@nektarios said:

... the impression he or she will get is "Oh, let me click this to get a natural sound, natural balance).

That impression would be correct, assuming "natural" means the resultant air-pressure waves would be objectively the same as the air-pressure waves generated by a live performance in the real physical world.

If you confuse -- as Kenneth does -- "natural" to mean "artistically preferable", of course there's no button that can read the minds of your listeners to find what they prefer to hear.

What natural volume is to me is this for example: I go to some hall and there is an ensemble there but there are no microphones whatsoever. The sound coming out of this ensemble is natural (irregardles if it's pleasant or not). Like this one: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33556625/Music/Chamber%20Orchestra%203.m4a

Just my iPhone recording. There are no mics, just the natural sound of the instruments and hence volume. So I expect that is what natural volume tries to simulate.

@nektarios said:

... the impression he or she will get is "Oh, let me click this to get a natural sound, natural balance).

That impression would be correct, assuming "natural" means the resultant air-pressure waves would be objectively the same as the air-pressure waves generated by a live performance in the real physical world.

If you confuse -- as Kenneth does -- "natural" to mean "artistically preferable", of course there's no button that can read the minds of your listeners to find what they prefer to hear.

BachRules, I tend to agree with Kenneth in many points. You can't ignore perception. One example that comes to mind is this: Have you ever watched the weather person say: It will be -5 degrees but feel like -17 with the wind. How do they measure the  "it will feel like" part if it can vary from person to person?

@nektarios said:

... the impression he or she will get is "Oh, let me click this to get a natural sound, natural balance).

That impression would be correct, assuming "natural" means the resultant air-pressure waves would be objectively the same as the air-pressure waves generated by a live performance in the real physical world.

If you confuse -- as Kenneth does -- "natural" to mean "artistically preferable", of course there's no button that can read the minds of your listeners to find what they prefer to hear.

What natural volume is to me is this for example: I go to some hall and there is an ensemble there but there are no microphones whatsoever. The sound coming out of this ensemble is natural (irregardles if it's pleasant or not). Like this one: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33556625/Music/Chamber%20Orchestra%203.m4a

Just my iPhone recording. There are no mics, just the natural sound of the instruments and hence volume. So I expect that is what natural volume tries to simulate.

If you set your volume faders all to the the same level, turn on Natural Volume, and use only velocity (and instrument-positioning in the MIR room) to control loudness, your will get combinations of timbres limited to the combinations which are possible in the real world. This optional limitation is the purpose of Natural Volume. When you want real-world-possible timbre-combinations, allign your faders, turn on Natural Volume, adjust velocity (and instrument-positioning in the MIR room) to countrol loudness, and leave the faders alone.

When you reduce velocity on your drum to 60, you are taking advantage of Natural Volume. When you alternatively leave velocity at 100 but attenuate by 8 db, you're breaking the don't-touch-your-faders rule and you end up with a combination of timbres which isn't possible in the real world. In the real world, you can tell the drummer to hit the drum less hard. That's like reducing velocity to 60. In the real world, you can't tell the drummer to hit the drum 8 db quieter while maintaining a constant timbre. That's physically impossible in the natural world; that's what you get when you leave velocity at 100 but lower the fader 8db.

None of this is to say what your listeners want to hear, or how you should do things. Just describing the objective science of the Natural-Volume button.

Yeap, I get it now. I wasn't aware of this before. It's just that the loudest velocity sounds a bit too load in the case of the bass drum.

Thanks!

@nektarios said:

BachRules, I tend to agree with Kenneth in many points. You can't ignore perception. One example that comes to mind is this: Have you ever watched the weather person say: It will be -5 degrees but feel like -17 with the wind. How do they measure the  "it will feel like" part if it can vary from person to person?

But this thread is about the number that shows up on the thermometer, and that number is unaffected by your perception of the temperature; and so, human perception remains totally irrelevant for the intents and purposes of this thread.

If you really, really are unable to ignore perception, you will believe that your perception of the temperature will alter the number that shows on your thermometer. That would be egomaniacal, to imagine your perception alters the functioning of thermometers. But hey, we live in a world where authorities imprisoned Galileo for claiming the earth isn't the center of the solar system, after all.

By bringing human perception into this discussion, the most you can achieve is continued misunderstanding of the Natural-Volume button on your software. Suit yourself. Natural Volume isn't about what you perceive. It's about the objective motion of your speakers and objective waves of pressure passing through the air. How your brain perceives those pressure-waves is none of Natural Volume's business.

Now I'll leave you and Kenneth to agree that human perception is relevant to the functioning of the Natural Volume button on your software. I concede the election: The MIR Natural-Volume button functions however you and Kenneth decide by consensus. The machine-code compiled inside MIR will alter itself to accomodate your perception.

I have no more time for this lunacy, as I'd have no more time for egomaniacs believing their perception of the temperature alters the numbers a thermometer displays.

