@ William... OK, What's So Great About MIR?

[Suntower]

From the post I sorta hijacked about 'Appassionata Strings'...

In that topic you said you did most of your presets in VI 'lite'. So when I asked what you found indispensable about VI Pro, vs. VI 'lite', you threw me a curve and wrote that you found MIR to be -the- indispensable tool.

OK, isn't MIR a separate product from VI Pro? Are you saying MIR is more important to you than VI Pro? If so, why? Is it the 'spatial control'? (ie. the ability to move instruments in frontf/behind/left/right)?

Also, my understanding is that MIR is (over-simplification) a reverb/mixer... Can you describe your system a bit? I have shied away from MIR because, I combine a lot of audio with MIDI and I'm already mixing in Cubase. I already find the 'flow' complex enough as it is.. adding another 'mixer' seems more of a pain. IOW: I already have a zillion 'windows' going at any given time which drive me nuts.

Do you use VEP along with a DAW? Or is MIR your 'final stop'? Just trying to get an idea of how all the parts fit together.

I apologise for all the noob questions. If $$$ wasn't a factor, I'd get all this stuff and just play around, but it's a -huge- deal so I gotta be real picky about purchases. And if I had a lot more free time than I do, I'd watch all the videos, and exhaustively work with the demos. But I just don't. I got limited time with the DAW every day and -really- working through these products can burn a whole day when I coulda been composing. So I throw out these questions and hope for kindness from strangers. I do appreciate your detailed and helpful replies!

TIA,

----JC

[William]

Well, maybe this will clarify what I was saying.  When working on pure music I don't want to worry about mixing, and the Basic Vienna Ensemble is great for pure musical composition because it is so instant and logical to use.  So I have gravitated to using it during that phase, and simply listen to the piece with a hardware reverb usually. 

But then to do the mix, I convert the project to VE Pro so I can use all the MIR power, and focus on the mix at that stage.   MIR is so simple to use that out of the box one gets a great sounding mix.  Also, the way the interface is musical rather than a mixing engineer's perspective, with the players on a stage, the positioning and size, and the already tweaked instrument EQ profiles, that  is what I like about it.  It is all set up for the VSL instruments, by the experts, and so you can't go wrong just using it straight ahead.    Also, if you are exceeding your computer's power with some huge orchestra setup, you can do all your MIDI in Vienna Ensemble basic (because it uses less CPU/RAM) and then freeze separate tracks in MIR.  Though MIR has become more and more efficient and I am not finding that much of a problem these days. 

[Suntower]

So just out of curiosity, how do you render your final product? Do you work in a DAW such as Cubase or PT?

[William]

What I've been doing, I admit is somewhat weird though it is so I can use certain programs I got used to.  I dislike doing MIDI in any of the main DAWs, as they all have intrusive controls for audio when you are trying to do MIDI.  So I use an old sequencer I like then load that MIDI file into Sonar and do a freeze out of a slave computer.  That way, any number of tracks of playback can be used from the slave, reducing the number in case the CPU is overly taxed.   Though the new MIR VE is very efficient and amazing even in how well it uses any available resources.  I then take those tracks and mix them in Vegas which I am used to from doing video editing.   But you could use any audio program you liked for this.