MIR PRO panning with Nuendo 5.5

[Arturas P]

Hi, Just started to work with MIR PRO plugin. Have a problems with MIR PRO on Nuendo 5.5. When I'm trying to pan a dry instrument for example to Lsur channel it comes from front right and slightly from Lsur. When instrument panned to rear right it's playing from front left and slightly rear right. Plug in is inserted on 5.1 track. Some (internal) routing issue? Maybe I'm missed something? Can any body help me? Thanks, Arturas

[Dietz]

Welcome Arturas,

I'm not sure that I understand you problem correctly. By "panning" you mean positioning the MIR Icon on a Venue's stage, or the panning supplied by Nuendo itself?

Positioning inside MIR Pro is very different from a conventional power-panner. It relies completely on Ambisonics (the dry signals as well as the "wet" signal derived from impulse responses). All of this is highly dependent on the chosen Main Microphone setup (i.e. the virtual microphone capsules and their routing).

Maybe you can supply some screenshots, or an examplary project (I'm a Nuendo-user, too).

BTW - it's noteworthy that due the inner logic of both Nuendo (or any other host) and MIR Pro plug-in, the _first_ instance (and only the first!) defines the audio format of all MIR Pro plug-ins within one and the same session. So - if you plan to work in surround, the first instance has to be set to the according format. There's no way to change this later-on.

Kind regards,

[Arturas P]

Thank You for the fast response, Dietz, I'm talking about instrument positioning. It's very strange, but when i'm placing instrument in any rear position spot and setting it to dry, it's playing from front speaker on oposite side. I'm not new in surround sound and ambisonic (own and love a soundfield st450) . Maybe I'm doing something wrong with configuration. I can send you a short audio example and screen shot to explain what exactly I'm talking about, but it's impossible inside this forum. Best, Arturas

[Dietz]

Hi Arturas,

What's the chosen Output Format? Maybe you're just fooling yourself by using a 5.0 setup within MIR Pro, while Nuendo is expecting 5.1 - which would lead to channel confusion.

Another possible source for confusion are the Figure-8-settings used by many of my Output Format-presets: By nature, a Fig-8 microphone "listens" to the front and the rear.

Knowing Ambisoncis, you are aware of the fact that "panning" a signal in Ambsonics doesn't mean to assign a soundsource to a speaker, but to a virtual soundfield. Hardly any chosen position will render any loudspeaker completely silent. Is this what irritates you?

BTW: Screenshots are best attached by using a free image hosting service like postimage.org and adding the link to your message. Switch to the "enhanced" forum-editor for more and better formatting-options:

Kind regards,

[Arturas P]

Hi Dietz,

It seams that dry signal is comming from acusticaly "wrong" direction due the main mic figure 8 configurations. When switching to cardiods or omnis everything is looking better. I'm not about using dry signals with such wonderfull reverb, it's only my first MIR tests and experiments.

Thanks,

All the best,

Arturas

[Dietz]

I'm not trying to sound lecturing, but it might be a good idea to start in plain stereo to get a feel for MIR Pro, and switch to multi-channel formats later. :-) MIR Pro sounds really, really great in surround, but the underlying concepts and techniques are very different to conventional approaches to virtual spatialization - something which might add unnecessary confusion during the first encounter.

That said, there are tools in MIR Pro's Output Format Editor to push the engine towards a more traditional power-pan behaviour for the dry signals: For a typical stage / audience setup you could lower the dry signal amount in the rear speakers (Ambisonics will always put a certain amout of a signal phase- and volume-mangled into all speakers). Some of the surround Output Formats make use of this option, namely all settings that don't carry the wird "Circle" in their name.

HTH,