I should add that the character presets are a huge resource in MIR, one of the best things about it.  Especially considering how one can use a slightly different color for a 2nd player or group.  An example is setting your second violins to "dark" in order to make the 1st sound out more.  Or many other variations.   Using the "bite" variations in basses helps to make rhythms much clearer.  ALso, I have started to think that it should almost be normal practice to use "clean low ends" or "clean mids" for various instruments such as harp and cello.  Those presets represent an expertly tweaked example of the basic thing I was talking about with deep bass notes that certain instruments produce (such as a cello section) not being present hardly at all in normal orchestral settings, due to many factors but mainly 1) number of players, 2) resonance of the instruments involved 3) characteristics of amplitude in the particular range the instrument plays. 

Also, the contrast of these levels throughout different instrument groups has a huge effect.  If you are recording a chamber group, you will hear a huge amount of bass from low strings.  If you are recording an R. Strauss sized orchestra playing "Also Sprach Zarathustra" you will hear almost NO BASS from those same instruments.  Because the recording is adjusting for the massive brass and percussion that almost obliterates the strings at times.  These factors are crucial to bear in mind during both mixing and mastering with samples, because there is absolutely no adjustment made for these automatically, quite understandably because of the goal of any sample recording  to absolutely suck dry any instrument in front of the microphones and capture every nuance. 

Thank you Dietz and William.

I have learned so much from this thread! Greatly appreciated.

I really like the character presets, but sometimes I have no idea what frequencies it modifies, so I end up using just "Pure", and then EQ myself or use eq presets. Thanks William, I think I will follow your advice on using the "Clean Low Ends/Clean Mids etc. as normal practice.

Dietz, I think exposing the character eq and settings would be a good thing for everyone if it facilitates making better mixes. I don't see where are the trade secrets if you are already showing thousands of other EQ presets in the VSL Equalizer?

Wow, thanks for this, Dietz! This has really opened my eyes on those presets. Finally, I see!

Interesting, if I read correctly, the character preset can use quite a bit of CPU power. So, I guess, it does more than just EQ the instrument?

Don't worry. This text dates back to 2009. Even the most complex Character Presets won't tax a recent machine too much. 

Great, thanks for this.

So the character preset I assume applies some high quality EQ, or it does more than just EQ?

So I managed to mix/master my VSL piece to the point where I am happy with what I can do with my abilities. I feel soo fatigued! I am done... My ears and head are spinning...  😶

Basically, I decided to minimize the master chain, and go with "compress bass and limit highs", I also readjusted the EQ curve and applied Dynamic EQ on resonant frequencies. 

It now sounds better on my car speakers, and the new monitors definitely helped. In any case, I am sure a professional can take it to another level. It still has has way to go to reach the level of being truly satisfying from a mastering/mixing point of view.

Here is the piece -- I used Dimension Strings, Brass A8, Vienna Choir, Solo Voices (Soprano), Percussion, Jazz Drums, VE PRO/MIR PRO using Grosser Saal Venue. I also use a Ukrainian Bandura (non VSL instrument).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33556625/Music/Nektarios%20-%20Eastern%20Dream%2050.mp3

If something stands out that isn't quite right, I would appreciate your feedback! This is still work in progress...

Thanks!

Cheers,

-Nektarios

Asking for advice on mastering VSL Music on the VSL Forum is like asking for advice on skinning cats at a cat skinners convention.

Here's my .02 cents which is not quite worth two cents if you consider the current exchange rate but here goes...

Basically, all of the aforementioned advice from all of the aforementioned cat skinners responding to this thread is all good advice.  In fact, it's all great advice👍 In double fact, there were things mentioned here that I found useful myself and I've been skinning cats for about twenty years now.

But here's my little contribution to this enlightening discussion.  Pick one of your especially challenging tracks and master it to what you think it should sound like or at least as close to what you want it to be as possible.  Then send that track to a professional mastering engineer who specializes or has experience mastering Classical music.  When you get the finished product back, compare it to the master you made.  Of course, you do this after you've been mastering some tracks for a while when you have some experience and you think you might be ready to go prime time with your mastering skills. 

I did this about five years ago and I found that my masters were actually pretty darn good😊  However, if you were to keep score line by line the professionally mastered tracks were slightly better than mine.  There were certain nuances that made certain frequencies shine and other subtle aspects that put the professional track above my own but only marginally.

Now in my case, 95% of what I do is library music for licensing and as far as mastering is concerned, "pretty darn good😊" is good enough.  On the other hand, I regret not sending that 5% of scoring I do to a professional mastering engineer and that's what I do now.

Long story short, it depends on what you do with your music.  In a perfect world hiring a mastering engineer to master your tracks is ideal but it may not be practical, nor necessary, in the real world.

Say... what is the current exchange rate on my .02 cents anyway?   

@nektarios said:

Is there a VST plugin that will allow me to detect resonant frequencies reliably?

Today we have Soothe 2. Dseq3, and Smooth Operator in 2021. When I wrote the following answer, there wasn't really anything that can perform FFT to locate resonant frquencies in real-time...

...but there was a stand-alone program that can show you exactly where the harmonic frequencies are (you'll have to bounce to disk) and I use it specifically for that in addition to its other capabilities. I was just mentioning this to another member recently. Watch this video from 1:14 to 1:32

Part of the secret to great mixes, as published in any book (Mixing Audio by Roey Izhaki being one of them; read pg 23, 3rd paragraph - someone uploaded it online somewhere, not sure where though...Google it. I suggest to buy it as we all did) is to balance competing frequencies...among a multitude of other things. So it helps if you could see the audio spectrums of several instruments at once in the same window - use this tool for that:

http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_FreqAnalystMulti/

If you understand fundamentally HOW (that knowledge that is non-transferable) to use it...it will save you so much time and you'll have more accuracy with...whatever you find you can be accurate with. Again...certain knowledge is non-transferable. It's not to say that I don't want to tell you something...it's that what works for me is custom to my needs.

Most people here, I'm sure, have read Izhaki's book. You may have - and if you have, disregard my suggestion to it; however, If you don't like reading the 500+ page pdf, you can watch this 2.5-hour video:

Disregard the nostalgia if you can, but if you've never seen it, take notes. From beats to molecules - it's a wealth of information for anyone.

There is endless information on mixing and mastering; both different but intimately related.

Thank you all. Some really great info here. I want to be able to get better in mixing and mastering as much as possible, although in the end I'll be sending it to professional mastering studios and then compare them as Jasensmith did. I just bought the book "Mastering Audio by Bob Katz (arrived today). What I love about classical music, is that if you're great at orchestration, your mixes will be better to begin with.

I have already found the person will master this track for me. He has mastered thousands of tracks of different genres for major labels and independent ones. He may not have mastered as many classical songs as I'd wish, but has been awarded a few times for his mastering work.

Mathematics, thanks so much for the tool suggestion "Blue Cat's FreqAnalyst Multi".  I can definitely see myself needing something like this. Downloading now. The videos seem also very helpful. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

Nektarios

Btw, here is my track without any of my mastering -- just the mix.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33556625/Music/Nektarios%20-%20Eastern%20Dream%20-%20Mix%20Only.wav

I will try to improve the mix first going forward. Would love to learn more on mastering, but there's just too many things to learn right now... 😕