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  4. Altiverb: Should we use the stereo positioning? / What´s your way to use altiverb?
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    @Felix Bartelt said:

    I don´t understand, how it works, to set the send-faders for the ER busses to "pre-fader", cause the S1 stereo imager then has (in Logic) no effect on the send-signal, meaning, that everything arriving at one of the early reflection busses is not panned.

    But most people are writing, that it is best to use pre-fader-sends, cause then the main fader is controlling the dry signal, while the send is just controlling the wet signal.

    So what about the panning then, if I have e.g. the brass section, playing very far away at the left? To achieve them playing far away, I need a lot of db beeing send to the ER-bus and not much direct signal.

    But only my (quite silent) direct signal is influenced by the S1-imager.

     

    IMO you should be sending pre fader (at least pre panned and full stereo --ie not narrowed) signal to the ER busses ... this is because Altiverb's stereo positioning feature itself will be giving you all the 'panning' and 'st width control' - that is exactly what moving the speakers about and making them closer or further apart does! 😊

      

    After setting the stage positions in Altiverb I then go back to the direct signal of each instrument and set its pan to match the stage position and narrow the stereo spread to match too (virtually mono for solo instruments, wider for strings etc)

    Then I set each track's (post fader) send to the Altiverb tail instance I have sitting on a buss .... the further back the instrument is placed on stage the more reverb and less direct is send and vice versa ....although in reality I just juggle everything (ER/ direct/ tail) until it sounds right!

    I hope that makes sense - I am still only a novice and still experimenting with other ways! (including using the 1 Altiver with stage pos and tail per instrument or group) ...... 
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    In alternative b) I´m using no Altiverbs positioning at all, meaning that I have e.g. the horns and the trombone both using ER-busses and reverb-busses via send, but having each an S1 for its own, to pan the horns left and the trombones right. The depht is supposed to be achieved by the balance of direct/send plus the reverb. So the problem about pre-send stays, that the reverb- and the ER-busses just get unpanned signals. So I get the reverb-sound and the early-reflection-sound of a centered instrument, while the direct signal comes from the left. Should I be using i/o-plugins instead of bus-sends?
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    What DAW and Vienna Library are you using. I've been making a new template that might be useful to you if you have Logic 8 and something similar to VI Special Edition. Heto
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    That might be very helpfull! I´m using L8 an the Vienna Pro Edition + Chamber String with Vienna Ensemble.
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    E-mail me .. hetoreyn@yahoo.co.uk .. and I'll send along a new preset I've been working on. It doesn't use altiverb quite in the way described above .. but I gotta say I'm really quite happy with the sound ... been trying to emulate the recording of the Soundtrack "Hollowman", and what I have is not a million miles away from it. ...... In anycase it'll give you something to try out and you can see if it works for you. It does use the whole Early reflection mix thing but also gives you control over level and reverb level. ......... To anyone else that's interested I will be posting this on my site soon, it's taken me a while to get this preset right, and it will be for Logic 8, but I'll also have one for Logic 7.
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    Hey Hetorey, I wouldn't mind that setting as well if you don't mind!

    I have an altiverb on every instrument with just the early reflections on and then I have a tail on a Aux track that they all send to. For the early reflections I use Toldex and for the tail I use a VSS3 from the TC Powercore.

