Mir Pro - Orchestral positions pics

[Hanquist]

Finally, I bought Mir Pro. What a nice piece of software! At the moment I am experimenting with the Grosser Saal. Do you have photos with an orchestra sitting in this hall? It would be helpful to see how they are placed on stage in real life. I am looking for a Mahler sized orchestra sitting in this hall :)

[Dietz]

Thanks for your friendly words, Hanquist!

In general there's nothing like "the" typical orchestral seating - it depends a lot on the piece, it's arrangement, the conductor's habits and taste, the orchestra's preferences, the context the piece is played in (in terms of the "playlist" of a concert event), the size and peculiarities of a certain stage, and - in case of recordings - technical and aesthetical aspects.

A little Google-search will give you an idea: -> http://tinyurl.com/orchestral-seating

... this is a particulary helpful source: -> http://andrewhugill.com/manuals/seating.html

HTH,

[Hanquist]

Thank you Dietz for answering my questions :) By the way I saw Herb has made a preset for Teldex Studio. Are there any preset for Grosser Saal too?

[Dietz]

Herb's Teldex Presets are meant to be a source of inspiration for the creation of your own, individual setups. 😊 As by now there are no comparable full-blown presets for Grosser Saal. But I worked hard during the last few months and came up with more than 140 "Venue Presets" for all MIR Pro Venues which will be released in near future.

This is a quote from the Venue Preset ReadMe file:

@Another User said:

Venue Presets are meant to be used as starting points for your own arrangements and mixes in Vienna MIR Pro. Think of them as empty stages which are set up readily by a team of professionals for recording an orchestra or ensemble of your choice. Ideally they will also inspire you to use MIR Pro in ways you didn't think of previously.

Each Venue Preset is built around one Main Microphone position in one of MIR Pro’s Venues (… please refer to the Vienna MIR Pro user manual for a detailed discussion of the technical terms used in this ReadMe). They are roughly divided in “typical” setups and setups that were created with more specific sounds in mind, or for certain instruments.

In general, all Presets contain

-      dedicated Output Formats, in many cases created specifically for the task

-      fine-tuned Main Microphone / Secondary Microphone positions and settings

-      optimized Room EQ settings, mostly to get rid of room-inherent resonances or similar peculiarities

-      suggested RoomTone Levels.

Much care has been taken to achieve perfect stereo balance and all-embracing stereo width. Some Venue Presets are set up as 5.0 and 5.1 surround configurations from the very beginning, though – all marked clearly so that they can’t be confused with stereo Presets.

Quite a few Venue Presets make use of the brand-new Secondary Microphone feature of MIR Pro. In these cases, both microphone positions are specified in the Preset’s name. In case of a surround setup the chosen configuration is mentioned, too. - Venue Presets that don’t make use of the Secondary Microphone will contain meaningful settings for the switched-off secondary array nonetheless, just in case you want to give it a try.

Several Venue Presets make use of MIR Pro’s unique MIRacle Algorithmic Reverb Add-on, partly in a “hybrid” approach, partly as synthetic enhancement of MIR's natural spatial enveloping. The settings used for MIRacle in these Presets were hand-crafted in every single case.

HINT: If you see a “MIR Wet Bus” in VE Pro's mixer, take it as an advice to use MIR Pro's wet signal routing instead of the conventional “In-line”-routing! In these cases, MIRacle is meant to process MIR's wet signals only. You will have to take care of that with each added Instrument.

You will also find some additional built-in effects like MIR Pro EQs or VE Pro’s Matrix Mixer in some more demanding setups, or for reasons of sound design.

Speaking of sound design: Some Presets rely on shortened overall reverb times (which can be achieved easily with the help of MIR Pro’s Reverberation Time feature). This option multiplies the possible uses of one and the same Venue – which is what those Presets are meant to demonstrate.

Some few Presets also make use of MIR Pro’s option to present a Venue from another acoustic perspective than the usual 0° main axis. These files are marked accordingly.

HINT: Keep in mind that you can rotate a Venue visually in 90° steps by Ctrl+Alt-clicking (OSX: Command+Alt-clicking) anywhere in the Venue-Map! Getting the right perspective will make the handling of those setups much easier.

Usually, a Venue Preset will contain just one or two “empty” Vienna Instruments to give you an idea where to start with your own setups. There are several examples built around specific instruments, though, e.g., the Vienna Imperial Piano and the Vienna Konzerthaus Organ. While you will have to own the licenses for these instruments to make full use of the provided settings, you can of course employ these Venue Presets for other signal sources, too.

I hope you will find them helpful, too. 😊

Kind regards,

[servandus]

WOW!!!

  This is going to be like having 140 utmost practical MIR "tutorials" ready to explore!! This is much needed, Dietz, and will be highly appreciated. With MIR you have achieved that a musician with no more than a basic knowledge about mixing like me could listen to his performances in beautiful acoustic spaces, getting very decent mixes just making use of some intuition in placing instruments, adjusting volumes and chosing "colors" with your character presets. MIR if not fills, at least reduces significantly the gap between the musical and the technical in a way that makes working with it a real pleasure. And not only this, but as an "acoustic virtualization software", so simple and intuitive, also awakens the desire to explore and learn more about mics, acoustics and live recording techniques, which was an art/science completely unkown to me. MIR's approach is so different (much more intuitive, but different), that I'm finding more interesting to read about ambisonics or mics than reverb depths or traditional mixing concepts. So, your post was really great news!! Many thanks.

  Let me ask a question here (it may be silly, but I could not find an answer anywhere). Why is the main mic's default position in MIR always a little right of the room's symmetry axis? I always tend to move it to the center. Am I missing something here?

  Can't wait to explore your Venue Presets!!

[Dietz]

@servandus said:

[...]

Let me ask a question here (it may be silly, but I could not find an answer anywhere). Why is the main mic's default position in MIR always a little right of the room's symmetry axis? I always tend to move it to the center. Am I missing something here? [...]

Many rooms have resonances, shatter-echoes or other strange acoustic occurances when you listen from the perfect geometrical center. (In many cases that's also the reason why there are no chairs in the middle axis, BTW.) When we sample a hall for MIR, we try to be as careful as possible and thus avoid the symmetry axis as soon we find the slightest hint for these phenomenons.

... in the early days we were discussing if we should make it "look pretty" by feigning perfect symmetry graphically on the Venue Map, but in the end I decided that _real_ rooms will bear _real_ audio engineering solutions. No cheating here. 😉

Sidenote: There _are_ Venues were we could go for perfect symmetry, like the studios, or Konzerthaus Foyer.

HTH,

[servandus]

@Dietz said:

but in the end I decided that _real_ rooms will bear _real_ audio engineering solutions. No cheating here. ;-)

I guess this is why the more I use MIR, the more questions I have (^_^). Thanks for the explanation, Dietz. Very informative.