Something New from Spectrasonics

[chas50]

Found this great Demo

 

[video:youtube]

 

thank you for posting this. I just watched the whole thing. it is absolutely phenomenal.

I am so happy I bought this.

its just such an embarrassment of riches.

horn of plenty.

cup runneth over.

sooooo many great sounds. this thing at the price its going for is an absolute steal. a gift. all my humble opinion. ymmv of course. but for me, this rocks my casbah!!

[burningbusch]

Spectrasonics has a preview mode which makes the instrument playable almost instantly. To fully load the C7 on my system (2008 Mac Pro 2.8GHz 8-core from 7,200rpm drive) takes 40 seconds. The Rhodes takes 33 seconds. I was surprised to see there is no LIVE mode like with Omnisphere so you would need multiple instances of Keyscape running in order to have all the instruments you need 100% available at all times. CPU-wise, according to Studio One Performance Monitor playing the Rhodes hits in the 30% range on my system while Kontakt Rhodes (mine or Scarbee) is 10-12%, so two to three times CPU hit from what I'm seeing.

 

Busch.

[Ashville.Guru]

Looks like Spectrasonics wants live users to use Keyscape within Omnisphere if they want to switch between different models instantly. See here for how this would work.

 

I know you can install it as part of Omnisphere - but we already know that Omnisphere is a resource hog

Not quite. Omnisphere without any sounds loaded doesn't consume significant resources. So given enough RAM, this should be a very viable option for instant switching of Keyscape sounds.

 

That being said, multiple instances of Omnisphere work well on older i7 machines. I wouldn't be surprised if Keyscape works the same way. Another way to preload, and switch instantly.

 

- Guru

[CaptainUnderpant]

A minute to load from SSD on a high end machine as referenced in the PW thread does not cut it for live use for me. PT, modelled admittedly, is instant.

 

The combined boot time of my computer and starting my VST host and pre loading all instruments used for all songs is as quick as the boot time of my Yamaha S90XS. Switching patches is instantaneous with patches pre-loaded. My system is a 2 year old Z87 MB with a 4770k processor and a 512GB Samsung 950 NVME drive. Fast but no longer state of the art.

 

Hey underpants. What host are you using and what primary VSTs? I don't know that Keyscape would patch change any faster within the host. Unless you are suggesting opening more than one instance of Keyscape preloaded with the patches you want to jump to. But multiple instances would use more resources no?

 

Elmer, I am running Cantabile V3. Absolutely love it! Was using Forte, which was ok. But Cantabile is just so damn functional and so very stable. In Cantabile you can choose to preload the entire setlist/Rack/all patches (or whatever term applies). Then patch/song changes are instantaneous. When I load all the VST's 19 in all. Only Chris Hein Horns takes a while to load (sample based). All VST's/Patches/Presets load in about 20 seconds with CHH taking about 5-7 seconds to load. The list of VST's that I load is as follows. Pianoteq, Omnisphere 2, CHH, OPX-II, Kontact Player (to run CHH), Lounge Lizard, Real LPC, Amplitube 3, VB3, Komplete 9 (but don't use much) (not quite sure if that is it?). When pre loading the patches, Cantabile shows that it is loading 19 VST's. Not sure if this is due to multiple instances/patches of different VST's, or because I really do have about that many VST's in my system being registered by Cantabile, but not using all. Ominsphere 2 in certainly loaded several times.

 

Would Keyscape Patch Change any faster within a Host? .... If Keyscape is anything like Omnisphere 2 then it should be instantaneous within Cantabile (if pre loaded). I should have a copy of Keyscape in my mailbox tomorrow if I am lucky and will be able to test out within a day or two.

 

I don't know how running multiple instances affects resources. I have 16GB of memory and never come close to even using half of it. Cantabile seems incredibly well written.

