Forgive me, these may be some dumb questions, just something Ive been thinking about as Im learning more about the engineering side of composition. It seems these days, a composer needs to understand both now.
I have a piece I have been tweaking and adjusting for realism. After a friend listened to this piece, he asked me why it sounded so "hollow." He meant, why it had so much reverb.
For reference, this is the piece, I used Mirx, the big concert hall (Grossersaal).
Now, mind you, Im not using a surround system, I am using studio monitor stereo speakers with a sub, they are similar to Mackey 5" studio monitors, with a 10 inch sub, run through a behringer pro EQ that has been adjusted to provide a very flat sound. My headphones are Sennheiser HD600 headphones (as I understand, these are the standard in music recording these days).
To my ears and on my setup, it doesnt sound like it has an excessive amount of reverb.
As I understand it, Mirx handles panning, EQ settings (if checked), and sound pressure levels (if checked) automatically to provide an authentic representation of that instrument, in that venue, based on the preset location you have provided. Is this correct?
Does Mirx also handle placing the appropriate amount of reverb based on the location of the instrument? That is, instruments further away will have less gain on the "close mic" to create the effect of that instrument being further away?
Lastly, what is the listening position that Mirx is trying to simulate? To my ears, it sounds like somewhere around 5-7 rows back, center aisle of the venue. As a conductor (although I havent conducted in awhile), I have always found the sound of the orchestra to sound unbalanced because some instruments, particularly lower pitched instruments, need room for their sound to fully develop. For example, if you stand right next to a tuba player (or in my case, are actually playing the tuba), it has a much brighter tone than if you are say 20-40 feet away from the tuba being played. This is why I ask, because the tuba recordings actually sound much different than what I hear sitting next to a tuba player or playing myself, or conducting. The vienna recordings sound as if Im sitting quite a distance away, if I had to guess, around 40-50 feet.
I have just started using Mirx and it has mainly helped immensely with saving time on adjusting gains for each instrument. For the most part, using the natural sound option on every instrument seems to provide a pretty decent balance, requiring only a few minor tweaks when I need an instrument to either stand out a bit more, or not stand out quite as much. I am all about spending less time tweaking and engineering and more time writing notes!
When using the natural sound, is the best approach to set every instrument to the same velocity and use the main volume control to create crescendos and decrescendos, and in the case of strings, swells? Or, is there a better way of doing this? Or is natural sound not a good option to use? Just curious what the best approach for me is, and with the help of others who have more experience, maybe I can pick up some tips here.
