Poly VL - Yamaha VL in a Soft Synth

Brian Moore dropped me a line about a Yamaha VL1 up for auction. I asked him if he had seen the VP1. He did and he mentioned that he was thinking of picking up the Yamaha S-YXG100 a softsynth with the VL physical modelling. I knew about the Korg OASYS PCI but not this. Brian sent me a couple of links (one, two) and a zip of the demo. Only thing is like the OASYS PCI it only runs on Windows 95/98. Here's the 1999 press release from Harmony Central:

"February 17, 1999
Yamaha Corporation, the world' s largest manufacturer of musical instruments, today announced the development of the SoftSynthesizer Poly-VL which further enhances Yamaha’s SoftSynthesizer software for creating polyphonic sound with a Virtual Acoustic (VA) synthesizer. The Poly-VL, a plug-in module for the SoftSynthesizer S-YXG100, is designed to take advantage of the performance of Intel’ s Pentium® III processor. As a result, it can reproduce music approaching the realism of a live music performance.

"We are delighted with this development," said Yamaha Corporation President Kazukiyo Ishimura. "Thanks to the power of Intel’ s new Pentium III processor, everybody can now enjoy music in their own homes as if it is performed by real musical instruments. We will start introducing this software to all major computer manufacturers to bundle it on their new computers."

Yamaha SoftSynthesizer embodies software technology that enables the playback of MIDI data even without dedicated hardware such as an external tone generator or a sound card. At present, Yamaha has shipped over eight million units of its acclaimed SoftSynthesizer S-YXG50 for preinstallation on computers made by manufacturers worldwide.

WaveTable synthesis is widely used in musical instruments and software synthesizers, and this technology is based on playback of pre-sampled waveforms. On the other hand, Virtual Acoustic synthesis utilizes a model that builds a virtual instrument and then creates sound by simulating the behavior of sound generation in a real musical instrument. Because VA recreates the sound generating mechanism of a musical instrument itself, users can create sounds that replicate both the timbre and expression of real instruments much more closely than is possible with an ordinary synthesizer. New and unusual combinations can even be created, such as a timbre that simulates a flute with brass mouthpiece being played with a cello bow.

The new Poly-VL utilizes the power of the Pentium III processor to generate eight-voice polyphony with VA synthesis, allowing users to recreate— for example— the sound of a brass ensemble of up to eight voices, including saxes, trombones, and trumpets. The percussion and keyboard sounds that are generated using Wave Table synthesis and orchestral timbre generated with VA synthesis results in a powerfully expressive music performance."