 

As a side note I didn't seem to get as much of a boost from the NVME M.2 upgrade as I would have thought. Went from a Samsung 840 Pro (Sata III) to a Samsung 950 Pro (NVME M.2). This maybe due to the Z87 MB, where support may not be as developed?. But it certainly wasn't slower. My live system for performing is a small form factor desktop based system with a small touch screen monitor, so desktop performance with tablet like form factor.

 

 

[Markay]

A minute to load from SSD on a high end machine as referenced in the PW thread does not cut it for live use for me. PT, modelled admittedly, is instant.

What kinds of gigs are you doing where you have to load instruments during a gig? I load my entire setup at the beginning of the night acoustic pianos, rhodes, clav, wurly, hammond, strings, horns, guitars, etc... everything fits in my (now) modest 8 gigs of ram on my 3-year-old laptop. Of course I change programs during a show but I don't have to unload/load samples ever.

 

Just real ordinary cover band gigs. It gives me comfort to know that in a not uncommon patch I use that includes a split with B-5, PTQ and EXS24 sampled strings which loads instantly and plays without glitches but consumes near 100% of resources on a 2 year old i7 with 16 gig of RAM with a buffer of 256 samples would not suffer at all if PTQ was replaced with the 65 gig of C7.

 

If this is the case then Spectratronics appears to be far ahead of the curve compared to UVI, Kontak and all Logic VI's in terms of efficient resource use.

 

Being the cynic I am I might wait until a third person with real hands on live experience with Keyscape confirms that you can achieve instant load when switching patches with multiple VI's and play them with acceptable latency and no audio glitches.

[Phil Aiken]

I use MainStage on a 3-4 year old Mac mini server with 2 SSD's, 16GB RAM. I have absolutely no problem having a "set" with Ivory, Keyscape (now) , Scarbee, Pianoteq, VB3, M-Tron, and Omnisphere and generally a virtual analog ALL loaded up, with effects including amp sims and instantly switchable. I think I currently have the buffer at 64 - would have to check. But low. Interface is an RME Babyface.

Anything not getting used is eating a bit of RAM, but little or no CPU. It is not even something I bother monitoring anymore. Not sure if I am just lucky with the combination of hardware, or the way MainStage is set up, but it is not a high end system in 2016, and I did not do anything special.

I will load up multiple instances of Keyscape later to check it out, but my gut says it will not be an issue.

[chas50]

this is certainly an evolving thing for me.

I love Keyscape.

I am an amateur and only play for fun.

I am not a great player. I am not real knowledgeable about computers.

all that for disclaimers, caveats, whatevers.

I have a new Dell Inspiron. it has 16 GB of DDR3 RAM.

an i5 quad core. a 256 GB SSD and a 1TB SSD for samples.

I loaded up Ravenscroft into UVI. 1 mic. sounds phenomenal. it plays perfect. I go wild playing. I cannot make it choke, glitch, drop out. it is excellent.

I play Keyscape as a plugin in Reaper.

C7 LA Custom. it does glitch, choke, dropout.

it looks like I may be able to play it in UVI. maybe I should try it in there.

as for load times, I have not paid a whole lot of attention to specifics. but, a quick comment regarding it.......the member who talked about 30 sec or more for complete load times sounds about the same for me.

just sayin, for the heck of it.......I bought Ravenscroft right away, when it came out.

tons of glitching (on an older laptop, must note).

that said, it was not a small file. high 30's GB's, maybe.

then VI Labs did some FLAC thing. that reduced it to less than 5 GB.

just wondering if that could someday happen to Keyscape. only because of my desire for no glitching, drop outs......

[burningbusch]

I guess I'm confused by some of the responses. If you want to use six of the KeyScape instruments in a live performance you're going to need to load six instances of KeyScape (short of using Omnisphere Live assuming that works well). They will all be loaded fully at the start of the performance. If you want to load some other instrument on the fly you will need to open the interface for one of the Keyscape instances, manually find the new instrument and load it (doesn't seem to me to be something you'd want to do live). I don't see this load time thing as an issue as everything will load up front.

