Bach in Pernegg & Schubertsaal - MIR PRO & Vienna Imperial demo

[GoranTch]

Dear forum members,

following the links below you can listen to J.S.Bach's Goldberg Variations theme (Aria) done with Vienna Imperial in two MIR PRO venues: Pernegg monastery church & Vienna Konzerthaus - Schubertsaal.

Pernegg - version I (dry/wet 30, IR length 2.69 s)

Pernegg - version II (dry/wet 20, IR lenth 3.8 s (full length IR))

Schubertsaal - version I (7th row)

Schubertsaal - version II (14th row)

All processing was done using Vienna Suite (Master EQ & Exciter), with two exceptions being a transient processor applied on all final recordings and a M/S gain processor applied to Schubert versions.

Important for Vienna Training Center participants and alumnae/alumni: VEP project files with all the settings for each of these four versions will be available to you as a part of this year's second major VTC bonus project, which will demonstrate some useful techniques of combined use of Vienna Imperial's different perspectives in junction with MIR PRO. The project will be released in November (followed by the third and final major addition to the course materials in this year which will be released in December).

As usual, you will be informed via mail on the day of the release and get instant access to all the files (MIDI file, tempo track & VEP project file) and the belonging course material in your Audiocation online area.

I hope you'll enjoy these examples as much as I enjoyed making them 😊

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hi Goran

I must start by saying that I only listened to the Schubertsaal examples...

I'm not a Piano Player but I think the music is very natural and expressive played. Bravo!

For the sound I can not give good notes. The quieter the piano plays the more I make out some artefacts beside the melody-tones (a sort of ringing tones). With the example of row 14 those ringings are even better audible...

Maybe these "ringing artefacts" are generated by the "EQ-Exciter-Transientprocessor-Chain". In any case I would check out this. Anyway: Choosing Row 14 means "transients good bye". It is probably not possible to get those transients back especially with quiet played notes - they come with less transients anyway. Keep also in mind that our brain recognize far distances (concerning sound) because high frequencies are reduced and with them the transients as well. So if you play the piano from row 1 to 14 without doing any more you will probably have the best deep/far-demo with MIR.

Nevertheless:

A first solution could be to treat the piano with those Exciter-Transient-Effects before MIR. 

A second solution: Choose a piece with louder notes (mf- ff)

A third solution: Choose Solution 2 and don't use at least the transient processor.

Hope you can take my feedback the right way. It should be help for finally having the best reference pieces you want to offer.

All the best

Beat

[GoranTch]

Hi Beat,

thank you for your reply, I'm happy te hear you enjoyed the performance :-)

Sound: I suppose we'll have to disagree on that one. If what you are referring to is the occuring resonance at ca. 4 kHz, this is very easily removed - just set a good notch filter at that frequency, set its gain to -20 dB and choose a steep (but not too steep) Q, and you are done ;-) 

However, I myself don't like this much, for two reasons:

a) I happen to like that particular resonance here, as it sounds a bit like high string dampening resonance picked up by mic

and, more important

b) with removing this the overall sound gets (for my ears) this "chemical clean" sort of character I have long grown allergic to. Almost all the reference recordings I used for "reseting" my ears during work on this have sonical imperfections of this or another kind in them - "too strong" attacks, "too high" noise floors, "too loud" pedal noise/key pressing noise/string dampening noise, etc. In this respect, the examples above are actually "cleaner" then most of these.

However, I feel that today there is a tendency (very much to my dislike, and ime often bordering on unhealthy obsession) towards "photoshopping" music into something that usually ends up feeling like a Persil ad. That's why I'll always prefer a recording with "beauty faults", but sounding "alive" to me to a recording that was "polished into coma" ;-)  

All the best to you as well,

Goran

[Beat Kaufmann]

Hi Goran

The reason why I chim in once more is because you plan to advertise the "super well recorded Imperial" with a - "in my ears" - horrible sound in your academy. I believe "Der Imperial hat eine bessere Demo verdient" (soundwise).

