can you provide an audio sample of the current mix?  It might be easier to help then.

There are two absolutely fundamental techniques that you may have already tried, but did not mention:

1. adjusting the wet-dry mix.

2. Using power-panning, reducing ALL solo instruments to mono.  Then, place the mono signal in the desired stereo position.

A third trick is less important, but based on what you said, it may be relevant:

3. Using EQ to simulate "bass loss" on many of the instruments, particularly brass.  Personally I found this was more important than reducing high frequencies.  I can't remember exactly, but I think my generic brass EQ is starts around 800 Hz - 1 KHz, and goes around 3-4 dB per octave to reduce the bass.  doing this also helps the woodwinds too, especially the flute.

Do any of these suggestions help?

The above reply is good - but I wouldn't reduce most instruments to totally mono that's just me I think the stereo information is important in there. IF you are going to mono them, I recommend muting one channel instead of using powerpan because you are blending the two channels together, a more accurate representation of a mono recording of the instrument is to simply mute one channel as though it was only recorded with one mic to start with. Since they were recorded quite close together, that makes sense to me. Second to that, from what I have seen so far - get MIR PRO! It will solve all those problems and in a fast and easy to use efficient interface. VSL library was designed to be used with something like MIR Pro in the future (which is now) - all instruments recorded at I think the same distance, on a specially built dry stage. This allows maximum flexibility later on, but of course with flexibility comes more work to be done - they're not ready out of the box. But MIR seems to solve all of that perfectly - you get the flexibility and ease of use at the same time.

For bass reduction I have dropped as much as 12db off certain instruments to help place them up to as high as 1khz. They are recorded in all their full glory in this library, so you have to do that to place things. Listen to the same instruments in recordings you like and listen to their freq distribution.

I'm sure there's now a better way to do it, but in Logic you have to go into preferences and I *think* turn off universal track option, then you can have independent faders and panners for each side of a Left and Right stereo pair, then you mute one. In Cubase I don't know how to do it. Anyone else know? I don't use this technique just keep everything in stereo (even if you reduce the stereo width quite considerably but don't go completely to mono using the powerpanner)

Ok thanks actually I'm going to check that out myself. VSL's Powerpan is quite a bit more powerful than the Cubase panner but yes it does have that function. As for mono instruments - I suppose I just never saw any particular gain in doing that, but I can see how it would be useful. It's definitely preferable (to me anyway) to use one channel of the stereo mix if you are going for a completely mono sound.

@mpower88 said:

[...] It's definitely preferable (to me anyway) to use one channel of the stereo mix if you are going for a completely mono sound.

... which is not necessarily a good idea, as you may lose signal components that are not inherent to both sides. It might be obvious in cases like grand piano, marimba, vibraphone, or any kind of ensemble. But the same is true (in a less obvious) way for any kind of instrument that isn't recorded exactly from the symmetry axis.

Well there you have it, perhaps that's why I never liked the sound of doing that myself. IMO, you can go close to mono with the power pan, but not mono, and Dietz now says using one channel of the stereo pair is not advisable which in my experience is usually right - although I wasn't thinking of piano but more specifically individual instruments, clarinet, oboe, etc. Obviously I don't think you would want to do that for any ensemble parts or larger instruments like piano.

@mpower88 said:

[...] I wasn't thinking of piano but more specifically individual instruments, clarinet, oboe, etc. Obviously I don't think you would want to do that for any ensemble parts or larger instruments like piano.

Of course not - I was just trying to give some exaggerated examples to make clear what I'm talking about. 😊

 What is there difference in the audible results when using the VE Pro Power Panner vs the Power Panner which comes with Vienna Suite?

Mahlon

As long as you use the same features (and the same pan-law!), there should be none. VS Power Panner has more options, though (Pre/Post Balance, Phase Switches etc.) and of course better visualisation.

OTOH, VE Pro 5 offers full-fledged surround-panning, which VS can't do.

HTH,

You know what, I think Dietz would better answer that. I tend to use the panners in VE Pro and suite fairly simply - for panning and playing around with the stereo width - it In fact I generally don't use the Suite panner, I find the one in VE Pro perfectly good. The one in Vienna Suite comes with more options, you can control the left right balance at the input and the output of the panner. Why don't you download the trial and try it out.

And MIR of course removes any real need for any of that, taking care of positioning and stereo width all within MIR...

@mpower88 said:

And MIR of course removes any real need for any of that, taking care of positioning and stereo width all within MIR...

[Y]

 Thanks for the answer. I've mostly used the VE Pro (4) version so far, but the VS version is visually easier. Sometimes I can't tell if there's a difference in sound because I'm deaf in one ear. So, a lot of my panning has to be done almost intellectually, as there's no stereo for me.

I need to try out MIR. Looks and sounds good to me. But I just bought VS, so have to replenish the purse first.

Mahlon