If one wants to try using a separate external hardware reverb with no additional convolution etc., I am wondering about using MIR 100% dry for positioning. Is it recommended for doing this or is this basically "abusing" it? I mean positioning front to back as well as left to right. I am assuming that simulate air absorption would be useful. I guess the question is are there advantages to using MIR for 100% dry positioning of the signal beyond a simple left right pan plug-in or is that overkill. I was auditioning it dry like that and I do hear differences in the basic sound of an instrument when placed near or far as well as left or right, but what are those differences and is this a "proper" use of MIR?
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Tips for using MIR for positioning alone
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Hi William,
technically, there's nothing wrong with using MIR Pro for "plain" positioning tasks, and I have used it like that quite often already. In fact, there are dedictated products on the market which do nothing more than Ambisoncs-based panning - something that MIR does en passant. ;-)
Some unsorted thoughts on that topic:
- Keep in mind that MIR will still fulfill its convolution tasks in the background, even when an Icon (or the whole engine) is set to "Dry". So it might be a good idea to use a Venue with short reverb times to keep the CPU-consumption as low as possible. ORF Funkhaus "Studio 2" comes to mind.
- It is a good idea to use one of the Venues that allow for free positioning not only on a dedicated "Stage" area, but in the whole room. All studios we have recorded for MIR fall into this category.
- Keep in mind that the virtual Main Microphone will still be the decisive factor when it comes to the perceived relation between the individual signal sources (especially their phase behaviour!). The good thing is that you don't have to aim for good "enveloping" of a reverb tail, so a simple setup like M/S with cardoid "M" might be all you need.
- Secondary Microphones don't output dry signal components in any case, so they are useless in a "dry Ambisonics pan" scenario.
- All features that affect this dry signal component will still be working. "Distance Depedent Air Absorption" is one of the possibly useful ones, but don't expect spectacular "depth" or distance cues from it: After all, it's just a cleverly set hi-cut filter that mimics the natural sound-damping behaviour of the air.
... other than that, it's "If it sounds right, it _is_ right!" (as always ;-) ...).
To success!
/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library -
MIR Pro uses some clever de-correlation algorithms to allow for more spatial enveloping by the reverb tail....The amount of this de-correlation applied to one of the virtual capsules in MIR Pro is shown as “distance” to make the process easier to understand..... The "Distance" parameter increases the artifcial de-correlation of the signal derived from the virtual capsule. ... The dry signal components of an instrument (a.k.a. "spot microphone") aren't affected....
But if I've misunderstood, please correct my conclusion?
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Your completely right with all of your conclusions. :-)
Just keep in mind that it is possible to produce some out-of-phase information with any Main Microphone setup that uses one or more virtual capsule with its directivity set to values "sharper" than 0 - 0.5 . (... in addition, MIR Pro's Output Matrix allows for flipping polarity of an individual capsule, but that's a different story).
Kind regards,
/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
