mpower88 –

I’m not a VSL employee or a software engineer, but I think you are so off-base here.

I got MIR and use it because my hardware Bricastis and Lexicons don’t sound realistic in comparison. In fact they have been sorely neglected in my orchestral template since implementing MIR. While in some cases the hardware may sound 'pleasant', they don't sound realistic. In all cases with MIR, you may optionally append a hardware or software reverb to a MIR venue or even to a 'shortened' MIR venue. Effectively this method uses MIR more as a spatializer and the optional reverb as the reverberant field's tail. 

In fact, I don't think of MIR as a reverb. It's a device to recreate the sound of a venue and the localization of specific instruments and instrument groups within that venue. 

There already is a French company that makes a product somewhat like you describe and I tried it out before purchasing MIR. It has an algorithmic reverb and it sounds sorry next to the realism and dimensionality of MIR.

This seems like a case of ‘Diffferent Strokes for Different Folks’.

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Hi Jack,

Firstly, as I said, it's personal preference...

Second, I haven't heard that French companies attempt at what I have described, but I doubt very much (although I could be wrong) that it is of the scope and depth of MIR. Lets say we compared any standard convolution reverb with MIR - there is no comparison. So I don't know the product you're referring to to make your point, but, I doubt that it is of the scope and level of engineering that I have alluded to in my original post... 

Regarding MIR not being a reverb, I somewhat agree with your point that you're making - in fact largely. My issue is ONLY with the flatness that convolution seems to me personally to tend to lend to anything it touches. Computers, amplifiers, speakers, are all not "real" things, it's not possible to make something sound entirely authentic with current technology unless we have some kind of 3D sound hologram... science fiction for now... so the point is, how do we create something that is aesthetically closest to what we are trying to achieve as possible - for me that is not with convolution reverb, unless you take the convolution as a starting point for an algorithm - and modulate it and then mix those many algorithms in real time with the level of engineering and expertise that has been put into MIR.

As I said, neither method for me personally is ideal both has strengths and weaknesses. There are things I love about MIR that it does which I think are marvellous and absolute breakthroughs, and I can completely understand many people not being able to live without it. For me though, the overall sound of impulses is lacking. Perhaps i'm "wrong" in that, just something I've thought for some time, that I hoped MIR would fix, but it hasn't for me.

Greetings mpower88,

Historically I would agree with you that convolution has been 'flat' sounding. There are lots of examples of this - I don't wish to embarrass the manufacturers by naming them all. 

However the MIR convolution process seems to be unique amongst all the other developers. The careful laser plotting of hundreds (or more) locations within a single venue recorded via  the ambisonic process, and the careful 'stitching' of all these IR's back into the ambisonic process for playback through the MIR interface go exponentially beyond what we've seen before in any convolution product. 

MIR sounds more real than any other spatial/reverberant enhancer out there. Truly any thing beyond it currently would be science fiction. 

Yes, we can ask for more. There is no reason to let developers off the hook. We want more!

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Hi Dietz, Thanks, I did invite that didn't I ;)

To your points: I'm glad to hear the topic is not closed! That's exciting to hear for anyone who knows the history of your company.

I did not say MIR fails miserably to my ears! Quite the contrary it is an amazing success. Rather it solves many problems while not solving some that I had perhaps unconsciously hoped would be solved. Perhaps what I'm trying to say is I'm hoping for the next generation already.

Simply put, I'm wondering why one couldn't with future technology apply algorithms to the impulse responses you already have, to give them more life, variance, and breath. To me, impulses always sound so flat. Although MIR sounds more real, other mixes have more "life" to them, to my ears. It's a difficult thing to articulate really because at the same time I am genuinely amazed at the realism that MIR generates. I hope this makes sense!

This is a very interesting topic, To my ears MIR works very well for some instruments and not so well for others. However, all instruments require an amount of tweaking in order to work in the mix; there is no "one size fits all".

However, whilst I quite like a bit of algorithmic reverb in the mix, I really don't like the sound without some sort of "placement in a room" as well. For example I like the smaller, studio sounds in MIR together with an extra tail for LEX or Bricasti. I know that this is against purist views of how to do things, but as all recording is affected by psychoacoustics, I don't care. [6]

DG

Hi DG, that's similar to what my thinking was, however I found that as soon as you put any signal through an impulse response, it sucks the life out of it. especially with medium to larger mixes.

Interesting topic indeed! What I think is a major missconception of MIR is that you just put your Intruments in the room where you think they belong and except everything to sound great. To be honest: when MIR was anounced I also had high hopes that I wouldn't hve to care for mixing that much any more in the future. I guess it will always take experience and skill to do a great mix, no matter which tools you might have ...

