@Dietz said:

... so I can't see any unwanted “coloring” here, thus there's nothing to “suppress”, like Beat implies. Quite contrary -...

Dear Dietz

On the one hand is the theory and on the other hand are results.

The first reason why MIR (and the venues) "colours" the music: Since VSL produce their demos exclusively trough/with MIR all of them sound more or less the same way - the MIR-way. The huge versatility of the dry sample-demos in the earlier days disappeared completely. This means for me: MIR has its own sound, given by the venues and the way it mixes instruments - always the same way. Funny is, that even if we have lots of parameters we can recognice whether a mix is done by MIR or not. The second and main reason why MIR colours the sound are the venues. Those venues are calculated a lot of times into the samples. Sometimes we have results which are not the ones we wanted to have... Please listen once more to two examples for showing these colouring-mixing facts:

A) Realsound - Orchestra trough MIR So what on earth added this boxy or cheesy sound? The samples itself sound way more natural.

B) DS-Cellos - from an official VSL-Demo...  Now listen to this Cello please. Which one sounds more free from added "colours"? Who or what added the potty sound into the DS-Cellos? It is not me who imply anything, it is MIR and its venues which applies such (sometimes extrem) colours. Each typical "room-colour" is probably OK and the sound we want, but what shall we do when it gets too much? ...as we can make out in the two upper examples?

I always use the EQ within your Convolution Reverbs for correcting (suppress) the main colours of a certain used venue. Maybe you could do this as well a bit for the venues of MIR (by default). Then the "common user" will get even better results with MIR without doing anything and in any case - even he use a 100% wet ratio.

All the best

Beat

[I just wrote a lengthy answer which my computer decided to destroy before I could post it, so I'll make it short now.]

Beat, of course you're entitled to dislike MIR, and you can even call it “cheesy” on this forum (run by audio professionals who devoted over a decade to its development, BTW) – but please stop presenting opinions as a matter of fact, and don't spread misleading information.

@Beat Kaufmann said:

I always use the EQ within your Convolution Reverbs for correcting (suppress) the main colours of a certain used venue. Maybe you could do this as well a bit for the venues of MIR (by default). Then the "common user" will get even better results with MIR without doing anything and in any case - even he use a 100% wet ratio.

 It has been said and written over and over again, both in the manuals as well as in these forums: MIR isn't meant to be used ”100% wet”. Never ever.

 The “common user” is an artist, hopefully, who is able to sculpt his/her music in every aspect. While MIR Pro has a nice, intuitive GUI, it was never meant to be just an easy solution for the heedless, but a deep, rewarding new approach to orchestral mixing. Neverthelss we did “a bit” 🤔 of preset work for MIR Pro, too - we created several thousand of them, strictly speaking, for individual instruments as well as for all available MIR Venues:

Vienna MIR PRO Venue Presets

RoomPack 2 – Herb's Teldex Presets for MIR PRO and VI, and  RoomPack 2 – Herb's Teldex Presets for MIR PRO and VI PRO 2

MIRx Mode – Instrument and Venue Presets for Vienna MIR Pro

 … apart from that I'm working on MIRx presets for two additional MIR Venues, one of them brand new (and again very different sounding). That's another 700 tailor-made presets.

Looking at the countless mixes and productions done all around the globe with MIR and MIR Pro during the years, it's quite daring to call all of them “cheesy” and “potty” (? … did you mean to say “boxy”?). While I know that your taste differs from mine  considerably, I think even you could hardly call the sound of this piece anything else than amazing (at least that's what Alan Meyerson said when he heard it): 

Dimension Strings Complete - Trailer 

… and I'm sure that you would hear dozens of other great examples, too, either on VSL's homepage or elsewhere - if you would just allow yourself to find them. 

Regards,

Thank you Dietz for your detailed response. Things are more clear in my head now for sure. I like MIR PRO a lot, and it's tough to go back to the old way of mixing for me. In terms of colorization, I realized a user can end up adding his own "coloring" by incorrectly applying a room eq to instruments, or a character preset. I think this just shows the great flexibility MIR PRO has when somebody wants to sculpt the sound to the sound they are looking for.

Beat, thank you also for your detailed response. Personally, I like all the examples you showed (MIR ones and non MIR ones), I just don't have the ears you have.

I think to better judge the product, you need to own/use it, and see what attributes you need to tweak to get the sound you are looking for. If you do this, I'd be very interested in getting your MIR template. 

Also, on the non-MIR examples you showed, I realized there is a longer reverb tail which adds to the pleasing sounds.

