VI Labs: Modern U Review

johanibraaten Hi. I kind of agree with you on the Modern U and I also find myself among the minority that isn't that fond of it. To me ir seems like it suffers from two major problems.

Thankyou for that John, was maybe thinking I should make an appointment with ENT!!

I agree with all youve said in your first point, Im finding exactly the same. My keyboard is a Nord Stage EX. It struggles to generate anything above Midi 105 as a max key velocity, this may be a problem, not sure. Can I ask what keyboard your using and whats the max midi velocity you comfortably achieve without bashing the piano.

I did watch a video by Simon Amburgey. He is getting some very nice sounds from the Modern U (and also David B) , Id love to get that, I did notice on his video that there is one moment where he switches to the Midi Out page, the one with the velocity and gain curves. The Midi Out/In readings are the opposite to what Im getting. Th eMidi In i salways much larger than the Midi Out, as I say opposite to my readings. Does this have some bearing, perhaps someone can comment.

Thanks for suggestion of VelPro, I'll look it up.

Ha, if id bought an acoustic that sounds like what Im getting from this software it would be straight back to the shop. My 100 year old Beckstein is doing better!

I may look at the VSL bosy when the next sale come around.

Thanks again

Hello,

MalcolmH , It is encouraging that you like Modern U in the videos you mention, because that is what I get from it every day.

My keyboard is a Roland FP-10 that nicely and consistently gives the complete velocity range 1 -- 127. I have it on its default (linear) setting.

If your Nord tops out around 105, then that is at least one problematic factor. You already mentioned the MIDI adjustments page with the two curves. The left one (velocity) has two little arrows in the top right corner. Drag the one on the top (X-axis) towards the left, steepening the curve until a MIDI input of 105 from your Nord is translated to a resulting MIDI velocity of 127 that will be played by Modern U. The top right arrow for the Y-axis should remain all the way up. Should the Nord also not give you the lowest velocities when pressing keys really gently, then the X-axis arrow in the bottom left corner can be dragged to the right.

After that, the left "Bend" knob (used subtly!) can then give you a somewhat lighter (convex curve) or somewhat heavier touch (concave curve). I suggest starting out with the linear curve (Bend = 0.0) and by first dragging the arrows as described above.

Cheers and happy improvements,

HZ

HZPiano Thanks HZ, I'll certainly try the steps that youve outlined. I probably have during the hours of tweaking that Ive done. You may land into the problem that Johan pointed out that he outlines in para 1 above.

The decent sounding videos indicate a possible problem in my setup. Im due a new keyboard anyway. I dont need all the functionality that the Stage EX gives. Simon Amburgey does amazing things with his SL88 grand. I may well look at that. Its seems good value for money. Or maybe the VPC1.

Thanks for the advice.

Hello,

johanibraaten , MalcolmH , I'll probably also have a look at VelPro (since Johan mentioned it) if and when I find some time for that.

That is mainly because of the total lack of a decent curve editor in NI Noire (it just has a handful of presets, none of which seem right to me). So I'll probably download the VelPro demo to see if that brings any relief.

And while at it, I may also see what it could bring to Modern U. Thus far, I never felt a need for that, though.

Cheers and happy fine-tuning,

HZ

PS Funnily enough, almost this same hour someone on PW writes that he found a velocity curve editor rather hidden in the Kontakt player. I'll try to find it and (maybe) that is my Noire handled and in that case I won't need VelPro at all.

http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/3182334/re-noir-by-native-instruments-a-small-review.html#Post3182334

Simply adjusting the overall velocity curve does not solve the problem, if different curves at bass, mid and treble octaves are indeed needed as @johanibraaten and @MalcolmH mention; therefore, the need for VelPro.
I have a tool that I programmed that can do velocity curve mapping per key, but it is not user friendly at this moment because it is simply for my own use: you need to create on excel a matrix of 88 velocity curves. It is not difficult but gets quite tedious. I want to make a simple interpolation tool that automatically creates those gradients, but time is in short supply. The good news is that it is free and it seemingly does not add latency (this needs third party checking), but it is Windows only. You only need a virtual port to output the midi out-value to the VST.
Let me know if this is of interest...