Since Classical Recordings and also mastering such music is my daily business I'm mainly trained to listen to music and of course specialy (sometimes unfortunately) to all those things which are "wrong" in it.

With this background I established some ringing sounds within your Imperial-demo which could be interpreted by a listener as a very bad sampled piano (which it isn't by far - the oposit is true). So my approach in the feedback above was, that you could improve the sound so that you can show your matters but together with a proper Imperal sound... not Ariel, not chemical clean and not photoshopped but without distortions and additional artefacts.

Listen to your Imperial once more. I took short excerpt and didn't add anything! I only amplfied the ringings where it was easy possible... Is this really the well sampled Imperial of VSL?

Once more: I am sure these artefacts are not from MIR. I believe they are either produced by the Exciter (which produces distortions by the way for getting more overtones) or by your transient-plugin. You certainly know, that less could be more. I'm sure you can have this distance and depth without those ringings!

This is my last response to this thread. Take my helping attempt or not. Try also not to see my proposals as an attack against you - I only want to help for reaching a proper result - with the sound you like of course. I hope you can see my "good intention" because I invested some time in answers, proposals for solutions and in producing an extra audio file.

Beat

[nektarios]

Hi Goran,

Loved your example. Thank you for sharing! As a matter of fact, I was even trying to figure out, a few days ago, how a sound like this was possible with Imperial -- as my next piece will be a piano piece. It sounds *very* natural. Almost feels like I am right there close to the piano. I would love to have my hands on this template!!!

Beat I think you are being too technical. To my ears it's plain super beautiful! 😊

[Beat Kaufmann]

@nektarios said:

... Beat I think you are being too technical. To my ears it's plain super beautiful! 😊

Fine that you are happy with the Imperial sound like >> This <<.

This makes the life much easier...😊

Beat

[GoranTch]

@Another User said:

This is my last response to this thread. Take my helping attempt or not. Try also not to see my proposals as an attack against you - I only want to help for reaching a proper result - with the sound you like of course. I hope you can see my "good intention" because I invested some time in answers, proposals for solutions and in producing an extra audio file.

No offence taken. I value it very much that we can have an open and direct exchange of views without descending into silly pettiness. We simply have very different positions on what is a"proper" result - in which sense and by which criteria. And it is a good thing we can discuss them openly.

All the best,

Goran

P.S. Enjoyed your Beethoven balcony recording 😊

[GoranTch]

@nektarios said:

Hi Goran,

Loved your example. Thank you for sharing! As a matter of fact, I was even trying to figure out, a few days ago, how a sound like this was possible with Imperial -- as my next piece will be a piano piece. It sounds *very* natural. Almost feels like I am right there close to the piano. I would love to have my hands on this template!!!

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it 😊 I believe you'll love the Imperial, and even more so if you'll be using it with MIR.

[Beat Kaufmann]

@goran_tsch said:

...P.S. Enjoyed your Beethoven balcony recording 😊

Hi Goran

Thanks for the feedback.

Sorry that I removed the Beethoven but I finally thought that even more links which have nothing to do with the thread would confuse the readers.

As I promised above: No more comments about your Piano. I already wrote my comments and suggestions.

Best

Beat

[nektarios]

What is this?

@Beat Kaufmann said:

Fine that you are happy with the Imperial sound like >> This <<.

This makes the life much easier...😊

Beat

I am very happy with his piece that he posted. It sounds alive, clear, and awesome. Like a real human playing.

Goran I do own the imperial and would love to create pieces like that!

[nektarios]

I guess my favorite version is this:

Pernegg - version II (dry/wet 20, IR lenth 3.8 s (full length IR))

[GoranTch]

@nektarios said:

I guess my favorite version is this:

Pernegg - version II (dry/wet 20, IR lenth 3.8 s (full length IR))

I like that one very much - the full length Pernegg suits the character of this music very well imo (even if I would reduce the reverberation length a bit for my personal "favourite version").