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  • question for dietz

    I just listened to the john williams princess Leias theme in the demo section .
    can you tell us more about the string sounds ( sounds great)
    what reverb , eq etc. also the dynamic range is just perfect.
    can you discuse some of the problems and challenges of this mix.
    in detail please.
    thanks

  • Now that's what I call a direct question! [:D]

    Thanks for the positive feedback. Your may believe it or not - I did nothing unusual with this piece. Inspired music, great arrangement, thorough programming were good corner-stones to build a convincing mix upon.

    Herb exported each ensemble and/or solo-intrument as a *.wav-file from Giga. I imported these audio-files to a ProTools-HD3 and mixed on a great PMC-monitoring-system in the Vienna-based SwoonFactory (i.e. the mastering-facility of my MIR-development-colleague, Martin Rajek, who added the final touches to the mix.)

    EQs were mainly Sony Oxford, and some tape-saturation from CraneSong's "Phoenix"-plugin. Reverb came from AltiVerb, using one of the IRs from Ernest Cholakis' sets (-> Numerical Sounds). The master-section was a t.c.electronic System 6000 for a little bit of bus-compression and two or three EQ-bands. - Most important: I had two recordings from a live-performance to keep my mix in perspective to Real Life.

    Sorry, no more details in my head, and the session is not within my reach.

    The real challenge was the solo-violin. The original performance is nothing less than breath-taking - a high target.

    HTH,

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library
  • Thanks, Dietz. That's very interesting. The real time killer there is exporting every section or solo instrument separately into ProTools. I haven't found a work-around for this yet, and I'm not satisfied with mixing in Logic. I also find I have to separately bounce the Altiverb 5 speaker placements, as more than 4 Altiverbs per session makes my ProTools sputter and click.

    Tape saturation as a plug-in is something I'm not familiar with. I'll look into it.

    Thanks,
    John Davis

    P.S. There is one odd work around -- you can bounce three parts at a time if you assign outputs 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 then do a surround bounce in Logic (then rename the files). I sometimes do this on very long pieces but you can't monitor it since some of it comes out the subwoofer.

  • -> http://www.cranesong.com/PHOENIX.html

    Highly recommended, although the descriptions of its parameters are a bit cryptic.

    HTH,

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

    PS - thinking about the mix again, a seem to remember that I fooled around with the virtual UAD-clone of the Pultec-EQ for the treble of the strings. Maybe _this_ is what you like ...

    /Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library