Wow that was a cool piece of music. William, you said you did no EQ'ing or anything eh? That's impressive. A very emotional and grand finish by the way.
I know I very much love MIR for what it can do. To me it was worth the money because of the time it has saved me. An interesting thing that I like to do is sit at my DAW and import a live recording of string symphonies, load up a venue of MIR and then try to achieve that sound (this means sometimes lots of changes of the venue and the string sections I choose since I own them all). I will tell you that it is scary how many times I have been able to reproduce it so perfectly, that I have to drive the modwheel (velocity crossfade) up to the maximum just to make my Appassionata Strings and Orchestral strings scream at me to know they are there. They blend so absolutely perfectly with the real recording, that I am baffled how people come on these forums saying the strings don't sound like real strings. Either my ears are completely gone at this point or those people are truly brain dead and tone deaf. It is simply a lie to say these strings don't sound real. The key understanding I have to try to adjust to is that they don't always sound like "live strings", they sound like "recorded strings". There is a difference. It takes much more ability than I posses to create that true live sound. Beat does it magically with Chamber Strings. I just don't have the understanding yet to do what he does on those (even with MIR). It's not the application, it's the dummy who's driving it...
I own all the Symphobias (which I use the least of all), LASS and many others and I can tell you that 8-9 out of 10 times, in every case VSL strings were the ones that matched the recordings to a perfection. Sometimes, when I find a string section that seems to be "brighter" and my Orchestral Strings are not quite bringing out that added brightness, I layer one section of LASS on them and viola, perfection. I could probably do this with the Vienna Suite I own but I have to be honest that I am completely lost as to why or how to apply the plug-ins. I am 90% musician, 9% moron, 1% sound engineer.
Thank God for MIR. Takes the complication out of my templates, but I am still trying to learn how to create a much more dry experience (while removing the blips in between the notes to create that much closer intimate dry sound but still lush and smooth).
Maestro2be