Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Ravenscroft by VI Labs… First Look and Sound

Managed to get it working: 48k @ 256 samples (although ASIO4ALL has a significantly different idea about the number of samples involved). The latency is still more than I'd like, and unless I can get it faster on the Surface, it'll still be Pianoteq live for me. I may have to consign the Ravenscroft to studio use only, and buy one of those blasted dongles for my iMac.

Sounds good, kind of like a solid workhorse piano... sorry, how much did you say the real Ravenscroft costs?

Quick update. For some reason, I'm now able to get 64 samples at 96k. No more warbling, thank goodness. Will be able to test it properly, now.

If you want to reduce latency on a surface pro 1 you need an external audio interface. I even tried an atom tablet and it had a very strong latency with asio4all and the internal sound, but is perfect with an audio interface on some pianos, like vintage D or Ivory II... (on others the problem is not really latency but lack of CPU power)

Re latency, I usually set this directly on Asio4all's own control panel when using galaxy D. So I'm doing the same with Ravenscroft in UVI but whether I set Asio4all to min (64 samples) or max (2048) there's no audible change in latency. It sounds just about ok and middling - maybe the 512 default that UVI initially launched in.

Is there a way to set the latency in UVI?

edit: No problem with UVI's latency settings when hosted in Cubase using ASIO4all - I suppose because Cubase is then in charge, but UVI as a standalone doesn't seem comfortable in the company of ASIO4all. Maybe I've overlooked something....bedtime...

A Mac version of the VPC Editor will be available soon, however I'm afraid I cannot comment on additional touch curves that may be in development.

Cheers,
James
x

Cool! Thanks James!
Mike

While I had serious problems with latency on one of the new Bay Trail Atoms, I have had none using Pianoteq, VB3 and Arturia Analog Lab with the Surface Pro, using all internal software/hardware. It seems quite capable of delivering the goods via ASIO4ALL. That's why I've been happy using it live with minimal additional add-ons.

The latency/ASIO problems I experienced with UVI a couple of hours ago seemed to be related to the app rather than the hardware. I have no idea why it's now working - or whether it will continue to work. I'm going to try it in Cantabile Lite next, and see what difference that makes - if any.

I have the exact same problems you guys have with UVI workstation - that weird warbly garbled distortion over ASIO playback if you don't get the settings just perfect. Glad to hear I'm not the only one, and that my system isn't messed up. All my other software (Kontakt etc.) works perfectly, and only UVI seems to have issues with ASIO. It usually takes me several minutes of fiddling with ASIO settings and restarting the program multiple times before I can get it to work correctly.

It's VERY annoying, and it should be looked into/fixed.

hey gang,
can anyone please tell me why we only extract Ravenscroft275.part01.rar?
I mean we download 4 .rar files.
I don't understand.

The first part references all the other parts, and so when you extract part 1 it joins the other parts to it.

Edited: because I was getting tired and grumpy when I wrote it!

My main issues have now been resolved - please see my post below.

wow!!
thank you so much mister!!

Thanks for all the Surface Pro (1) information. I also have that device and curious to see how it performs with this app.

It will chain to the other parts, ASSUMING they have all finished downloading,,,
BTW, there don't seem to be any published checksums, so hopefully WinRAR detects corrupt files.

thank you very much R_B.

You're welcome. I'll be interested to read how you get on.

The first impression of Ravencroft is quite not bad:
- Yes, it's far considerably better than TK in terms of quality of sound(I grade TK less than Alicia's Keys, Addictive Keys, MyPiano. The main drawback of TK is their sound whereas their playability is OK pretty much)
- Thank you very much for making good 4th and 5th octaves.(in many pianos such as TK, Production Grand, it sucks for some reason.)
- Custom tuning is also very important feature.
- As usual a good sound can be revealed just with use of some decent third party reverb.
- The palyability (feeling, touch) is perfect.
- As many others I experience an issue with ASIO interface too (I believe that is rather an issue in UVI than in the library itself)
Overall mark is GOOD. (So I can say Ravencroft has definitely beaten my expectations)

PS. But Matt Matt Stedeford's Ebony Grand is still the best for me anyway.

I have installed everything... but no joy yet.

Since I have an iLok for Ivory II the process of registering the VILabs-Ravenscroft license at iLok, logging in to iLok, and copying/dragging the license to my iLok key went fine. When I run the iLok License Manager, I can see the license on my key.

I already had UVI Workstation and that is working fine with the Kawai EX PRO sampled piano.

And the unpacking process of the Ravenscroft data files went fine as well. So now I have the 35 GB Ravenscroft275.ufs file sitting there waiting.

When I start UVI workstation, browse/navigate and double-click on the .ufs file, however, I am getting an error ("no valid authorization found") even though I have transferred the license to my iLok key.

I'll reboot and test again tomorrow. I don't have time to troubleshoot any more today.

[EDIT: This issue was fixed by loading a newer version of UVI workstation. I had an old version on my machine that was not compatible. ]

OK, so Lance from VI Labs was kind enough to PM me and offer support for the issues I was having. Thank you, Lance.

Basically, from my own trial and error, I don't believe that ASIO4ALL is suitable for the UVI workstation. I connected to a hardware device (Alesis) and all the ASIO related issues were solved. I had been hoping to run live in the same way I do with Pianoteq - i.e. just the Surface Pro with ASIO4ALL, a USB cable from the controller, and an audio cable; but it seems like the only stable way to do it with UVI is to use an interface with its own drivers. With ASIO4ALL I was getting false readings and very inconsistent performance. I think the message here is to use a USB audio interface that you know is reliable, and go from there.

As to the Ravenscroft itself, I now need to spend some unstressed time with it, so I can evaluate it fairly. But I can say that from the few moments I've had since I changed over to the Alesis interface, it seems to play well.

Interesting.

I have a desktop computer with an internal soundcard with dedicated ASIO drivers and UVI still seems to have a lot of problems with it though (while my other programs work fine with it).

So I still say UVI needs some work done on it's ASIO.