FREQUENTLY ASKED
QUESTIONS
How much does your service cost, and how do you scale your pricing with the project's length and complexity?
At this time we are in the early phase of Largosonic's deployment, where early-adopters will be eligible for reduced rates. We scale our pricing linearly according to number of player tracks and also per minute of music. The longer we need to work on a render (i.e. the more notes and phrases there are), the more we need to be charging our customers. For a typical string ensemble render (5 input tracks with violins1+2, violas, celli and basses) the regular "indie production" rates are around $ 100-200 USD per minute of music. Two revisions are included, as well as one hour of consulting to discuss the project and make artistic decisions together over a conference call. For a detailed quotation specifically tailored to your project, please contact us directly.
Can you also render brass, woodwind and percussion ensembles?
Yes, we render brass and woodwind ensembles for our clients with the same level of customizability as our string ensembles. The ensemble sizes can be scaled to an impressive level. We can do the entire orchestra including percussion ensembles using a combination of Largosonic and traditional samples/modeling for the percussions.
Remind me again why your method is an advantage compared to others? How good is it really compared to live players?
In terms of output quality, Largosonic lies somewhere between a sample library (albeit enriched by few live players), and a full live orchestra on a real scoring stage. In terms of agility and versatility, our platform is miles ahead of any sample library, and way more scalable than real players - have a
listen to our demos. Challenging pieces of music like in the demo shown above, Paganini's Caprice No. 1, don't pose a problem for Largosonic to render convincingly. Our service keeps human intervention (i.e. MIDI programming) and technical effort to a minimum, and relies more heavily on algorithmic humanization and scripting to achieve realistic sounding outcomes. We don't typically employ live musicians and scores of technicians, since our engine works well out of the box. If clients desire, we can also book live players to weave into the mix, but longer lead times may result.
I find it ethically more appealing to hire live players for a studio session.
That's fine if you have the time and budget to do so. Actually, we recommend hiring real musicians whenever possible. But keep in mind that many live string players prefer to play classical music on a real stage in front of audiences. For them it is less tiring than doing studio work and recordings for sample libraries or music for media for 8-10 hour stretches. If you book a live scoring stage, your time slot will most likely be towards the end of the work day, when players are already exhausted from the higher priority recording gigs. Also, be prepared to pay a lot and not be able to make any more revisions to the output without paying for another session. They also prefer to deal only with professionals of the highest calibre. If you are just starting out as an indie artist/producer you need a solution that is more nimble.
What would I be paying if I were to hire a real orchestra? What are the disadvantages?
Budgets for scoring stage sessions are often in the many $ 10,000's of US dollars. Only A-level composers working on large projects are able to afford the best orchestras. Thus, booking capacities for high-end scoring stages able to accommodate large numbers of live musicians are limited. Composers are often under intense pressure to deliver on time for recording sessions, and the high level of commitment makes composers' lives stressful. After a recording is completed, further revisions are seldom possible, and sometimes takes cannot be used if they contain player errors or if they can't blend with samples. This is not feasible for indie or medium-scale budget productions where the needs are constantly changing, and funding is limited. Our Largosonic platform is easier and faster to book than the top scoring stages, and dynamically scalable to meet any client rush scenario.
Why wouldn't you just hire a very inexpensive small chamber orchestra and double/triple them in post-processing to achieve larger ensemble sizes?
This has already been tried and shown not to be effective. Playing to a dynamic click track is already a challenge for a whole ensemble of players. Syncing with the pre-recorded ensemble without eye contact is extremely challenging, even for most seasoned tutti players. Eventually you will also build up noise floor and bleed signals, and increase the likelihood of experiencing intonation issues. These types of tricks also involve a lot of expertise on the recording side, adjusting microphones and shuffling the players’ seating positions, and tuning individual players. Instead, you could just hire a small string quintet and have Largosonic multiply the sound to a large ensemble size (see demos).
Why should we bother to use your service, when we directly could use Samplemodeling Solo, Chamber & Ensemble Strings, or Audiomodeling Ensemble Strings, and Aaron Venture's Infinite Strings (also Woodwinds and Brass etc) when available?
Our opinion is that using each of those products alone will involve a steep learning curve and may not satisfy every composer's needs for expression, timbre and character. Since we employ a combination of various platforms, along with advanced scripting to blend everything together effectively, we believe that we can achieve a richer timbre structure and performance, which may be more appealing to a broader set of clients. This is possible already with very few lanes of MIDI CC data. In other words, the composer can focus on the composing while Largosonic takes care of the mockup and STEMs, and hopefully generate a result that is closer to a live performance scoring stage.
Could someone reverse engineer your rendering engine, and offer the same service? Why hasn't anybody tried this before?
Sure, in theory it is possible. It would require thousands of dollars in investment and quite a substantial amount of time and fine-tuning. In fact, we spent about 5 years developing Largosonic, while only recent advances in physical modeling have made our platform even possible in the first place. We also use proprietary scripting to achieve that extra edge in terms of realism and playability feel, that remains unparalleled to date.
Why isn't it enough to use Noteperformer?
Using just NP4, you might achieve an agreeable sound out of the box, but you will lose some important details as well. Control over dynamics and articulations/transitions will be difficult to achieve using the NP4 notation software workflow. While we believe it is well-suited for quick mockups, it will not yield final production quality results with the precise dynamics and transitions the composer has in mind. You will end up needing to migrate the MIDI and performance to the DAW anyway, if you want to have sufficient control over performances and mixing in your piece. Instead, you can skip all this and have our team at Largosonic render all the sounds for you.
Why can't we just use layered stacks of commercial sample libraries (i.e. LASS + CSS) to achieve a sound like yours?
