Basic question about MIR

[vsler]

I just joined the VSL world. I was reading a bit about MIR. I don't own it. If you take the MIR philosophy to its logical conclusion, shouldn't the tracks be 100% wet? Wouldn't any deviation from that have to be justified on an ad hoc basis? These are purely theoretical questions and have no bearing on whether and when I will buy MIR. Thanks in advance.

[Dietz]

Welcome! That's a valid and interesting question. :-)

If you were strictly aiming for a "natural" sound, you would indeed have to stick to the plain, 100% wet signal of the impulse responses. You wouldn't do this for several reasons when using MIR Pro, though:

- Microphones "hear" differently than the human ear. What we get from maybe 95% of all recorded orchestral (or actually any kind of acoustic) music therefore is a mixture of one "naturally" sounding main microphone and "unnatural", but much more distinct and controllable spot-microphones.

- A technically "good" and acoustically convincing mixture of main and spot-microphones is not easy to achieve, because there will always be runtime-delays and phase-differences between the two of them.

- To avoid these issues, all remaining portions of the direct signal have been removed carefully from all of MIR's impulse responses. It will be replaced by the "ideal" spot microphone (which in case of MIR Pro is the dry, but already perfectly positioned input signal).

- IOW: "100% wet" in MIR Pro means exactly that, and not "raw impulse response".

If you want to dig into it, MIR Pro's manuals are freely available for download in your VSL User Area. :-)

*****

A sidenote: Would you mind to change your forum-nickname, please? "VSLer" shows your dedication, but it might be misleading for the occasional reader. Thanks!

Kind regards,