I would be most grateful for some tips in super simple terms

[newbiebigtime]

I'm planning on purchasing Opus 1. Only one thing is holding me back..my fear of not being able to make it sound good even with the great sounds...because I don't understand 75% of what you guys discuss on the forum. I know how to load performance files with the instrument gigs I want to use, I know how to compose and have my notation/sequencer work properly with Gigastudio for patch changes and all that jazz. Here's where I'm afraid my knowledge dies. I don't have the resources to run multiple (bus outs as you call it to mixers and multiple computers and reverb units.)
I do everything on 1 PC. A Pentium 4, 2.66Ghz with 1GB of RAM, an Audiophile 2496 and a Soundblaster Audigy. I use Finale to compose, and just started using Gigastudio instead of hardware units that I had used forever. (I never did much in the way of mixing and mastering before.) The only way I can really record well is with the capture to wave.

I tried to run the NFX reverb when recording, but it was lackluster in comparison to your demos, and put my CPU usage well above 50%. So I tried Sound Forge with Acoustic Mirror. Now I'm only using demo sounds, but I can still fake a composition to try it out using what notes I have in an instrument. Here's what I need desperate help with:

I like the Vienna results when you guys do your thing with reverb and panning on your demos and posts much better than anything else I've heard...seems much more flexible, but if I don't understand how to make a good demo CD with your product, then the EASTWEST recorded reverb and panning (if I understand it correctly) would be better for a newbie like me.

If you are going to use only gigastudio and capture to wave to record a dry wav. Open it in Sound Forge and do some normalizing and Acoustic Mirroring...I don't know how to EQ for realism,
what do I do in Gigastudio to get accurate panning? I understand why I pan and where I want instruments to come from sonic-wise, but I don't understand the best way to do it.

I've read on the forum "pan in DSP, not the MIDI mixer"
If I do that I have a left and a right slider...both without any numbers to guide me on how much I have actually panned" How do I know I am properly placing them in the field. I'm not seeing an angle here. What helps me create that sense of distance in instruments seated back farther..."collapse the stereo field" aren't those the sliders I'm messing with for panning...how do you narrow the field and pan with two sliders that have no numbers and are less then an inch long?

I hate to ask all these questions...but it seems this is child's play to most of the people here...and while the posts seem general to you...its still beyond me. And before I spend a grand on a great product, I want to have faith that I can make it sound at least newbie good. I realize that skill will come with practice, and that you guys didn't suddenly learn great mixing through osmosis, but if you could answer a few questions in dumby form for me, I would feel much more comfortable with my learning curve.

All I want to do is set-up a performance file after purchasing Opus 1 that I can open up with all my instruments in it, panned to the right locations of the orchestra and capture the sequence to wav. In one shot...or if you think I need to capture sections one at a time to get a good sound...I think I can probably figure that out and merge the files back together in Sound Forge??? I assume I will need to know basic panning settings inside of Gigastudio for this part to work. Which I can't figure out with 2 sliders...am I losing quality by lowering the left side of a stereo sample???Also is EQ necessary at this point...and how do you EQ each section...I mean in basic, basic terms.
I know I read here somewhere to put all the like instruments on the same channels in different ports, so that DSP effects all the instruments in that section the same. I think you mean like all the flutes and pics on channels 1, 17, 33, and 49 of MIDI, right?

I then want to open it up in Sound Forge and apply Acoutic Mirror to the wav. Another thing I understand not one bit...the default in here is 100% wet, 0% dry. Is that how you properly use an impulse? Or are you supposed to use the dry mix like a regular reverb. What do you typically use, a few more db dry then wet? I have no clue. Someone said don't mess with editing a convolution impulse, or you defeat the purpose of recreating a room environment. Some people in here talked about setting a predelay of -40ms to -50ms...is that the response delay slider?