MalcolmH Can I ask what keyboard your using and whats the max midi velocity you comfortably achieve without bashing the piano

Hi. Sorry but I've missed your question, I've been off the forum for a while. My controller is a Yamaha N1 and the highest velocity I feel comfortable to achieve without abusing the instrument is around 110 in the bass and 115-120 in the treble. That is with the arm falling freely from about 20cm above the keyed and striking a single note.

Hello,

For those interested:

Just recently I did make a small change to my setup as depicted early on in this thread*): both the velocity and gain curves are back to default (bend knobs at zero) in both instances I run.

This I did following, and inspired by, playing a real Yamaha U3 a couple of weeks ago.

Cheers and the happiest playing,

HZ

*) https://pianoclack.com/forum/d/84-vi-labs-modern-u-review/10

There is currently a sale on the Modern U from VILabs, at BestService; it's reduced from 185 EUR to 129 EUR. Maybe it is also on sale elsewhere.

https://www.bestservice.com/modern_u.html

All the other piano's from VILabs appear to be also on sale.

K I’m loving this particular post . Browsed thru right before work lol. Gonna get to listening and reading 🙂. Post up a few amateur recordings maybe .

Has anyone installed it recently on an Apple Silicon Mac? I replaced my MacBook Air M1 with the newer MacBook Air M2 (main reason for the upgrade was that the former had only 256 GB SSD and only 8 GB memory, now I doubled them and I can fit Garritan CFX and my other software with enough free space left, as well as do heavy arrangements in the DAW without the OS and the DAW fighting for memory).

So, I downloaded the UVI workstation, downloaded the samples, installed it and tried to open it but it complained about the missing license and I remembered I had to also install iLok. I did that too, authorized Modern U for the new computer and now I don't get any warning about the license, however nothing loads in the workstation. It stays empty. I can either browse to the sample file from within workstation or directly double-click on it from Finder but there's no difference. In the latter case the workstation would open (if it isn't) but it would be empty... I haven't used it for quite some time and I'm kind of tired, so I might be doing/missing something really silly but for the moment I just can't see what I'm doing wrong. I even reinstalled the workstation and iLok but it's still the same.

CyberGene Modern U works fine on my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro). Like you said, it's probably something simple on your end. I'm sure you'll figure it out after you've gotten some rest. Sorry I can't be more help.

God Bless,
David

I think something is broken, I get an error message from iLok which is unexpected and I opened a ticket with them:

Software Component Unavailable
A background component required for iLok License Manager seems to be unavailable. If rebooting does not fix this issue, please visit iLok.com to download and run the latest License Support installer.

This keeps appearing even after I reboot. I reinstalled clean everything multiple times in various orders but it's still the same.

CyberGene Bummer. Hope it gets sorted quickly.

Modern U uses iLok? That's too bad.

navindra at least it’s the software one, not a hardware USB dongle.

CyberGene It still seems to lock you out pretty well. "Background component" seems ominous and invasive.

CyberGene

I do hope this will be solved quickly for you!

I use iLock (for VI Labs and Acousticsamples) under Windows 7 without any problems, my brother uses it as well for several VST synths under Windows 10. No troubles for him either.

Just to make sure: before uninstalling and reinstalling, did you remove your license(s) from the computer (back to the cloud, so to speak)? So: unregister the licenses, uninstall everything (iLock manager, UVI Workstation), then reinstall UVI Workstation (which, at least on Windows, automatically installs the iLock license manager with it).

It's just a hunch on my side, with a tiny hope this may help.

Cheers and good luck,

HZ

HZPiano actually I forgot to deactivate my key on my previous computer which I restored to a clean state and then sold… So, I requested that it is released. But still, I have two more activations left and used one of them for the new computer.

What does everyone use for settings in Modern U?

I picked this up recently for my VPC1, and the defaults don't sound as good as the Garritan CFX ones. But I do feel like there is maybe more responsiveness in Modern U compared to Garritan CFX.

Hana What does everyone use for settings in Modern U?

Hello,

Please see the very early posts in this thread for examples!

Cheers and happy Modern U playing,

HZ