 

Busch.

[Reezekeys]

Yea that was the point I was making it's not viable to me to be loading sounds during a gig. I assumed everyone did as I do - load up all sampled sounds up front.

[ElmerJFudd]

I guess I'm confused by some of the responses. If you want to use six of the KeyScape instruments in a live performance you're going to need to load six instances of KeyScape (short of using Omnisphere Live assuming that works well). They will all be loaded fully at the start of the performance. If you want to load some other instrument on the fly you will need to open the interface for one of the Keyscape instances, manually find the new instrument and load it (doesn't seem to me to be something you'd want to do live). I don't see this load time thing as an issue as everything will load up front.

 

Busch.

 

The question I think is if Keyscape itself is fairly resource hungry does having multiple instances preloaded to gig run poorly on i5/i7 laptops with 16gb of RAM. Also, does MainStage or Cantabile manage resources in a set. Like the current instance being used gets CPU priority?

[Doug Robinson]

If anyone is using it through a SpaceStation V3 I'd love to hear your comments about the sound.

[ngk]

I've been testing it for a few days with the immediate hope of using it on my 8GB laptop. Keyscape is not easy to just install and play on a laptop. 8GB RAM is the minimum....and I have been having problems with that and a very fast PC. Macbook Pro users might fare better with 8GB, certainly 16GB RAM would be great, but that is hard to come by on a laptop.

 

BTW, I own every Spectrasonics product since the beginning with Stylus RMX, Trilogy, Trillian, Atmosphere, Omnisphere.....I use them all on my studio i7 desktop with 32GB Ram and RME interface. I haven't even started testing Keyscape on the desktop, I really wanted it working for upcoming live use.

 

With my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro i7 and 8GB Ram, 512 SSD, Win 8.1 - using Cantabile 3 as a host. This system works great with Ravenscroft UVI, LOUNGE LIZARD and Kontakt live at 128 or 256 samples, but Omnisphere does put a demand on the system.

 

I'm having glitches in Keyscape at 128 samples no matter what I do.....even at 256 with "Thinning" on and voices set to 14 it will sometimes just choke. Obviously, that is too few voices to play most styles. I've tried 2 different interfaces: USB Motu Ultralite Hybrid and NI Traktor 2 MkII.....Then, ironically, I get best results with the built in headphone jack and ASIO4ALL driver at 256. I just don't know if I can trust this C7 in live performance. The Rhodes seems to be better.

 

This seems to be the deal with Spectrasonics, great sounds, but high demand on RAM and CPU.

 

Having said that, The C7 is beautiful, clear, resonant and not as bright as you would expect. Very inspiring to play. The Ravenscroft is a bit brighter....and still my overall favorite over all the other "working" VST pianos I own: Garritan CFX (2nd favorite), Galaxy Vintage D(NI Grandeur), Ivory Italian or American Steinway.

 

This reminds me a little of the unplayable Quantum Leap Pianos with PLAY interface I bought 6 years ago. Wasted $450. Also, Gospel Keys/Neo-Soul Keys (Rhodes) was a glitch prone, RAM and Processor demanding UVI based VST.

 

So, if Ravenscroft/UVI can make a very deep player that is very efficient, and includes a bunch of efx, why can't Spectrasonics do the same, since their Steam engine succeeded their using UVI for Atmosphere? Ravenscroft even scaled down the whole library to flac and it only takes up 5GB with 4 stereo mic positions to choose from and mix.

 

The C7 on Keyscape, even with Thinning feature - as it is now implemented- is not enough to scale it down to run glitch free on most systems, in my opinion. They should really rework some C7 patches to be "lite" versions, with more voices capability.

 

Any users who have better results, please chime in with your system and settings.

