MIR - 'Natural Sound' and volume settings

[knievel]

Hi me again! [:$]

Not sure I'm reading the MIR manual right here:

"Ideally, using the Natural Volume option throughout a complete arrangement will make many – if not all – further adjustments of
individual volume settings unnecessary. Of course this means that most instruments will seem unusually quiet at first glance. Just make sure
to raise MIR's Master Volume in the Global Output Channel (8) to compensate for that. Ticked by default, this option can be deselected individually. The Instrument will then appear on stage with its volume set to the usual 0dB".

Sooo...

After ticking the 'use natural volume' check box in each instrument when loading up each instrument, I kind of left the volumes alone, but just earlier noticed some individual volumes were waaay different to others. E.g -25db [celesta], -17.99db [bassoon], -9.5db [trumpet], then some as high as 3db [timpani]!

I suppose of course other factors will then come into play:

1. Where I have positioned the instruments on stage
2. The dynamic I have given the instrument in my Sibelius score, i.e. fff, pp, sfz etc

But is this kind of how it should work??

Yours forever grateful,

knievel

EDIT: I'm using the MIR demo and am in the Mozart Hall, mic position 3rd row.

[Dietz]

Knievel, the answer is quite simple: We try to record all instruments at ideal technical level (regarding the mic preamps and the A/D-converters). This leads to the fact that also a comparatively quiet instrument like a solo-violin alone will sound great, but it will be _much_ too loud in direct comparison to a tam-tam or a horn ensemble, for example.

The "Natural Volume"-option of MIR's Instrument Profiles takes this into account. Ideally, you would be able to add instrument by instrument on a stage, having them in healthy balance already. Of course this also means that we need the headroom for those very loud instruments, thus most other ones have to be much softer.

To make good use of this feature, you would complete your ensemble on stage, make a Group for all of them (with "Volume" selected as only grouped parameter) and bring them up to a starting level that fits your arrangement. I say "starting level", because like on a real stage the decision of an instrument's volume depends a lot on the acoustical circumstances (and the music your'e working on) and is finally up to you - the conductor / arranger / user! :-)

HTH,

[Stephen W. Beatty]

Let's see if I got this straight. 1. Set instruments on stage to form orchestra. 2. In the Instrument panel press E and group all the instruments into Orchestral 1and select volume to control. 3. Set the output faders to 0 db and play composition. Watching the output meters window note where clipping occurs and decrease the volume of the whole orchestra group in the instruments strip. Now the whole composition plays using the appropriate relative volumes. Is it my imagination or does the key velocity of each instrument in the sequencer enable one to fine tune the presence of an instrument? Also if you assign the whole instrument list to the ochestral group can you place additional instruments from the list on the stage without regrouping the whole setup? 

Awesome!

Stephen W. Beatty

[knievel]

Hi Dietz,

This is great.

You can really get into just composing, instead of spending hours trying to tweak faders and knobs. The natural sound feature combined with the grouping is a nice touch - if I want a bit more ummph (technical term there!) from the brass group, I can just up the volume a tad and it still be all balanced within the orchestra sound stage itself.

It's all fab! [:D]

PS... One little thing that might be nice for a future update, is perhaps to have an option to have pop-up text when I hover the mouse over an instrument, to quickly tell me the 'name, group' of each instrument, rather than clicking either the instrument or my list of VI instruments.

[forgive me if this is in the full version of MIR]

Thanks again!

knievel

[Dietz]

[quote=knievel][...] PS... One little thing that might be nice for a future update, is perhaps to have an option to have pop-up text when I hover the mouse over an instrument, to quickly tell me the

Right now, the Instrument Channel switches to the instrument under the cursor, as long as you don't have one instrument selected. We came up with this solution to keep the GUI as clean as possible.

But we know that any additional information can be helpful when you're working on a big arrangement, so it might very well be that we implement something like you suggested in the future (... we are discussing new GUI elements since quite some time now ;-) ...)

Kind regards,

[Dietz]

@Another User said:

Also if you assign the whole instrument list to the ochestral group can you place additional instruments from the list on the stage without regrouping the whole setup?

Awesome!

Stephen W. Beatty

Yes, you may add Instruments later. Just remember the overall offset you applied to all other instruments' volumes. ... or did I misunderstand you question ...?

Kind regards,