The Gliss Amount, Time Spread and Pitch Spread sliders

The three sliders are perhaps the most important controls in terms of bringing realism to 70 DVZ Strings. Realism stems from imperfections DVZ places within the music to duplicate the actual playing anomalies generated by live musicians. Nothing identifies the sound as coming from a sample library more conclusively than having perfect transitions between notes. Real world orchestral string instruments are not fretted and, as such, the faster they play, the more out of tune they play. The wider intervals they play, the more out of time and off pitch they play.

Since 70 DVZ Strings is a library that internally consists of 32 separately recorded libraries, it means that each library (each stand) can be placed out of time and out of pitch in a musical way that you can control. DVZ technology is not just about splitting notes among players. The DVZ Core Engine can take the divided notes and change their pitch and time qualities as well. A single recording of 70 players would not allow you to change the pitch and time of the individual players in the way that 70 DVZ Strings does.

Gliss Amount

This slider allows you to continuously increase or decrease the amount of glissando between intervals. You can also click on the Fx (effects) button and get extremely wide glissandos for eerie effects.

Time Spread

This slider allows you to change the arrival time of the back desks relative to the front desks. On a real recording stage there may be as much as a 20 foot (7 meter) distance between the first and the last violins. This distance delays the arrival of sound at the front of the stage by 20 ms or more depending on how far away they are from the overhead mics. There is of course a different delay for each desk relative to the front desk, depending on their individual positions. SPACE supplies the realism of timing the arrival of sound based on player positions, but that’s only half the job done by DVZ.

Not only does the arrival time change at the room mic location up front, but those musicians located further back hear what the first chair players are doing only after a similar time delay. Thus, as the musicians play faster led by the first chairs, the whole section tends to play more out of time due this time difference between the desks. While this distance-related timing issue is always in effect, it only becomes apparent as the instruments play faster. Think what would happen if everyone played and held one note; other than perhaps a less than simultaneous attack, you wouldn’t hear any time spread.

Adjusting the Time Spread slider sets the maximum available spread; the momentary changes in time spread are controlled automatically based on how fast and hard you play from note to note.

Pitch Spread

This slider does the same thing for pitch as the time spread slider does for time. However the pitch spread differences between desks has more to do with the fact that string instruments are not fretted instruments than with the location of the players on stage. Without frets, it is harder for the players to keep in tune as they play both faster and harder. For this reason, it is especially important to throw in a bit of pitch shift when playing wide intervals. Conventional libraries cannot do this with continuously variable control because they must rely on a hand full of sample swaps, none of which can have the same degree of out-of-tune quality on the long interval jumps because they must record every sample perfectly in tune. This kind of pitch “perfection” is a dead giveaway that one is listening to a sample library.

With 70 DVZ Strings you can vary the pitch between desks as you play. Like Time Spread, Pitch Spread can be set to occur automatically, or you can override and force it even higher on wide intervals and fast passages or loud passages in order to create vivid realism. 70 DVZ Strings uses the a tenth of the samples that a conventional string library would require to begin to approach this kind of pitch spread, while providing you the Pitch Spread realism possible from its 32 separate desks.