I get you and know where you are coming from. The point I was making is that natural volume may need further refinement so that you are not left on having to use your perception and make adjustments. 

@nektarios said:

I get you and know where you are coming from. The point I was making is that natural volume may need further refinement so that you are not left on having to use your perception and make adjustments. 

Natural Volume simulates a natural orchestra. Composers for real orchestra have to decide which dynamics to assign each note (ppp, fff, or somewhere in between); and true to that model, Natural Volume leaves VSL-composers with the burden of deciding which velocity to assign each note.

There could be an added layer of technology which assigns dynamics (velocity) automatically, but VSL's Natural Volume was never intended to do that aspect of composition for you.

I'd buy software to compose my dynamics for me automatically, if I liked the results. But hopefully they'd name it Artistic Dynamics, so as not to confuse it with Natural Volume, which is a science, not an art.

I agree, and it would be ideal if natural volume is not just a guide. Personally, I would take it a step further when it comes to EQ as well, but that is for another thread.

@BachRules said:

If you set your volume faders all to the the same level, turn on Natural Volume, and use only velocity (and instrument-positioning in the MIR room) to control loudness, your will get combinations of timbres limited to the combinations which are possible in the real world.

No, that is not correct, because it ignores the differing dynamic range of instruments. There is probably one dynamic at which this is true, but as I have no idea as to how the Natural Volumes were calculated, I have no idea which dynamic it would be.

DG

@DG said:

No, that is not correct, because it ignores the differing dynamic range of instruments. There is probably one dynamic at which this is true, but as I have no idea as to how the Natural Volumes were calculated, I have no idea which dynamic it would be.

DG

I have always assumed that it is based on the maximum level ot the loudest dynamic (maximum SPL of that instrument),  but the huge diversity of dynamic ranges per instrument makes things somewhat more complex, especially when a piece may not be utilising that dynamic range.

If I ever need to make large changes to what Natural Volume has set,  I can't help feeling that I must be doing something  a little unnatural.

@DG said:

No, that is not correct, because it ignores the differing dynamic range of instruments. There is probably one dynamic at which this is true, but as I have no idea as to how the Natural Volumes were calculated, I have no idea which dynamic it would be.

DG

I have always assumed that it is based on the maximum level ot the loudest dynamic (maximum SPL of that instrument).........

You may well be correct, but the problem with that assumption is that an orchestra almost never plays at its loudest dynamic, so if it is true, then in real terms the Natural Volume will almost never be right.

DG

@BachRules said:

If you set your volume faders all to the the same level, turn on Natural Volume, and use only velocity (and instrument-positioning in the MIR room) to control loudness, your will get combinations of timbres limited to the combinations which are possible in the real world.

No, that is not correct, because it ignores the differing dynamic range of instruments. There is probably one dynamic at which this is true, but as I have no idea as to how the Natural Volumes were calculated, I have no idea which dynamic it would be.

I'm not understanding your point. Not disagreeing with you, but I don't understand what you mean.

To use Mural as an example, if I set my volume faders to the same level and use only velocity to control loudness, I get only the timbre-combinations which are possible in the real world. I get this despite the differing dynamic range of instruments. Or are you suggesting Mural doesn't work this way either?

@andyjh said:

I have always assumed that it is based on the maximum level ot the loudest dynamic (maximum SPL of that instrument),  but the huge diversity of dynamic ranges per instrument makes things somewhat more complex, especially when a piece may not be utilising that dynamic range.

Mural gives Natural timbral relationships, and only Natural timbral relationships, at all dynamic levels. Just like a natural orchestra -- the diversity of dynamic ranges works against this in no way. This is how I conceive of Natural Volume, though it's possible that I still don't understand how VSL Natural Volume works or what it does.

@BachRules said:

If you set your volume faders all to the the same level, turn on Natural Volume, and use only velocity (and instrument-positioning in the MIR room) to control loudness, your will get combinations of timbres limited to the combinations which are possible in the real world.

No, that is not correct, because it ignores the differing dynamic range of instruments. There is probably one dynamic at which this is true, but as I have no idea as to how the Natural Volumes were calculated, I have no idea which dynamic it would be.

I'm not understanding your point. Not disagreeing with you, but I don't understand what you mean.

To use Mural as an example, if I set my volume faders to the same level and use only velocity to control loudness, I get only the timbre-combinations which are possible in the real world. I get this despite the differing dynamic range of instruments. Or are you suggesting Mural doesn't work this way either?

I have no idea how Mural works so I can't comment on that. However, I do know that the dynamic ranges of VI are not really accurate. For example the dynamic range of a Flute is far less than say a Trumpet, but in the VI player the difference is less severe than it should be. Maybe this is something that the VSL guys could comment on and possibly give figures as to how the normalisation (for want of a better word) has been achieved.

The other thing to remember is that certain instruments react with their surroundings far more than others, and the convolution IRs cannot reflect this, as they are based on sounds coming out of a speaker. In fact you'll find that even if one was to broadcast a real performance from an anechoic chamber into an acoustic via a speaker, it still wouldn't sound the same as having a player there.

