VHorns Saxophones

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Sampling Meets Modeling, Again & Again

Following the success of the VHorns Brass Section, Acousticsamples decided to work on saxophones. And after a whole year of work, the complete saxophone family is here! The developers went beyond simply sampling one of each saxophone, so with VHorns Saxophones, you get 2 altos, 2 sopranos, 2 tenors and 2 baritones, each played by a different musician and using a technique to cover a specific genre, one more Jazz oriented and the other with less air that is more suited for classical.

Just like for VHorns Brass Section, Acousticsamples  wanted to make it easy to use, without any key switches, and able to just control the air flow. Thanks to their recent work on a hybrid technology blending samples and modeling, they were able to overcome both of these problems and take advantage of having the best of both worlds: impeccable authentic sounding horns with a simple, powerful way of playing them.

The VHorns Saxophones are also based on HAT (Harmonic Alignment Technology). This technology allows to accurately reproduce the timbre evolution from very soft to very loud playing. Acousticsamples struck a balance in combining both technologies by using samples as the sound source, while the rest utilises modeling techniques. This allows VHorns Saxophones to weigh around just 100Mb per instrument (retina graphics and presets included), while truly sounding like a real live saxophone instrument being recorded with all of its imperfections, as well as having fully continuous response with unparalleled playability.

8-Instrument Bundle

The VHorns Saxophones contains 8 saxophones: 2 altos, 2 sopranos, 2 tenors and 2 baritones.

Acousticsamples recorded two of each (with two different players) to cover two distinct types of playing, one more jazz oriented with a lot of breath and the other more classical focused, with a much cleaner tone.

• The HAT - Air Flow Control - Thanks to our proprietary HAT (Harmonic Alignment Technology), VHorns saxophones is not just another heavily multisampled instrument - you can play articulations yourself like a player would, with just a MIDI controller (or by drawing in automation)! There are no complicated keyswitches involved to play staccatos or anything else, it's just a matter of playing it that way. All you need to do is play a note and adjust the air flow, that's it! You can even automate vibrato if you want.

• Authentic Vibrato - Acousticsamples carefully measured the different parameters that change when a player uses vibrato and combined everything into a highly realistic and adjustable vibrato for VHorns Saxophones. There are multiple ways to control the vibrato: automatic, automatic depending on time, and completely manually to mimic the jaw movement of a musician.

• Legato Transitions - A large part of what horn players play are legatos, so Acousticsamples spent a considerale amount of time and effort to carefully extract every little aspect, pitch changes, noises, etc. and make ours indistinguishable from a real performance. They go from fast note changes to slow bends, with and without extra attack. Acousticsamples covered all that and let you choose how to control them. The legatos behavior can be adjusted and even randomized for more life-like performances

• Multi Microphone Recording - Recording a horn can be done in various ways and at different positions. Acousticsamples used 4 different microphone positions so that you can get the exact sound you want, as if you chose the microphone placement yourself. This can yield even better results when using the "virtual space" which is detailed below.You can apply reverb and EQ to completely mix it to your liking.

• Virtual Space - The virtual space perfectly reproduces what a real recording of an ensemble would be using convolution. When you record a big band, you usually place a pair of microphones in front of the musicians and they naturally take position in the stereo field depending on where they are in the room. The Virtual Space does exactly the same thing: you can place the musician wherever you like. When using this with multiple tracks, you immediately have the feeling of being in front of a real horns section.

• Advanced Editing - There are many ways to play a brass insrument, and Acousticsamples had to make a choice on the default settings, however many of the options can be customized to your taste. Even better, most settings can be randomized for natural and unpredictable results.

• Ensemble -  If you load multiple instruments at the same time, it will play unisons exactly at the same time. Acousticsamples added some smart features that first can change the timbre of the instruments, transpose everything by a fixed interval and also act on the MIDI performance. For example, you can have all 8 instruments with a different transposition value play the same C minor scale, so no matter what you play on the keyboard, it will sound in key.