How to go insane with your home studio, and MIR PRO!

[cgernaey]

I have the absolute prescription for anyone who wants an evening of insanity at your own expense!  All you need is MIR PRO, VSL Instruments, a DAW, and beer....

So last night, I was making great progress on an orchestral piece (hell with MIR PRO all you really need to do is ride the modwheel, run expression and then touch up volume control automation lol).  So what!  i was proud of myself, anyway back to reality, err insanity.

The piece was coming so nicely I decided to have a cheat night from my workouts, and order a large pizza and snag some beer (but not just any beer, the good schtufff).  Ah yes, calories.  After consuming half of this pizza and a few of the said beers (oh mama) I am ready to go!

Back to the DAW and press play.  Absolute bliss (still needs some mastering etc but man it's coming nicely).  So much so, hell let's call mom!  After I have her attention and play it back to her, I receive the desired oooo's and aaahhh's.  That's lovely dear.  Geez, thanks mom :).

While I am at it, since my mood is so good let's talk to the wife who is 2500 miles away!  SURE is a great idea!  Now you can play it back over Skype for her!  Wow darling, that sounds so real god job!  *shrugs*, it was nothing dear.  All in the hands...  *wink*  (on a side note have your mood side barred by an hour of troubleshooting her PC Problems, next time re-think this option in the future)...

Lastly, decide to hook up your live gear (your enormous manly speakers and techo gear that wows all your buddies).  By this time you have managed to consume a good portion of the beer stash.  The song is even more incredible now.  Now end the night by hooking everything back up the way it was because as dad taught you, it's best to clean up after you're all done.  Gotcha, thanks dad!  And then sleep like a baby so proud of your composition.

Is it really morning?  Crap, I have to work.  Maybe I should call in sick today.  Alright I will go in.  Why not take a copy of the mixdown with you so you can listen at work to see how it sounds.  Wow even here it sounds great!  Can't wait to return home to finish this up!

Arrive home after a long days work and decide to relax and work on this piece to finish last touch ups.  As you're listening, you begin to chug the last few beers you had from the day prior.  Why not, they were there!

I finally finished the last piece of automation for my piano track and then noticed something strange.  That's odd, the violin is playing on the right speaker and the Cello on the left.  How the hell can this be?  Let's be smart and open up MIR PRO and start the troubleshooting!  Oh yea, you got this!

Hmm, nope.  The instruments all appear on the stage as they were before.  Let's look in the DAW and all over MIR PRO for some magical way to invert the process and make the two instruments flip sides.  Hmm, nope can't find any magical thingie mabobbers for that setting.  This is really strange.  After 1 hour of looking around and listening, I realized holy hell!  ALL the instruments are doing it (chug chug, dam this beers good).  Now I am REALLY confused, or this beer has some amazing side effects!

So after 4 hours of searching, digging, researching forums and technical reasons why it is doing it I am about to strangle myself.  I have now rebooted, reverted my old saved projects from the last 3 weeks, to no avail.  I mean come on I am one smart feller but this one has me stumped!!  What could it possibly be!!!

Mere seconds before writing to Dietz and team on the forums about my stupified moment (which seems to be caused by MIR PRO losing its mind) I look over at my trusty Lavry DAC's and think, hmm.  Is it possible you reversed the two balanced output cables to your monitors (followed by much beer giggling)?

Well what do you know, it works again!  Now I just have to remember all the things I destroyed trying to figure out that stupid mishap!  I am so upset at all of this, I think I will have another beer!

Thanks for listening and letting me waste 5-10 minutes of your time with a completely useless, nonhelpful in any way musically post!

Have a great evening!!  (where the hell did I put the bottle opener)...

Maestro2be

[DG]

A timely reminder I think. today's job (for me) is removing and cleaning the cables in and around the desk. Must remember to plug them in correctly aftewards... [:$]

DG

[mboc]

When I was a tech at some major recording studios, I would frequently receive frantic calls from assistant engineers concerning "blown" gear: dead power supply, fried components, "now the session is screwed because everything will sound different; the engineer is going to flip out!"

After playing along a few times, I learned one simple but essential troubleshooting lesson: go to the back of the gear and make sure the power cable is fully seated. 90% of the time this was the problem. I came to enjoy calmly walking into a session, going to the back of the rack, reseating the power cable, and walking out with a smug smile [:)]

Start with the basics. If channels are swapped and you recently messed with the wiring, it's probably as simple as the connections and not a ghost in the machine. (Having said that, I was once very confused with channel-swapping and MIR Pro. Realized that with certain mic polarities, instruments placed behind will be inverted. I believe this is in the manual.)

However, if you do find that there is a ghost in the machine, when applicable, you can try using what we called "Fonzie skills." Bang on the gear with cool confidence and moderate force. If you have good studio karma, it will work. Warning: I've seen many good men and women, (and gear,) die due to a lack of good studio karma, so make sure you establish a positive and respectful relationship with your gear. Don't be quick to blame it and forgive it when it fails.

For what it's worth, doing all of this in a less-than-sober state is standard operating procedure in most studio environments...at least the ones I've been in [:)]

Mike

[Dietz]

Hi Maestro2be,

don't despair - everybody runs into situations like that every now and then (... with or without beer 😉 ....). I for one wrote a nice, lengthy answer to your message yesterday, but I clicked the wrong button before I posted it, and it was gone 😛 ... I switched off the computer and went to bed, after that.

What I actually wanted to say:

@cgernaey said:

[...] Let's look in the DAW and all over MIR PRO for some magical way to invert the process and make the two instruments flip sides.  Hmm, nope can't find any magical thingie mabobbers for that setting. [...]

There are several ways to flip the left and right sides of a mix within MIR Pro:

1.  The most straight-forward method: Load VE Pro's Matrix Mixer plugin into its Master Bus and change the routing of the first two channels (... you will have to use the latest software update of VE Pro which introduced this convenient new plugin).

2.+3. The most elegant methods (very "MIR-way-of-thinking-style"): Open MIR Pro's Output Format editor and either change the angles of the individual capsules of the Main Microphones to the opposite sides, or open the Matrix view of the Output format and change the routing there.

4. The brute-force method (in stand-alone mode only): Open VE Pro's Preferences and change the hardware output assignements.

5. The most convenient method: Add Vienna Suite's Powerpan to the Master Bus and click "L/R Swap". 😉

... apart from that, it's very likely that your DAW offers some tools and methods to achieve the goal, too.

HTH & kind regards (... look! I didn't delete this message _again_ ;-D ...),

[Cyril Blanc]

Another way to go insane : Thinking your cables where unplug by a ghost !

Since VEP5, each time that I boot the right channel of my Motu system and a few other more has no sound out

To fix this, after you lauch Logic and VEP 5 go in AUDIO MIDI SETUP select the Audio device you use

You will see that some of the volumes are at -96, you just need to put them to zéro

Close Audio Midi Setup otherwise you will have crash and hangs the next time you boot

If somebody at VSL could look at this it will be great !

Best

Cyril