FAQs: DVZ Core Engine

What is the DVZ Core Engine?
The DVZ® Core Engine (“DVZ”) is Audio Impressions’ software that implements our patented divisi method as well as a number of other proprietary and patented technologies (such as SPACE) to control our sample libraries. Audio Impressions DVZ libraries rely upon the DVZ Core Engine, and are not usable without it.

What does the DVZ Core Engine actually do?
With Audio Impressions’ libraries, a single Graphic User Interface (GUI) controls all the sounds at once, even if they’re running on multiple sampler computers. This is unlike other libraries where you must open multiple instances of Kontakt Player and directly control the samples for each library being used. The DVZ Core Engine is the software that provides that interface.
The DVZ Core Engine also implements our patented SPACE technology which you use to place individual desks anywhere in the virtual sound stage and to adjust the apparent size of the environment. SPACE includes a mixer for you to balance of the orchestral sections. However, “under the hood” SPACE also creates the kind of source-to-microphone interaction that occurs in live recording environments. Sonically, it’s this bleed of individual sound sources (players) into the nearby and distant spot mics as well as into the room mics (Decca Tree array) that creates the perceived sound of many individual musicians playing in ensemble.

What do the DVZ keyboards show me on the DVZ GUI?
There are five vertically-stacked virtual keyboards on the 70 DVZ Strings GUI, one per section stem. Keys appear in red as you play notes and DVZ assigns them to section stems. This lets you see, in real time, exactly how DVZ is working. When you change the state of the Coupler and Octave Transpose buttons for each section, the red keys will change appropriately so you always know what’s going on. Coupling is borrowed from the pipe ogan console whereby you play your keyboard and the stem set in coupling Up or Down will duplicate the lower and or upper octaves of the instrument’s play ranges.
The red notes on the keyboard are showing you Level 1 DVZ, the level at which DVZ orchestrates notes, parsing them to the different sections depending upon the notes you play, the set note ranges on each virtual keyboard, and whether or not you have DVZ active for a given stem. These keyboards do not show you Level 2 DVZ, the assignment of players within a stem to a given note; you can see this on your MIDI tracks, nor do they tell you anything about Level 3 DVZ, the assignment of strings to play a given note, which happens automatically and which you can indirectly affect with the SUL II, SUL III and SUL IV buttons on the DVZ GUI.

Where does the DVZ Core Engine get installed?
The DVZ software, our short name for the DVZ Core Engine, is installed on the main drive of the sampler computer. The application program file is about 14 Megabytes in size.

How can you claim to be the first real-time divisi library? Weren't others out there before you?
We briefly sold an earlier version of the DVZ Strings library over two years before we official launched 70 DVZ Strings in the summer of 2010. This firmly established Audio Impressions as first to market with real-time divisi. We withdrew that product offering because we wanted to further improve the product. The main issue then was how we could get the library to run on a single sampler computer instead of multiple computers, and it has taken this long for the CPU chips, operating system and sampler software to rise to the performance level our technology required.
We filed he first US patent application for divisi technology in 2003. We now hold two US patents on real-time divisi technology, and a third on the SPACE technology that is an integral and important component of the DVZ Core Engine. Foreign patents are pending. Other so-called divisi libraries provide gross groups of samples (half or quarter orchestra sections, not the individual desks we provide), and most require that the user manually sequence these to create divisi compositions. A few other libraries use crude processing to effect some real time divisions, and they may indeed be in violation of our patents (we're investigating). Meanwhile, we are willing to license our DVZ technology so other libraries can take advantage of it, so the landscape may change in the near future.


Anyone licensed to use Audio Impressions patented divisi technology will be allowed (and required) to use our official DVZ logo (our registered trademark).