LASS Full 2

What’s New in LASS 2?

Sample screenshot of LASS 2’s Stage & Color feature

We are very excited to announce the LASS Full 2.01 update.

LASS 2 Overview

LA Scoring Strings 2.0 (LASS) brings you a whole new set of tools and sonic profiles providing a new level of expressiveness, realism, real-time playability and program-ability to sampled strings.

Aside from our new Stage & Color feature (providing an easy way for you to have LASS sound like famous orchestral recordings and film scores), LASS 2 has over 60 new patches ranging from Aleatoric (string effects) to NV-Vib (non vibrato to vibrato) to Real Legato Tremolo and Trill patches.
Below is a partial list of some of LASS 2.0’s new features (you can also read about LASS’s new A.R.C. (Audiobro Remote Control).

• Stage & Color – At the heart of Stage & Color is a collection of exclusive orchestral sound profiles (colors) inspired by famous movie scores and recordings. Now, at the push of a button, LASS can adopt the tonal characteristics of some of the most coveted scores and recordings.
• A new ARC (Audiobro Remote Control) master script that will allow for dramatically easier control of all sections and divisis from a single window.
• Reverb and width controls of multiple patches from within the ARC
• ART programming of multiple patches from within the ARC
• CC Table control of multiple patches from within the ARC
• Auto Arranger control of multiple patches from within the ARC
• A new Key Switching approach of multiple patches from within the ARC
• Aleatoric (string effects) patches
• Non Vibrato to Vibrato patches
• Legato Tremolo patches
• Legato Trill patches
• Micro Tuning and real-time performance of tuning
• A CC Attenuation knob that allows on to ride CC attenuation in real-time or after-the-fact for added dynamic control.
• A new User Interface that is easier to read and more pleasant to look at.
• A drastically reduced footprint of only about 16.5GB due to the inclusion of NI’s NCW (loss-less compression audio file format) files. We include the 24 bit files since it will be about 30% less taxing on your hard drive than a 24-bit wave file. We noticed no measurable CPU hit using the NCW files… and we did a lot of testing.
• Many other new features and improvements

The ARC

The ARC (Audiobro Remote Control) is a huge part of the LASS 2 upgrade. Not only does it allow easy and simultaneous access to programming all your patches, but it is also the centerpiece to Stage & Color. There are so many things that the ARC can do, we decided to give it it’s own section on this site. Please visit the ARC Page to read more about it.

 

New LASS 2 Patches

There are over 60 new patches covering new articulations in LASS 2 (see below), and ALL LASS 2.0 patches have been reworked to integrate with the ARC.

Aleatoric Patches

In case your wondering, “aleatoric strings” is a term often used in film-scoring to describe string sounds that have randomness and dissonance that can heighten the tension and drama in a scene. LASS’s Aleatoric patches allow users to perform (in real-time) these types of dissonant string effects that are so sought after in film scores. By assigning the different divisis to a patch and allowing for individual control of tuning and modulation, you are able to create many varieties of dissonant strings while maintaining control of how it reacts over time. These patches are included for all sections (violins, violas, cellos and basses) in a variety of articulations: Sustains, Tremolos, Trills.

 

Non-Vibrato to Vibrato (NV-Vib) Patches

LASS’s new Legato patches are much more powerful than before. Not only do these patches play non-vibrato and vibrato legato, portamento and glissando articulations, but they also allow you to vary the amount of vibrato in real-time… completely transparently via CC2. Furthermore, when you no longer need the NV-Vib functionality, you can simply “turn off” the NV-Vib mode without purging your samples… thereby saving you polyphony.

We have also included a CC Attenuation knob to all legato patches. This allows you to reduce the dynamics of a passage by turning the knob down (even remotely via CC). This is useful if you like your dynamics but you just want to lower them by a certain percentage.

Features:

• Consolidated legato patches
• Realtime Loading/Purging of Legato Transitions
• Realtime Loading/Purging of NV/Vib
• Auto Arranger quick on/off control added

 

Intelligent Legato Trill Patches

LASS’s new Legato Trill patches are smart. With a key switch (dictating the key of your piece) you can perform diatonic trills whereby, when you play a new trill note, the transition to that trill note can be either a legato, portamento or glissando transition.