[SpPiano]

You can use 8 different sounds in Omnisphere per instance inside of MainStage using aliases. You can set up 8 different patches in MainStage all aliased to the same instance of Omni and accessing different midi channels. You can even assign knobs on your layout pages to effects parameters (or any control) inside of MainStage and have more than 8 different 'sounds' from one instance of Omni. I usually will use either 2 or 3 instances of Omni in a big MainStage setup which means I'm at 16-24 different patches that are all preloaded and able to switched between without sound cutoff. I run into no issues managing it this way with my system. I've got 16 gb ram on a Macbook Pro and a SSD which helps too. Just ordered Keyscape today and looking forward to trying it out!

[Markay]

My concern is with how well multiple sample engines play together concurrently.

 

MainStage or Cantabile, or any other host probably, will load a MainStage equivalent of a Concert with with an endless number of VI's in patches without a hitch.

 

Where the rubber hits the road when when playing live is when a patch contains multiple sampled and modelled VI's and you are playing them concurrently.

 

To my knowledge no VI developer, other than Apple with its Logic VI's, takes into account how well their VI plays with others. CPU and RAM are the limits each user has to manage. Inevitably it then becomes a compromise between tone and glitch free performance.

 

Where Keyspace sits in this regard has yet to be clarified.

[Phil Aiken]

I guess I'm confused by some of the responses. If you want to use six of the KeyScape instruments in a live performance you're going to need to load six instances of KeyScape (short of using Omnisphere Live assuming that works well). They will all be loaded fully at the start of the performance. If you want to load some other instrument on the fly you will need to open the interface for one of the Keyscape instances, manually find the new instrument and load it (doesn't seem to me to be something you'd want to do live). I don't see this load time thing as an issue as everything will load up front.

 

Busch.

 

It depends on your wants and needs. There is no way I would load up 6 keyscape instruments for a gig. 2, maybe 3. Any variations would be with effects, either within KS, or after it, and not be a reload. But I'm the kind of guy who would rather just have one really phenomenal Wurly and an organ than have a wider variety of sounds that I didn't dig quite as much. The Wurlys and Rhodes, once tweaked, are best in class for me now. I have Scarbee Wurly in Flash in my Forte - I am stoked beyond belief about that. But if I was going to bring MainStage to a gig I would use Keyscape.

[hardware]

Im trying to understand why one would need to "load them up"...?

I just call up whatever I need for a particular scene/song and play it.

Dont have to have them loaded up...

They're on M.2s, simple push of a button, no loading no progress bars....??

 

Please explain to me, maybe I am working way to hard.

[Reezekeys]

You're probably the last person I would need to tell this to, but as you most likely know, when you "load up" a sample-streaming instrument, you're really only loading the attack portions of each sample. The point is that this can take some time. From what I've heard here, Spectrasonics instruments even when loaded from an SSD can take maybe 30 seconds to fully load. All I've been saying is that, to me, it would be impractical to have to do this during a gig even between songs.

 

When I set up my rig before a gig, I boot my laptop and load in my Bidule setup. At that time all my samples are "loaded up" and all my sampled instruments are ready to play - which in my case is acoustic piano, rhodes, wurly, clav, organ, horns, guitar and strings. Sometimes I add flute and vibes, depending on the style of music I'll be playing. I use the routing and channelizing modules in Bidule to quickly switch between any of my sampled instruments. So in that sense I'm doing what you said - "simple push of a button, no loading no progress bars." I'm not sure what's confusing about this.

[CaptainUnderpant]

Reezekeys - You may not realize that M.2's have throughput of around 2,500 mbs while SSD's have about 500 mbs. So 5 times faster. Your 30 second load time drops to less than 6 seconds. By the time your drummer says 1,2 1,2,3,4. The patch is loaded.

 

On a side note, I did install Keyscape last night. The host is Cantabile V3 (great product). With Cantabile set to load entire set list, the switching between patches is instantaneous. With my system there is NO issue in running Keyscape in a live setting. Not sure if this is because I have a relatively fast computer or because Cantabile just manages the program well. Keyscape will be my new go to Rhodes for next Friday's gig. Love the Rhodes sounds, much better than Pianoteq or Lounge Lizard.