Do you normalize before or after you apply Acoustic Mirror?
Do you EQ any here with everything together, or do you do it all in DSP?
Or is it really necessary to record sections individually and EQ here, and merge them together?

That's probably all I can ask in my first post without getting kicked off. I feel confident asking all this though, because the best thing I have found about this product, is this forum. You guys seem to do whatever you can to help out customers and future customers. You guys actually care. If other companies cared as much, maybe I would be asking most of these questions on a Gigastudio users form, but I think we all know they're the polar opposite of this company.

Sorry for the long post and thanksin advance,
J

[newbiebigtime]

I then want to open it up in Sound Forge and apply Acoutic Mirror to the wav. Another thing I understand not one bit...the default in here is 100% wet, 0% dry. Is that how you properly use an impulse? Or are you supposed to use the dry mix like a regular reverb. What do you typically use, a few more db dry then wet? I have no clue. Someone said don't mess with editing a convolution impulse, or you defeat the purpose of recreating a room environment. Some people in here talked about setting a predelay of -40ms to -50ms...is that the response delay slider?

Do you normalize before or after you apply Acoustic Mirror?
Do you EQ any here with everything together, or do you do it all in DSP?
Or is it really necessary to record sections individually and EQ here, and merge them together?

That's probably all I can ask in my first post without getting kicked off. I feel confident asking all this though, because the best thing I have found about this product, is this forum. You guys seem to do whatever you can to help out customers and future customers. You guys actually care. If other companies cared as much, maybe I would be asking most of these questions on a Gigastudio users form, but I think we all know they're the polar opposite of this company.

Sorry for the long post and thanksin advance,
J

[Dietz]

Huh - quite a bunch of questions, J. :-] ... but rest assured, you're welcome.

Personally, I'm no Giga-user and can't answer your sampler-related questions (I'm sure members of the forum will do so soon). But I can tell you this that in the end, mixing is about _hearing_, and not necessarily about "knowing all the tricks" (because in 99% of the cases they won't fit your problem anyways ;-] ...)

So don't be afraid of missing values of little onscreen-faders and so on. "If it sounds right, it is right!" All you have to do is give it a try.

All the best,

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

[Fred Story]

Dietz's advice reflects my own experience when I was first learning to engineer and mix...(purely out of neccesity once MIDI started changing things. Previously it was piano, pencil, paper, contractor, engineer and lots of musicians. Ahhh...the good old days.)

Anyway, I worked almost exclusively with an amazing engineer named David Floyd. I used to constantly bombard him with stupid questions, which he mostly tolerated. (I used to take notes, too, which I think irritated him.)

I remember one session, which in hindsight was probably the moment when it all sank in. We were having a difficult time with the snare drum sound for some reason. David said, "Give me a minute". He tweaked, he fiddled around, and magically what had sounded like an old cardboard box had snap, life and personality. "Wow!", I said...notepad in hand. "That's incredible! So what's the rule for making a snare drum sound like that?"

He said, "See all these knobs? You turn 'em until it sounds good."

Lesson learned. In our shop, to this day we still call it "The David Floyd rule."

Fred Story
Concentrix Music and Sound Design
www.concentrixmusic.com

[Dietz]

Thanks a lot, Fred. I'll quote you & and the David Floyd Rule, from now on.

/Dietz

[newbiebigtime]

I'll keep experimenting. Just wish there were some ballpark answers for more dry than wet by a few db with convolution...etc.

Thanks again

[William]

newbiebigtime -

I can give some specific answers to those questions because I have some of the same equipment. If you've got Sound Forge and Acoustic Mirror that is half the battle because you can use the best reverb on the planet (Except for MIR probably which is not available yet.) I got the Cholakis impulses which are incredibly good - the best reverb of any kind I've ever heard. It is important to have really good impulses.

This is done in your mixing program of course, after you've frozen to wav files your midi tracks in GS. One big difference between what you're talking about and what I've done is having all the instruments playing simultaneously. I've never done that even on a massive orchestration. I just do it instrument by instrument, building up more dry wav files that are in sync with each other. This way you can handle each one separately and do different things to it.