Legato Tremolo Patches

LASS’s new Tremolo Legato patches allow you to play tremolo lines with legato, portamento and glissando transitions. These patches look similar to the other Real Legato patches as seen above.

 

Updated A.R.T. Patches

Aside from being 100% integrated with the ARC, LASS 2’s new A.R.T. patches include several new performance features including real-time Quantization and a Retrigger/Continuous mode.

• Retrigger and Continuous modes — newly played notes retrigger the start of the rhythm pattern or they continue on and “join” the other notes at the same spot in the rhythm pattern.
• Quantize — a new approach to quantizing where only notes outside of the user defined note value are quantized. This allows the user to retain the human feel. Of course one can 100% quantize the notes.

 

LASS 2.0 Script Updates

All of the LASS 2 scripts have been updated to integrate with the ARC so that you can control all of LASS’s important features remotely from one centralized window. No more having to scroll through all the patches to apply changes you need. This is both a big time saver and can be inspiring. How many times do people abandon good ideas simply because they are too time consuming to execute?! Well… this is where ARC integration saves you time.

Before LASS 2, if you wanted to change the non-performance settings on multiple patches, you would have to make those changes on a per-patch basis. Now with LASS 2 and the ARC, the newly revised scripts “listen” to the ARC and update the settings on as many patches as you choose from within the ARC.

 

The Auto Arranger (now controllable from the ARC’s AA & DNH page) script brings a whole new range of features never before possible with sampled string libraries with the following features:

• Deep integration with the ARC so now you can apply changes to batches of instruments in 1 place.
• Polyphonic legato with Real Legato, Real Portamento and Real Glissando
• Auto divisi and accurate player count
• Play all sections with 2 hands on 1 MIDI channel
• Have other sections double at different octaves
• Create inversions of your chords on-the-fly
• Create your own set of Key Switchable “rules” that you can invoke in real-time
• Up to 13 part voice tracking!

 

The Delay and Humanization (now controllable from the ARC’s AA & DNH page) script has the following features:

• A new AA On/Off button is now on the main performance view of all patches.
• New Pedal behavior modes have been added.
• Deep integration with the ARC so now you can apply changes to batches of instruments in 1 place.

 

The Tuning Tool script (now controllable from the ARC’s Tuning page) has the following features:

• Complete script redesign
• Tonal morphing using assignable Tuning CC
• Deep integration with the ARC so now you can apply changes to batches of instruments in 1 place.
• The Tuning Tool script is now has a Range Tuning and Micro Tuning mode.
• Tuning expanded up to +/- min 3rd (300 cents)
• Save/Load tuning presets to/from disk
• Table Shifter added
• Automatic key coloring
• A new Tuning Amt knob allows you to  assign a CC to change the tuning amount in real-time. This allow for dissonant string effects on every patch.

• Micro Tuning is lets you chose different tuning for each note in an octave and  then assigned those tunings across the entire range of the instrument.

The CC Table script (now controllable from the ARC’s CC Table page) has the following features:

• Deep integration with the ARC so now you can apply changes to batches of instruments in 1 place.
• The CC Table script is now accessible from the front panel of the patch.
• There are now 10 user presets for you own dynamic layer and volume curves
• The default curve will never be lost.There is a knob that will allow you to choose from different curves (Fig 5)
• There is a smoothing knob that will even out any jagged table artifacts if you draw them in that way by accident.

 

 

 

System Specifications for LASS Full

Library Size:

• 16.4 GB with loss-less compressed audio files (approximately 24 GB uncompressed)

Software Requirements:

• Requires Kontakt Player 5.0.2 or later. Click here to download the latest version of Kontatk Player.

Supported Interfaces:

• Stand-alone, VST®, Audio Units™, RTAS®, ASIO™, Core Audio™, DirectSound™, WASAPI™

Minimum System Requirements:

• Windows — Windows XP (latest Service Pack, 32 Bit), Windows Vista/Windows 7 (latest Service Pack, 32/64 Bit), Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or Intel Core Duo or AMD Athlon 64, 2 GB RAM
• Mac — Mac OS X 10.6 (latest update), Intel Core Duo, 2 GB RAM