I just caught this when I visited Audio Ease's site. They've released an IR set for the amazing TODD AO scoring stage. A Free update to anyone with Alitverb .. 5.4 or better needed to run it.
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I'm trying it out right now. Only problem I'm encounter ... which I normally do with AV .. is to try and find out what is a default setting. If you go by leaving everything as it is set when you initialize the instance .. it all sounds awful. But with tweaking I'm sure this room will sound awesome. IF anyone figures out a good set of positions for an orchestra using this .. let me know. :P At least one can get these IR's now. All I'm waiting on is Paramounts Stage M IR's next.
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http://www.audioease.com/
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TODD-AO IR's for Altiverb
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Yeah .. I'm thinking the best way to use this is similar to Christian Kardeis's Method. The Instrument track provides the Direct Signal .. and the depth is controlled by the Fader (In Pre Fade mode), and then a Bus send / Return is used to put a the Altiverb instance with TODD AO for room emulation. . Would be interesting to try using 3 instances of Altiverb for different depth IR's. But I'm not tempted to go too crazy with this. If I can get the sound nice and sweet than I'll be happy. . Oh yeah .. I figured out that the "Hollowman" sound track was recorded at TODD AO .. not Paramount Stage M :P. But still I was right about Stage M being used for Star Trek Insurrection .. which oddly enough had a similar sound to TODD AO. . Anyways, By all means Tanuj .. if you get some good settings for Altiverb .. do let me know. I'd love to try 'em out.
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One problem with sampled spaces is that they are sampled without all the people and instruments normally present during a recording. This may result in a more boomy and less representative result.
And don't forget that these stages are mostly adding specific Early Reflections, they typically do not have a real reverb "tail" (they are not concert halls!). Tails are often added with high end processors, like the DRE777, TC6000 or 960L.
From my Samplicity correspondence I know that the San Francisco Orchestra uses the DRE777 for their studio CD recordings.
The "real" stuff is often not really "real" (my pet peeve, sorry!) [;)]
Peter
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Fair point. I guess that way I see it is if you can at least get the VSL Instruments to sound like they come from the stage (empty or otherwise), then you are half way there. Adding another reverb or a tail is easy enough to do. . At the moment I'm just trying to get the right feel and perspective of Depth and Pan and thus far I've never been 100% happy with the IR's that I've had. I really wish that Audio Ease would pay attention to creating some kind of realistic default sound though. I know that's highly subjective at best .. but how hard really would it be for them to give us some context. . It's like when a news presenter on the TV tells you "The economy is receeding by 2%" .. I sit there thinking .. "So what ... is 2% high .. is it low .. should I run for the hills .. or go and buy a new car", I have no context to know what is normal ... same with these Reverbs. You have to have some baseline to go from. Cos the standard default is just obviously not what that room would generate. . Again I know it's all highly subjective .. how one chooses to use your AV, what instruments you're using .. personal choice on sound .. and all that, but SOME basic guides to follow would really help. . All being said I think these IR's are definitely my favourite and I'm gonna try real hard to get a good mix template out of these. I will release my newest Logic template as well, but I'm going to work on a good setup for TODD AO. . And please ... feel free to beat me too it :P I certainly never feel like the expert .. just another guy looking for a great sounding virtual orchestra, and room. :D
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Hetoreyn,
Please send me your address information (to: peter (at) peterroos.com).
I think you should also experiment with "fake" halls - I will send you my libs to experiment with.
When I made my Lex960 library I tried it in AV with a friend of mine with a Mac and AV. I must say, I was very disappointed by the complex user interface, offering too much unclear options. I am a big fan of Pristine Space, which is just a very optimized, stable and no-nonsense plugin. Although I have no in-depth experience with AV, I have the feeling that I have more control over reverb with PS than I might have with AV. Just my personal impression... [8-|]
All the best,
Peter
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Hi James,
That looks like my approach. I add ERs with TrueVerb as inserts on several input busses (for dry instruments - horns solo, woodwinds (2x), trumps and bones and dry percussion). Then I have two reverb busses (front and back) which go to a separate PC, where I run PS with two True Stereo instances. In this case it is recommendable to lower the ERs in PS, because of the added ERs and the "wet" input channels that I also have (ProjectSAM groups). For the strings I use a different trick: I have one bus that adds some ERs to all the string sections. This subtly seems to blend them into the same space, after the narrowing and panning the string groups with Waves S1.
I really like the European Hall from the TC6000, with the "less ERs" option.
But I have a few different templates, for shorter tails I also like the Lex960 Large Hall, which strangely enough has its ER portion AFTER the start of the tail (!) - I noticed this when I switched the ERs off on the Lex. Anyway, it's a completely different reverb style, but very usable.
To be honest, I do not often check out other presets, but there are some very nice halls in both libraries.
It IS important to watch the amount of ERs when you add them like you and I do, otherwise the 50-150 msec range can become too muddy.
An interesting difference between the TC6000 and the Lex960 is that the latter is more based on psycho-acoustical research and less on "physical correctness". The ER range for instance is NOT how you would expect it from a real hall, but it does seem to give a better "experience" of space. See all the papers that Griesinger wrote on this subject. Really interesting material.
Cheers,
Peter
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Don't change the pre-delay in PS, but draw a volume curve going upwards in the 0-150 msec range. Or use Samplicity presets where I reduced or removed the ERs. And in Pristine Space, make sure to lock the two IR files (locking their length etc.) and copy the volume curve for one IR file to the other.
Note: I have compared ER-only presets with the ERs produced by TrueVerb, and I must say I find the latter more effective (to my own surprise). But I will do this comparison again, maybe this does not hold for all presets where I made the ER variations.
Success!
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I've been playing with the TODD AO set and think I may have found a good setting. At the moment I've been using just the Horns to experiment with and playing .. in endless loops .. soundtracks (With horns naturally :P), that have been recorded there. I have after much fiddling found a setting that allows me to play along to the music with my horns and it sounds like it was part of the recording. Still experimenting of course but I'll have some info on this soon. . This is using the technique of only one instance of AV and using it as a bus send .. (on pre not post) and thus adjusting depth via the instrument channel fader. Thus far I've been happy with the result which is that this sounds like it comes from the TODD AO stage with a very natural reverb sound. I am going to see what happens if I use 3 instances and using 3 different IR depths for more depth simulation .. although I suspect I'll end up only using 2 depths (near and far). . Let you know when I have something more to tell.
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I've been trying out the TODD AO the same way, which is pretty much how do all the verbs, on a bus. I also add some verb from TC VSS3 (which is the 6000 in TDM). The results are pretty good. The boomy sound is an issue with the TODD AO for sure. But it's easily overcome by placement and EQ. I'm pretty sure that stuff in the real room didn't go without EQ as well. There isn't a room in the world that just works perfectly untouched all the time. I've been in enough studios to know that. They EQ'd strings in Abbey Road when I was there as well. My biggest issue is really more with stereo spread. You just can't get enough width with virtual - it's not like the real thing. Putting the AV on a bus against the dry does help though. You loose spread as soon as you run the whole thing through AV.
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I'm tempted to repost Tripit's message above in BIG LETTERS, because every word is true. I might add that the necessity of EQing and filtering is valid not only for cinematic-style music, but also for seemingly "puristic" classical recordings, in world-class halls like the Vienna Konzerthaus or the Musikverein.
/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library -
You mean the frequency spectrum looks weird?
Have you read my reply to Rob Elliot in the other Todd-AO topic?
Doei,
Peter