    I do this so I get the sound of the instruments in their position in the room and then add the tail using the reverb that alot of the studio's use to add to orchestras for film. To my ears it sounds pretty good, it does mean that you are running alot of altiverbs but my computer seems to cope fine.
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    IT may be that you already have a better sound than me, but do e-mail me and I'll send it along. I'm running only 1 instance of AV for the room sound emulation. And using just the balance panning. I found that in listening to my source soundtrack "Hollowman" that the instruments there sound more concert like. As quite a few Goldsmith scores sound. ......... Eitherway I'm happy to let you try it out and see what you can make of it.
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    Hey guys. So I'm working on a template for Logic 8 as you know. I wondered what any of you might think of this mix. this is using my template. I'd appreciate any comments. Personally this is one of my best mixes thus far I thinkbut I'd like to know what people think. If you're a fan of Goldsmith soundtracks, as I am, then this is what I have been reaching toward. .... The piece is an unused cue from my Starship Farragut Project. ......... http://www.elvenmusic.com/public/Plan-of-Action.mp3
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    P.S. The template is sort of being Beta tested at the moment to make sure the settings and all can be transfered around, once I know it's good I'll upload it for everyone to have a shufty at. Although of course mix is a very personal thing and we all like different things, but this might perhaps help those of you who have not yet got your favourite sound into the right direction ... it may also pull you in the wrong direction :P .. but at least we can try it.
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    Sounds good to me! Will your template use VE outside of logic or is all based on VI's inside logic?
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    Inside Logic. I can't use VE yet as my machine can only run about 8 instances of VI in one VE without choking .. so I'm waiting on the 64 bit version. VE looks great .. but it's just unusable for me ... unless I'm doing something wrong. But .. you must admit .. the sound I'm getting from the way round I'm doing it does work nicely :D
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    Hi Heto, I´m not sure, if you have gotten my mail, so I´ll write here again. The template helps a lot. Thanks a lot for that! In my case it is very easy to load. Not many changes like changing the Midi devices were needed. From my stage of mixing the Plan-of-action mix is amazing. Is that the same template as the one, you used for Starship Farragut? I´ve downloaded a song from Itunes and to me the "Plan of action" sounds even better.
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    The New Template (The one I sent you) .. is based on the one I used for Starship Farragut. Only now I've managed to correct a few things that mean I can have more depth, less mud and a louder sound. I did get your last message by the way (Just been very busy). .......... Plan of Action is an alternative cue from Farragut that ended up being made a little less decisive (Less horns), but I really liked this version of it .... and yes it was very much inspired by Jerry Goldsmith. :D ..................... (Man I wish this forum would work better with Safari) ........ ........ Anyways, feel free to send me feedback on the Template as I'm looking to publish it to my site soon, and if you feel that you like the sound it gives then thats cool. Also if the settings all opened correctly then that's also good. I find that Logic really does have some silly issues with saving and opening presets which I hope will be cured soon.
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    Finally I have a hint, I can give you!

    Even though it is just about this homepage:

    . To add a break to your text on safari, you have to type arrow left, then p and then arrow right without any spaces between them. . I dont know, how to make a real blank line, but you can just put a "." in the line and create a new break. . Anyway, I hope they´ll fix this soon!
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    After reading this topic I did some rather extensive testing with altiverb.   My conclusion is that the farther you put your instruments back (both with mic selection and stage position) the less pan information gets across - regardless of whether it's from the panned direct signal or the stage positioning or both -  In general altiverb diffuses the panning a ton - which is reaslitic I guess but the result I feel is that is hard to have a balanced (i.e controlled) stereo image.   I also tried every possible combination of sending signal to both the early reflection and the tail seperatly (in a chain AND using the same signal twice at the same time via an aux bus with two sends). It never sounded as good as the signal being proccesed in one instance of altiverb - the diffrence was signficant. Even if I had the CPU to run the 6 instances of altiverb I'd need to pan in stage positioning it still wouldn't give me very good control over the stereo feild (unless I used all close mics and close stage positionings which I don't want to do).  If anyone has tricks on how to regain control over the stereo image while using large diffusing IR's it would be much appreachiated. 

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    Hi Magates, the loss of stereo image is natural, cause the further away the sound source is, the smaller is its stereo image. I´m quite content with my result now, splitting the altiverb stereo positioning and the rest (ER and Tail). The output of the track with the stereo positioning has also a S1 stereo imager on it and its output goes directly to the master output. . I don´t agree, that one instance of altiverb is better than splitting, cause I think that combinations of different IR for positioning, tail and even ER often sound better, than using the same IR for all three of them. . Example: I´m using the original orchestral positioning preset (Konzerthaus Vienna) for the positioning, the disney hall for the reverb, but the Konzerthaus Vienna with a little larger size for the ER. I don´t know, if that´s recomended, but I like the result much better than just using the Konzerthaus
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    I know it's natural and realistic and all but it'd be nice still be able to have a more controlled experience - at least that's my opinion for film music. Right now my only solution would be to introduce some of the dry signal back in 10-15%
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    In my case, having had the same problem, I didn´t see, that reverb and specially the mix between early reflections and direct (not exactly "direct", cause it comes thru the stereo placement) signals are very important to place my sound more in the back. . So I - wrongly - tried to get all the depth by using the altiverb positioning, forgetting about the other posibilities for placing instruments further away. Now, since working more with the other parameters, I don´t have to place the speakers so far in the back, saving a lot of stereo impression. Maybe this helps in your case?
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    Well .. I don't think you did it wrong. It's just that I found AV to be really hard to place instruments without screwing something else up. I tried Maartens Presets but for me they just sounded fake. (I concede that I probably did it wrong :P), and so hence why I've been trying other methods.