SYNCHRON RESONANCE

[thomas_hjl]

Hi there,

According to this article

https://vi-control.net/community/threads/synchron-player-custom-mixer-preset-guide.130056/

Seems like Ben from VSL revealed that there are resonances in Synchron libraries, specifically Strings Pro and Elite strings.

This is extracted from the webpage:

"2a. How to find resonance frequencies

Set Q of an EQ band to ~10, pull it up +10-15dB and sweep through the frequencies while playing different notes. If you notice a frequency ringing on almost all keys, you found it.

Adjust the Q to ~3-5 and set the gain depending on the strength of the resonance to -3dB to -10dB.

Hint: These values may differ in an external EQ since the Synchron Player provides an economic no-latency EQ."

To clarify matter, resonance are a physical phenomanol of the room where the recording takes places. It is not easy to hear resonance but when you hear it, you can't unhear it. Clues of resonance include a persistent tone that smear overs multiple notes. More information can be found at :

I am quite surprised. I would have thought resonance frequencies would be removed in something as high end as VSL Synchron libaries? Or is it something that is prevalent due to the multi microphone environment?

As a part time sound engineer, I spend many many hours find and removing resonance with EQ fix and Soothe. This is usually due to home made recordings. But I do not find resonances in even cheap libaries like Impact Soundworks. I am quite taken back that resonance would exist in a high end product from VSL.

I have asked VSL support on this matter twice, since mid december but I have not gotten any reply.

Does anyone have any comment on this?

Thomas

[Ben]

Hi Thomas,

Ben here, the author of the VI-Control post 😊

In short: Resonance frequencies are everywhere and part of the sound. You don't want to remove them most of the times, at least not completely. Also you have to differentiate between instrument- and room-resonances.

Instrument resonances are part of the instruments DNA, but sometimes the load ones can be overwhelming due to the nature of how and where an instrument is being recorded and need taming.
Room resonances are similar to that: They are part of the room's DNA, but can be annoying, especially if a lot is going.
These kind of resonances are being tamed in our mastering process, of course, so you don't have to think about it and simply can use our sample libraries.

The post I wrote tried to demonstrate how to achieve a "cinematic mix" that many virtual instrument users like to use.
For this kind of preset it is important to further decrease resonances. Since they don't stick out I recommended pulling up a narrow EQ band and search for the most prominent ones and pull these down a bit. This creates a softer, but also sometimes more blurry sound signature that you want to have in the "cinematic mix", but not necessarily in other mixes.

For example if you look at my "Arctic" preset (Elite Strings, Strings Pro) you can see that I increased a specific resonance to achieve this icy, cold sound signature that makes this preset special

For the "Muted" preset I increased some, and decreased other resonances to achieve a frequency spectrum similar to how muted strings sound

As you can see it's not a library issue that you have to fix, it's an artistic choice you can make to add your touch to our libraries to get your sound out of them.

Best, Ben

[thomas_hjl]

Hi Ben,

Glad to hear from you. What I am refering to is Room resonances. Take for example CFX. There is quite a strong resonance thing at note C3 at 131hz. You will also find a resonance at D5 at 587hz. I have to use the narrowest Q @ -12db to take them out. I was thinking this is not an easy exercise. Most of these details would just fly over a musician, unless they are sound trained.

I do not claim to be an expert and for sure I know I struggled at times with using VSL Strings Pro and Piano due to resonances. It like a blanket that lightly covers things up. Not a lot, VSL samples are excellent, but it is still present, and in a dense mix, every advantage matters.

Anyway I have checked out your Artic Presets in Strings Pro. It seems like it changes the tone quite a bit. Could you lets us know among the presets, which is the one that is highly oriented towards removing room resonances while leaving the tones intact? This will be helpful for the mix down, since the music is free from junk frequencies which might obscure other instruments. I am asking becuase I am not skillful at finding resonanes quickly! It is laborious for me.

[Ben]

@thomas_hjl said:
Could you lets us know among the presets, which is the one that is highly oriented towards removing room resonances while leaving the tones intact?

Sorry, this is not how I work. I listen to the sound, think about the character I would like to have, and then imagine what has to change in order to achieve this character. I don't think in room or instrument resonances, and most often I don't look for them at all.

@thomas_hjl said:
This will be helpful for the mix down, since the music is free from junk frequencies which might obscure other instruments.

I don't think of resonances as junk, and going in too early and remove too much, especially with high Q's can result in a thin and unbalanced sound as well as introduce artifacts. I touch the EQ on a single instrument to shape the character, adding an EQ on section mix-bus where I now and then remove unwanted signals. If I notice frequencies at this stage I dislike and they come from one instrument I might get back and dial it down a bit, but I don't polish everything before hearing it in the mix first.