There is science to be gleaned from all of this, but I think that it is far to complicated for any company to solve in the short term, and what we are left with is generalities. I agree that the science of it ought to be nailed down as far as possible, but also understand that there are too many variables for any definitive answer.

DG

Before reading this thread I had made an incorrect assumption, which is:

I thought samples were never altered in volume after being recorded. After reading Kenneth's response, that seems not to be the case. Unless I am still wrong. Please correct me if I am wrong.

@DG said:

The other thing to remember is that certain instruments react with their surroundings far more than others, and the convolution IRs cannot reflect this, as they are based on sounds coming out of a speaker. In fact you'll find that even if one was to broadcast a real performance from an anechoic chamber into an acoustic via a speaker, it still wouldn't sound the same as having a player there.

Very much agree on this. Once you have microphones and speakers it won't be as natural as you'd expect. Once a conductor told me: There is a mixer in an orchestra and he can make or break the performance. And I was thinking "Wow! So it's really not as natural as we'd expect".

@nektarios said:

Before reading this thread I had made an incorrect assumption, which is:

I thought samples were never altered in volume after being recorded. After reading Kenneth's response, that seems not to be the case. Unless I am still wrong. Please correct me if I am wrong.

All samples are likely to be altered in volume a small amount after being recorded. For a start, you would want the notes of each dynamic to have a volume that matches, in order to make the instrument response predicable. You will also find that the level of the whole instrument is likely to be raised, particularly for soft instruments. Hence the Natural Volume feature

Where the difference in techniques is concerned is the actual dynamic range of an instrument, or section. Different developers approach this in different ways.

DG

@Another User said:

There is science to be gleaned from all of this, but I think that it is far to complicated for any company to solve in the short term, and what we are left with is generalities. I agree that the science of it ought to be nailed down as far as possible, but also understand that there are too many variables for any definitive answer.

If you rented a hall, seated the instrument-players in their normal locations on stage, hung a microphone over the conductor, recorded every note on every instrument at lots of different dynamic levels, and if you never touched your gain faders throughout this process, and you never changed the volume of the samples, you'd get Natural Volume; and to use such a hypothetical library, you'd never alter CC7 or CC11, you'd just use velocity or CC1, and it would control timbre and loudness at the same time, always keeping them in their natural relation.

This hypothetical library would be inferior to VSL in lots of ways, but at least it serves as a model of Natural Volume made easy for the end-user. Beethoven had to decide among ppp .. fff for each note but that's just a simple one-dimensional variable for dynamics. I have to set velocity, CC7, CC11, DynR, Velocity Curve, and probably some other variables I'm overlooking. That degree of control -- 5 independent variables -- is nice when I want to make unnatural sounds, but it only gets in the way when I'm trying to do things like Beethoven did them.

@DG said:

The other thing to remember is that certain instruments react with their surroundings far more than others, and the convolution IRs cannot reflect this, as they are based on sounds coming out of a speaker.

I'm skeptical about your point here. I haven't experienced this, and I don't see how the laws of physics would allow for the 'reaction' you're suggesting.

There's nothing with with being skeptical. I don't have a Physics background and certainly can't point to any scientific data to confirm or deny what I said. However, observation is also a very important to acquiring scientific knowledge, and as I've conducted hundreds of performances in many different venues I am speaking of my own experiences regarding instruments and their reaction to their surroundings.

DG

@BachRules said:

I'd appreciate if VSL would inform us how to set things to that there's no dynamic compression or expansion applied to the instruments.

That is not going to happen, because when the samples have been normalized, you can't reverse it. Think about it. Every note on an instrument has it's own dynamic range. On a flute, for example, the higher register can go much louder than the lowest register. So you would have to set the dynamic range separately for each register of each instrument. I don't think that's even possible in VI Pro. And even if it was, it would be a crazy amount of work.

So, the Natural Volume feature in MIR can only be an approximation. It means that the loudness of the instruments are generally balanced against each other. But it won't account for the cases where you play the lowest note on the flute, and assign a cc 1 value of 127. It will be too loud compared to the rest of the instruments (simply because the low notes of the flute in VSL have the same dynamic range as the high notes, which in reality, they haven't). That's where we'll still need our brains and our ears. But in my experience it's less of an issue than you'd think. In most cases the balance is good enough that it won't disturb the 'reality' of the mock-up. And in the very few cases where it does: simply adjust the volume a little.

So, I guess, if you don't want to think about balancing and volume, you'll have to buy samples that are not normalized. But even there you'll have to mix. Even in recordings of real orchestras recording engineers will have to make subtle adjustements to balance the volume, so you can't expect samples to not have that problem.

On the bright side, from all the mock-ups I have heard, volume balance was rarely the main point that prevented it from sounding 'real'. Usually there are a whole lot of other problems in a mock-up that give it away.