Sarah Mancuso
Esselfortium
Update January 2023: If you are looking into buying Adagio/Agitato/Anthology due to Adachi, I strongly suggest you reconsider and look elsewhere for your orchestral strings needs. My own interactions with 8Dio and what I have been told about them by others has led me to the realization that they are a completely amoral company, and I regret having ever purchased any of their products or given them free sales by releasing my work here. If you don't believe me, listen to Cory Pelizzari, who was threatened by them for simply posting a review they didn't like.
edit: EvilDragon, Daniel James, and Anne Dern have also since spoken out about their experiences with 8Dio. Also, a more recent update from Cory.
I've also updated the thread title to be clearer.
Original post is below:
edit: EvilDragon, Daniel James, and Anne Dern have also since spoken out about their experiences with 8Dio. Also, a more recent update from Cory.
I've also updated the thread title to be clearer.
Original post is below:
Info on latest update: https://www.vi-control.net/communit...pdate-and-more-on-page-12.116094/post-4955044
Last year I picked up Adagio Legacy via the now-popular $8 crossgrade from Anthology. While I could understand why it had been retired, I was awed by its wealth of beautiful content. So much so that I was inspired to learn KSP scripting and build a completely new legato script to house its samples. The result of that work is Adachi, a set of custom legato patches for these very underrated strings, rebuilt and re-scripted from the ground up.
Adachi feature overview:
Using Adachi:
Adachi is my attempt to enhance Adagio Legacy's workflow and squeeze more life out of its great recordings. Adachi is focused on legato only, meant to be used alongside a full set of articulations from Anthology or Adagio Legacy.
In Adachi, blue keyswitches change legato types, red keyswitches change sustain types, and purple keyswitches are mapped to change both at the same time. You can map multiple articulations to the same keyswitch, using the velocity and speed settings. I’ve provided several of these pre-made “articulation stacks” for many of the instruments. All of this is fully customizable in the UI.
Features:
Adachi utilizes recordings from both Adagio Legacy and the Agitato bundle, as they were recorded in the same space with the same number of players.
I’ve set it up to allow switching to any legato or sustain type at any point in a musical phrase. It’s also fully customizable so that you can do this via keyswitches, velocity, speed, or any combination of those methods.The ensemble violins are the biggest section here, with 13 different types of legato and countless types of sustains, all accessible from one patch. The ensemble violas and ensemble cellos are nearly as hefty. This ability to freely combine material allows for an extreme and possibly unprecedented level of control in shaping musical phrases.
I’ve manually set up custom legato crossfades for every possible combination of legato type and sustain type (of which there are hundreds of possible combinations). In some cases, the transitions in Adachi should sound better than their equivalents in Anthology or Adagio Legacy.
Beyond that, I’ve painstakingly retimed many of the legato transition samples, one at a time, so that they play more consistently from one note to the next. I’ve given particular focus to many of the round-robin transition types, to make their repetitions more reliable and agile. I’ve also corrected some instances of inconsistent volume between different note transitions.
I’ve used three dynamic layers for basic sustains wherever possible, instead of the 2 used in the original patches. Vibrato blending is implemented for the basic Sustain type, and artificial dynamics filtering has been implemented to further shape the various prerecorded arcs.
Most legatos in Adachi are timed to around 240ms of delay, which allows for a good amount of the transition sample to play through. Shorter legato types like Fast Feathered are automatically delayed via scripting to line up with the others. This should limit the amount of tiny MIDI adjustments that are required for timing. Portamentos and a few longer legato types (ET and Dolce in the ensemble violins) may still need adjustment in some cases, this is a compromise to keep a delay length that’s still reasonably playable and responsive.
As there are many different legato types available in Adachi, I’ve also added onscreen descriptions of each legato type, sourced from the Adagio manuals and from my own observations. These will hopefully help to convey the differences between them at a glance.
Disclaimers:
Adachi is a work in progress. A few of the legato types and some of the sustain arcs have not yet been ported over to Adachi. A few instruments have not been ported over at all (solo violin, solo viola, and sordino basses). In addition, a few of the instruments use an older dynamics-filtering setup that IMO doesn’t sound as convincing, though I haven’t had any issues mixing and matching the newer and older types in the same music.
You may encounter some minor issues that haven’t yet been resolved. There is a known bug with the keyswitch editing GUI, so if you’ve made changes and they don’t seem to have applied yet, clicking the Sort button should get things working as expected again.
Owning both Adagio Legacy (Adagio 1.6) and the Agitato bundle is recommended for use of Adachi. (If you don't own Agitato, you can use Adachi with Adagio and Anthology instead, but some articulations will not play.) If you're having trouble getting Adachi to load, this post by djDarkX shows how to use symlinks to get Kontakt to consistently find your samples for Adachi every time.
As this is a hobby project that I do on the side when I’m not busy with other obligations, I can’t promise any support on it, and I can’t offer any timeline for updates.
Please do not bother 8Dio support about any problems you run into with Adachi. This isn't their responsibility (of course). This is a fan project based on a discontinued product.
Downloads and audio demos:
Here are some audio demos I've written using Adachi:
Clip 1: Full ensembles
Clip 2: Full ensembles with loures and solo bass
Clip 3: Early alpha test with ensemble violins
Clip 4: Con Sord ensembles
Clip 5: Full ensembles with round-robin legato
Download of the current instrument versions:
(Download)
Adachi requires Kontakt 6.6, and requires Adagio 1.6 ("Adagio Legacy") and the Agitato bundle for full functionality.
I genuinely think these are still some of the best strings on the market. If you already own Adagio but haven't used it lately, maybe this will inspire you to give it another chance. Adagio has become one of my favorite libraries while working on Adachi, and maybe it will become one of yours, too!
