MIR3D and Doublebass

[Holgmeister]

Bought my upgrade yesterday and the introductory offer made this a nobrainer. I ended up with everything I already own plus the Stages... perfect.

I played extensively over the years with MIR and it was always my GoTo for everything reverb, from Konzerthaus to add the overall room to experimental Churches, when I needed that extra room. 

So I was very sceptical about this 3D thingy, but when Dietz is up to something, you better watch&follow. 

What should I say.. the effect is spectacular. This is more than an upgrade, this is a new world of Rooms. You always tend to overdo room and reverb, so the 3D aspect forces you to even more listen & adjust. 

I started two years ago with doublebass, because I finally would like to learn a string instrument and for some to me unknown reason, I took Doublebass. This world of low down, low end frequency range has its own challenges and awards, I never regret it. And remember, the week long Opera of Wagner's "Ring der Nibelungen" in the "Rheingold"  starts in the Overture with a tuned down DoubleBass section E-flat for some minutes... the so called "Ur Es"

So I had a recorded track of mine where I do some arco doublebass and Arturias incredible new plugin "Fragments" that is doing granular based effects on the playing. 

What I did now is take one original track with the double bass and three tracks of "Fragments" in various granular responses. Then Mir3D allowed me to position the responses in 3d  in all areas of the Konzerthaus: From sort of "Section playing" to randomly responding aerial sources. 

The result, just after some minutes playing, was literally goosebumping - the possibilities are endless, because at the end, it does not sound synthetic, it sounds like a real room where all levels are played. 

Congratulations, Dietz and VSL - Masterpiece!

P.S. Maybe Dietz or other forum members has some tips for me how to record the Doublebass  to ideally sit in MirPro 3D. I am using the usual piezo in the bridge and an AKG contact mic., which is great for Amps and live, but maybe not ideal for classic recording. My attic studio has a bad acoustics so as close as possible would be necessary.

PPS: Snob as I am, the channel runs through WARM LA2A and a WARM Pulteq with the special Bass setting - both tubes, that add the warmth to the sound for real. 

[Dietz]

Wow! Thanks a lot for the friendly words, Holgmeister, it means a lot. *blush* ... Great to hear that you like MIR 3D as much as we do. :-)

Regarding your post-scriptum: Believe it or not, but even after almost 40 years of audio engineering, recording a double bass (especially as a solo instrument) is still amongst the top three entries of my personal "hard to do it right"-list. There is hardly any other instrument that depends soooo much on the acoustic environment it gets played in, because its relevant frequency bands overlap widely with the problematic range of most rooms. 8-/

For jazzy fingered basses I prefer a combination of piezo, plus a large diaphragm condenser (U47) about half a meter above the floor and about one meter in front of the instrument, plus a dynamic cardioid like a PL-20 pointing at a position where the neck meets the corpus, and a small-diaphragm A/B (ORTF-style) about two meters above the floor for the "complete picture". This has to be time-aligned carefully and mixed to taste. ... a quite recent - and MIR-mixed! - example of this approach can be heard here:
-> https://open.spotify.com/track/6hOdsXLK7t4tRN98UOIqjt?si=2b9a9da05edb4f1d ... it's coming from an acoustic pop/folk background, though.

... in a more classical, bowed playing style I would try to avoid the piezo, to be honest. :-)

HTH,