 

The Yamaha C7 sounds nice in the upper registers, but the bass notes sound very flat. I will be sticking with Pianoteq for piano.

 

System Asus Z87 MB, i7 4770, 16gb, 512gb Samsung 950 M.2 boot and storage drive.

[Song80s]

On a side note, I did install Keyscape last night. The host is Cantabile V3 (great product). With Cantabile set to load entire set list, the switching between patches is instantaneous. With my system there is NO issue in running Keyscape in a live setting. Not sure if this is because I have a relatively fast computer or because Cantabile just manages the program well. .

 

is Cantabile V3 Windows/PC only ?

[Reezekeys]

Reezekeys - You may not realize that M.2's have throughput of around 2,500 mbs while SSD's have about 500 mbs. So 5 times faster. Your 30 second load time drops to less than 6 seconds. By the time your drummer says 1,2 1,2,3,4. The patch is loaded.

Ha ha, I should have known this would be the case with our esteemed mr. hardware. I thought "M.2" was "Mainstage V2" (dumb since they're already past that version); of course now I remember he has a custom-assembled rig yea, it's right in his sig. That's wild, loading up huge sample-streaming instruments with no wait time. Actually the internal SSDs of newer Mac laptops can get in that speed ballpark I think. But, call me old-fashioned... I like knowing all my instruments are "loaded up" and ready to go at the beginning of a gig.

[Synthoid]

I like knowing all my instruments are "loaded up" and ready to go at the beginning of a gig.

 

 

http://perronimg.com/loading-gifs/green/animations/green-original-loading-animation-large.gif

 

 

[ngk]

Keyscape seems to reload any patch change...and that takes a few seconds. If you have multiple instances in Omni2, then it might be seamless.

[CaptainUnderpant]

On a side note, I did install Keyscape last night. The host is Cantabile V3 (great product). With Cantabile set to load entire set list, the switching between patches is instantaneous. With my system there is NO issue in running Keyscape in a live setting. Not sure if this is because I have a relatively fast computer or because Cantabile just manages the program well. .

 

is Cantabile V3 Windows/PC only ?

Yes, I believe Cantabile is Windows only. Us Windows guys need to get some of the good music stuff, after all Mainstage is Mac only.

[hardware]

Hey Reeze the Bome hardware MIDI translator box and Bidule are pretty cool.

Route lots of stuff in and out of Bidule, merge, transform, mangle it 100 different ways.

 

Cheerz

 

 

[hardware]

Im trying out Cantabile.

Good app, but Bidule and a Physis K4 are so fast for me and I use Scope which connects modules together, so doubt I'll be switching.

Too use to calling up screensets from my keyboard and watching faders and parameter modulations in real time.

[Al Coda]

... and I use Scope ...

 

Really ? I don´t see SCOPE/XITE-1 in your sig* anymore.

 

* Supermicro C7Z97 OCE/i7 4790k/32GB DDR3/NVMe M.2/ Solaris/HX-3/Code 8/FS1r/SSv3/Physis K4

 

 

just askin´ ...

 

A.C.

[LaGranderson]

Picked up Keyscape today...really really nice. That being said, I'm trying to put it on my Receptor Trio - which I haven't used much sadly...BUT if I could get Keyscapes to install - I'd use it ALOT more...please share if you share the same desire and happen to be successful with the install!! Thanks!

[Geoff Grace]

[video:youtube]

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[BobK]

Heads up:

 

To create your own splits and layers, or modify anything beyond the limited effects and parameters burned into each patch, Keyscape requires Omnisphere 2.

[ElmerJFudd]

Thanks for that heads up, you're 100% certain of that?

 

Great example, and reason to record the raw sound of some of these instruments and build the rest with insert fx rather than necessarily sample the exact patch with fx printed or "baked in". Although, there's some scenarios where it may be hard to match using any fx other than the ones in the hardware.