug-in does sound fantastic. The Szeged Cathedral preset was particularly inspiring. While pretty much the whole Suite is light on the CPU, this one is the exception. Depending on the length of theRECORDING MARCH 2010 reverb, and the setting for the resampling parameter, I could easily hit 100% CPU on my aging AMD 3800+ X2 dual core machine. Dropping it down to a lower resample level of 1.00 brought the CPU to a more reasonable 15–20% usage. Those with new Intel i7 Nehalem processor systems should be able to get a lot more bang out of this plug-in. CPU load aside, it’s an easy plug-in to get around and the results sounded great. Compressor Vienna’s Compressor is well laid out, easy to use, and gives great visual real-time feedback of what’s going on with the audio. The controls cover the usual gamut with a few nice extras; attack, release, audio threshold, ratio, and output level as one would expect, along with an opto emulation, Fat mode (tape-like distortion), automatic makeup gain, and the often asked for, but rarely delivered, internal sidechain ability. Aurally, I found it to be one smooth operator on about everything I threw at it. Think ‘transparency’ more than ‘color’ when it comes to this fine compressor. As I ran the gamut of presets and tried them with orchestral instruments, I was extremely pleased by how well it brought out the detail of each instrument, without sounding unnatural. Two thumbs up here. Equalizer and Master Equalizer The Equalizer is a no-nonsense 64-bit, 7band eq; 5 fully adjustable bands with Q (bandwidth) for each band and gain control, along with a separate high- and lowcut filter with 12/24/36/48 dB curves. Not only did this eq sound good, it’s one of the few equalizer plug-ins I’ve used that has been preloaded with a significant amount of very useful presets, most notably the “resonance presets”. These instrument-named presets are dialed in to the typical problem resonance frequencies the instrument in question has. Since each eq band can be turned on or off at will, it’s quick and easy to tune out the problem frequencies in the mix for that instrument. Add on top of that the 120-band analyzer from the Analyzer plug-in that can be activated at will (pre or post eq selectable), and we have one pleasurable eq experience. The Master Equalizer is just the Equalizer with a few additional features; two more shelving eq bands (one at either end), three filter types for the five fully adjustable bands, 4x oversampling capabilities, and a larger frequency range from 15 Hz to 30,000 Hz. Supposedly this has higher CPU demand, but in practice I noticed no appreciable differences on my machine. Delivery: Web-based download or boxed Format: VST for XP/Vista/Win7 machines; VST, AU and RTAS for OSX 10.4 or higher Copy Protection: ViennaKey (Syncrosoft USB dongle) License: Can use up to three licenses at one time Documentation: PDF Format Price: 445 Euros for the download, $695 for the boxed version More From:Vienna Symphonic Library, www.vsl.co.at; distributed in USA by Ilio Entertainments, www.ilio.com.

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Recording - March 2010

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