MIR Konzerthaus foyer - Location sounds very "wet" ?

[Holgmeister]

Hi,

I am now experimenting with my brand new MIR24 - Exciting stuff, I think Dietz and the whole crew needs to be nominated for the Nobel Price for Sound Engineers.

But the Konzerthaus Foyer sounds extremely "wet" - very long reverberation. (IMHO)

I had once the pleasure to visit the "Bonbonball"- The "Ball" of the Wiener Bonbon-Fabrikanten, which takes place in the Konzerthaus:

In my memory (which is fading by age of course) , the Foyer was rather reverb-less - maybe it was, because the entrance was so crowded with Evening gowns and Black Dress. (and maybe some decoltees blindfolded not only my eyes but also my ears)

Does the Foyer is really is so reverb-intense?

And a second question:

If I run a synthesizer instead of the VIPro Instrument through MIR, it sounds unnatural reverbish (again: IMHO): I had to turn the dry/wet ratio to 90:10 to makle it sounds well.. Does someone have the same experience with non-acoustic instrument tracks?

[Dietz]

Thanks for the kind words, Holgmeister! :-)

The Foyer of the Vienna Konzerthaus is a beast. When it's empty, its acoustics indeed resemble those of a cathedral. But as soon as the place is crowded with people, it will be much, much drier than a typical church could ever be. That's due to the fact that the ceilings are considerably lower than in a cathedral, and therefore there's less reflections from the walls. Needless to say that we recorded in an empty Foyer during the night. ;-)

I should add that the Foyer is kind of untypical for a MIR Venue, because we didn't record as many impulse responses as we usually do. The Foyer is hardly insulated against noise from the outside, so it's a tedious task to record a clean IR there, without hearing a car, the noise of a distant tramway or some crows passing by. ;-P ... This could be the reason why certain close positions might sound "wetter" than the ear would expect: MIR interpolates them from positions that were actually recorded farther away (... we're talking about a few meters here).

Regarding your second question: We all are spoiled by decades of listening to artificially reverberated music, or instruments that have been recorded by spot microphones rather than distant room mics. Bringing the Dry/Wet-ratio to something like 70:30 (or even 90:10, like you suggest) is not unusual for a more pop-oriented sound. BTW: Don't forget that the overall reverb length can be reduced easily in MIR Pro, too!

And as a final sidenote: Keep in mind that the natural direct signal component has been removed from all MIR impuse responses, to avoid phasing issues. MIR will use the readily positioned input signal to replace it (like a perfectly phase-aligned spot microphone). In other words: "Full wet" is not the natural room sound, but only the early reflections and the reverb of the room.

Kind regards,

[Holgmeister]

Hi Dietz,

thanks for the response. The reason why I tried "Foyer" was my first piece for one Bösendorfer, two prepared Pianos and one Solo Violin . The three are distributed among the foyer and are supposed to play their part - something like one Steve Reich, two Hauschkas and one Hillary. OK, I admit - Idea on loan from Silfra.

I thought this would produce a theatre/workshop style atmosphere - so maybe you can give me the MIR-Foyer version with tramways, passing cars and crows - would perfectly fit my requirements.. ;-)

As for the synth tracks - yes, all true, also for my ears.