Dietz, maybe as a future feature for MIR PRO, it would be great for the ability to add an algo tail from MIR directly. I see myself adding this almost always (sometimes increasing the tail to 6 seconds). So would be nice if I don't have to do this with MIRacle.

And yes, I almost always tweak the dry/wet ratio, even for individual instruments.

Cheers,

-Nektarios

Kind of a strange thread.

MIR adds coloration to the sound - well that's quite the shock, isn't it. Why else would you want to put your sounds in a "room", if not to add the, uh, coloration of that very room? 😕 And what's the "natural" sound of an instrument anyway? It's gotta be played or recorded somewhere. And even completely dry samples still get "colored" by the used mics ... so, I don't know, it's a strange discussion to me.

I can see the possibility of misusing presets (which I have done myself), which would introduce this notion of "coloring" that is not desired. Which is why, I think, a character eq is not exposed to the user.

How did I misuse presets? I took the room eq preset (i.e. cello) of one venue, and applied it to another.

@nektarios said:

I can see the possibility of misusing presets (which I have done myself), which would introduce this notion of "coloring" that is not desired. Which is why, I think, a character eq is not exposed to the user.

@Another User said:

The “common user” is an artist, hopefully, who is able to sculpt his/her music in every aspect. While MIR Pro has a nice, intuitive GUI, it was never meant to be just an easy solution for the heedless, but a deep, rewarding new approach to orchestral mixing.

By "heedless" here, you mean people who'd rather work on composing scores than mixing and mastering? Heedless people like Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky?

Dietz, 

I was thinking, maybe MIR PRO can introduce the ability to increase the reverb tail of a venue given the characteristics of a venue. MIR PRO already does this by means of reducing the tail if you wish. For example, on the Mystic spaces, we can reduce the tail which is 8 seconds long, but as a result, this results in all different sound for this particular venue. I would love this feature reversed, where any venue can have the tail increased to achieve the desired sound. This would be so helpful.

@tek0010 said:

The "natural" sound would be the air-pressure wave emitted by the instrument in an anechoic chamber:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_chamber

It was a rhetorical question. Usually, sample libraries aren't anechoic.

My impression was always that VSL was recorded in an anechoic chamber (or very close to it). Other cheap sample libraries usually are not.

Vienna Instruments aren't recorded in an anechoic chamber; far from it. There is quite a lot of "room" on the samples. It is easy to hear the difference when you put them side by side with samples that are recorded that way. If I get a chance next week, I'll put a little audio example together so that you can hear what I'm talking about (sorry, no time before then)

DG

Thank you DG! Btw, the reason I even started this thread, is because of a sample mix you posted a few months back for one of my Dimension Stings pieces (playing a chord progression). I remember you sent me the EQ settings so I can apply them myself in MIR, but it never quite sounded the same yours. Unfortunately, you didn't use MIR PRO to create it. The version I have now sounds much better (with the use of VSL EQ presets), but I could never quite make it sound like your mix.

@DG said:

Vienna Instruments aren't recorded in an anechoic chamber; far from it. There is quite a lot of "room" on the samples. It is easy to hear the difference when you put them side by side with samples that are recorded that way. If I get a chance next week, I'll put a little audio example together so that you can hear what I'm talking about (sorry, no time before then)

DG

Here is the piece I am currently working on (still in draft mode):

Eastern Dream.mp3

It's MIR PRO/Dimension Strings/Chamber Strings/Horns 8/etc.

(I also use a non VSL instrument, the Ukrainian Bandura).

Here is my VE PRO 5 Project File:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33556625/Eastern_Dream_All_06_27_2015.viframe64

Any suggestions or improvements would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

-Nektarios

Hello all

Convolution Reverbs use Impulse Responses. IRs are acoustic copies of rooms. All! rooms have their resonances, room modes... called "colours" in this thread.

Here is a short instruction how to equalize those colours of a certain room - using the Convolution Reverbs of the SUITE EFFECTs of VSL...

http://www.beat-kaufmann.com/vitutorials/vi-tips--tricks-4/index.php (No. 36.)

All the best

Beat

Thank you Beat! Very good article. It's interesting because right before I read your post I decided to do an EQ-Match on the piece I posted earlier. I basically matched the EQ with an orchestral piece I like. I was amazed at the difference! Here it is now with the EQ matched:

Eastern Dream (Matched EQ) mp3.

I can def hear a difference. The matched one sounds cleaner and less muddy for sure.

I also used CurveEQ.

I can certainly hear a difference as well on your example Beat.