If you'd like to donate to support this project, you can do so via this link. Thank you!
Last year I picked up Adagio Legacy via the now-popular $8 crossgrade from Anthology. While I could understand why it had been retired, I was awed by its wealth of beautiful content. So much so that I was inspired to learn KSP scripting and build a completely new legato script to house its samples. The result of that work is Adachi, a set of custom legato patches for these very underrated strings, rebuilt and re-scripted from the ground up.
Adachi feature overview:
- Switch to any legato or sustain type at any time in a musical phrase: no more patch juggling
- Set up your own articulation switching via keyswitches, velocity, and/or speed
- Onscreen descriptions of each legato type, to help navigate them all
- Adagio and Agitato recordings can be mixed and matched freely for even more variety
- Individually retimed legato samples for better timing consistency
- Uses more length from each legato sample, for buttery smooth transitions
- Custom manually-configured crossfades for every possible combination of legato and sustain (and there are hundreds of combinations!)
- Automatic delay for faster legato types, to minimize “MIDI sliding” required
- More dynamic layers used than the original legato patches, where possible
- Smooth filtering for faux dynamics
- Start musical phrases with arcs, not just basic sustains
- No need to overlap notes for legato, letting their edges touch is enough
Using Adachi:
Adachi is my attempt to enhance Adagio Legacy's workflow and squeeze more life out of its great recordings. Adachi is focused on legato only, meant to be used alongside a full set of articulations from Anthology or Adagio Legacy.
In Adachi, blue keyswitches change legato types, red keyswitches change sustain types, and purple keyswitches are mapped to change both at the same time. You can map multiple articulations to the same keyswitch, using the velocity and speed settings. I’ve provided several of these pre-made “articulation stacks” for many of the instruments. All of this is fully customizable in the UI.
Features:
Adachi utilizes recordings from both Adagio Legacy and the Agitato bundle, as they were recorded in the same space with the same number of players.
I’ve set it up to allow switching to any legato or sustain type at any point in a musical phrase. It’s also fully customizable so that you can do this via keyswitches, velocity, speed, or any combination of those methods.The ensemble violins are the biggest section here, with 13 different types of legato and countless types of sustains, all accessible from one patch. The ensemble violas and ensemble cellos are nearly as hefty. This ability to freely combine material allows for an extreme and possibly unprecedented level of control in shaping musical phrases.
I’ve manually set up custom legato crossfades for every possible combination of legato type and sustain type (of which there are hundreds of possible combinations). In some cases, the transitions in Adachi should sound better than their equivalents in Anthology or Adagio Legacy.
Beyond that, I’ve painstakingly retimed many of the legato transition samples, one at a time, so that they play more consistently from one note to the next. I’ve given particular focus to many of the round-robin transition types, to make their repetitions more reliable and agile. I’ve also corrected some instances of inconsistent volume between different note transitions.
I’ve used three dynamic layers for basic sustains wherever possible, instead of the 2 used in the original patches. Vibrato blending is implemented for the basic Sustain type, and artificial dynamics filtering has been implemented to further shape the various prerecorded arcs.
Most legatos in Adachi are timed to around 240ms of delay, which allows for a good amount of the transition sample to play through. Shorter legato types like Fast Feathered are automatically delayed via scripting to line up with the others. This should limit the amount of tiny MIDI adjustments that are required for timing. Portamentos and a few longer legato types (ET and Dolce in the ensemble violins) may still need adjustment in some cases, this is a compromise to keep a delay length that’s still reasonably playable and responsive.
As there are many different legato types available in Adachi, I’ve also added onscreen descriptions of each legato type, sourced from the Adagio manuals and from my own observations. These will hopefully help to convey the differences between them at a glance.
Disclaimers:
Adachi is a work in progress. A few of the legato types and some of the sustain arcs have not yet been ported over to Adachi. A few instruments have not been ported over at all (solo violin, solo viola, and sordino basses). In addition, a few of the instruments use an older dynamics-filtering setup that IMO doesn’t sound as convincing, though I haven’t had any issues mixing and matching the newer and older types in the same music.
You may encounter some minor issues that haven’t yet been resolved. There is a known bug with the keyswitch editing GUI, so if you’ve made changes and they don’t seem to have applied yet, clicking the Sort button should get things working as expected again.
Owning both Adagio Legacy (Adagio 1.6) and the Agitato bundle is recommended for use of Adachi. (If you don't own Agitato, you can use Adachi with Adagio and Anthology instead, but some articulations will not play.) If you're having trouble getting Adachi to load, this post by djDarkX shows how to use symlinks to get Kontakt to consistently find your samples for Adachi every time.
As this is a hobby project that I do on the side when I’m not busy with other obligations, I can’t promise any support on it, and I can’t offer any timeline for updates.
Please do not bother 8Dio support about any problems you run into with Adachi. This isn't their responsibility (of course). This is a fan project based on a discontinued product.
Downloads and audio demos:
Here are some audio demos I've written using Adachi:
Clip 1: Full ensembles
Clip 2: Full ensembles with loures and solo bass
Clip 3: Early alpha test with ensemble violins
Clip 4: Con Sord ensembles
Clip 5: Full ensembles with round-robin legato
Download of the current instrument versions:
(Download)
Adachi requires Kontakt 6.6, and requires Adagio 1.6 ("Adagio Legacy") and the Agitato bundle for full functionality.
I genuinely think these are still some of the best strings on the market. If you already own Adagio but haven't used it lately, maybe this will inspire you to give it another chance. Adagio has become one of my favorite libraries while working on Adachi, and maybe it will become one of yours, too!
If you'd like to donate to support this project, you can do so via this link. Thank you!
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