I take them into the audio mixer, which is Vegas Audio - one of the best pieces of software I've ever used and capable of anything the more expensive programs do. You can do some preliminary EQ and compression in the dry stage - weaker dynamic range instruments like violas, contrabasses, woodwinds often need compression of 1.5 to 1. The VSL violins and celli are very bright and may need EQ in the high frequency range down a few decibels. If you are going for a completely "natural" approach to the recording, though, you can actually get away with very little EQ because the recordings on this library are so good. I've often monitored this basic mix with an external FX unit so I didn't have to tax the computer with the convolution.

On the important subject of the panning it is nowhere near as difficult to do it correctly as suggested on other threads of this forum - if you have captured to wav file your dry tracks with a center pan, then you can simply do the pan or collapse of stereo image in your mixer before you apply FX. As long as you do not pan hard right or left, there is no problem with losing too much stereo signal because these samples were recorded all the way across the stereo image. I found that a 40% left pan for violins and a 40% right pan for celli places them correctly both in size and image. I believe unlike some people here that solo instruments within an orchestral context (as opposed to a concerto "upfront" solo) should be in mono, so I do that also in the mixer and pan them also to their approrpiate places.

In Acoustic Mirror, you should set dry to 0, and wet to around -9 for really wet sounds (like a pipe organ or strings) or around -3 for something drier (like percussion). You can of course change those figures but they are good working guidelines.

The EQ can be done after FX also, in case for example you like a convolution that has a lot of high frequency tail but certain instruments sound too bright in it (again, often the violins and celli).

I also like to do premixes of various stages for instrument groups - like render all the strings dry, compressed and panned first, then apply FX/EQ at a further stage, then do a final mix with these subgroups. This seems to make the mixing much easier and there is no danger because you can save each mix set in separate folders and go back to them, using the same file name which causes the higher folders to "update" instantly if you do any changes.

Those are some procedures I've been using though I'm sure every person has a different way of working.

[newbiebigtime]

This is exactly the type of info I was looking for.

Few more questions...if I capture each instrument group to wave individually in GS, and then open them and apply FX and EQ in Sound Forge, or Vegas (which I have),
how do I put them all back together as one wav file?

Also...do you do Acoustic Mirror on each individual file and then put them back together.

What about normalization...is it okay, what type and at what step?
The way I had been doing it was to normalize after Acoustic Mirror - Foellinger Great Hall Row 8.

Thanks again William for all your help.

[William]

If you have Vegas, you are cool. Nothing to worry about there... [[;)]]

But anyway, you just render to .wav after you've got your mix. Normalizing MUST be done after mixing - so that you preserve the balances you set prior to the mix. That will make the level as high as it can go for cd mastering without changing your balances.

By the way I did try that Foelinger great hall - it's the best of that group of impulses and you obviously realized that. Though if you can afford it sometime, get the Ernest Cholakis impulses from Numerical Sound - they are the best reverb available anywhere for any price (except maybe for that nice little Lexicon unit for ten grand I couldn't afford this week).

[Simon Fox]

@William said:

(except maybe for that nice little Lexicon unit for ten grand I couldn't afford this week).

...not sure about that - I'm beginning to think I'd rather stick with the Cholakis Impulses!!! [:D]

[newbiebigtime]

Do you use the Acoustic mirror on individual tracks in Vegas, or on the final mix (the single stereo wav) that you render?

I think I can add Acoustic Mirror in Vegas....some FX chainer thing, (that's where the EQ and compression tools you spoke of are at, I think) but I know I can use Acoustic Mirror on the final rendered wav in Sound Forge....and then normalize.

But do you use different mixes of Acoustic Mirror on each section of the orchestra?

This is helping me so much...I am actually making some progress here.

Your help is much appreciated.