[Beat Kaufmann]

EQ against resonances?
Over the years, I can say that you can assume that you don't have to look for resonances in VSL instruments. If you do this anyway, then as an inexperienced user you usually take away "resonances" that actually make up the sound of a particular instrument. If one frequency is then missing, you don't like the sound any better and you start to search further and take away more and more until you finally end up somewhere - usually far away from what you thought you were correcting for the better.

EQ in the mix
A sensible use of the EQ is usually to make an instrument fit the position. Let's take the example of a bassoon that is supposed to play somewhere at the back of the stage in the mix. Individual instruments were often recorded for the sample library not only from a great distance - i.e. usually also from close up, where they sound brilliant and full, as does our bassoon. If it is played at a distance, the lower frequency range and the low mids are usually too strong. The bassoon will therefore sound a little too inflated, thick or fat. To correct the sound, use an EQ and reduce the lower frequencies until the bassoon has the sound that it would actually have from a distance. As Ben said, there are no rules here, and it's almost always not a matter of removing resonances, but simply of optimizing the sound to match the distance. The high frequencies are treated in exactly the same way, because the bassoon doesn't sound as brilliant from a distance as it does up close.
Unfortunately, this requires a relatively large amount of experience, many concert visits and, of course, a monitoring system with which you can make the right sound decisions regarding EQ settings.

EQ as a sound shaper (style)
Ben talks above about using the EQ to set a sound style (e.g. Cinematic). If you want to achieve such things, you first have to think about what cinematic means, for example: Everything should appear even further away and at the same time even bigger and more powerful. So distance, power, pressure and size are required. It quickly becomes clear that a few more bumps in two or three EQs are probably not enough. Unless you have a lot of experience with adjusting individual instruments or entire ensembles, you probably won't achieve successful results right away. But as always, it helps to analyze “real” recordings carefully and ask yourself what the strings sound like in a cinematic mix and where they come from (depth of space), and also the woodwinds, the brass, the percussion, the choir, etc. After that it's exciting to experiment with your own samples and try to get - for example - the choir just as far away and still as powerful.

Hopefully all of the above shows you that it is very rare to have to look for bad resonances in VSL samples. If in doubt, it is better to skip this work altogether. On the other hand, sound adjustment based on the distance where an instrument plays on the virtual stage is almost a must.

[Helmholtz]

thomas_hjl, there's another important aspect to what Ben and Beat have already covered nicely above. It's this:- you need to know whether the 'resonances' are in the original audio recordings or are coming from your own audio reproduction setup.

If you're listening on speakers, is your room acoustically treated up to a standard at which you can be sure your room is not contributing its own resonances to the sound you're listening to? And what about your speakers - are they top quality studio-grade monitors or are they mediocre quality wannabe studio monitors that contribute various resonances of their own?

If you're listening on headphones, did you know there is no such thing as flat frequency-response headphones? Not only do all headphones have a multitude of peaks and dips in their response curves, but also headphone manufacturers typically add spectral colourations to their headphones in order to make them sound subjectively 'better' than those of the competition.

I'm aware of the often repeated advice that you should not mix on headphones; but I do. For a long time I've been using the SoundID Reference app from Sonarworks which very finely corrects the frequency response of my various heaphones according to averages of measured response curves for my specific headphone models. Also I drive my headphones from a Neve headphone reference amp, which takes excellent care of keeping the power amp unaffected by frequency-dependent impedance changes in the headphones. If I wanted to be really sure about my monitoring headphones, I'd buy them directly from Sonarworks, each provided with an individually-measured calibration curve for use with my SoundID Reference app.

But since I'm not in the business of Audiometry, nor much bothered by the resonance-zapping 'fetish' that seems to have popped up time and time again over several decades, I'm pretty satisfied with my audio reproduction setup and with the sound I get from my VSL libraries.

[thomas_hjl]

Dear all,

I read and re-read and re-read again all your comments. I even took notes.

Ben, I get what you are trying to say, it is an artistic decision.

Beat, it is like you flipped a light switch. I never though of cinematic mix as one that is back and further out and yet powerful at the same time. I realized close mics seems to not get me this cinematic style. Thanks for the tip.

Helmholtz, yes I have investated sonarworks. Pretty cool, I use Neuman KH80dps with KH750. But it is interesting you mentioned that headphones have a unique peaks on their own. I typically use Bayer DT1990 for all my clinical listening.

Thank you Ben, Beat Kaufmann and Helmholtz! You guys gave me an invaluable course in using VSL sample. Enough for me to write a meaningful 'thesis' out of it. Alright guys, back to doing music, I guess I will pause the resonance witch hunt.