You may experience poor quality transitions, agility for trills, and tremolandi (i.e. available articulations) and timing/tuning spread, to say the least. Also, you will have to tweak more lanes of CC midi data and adjust note overlaps and track delays constantly. This will be extremely tedious and you will be stacking up many tracks for just one instrument group. You will also spend a lot of time to blend together the various libraries and to have them perform consistently as a group.
I have a subscription to some commercial providers who will be releasing sample libraries for the future to come, so there will be plenty of articulations and performance-based articulations to choose from. Why can't I just use samples?
Romantic orchestral music with complex nuances is making a comeback and many intricacies will not be captured in regular commercial libraries. In fact, sample libraries still restrict the freedom of composers, because they can only write within the framework of available articulations and "moods". The resulting mockups will likely be full of artifacts from constantly switching between libraries to achieve richer articulation sets. Even with a subscription model, it still requires a never-ending investment to be constantly purchasing new performance-based (specialty) libraries to keep sounding fresh and unique. Largosonic gives you more control over the timbre and sound. The performance and production quality will be "timeless", especially when a small set of live players is incorporated into the mix for special occasions.
Why do you insist on having your own baked-in ambience (choice of scoring stage and early reflections), and not let our mixing engineer take care of that using dry STEMS as a starting point?
3rd-order ambisonics and early reflections for each virtual player are built in, so results will be less convincing if you have to remix from STEMs where players are grouped together already. The whole point of Largosonic is to speed up the process, while achieving both true multiplexing and unique ambiences. Nevertheless, we supply you with relatively dry STEMs with just basic early-reflections, so you can add more ERs and the extra algorithmic reverb tail if needed. We can also adapt our signal chain to the room of your choice.
Can I provide to you just basic MIDI data (note on/off and modwheel), and you would then improve it further? Can you work with sparse MIDI and some rough guidelines/score notations?
Yes, we are fully equipped to redraw your data so it generates realistic outcomes for the chosen playing styles and motifs, in accordance to your score or preview mockup. We are fully aware that commercial notation software often only outputs linear ramps for CC data, which is too crude to even sound convincing in a DAW-based production with custom VIs. Our team has many decades of experience dealing with MIDI CC and performance mockups, so we can liven up your dynamics to a convincing level.
How do you work, and how fast can you deliver the final STEMs?
It depends on the level of detail in the music. Normally, it is within hours to a few days. Our workflow is based on having as little input data as possible. We can work with just 5 MIDI tracks for a string ensemble of VI1/VI2/VA/CE/BA, or 10 if there are more intricate/changing divisi parts to be worked on independently. Your provided articulation switching commands should be basic, and only dynamics/vibrato information is required. Also, you can insert comments where you want to have non-vibrato segments and let us handle the rest. You are also welcome to supply a rough mockup as reference, using your favorite VIs. For more information on our requirements and questions relating to your specific case, please contact support directly so we can find a solution that best suits your workflow. It’s highly likely that we can adapt quickly to your needs. Please don’t forget to include your tempo maps in the tracks.
Would it work to book your services only to showcase a superior grade mockup to a (film) director for final approval, before proceeding to booking a commercial scoring stage and committing to such a large investment?
Yes, we can also accept such contracts, wherein the rendering never ends up being part of the final music recording. Nevertheless, Largosonic will produce production quality mockups, and most directors will probably not be able to tell the difference between Largosonic and the scoring stage sound, but please judge for yourself after listening to our demos.
What led you to develop Largosonic and to offer it as a service?
We were seeing that there were too many shortcomings to present-day technologies, in particular sample libraries (baked-in recordings), half-live hybrid workflows, and the hiring of real live orchestras, especially for projects where budgets are close to zero. Recent advances in physical modeling technologies have made it possible to envision a new paradigm in workflow and rendering of performances, which allows for real-time shaping and control of a large set of parameters. In addition, higher performance of CPUs have made it feasible to audition the result while actively writing and performing each part. We wanted to create a mockup service which incorporates the newest technologies, while simplifying the workflow to obtain realistic sounding performances. Composers should feel that they can have their own characteristic sound.
How future-proof is your technology platform, and how can it scale with increasing demand from clients?
The rendering platform is easy to scale, along with the dedicated expertise. In addition, the engine can be cloned to a dedicated cloud instance. Within each node our experts can run jobs for multiple clients simultaneously. In the early beta stage, the system will be only running on our private server, and a team of customer service agents will be attending to clients’ needs. Since the data input requires only few MIDI CC lanes, most of the conceptual work can be done quickly, either by the client (if they choose to do this prior to submitting the project to our team), or by one of our team members.
How does it work for performance-based and mechanical royalties? Is Largosonic Productions eligible to have any part?
This is no different from the scenario of booking the scoring stage with live musicians, except there will be overall less royalties per person to pay presumably when using our service. In principle, our engine is powered by both technology but also by humans with musical knowledge that make important adjustments to the virtual performance and the input data. Therefore they deserve to have a certain fraction of the royalty disbursements. Further details will be discussed upfront at the early stages of the project submission.
What forms of payment do you accept and how does it work with commissioning your service?
First we receive your request via email. We then discuss terms and conditions specifically in the context of your project, as well as a proposed work plan. We then proceed to issue the quotation. Upon receipt of a designated downpayment via ACH bank, or Paypal, the scheduled work plan is put into action and a downpayment confirmation is issued to the client. Once the final job is submitted and accepted by the client, the final step is to pay the remaining balance to Largosonic Productions within 10 business days. We don't share your personal contact details with any third parties. Your email remains confidential once you contact us.