In my opinion, the problem is that most people use samples for a filmmusic kind of sound (even if it might not always be filmmusic they compose). When you use the Vienna Konzerthaus main stage it sounds more like a classical recording. What DG wrote is exactly, what they do on a filmmusic recording most of the time: They record on a rather small stage (compared to a concert stage) and do plenty of manipulation, especially reverb, in the mix.

I am curious, what MIR pro will do in that regard. I hope it to be more a "creative stagesound manipulation tool", where you can tweak each instrument the way you whant it to sound like. E.g., it may be realistic in theory, that every instrument sits in the same recording room, but it is not necessarily the best result for the sound you are after. Maybe you want the brass to be in the konzerthaus, but for the Strings you prefer a small stage with additional reverb to compensate, etc. ...

@mpower88 said:

Hi DG, that's similar to what my thinking was, however I found that as soon as you put any signal through an impulse response, it sucks the life out of it. especially with medium to larger mixes.

In my experience the times that this has happened to me was when the original performance wasn't that great to start with. However, as far as the algorithmic reverb is concerned I use this as a send from the original audio files, not after a convolution insert. I hope that this makes sense. [:$]

DG

@Another User said:

What I think is a major missconception of MIR is that you just put your Intruments in the room where you think they belong and except everything to sound great. To be honest: when MIR was anounced I also had high hopes that I wouldn't hve to care for mixing that much any more in the future. I guess it will always take experience and skill to do a great mix, no matter which tools you might have ...

To a large degree I think MIR can be 'set & forget'. However a lot of us like to expand our spatial/reverberant techniques into what we're hearing in our minds for the mix at hand. Beside, we like playing with things. With the advent of MIR PRo there will be a ton of things we can do creatively with stems and technical tricks. 

I do like mpower88's ideas for future expansion of MIR.

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@Jack Weaver said:

In this regard I was secretly hoping that when MIR Pro comes out that I will still have a regular MIR license and having 2 machines will be able to install MIR on one and MIR Pro on the other to be able to get 2 MIR-type venues simultaneously.  I hadn't run this concept past Dietz yet but on the surface I can't see anything that might stop this from being possible. 

I guess that this will depends on whether or not MIR Pro is an insert. If it is then there will be no reason not to be able to run a different venue per insert.

However, I would imagine that in your case you would need 2 licences to run on two machines, just as you currently do with VE Pro.

DG

DG: your idea of running the algorithm reverb as a send makes sense but aren't you messing up the placement. Sorry I'm not very familiar with MIR's actual operation... maybe I'm getting this wrong. In terms of the mixes, I was referring to quite good mixes - a couple by Dietz I was listening to from the demo zone, compared with some older mixes from others that sound like they have not used convolution reverb, and comparing those with live recordings from film scores.

You could be messing up the placement; exactly as you could when using a multi mike set-up in the real world. So, treat it the same. MIR is the overhead mikes, audio track sends are the sends from the close mikes. There is also no reason that you couldn't use a send from the o/h (MIR) as well. You just have to pan the audio tracks manually for the send, and not for the actual audio track (and this is crucial, or you would mess up the MIR placement)..

DG

Yeah, makes sense in the real world, but how does it sound in the virtual world?

@mpower88 said:

Yeah, makes sense in the real world, but how does it sound in the virtual world?

Using the current MIR loading audio files in Kontakt and then running them in parallel for he audio track sends, it sounds pretty good. Obviously this is no way to work for real, but at least I know what will be possible when MIR Pro is released.

DG

Got any examples we can listen to??

An easy way to do check this yourself is to do a "Dry Only"-version of your piece once you're ready. There's a dedicated button in MIR's Output Channel. Send this to an algorithmic reverb of your choice. Done. :-)

Kind regards,

@mpower88 said:

Got any examples we can listen to??

Unfortunately not at the moment, because I'm in the middle of mixing an album, but I'll try to do a couple of single instrument examples in a couple of week. Meanwhile feel free to post an example where you feel that convolution has destroyed the performance. A before and after would be really useful to hear.

DG

Hi Dietz, I don't have MIR, and I'm on a Mac only set up right now... although I was considering a dual boot system... but for now I'll wait and see. MIR pro looks like a mac version might be coming? If so, I'll look forward to that and what might be possible.

To me, the MIR sound is not flat at all, but far more dimensional than algorhythmic.  It really does what it is said to do - placing the instrument within a space.  I do have Lexicon reverb that is very good but the Lexicon does not have that sense of reality and simply adds a generic reverb.   Also, what was said about having to do complicated mixing tweaks with MIR to sound right is not true.  It does give you an instant mix that is incredible just by dragging the instruments onto the chosen stage.  You can play around with that if you want, but right out of the box it is a great sound. 

I was comparing MIR to Altiverb the other day.  While Altiverb sounds  good,  MIR is like about 100 Altiverbs in one piece of software for any given stage.  You have to be able to position multiple sound sources, without changing the microphone, in order to really use the effect of convolution which is exactly what MIR does.