In the 1990s, founder Herb Tucmandl, a former cello player and substitute member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, went from working as a cameraman to being a successful director in his own right. For his various award-winning productions Tucmandl even produced his own orchestral scores with computers and sample libraries. The available resources at that time, however, were nowhere near satisfactory for his needs. As an experienced orchestral musician, he grew increasingly tired of listening to the same old samples. “Composing with sample libraries is 1% creativity and 99% damage control“, he used to complain. As a result of this frustration, and with a clear need for something new, he spent hundreds of sleepless nights creating a new concept for a truly authentic orchestral sample library.

His approach was fascinatingly innovative, as Herb not only wanted to record single notes but also note transitions, which would allow for a living and believable performance for the very first time. The recordings would include a wide variety of articulations such as legato, repetitions, trills, fast runs, arpeggios, harmonics, flutter tongues, clusters, and so much more. While the largest conventional sample libraries at that time offered a mere 6,000 samples to replicate an entire orchestra, Herb developed a structure of more than one million single notes and short phrases!

It quickly became clear that a project of this scale was going to push the boundaries of computer processing power, memory and storage space. Unfortunately, computers at the time simply would not have been able to deal with such an enormous challenge. Regardless of all the doubts surrounding the project, Herb Tucmandl took his cello to a studio and recorded several thousand samples himself. After creating the first demo production he managed to convince sampling experts and music lovers alike.

Quite extraordinarily, the next obstacle facing the project turned out to be that of finding exceptional orchestral musicians in Vienna, one of the world capitals of music! The problem was that the sheer physical and psychological demands of such an endeavor differed significantly from those of well-rehearsed concert repertoire. Sitting in a recording studio for several months, sometimes even years, only playing single notes and short phrases at the highest possible level of perfection requires not only impeccable control of the instrument, but also outstanding stamina.

On top of all of this, though, was the fact that no recording facility could provide a large enough space with the high level of required sound insulation and guaranteed availability over an extended period. These challenges were remedied through the creation of the “Silent Stage”, a custom-made recording hall built in the south of Vienna. Since then, more than 200 musicians and singers have been performing there with Artistic Director Michael Hula acting as a merciless but very patient conductor. Since a recording session of 3 hours results in about 30 hours of editing, several dozen sound engineers were confined to editing suites for days and nights, plowing through a mountain of sound data (terabytes) and working meticulously to hone a perfect, authentic sound.