MIR Pro 3D: Factory Presets vs Natural volume (and CC7 Master Volume)

[JaredThirsk]

Hi,

I'm pretty novice at mixing/panning and trying to take advantage of the defaults VSL has put in to help learn how a balanced orchestra is supposed to sound to give myself a baseline.  I'm trying to get a "factory preset" sound at Synchron A wide, with a mix of Synchron-ized (mixer preset 99 MIR Unprocessed) and Synchron libraries using MIR Pro 3D.

[EDIT for clarification: Synchron libraries are going direct to output with no MIR Pro 3D, and the Synchron-ized libraries are going through MIR Pro 3D to try to match the acoustics of Synchron libraries in Syncron A wide.]

Question 1: Some Synchron-ized player presets have some CC7 Master volume defaulted to 71 (and others at other values).  Is this intentional?  If I want to use these in MIR 3D Pro with the factory presets, should I always be cranking CC7 this to the max (127), or some other value, or is there some reason to keep it at whatever the Synchron player preset gives me, 71 in this case?  

(And what's the common/best practice for CC7?  In the past I always cranked CC7 to max and used CC11 expression for "volume" alongside CC1 for VelXF, and then Cubase DAW channel volume as a last resort if I needed more headroom.)

(I noticed CC7 is being discussed elsewhere in regards to this value not being saved and/or loaded with projects.  I haven't tried to confirm this myself yet, but perhaps there is a bug with reverting it to the value from the preset when loading the preset upon project load?  Example of how to reproduce CC7 71: simply go to Synchron player PRESET and double-click "02b Violin 1 full VelXF".  CC7 gets changed to 71.  This is without closing and reloading the project.  Still happens after I disconnected MIDI inputs from Cubase.  I think I noticed other values in other presets.)

Question 2: The new factory presets in MIR Pro 3D seem like quite a handy feature, but they seem to have a much higher volume than "Natural volume".  Why?  Does this mean the new presets are 'unnatural'?  If I want a balance Synchron-ized plus Synchron sound, should I use volume from factory presets, or "natural volume"? (or neither if it still requires some work to get a proper mix?)  Bonus question: should I turn on distance-dependant volume scaling and air absorption filter?

My best guess: the VSL team has been working on the presets more recently to make them sound somewhat ok in MIR Pro 3D, with more of a focus on positioning than volume, because a lot of numbers are the same volume (-6) whereas it looks like a lot of care went into doing per-instrument natural volumes. (Though I notice Dietz said some natural volumes are off, implying they need to be corrected on VSL's end.)

Any thoughts or guidance on this for trying to mix Synchron-ized libraries with Synchron in MIR 3D Pro?  (And also Q1 is relevant here: should I be cranking CC7 to the max?)

Thanks!

[Dewdman42]

I will look forward to hearing from Dietz or Ben on this..

My opinion is that the Synchronized libraries were not designed with MirPro in mind, they were designed to be used on their own, with their own built in IR's, and VSL did endeavor to setup the factory patches so that if you load all factory patches as-is, they will have pretty close to accurate level balancing between different instruments of the orchestra.  They did that by setting the CC7 master volume of each patch.

MirPro was first created mainly for VI series...  I'm not really sure right now what the master volume defaults are for those.  But MirPro has its own natural volume feature, which if you have turned on will attempt to apply some default loudness to whatever the instrument is, based on the instrument profile.  it might be also factoring in the distance from the mic on MirPro stage.  There is probably more to it then that, but anyway, that's what natural volume is attempting to do... and I am not sure if its based on the assumption that CC7 be set to max or set to 100 or what.  What do the VI libraries look like?  I would suspect its more in line with those.  

While the Synchronized libs can easily disable internal IR's and use MirPro instead, their default CC7 master volume is in fact set to a value that assumes you are not using MirPro with its natural volume feature..but just using synchronized libraries on their own.    I haven't worked this out per say because I don't like to use the natural volume feature of MirPro, nor of the the synchronized presets.  I prefer to do my orchestral balancing in the DAW mixer with the faders there after processing through plugins.  With MirPro that gets a little more complicated, but still I am not relying on MirPro natural volume, nor the synchronized CC7 default settings.  I think at best they are just a starting point and its still up to you to balance your orchestra as you see fit.  I actually would prefer if synchronized and VI series patches were all standardized to -6db peak output, instead of adjusting CC7 downwards to attempt orchestra balancing that probably doesn't apply to many of us.

[William]

MIR Pro is not for Synchron.  It's for either VI or other sample libraries/audio inputs. 

The default audio levels for instruments in MIR Pro are very natural and give a good basis for the mixing so you can tweak them to make an instrument stand out a little - like a first player or section.   

[JaredThirsk]

@William said:

MIR Pro is not for Synchron.  It's for either VI or other sample libraries/audio inputs. 

I added a clarification in my original post:

'Synchron libraries are going direct to output with no MIR Pro 3D, and the Synchron-ized libraries are going through MIR Pro 3D to try to match the acoustics of Synchron libraries in Syncron A wide.'

VSL provided a dry mixer preset for Synchron-ized libraries (which use VI recordings) called "99 MIR Uncompressed", which I understand is intended for sending to MIR.

[Dietz]

"Natural Volume" has indeed been created with the original Vienna Instruments in mind. The idea was straight-forward, actually: Just set all instances of Vienna Instruments to the same level (90, 100, 127 - it doesn't matter as long as the value is the same), make sure that the proper Instrument Profile is selected (which could be achieved more or less automatically in VE Pro as this host is able to "talk" to MIR Pro), and recall the Natural Volume for each MIR Icon. The result would be a starting point for the actual mix with a meaningful balance of all instruments and ensembles.

With the advent of Synchron Instruments an the following "Synchronized" updates of legacy Vienna Instruments things got blurred more and more, partly by several attempts to streamline the levels of these two product branches without MIR, but actually more by the fact that each Synchron Player is a full-fledged mixing console for a bunch of microphones. This means that there is not "the basic volume" for each individual player to rely on any longer. :-/

.... we discussed the issue quite a bit internally, but truth to be told: There won't be a "Grand Unified Theory" covering all volume settings for all VSL instruments any time soon. There are too many variables that influence the actual perceived gain of an instrument now, even more so when we talk about surround and 3D audio.

Natural Volume should be seen as starting point for legacy Vienna Instruments only until further notice.

[Macker]

Many thanks Dietz for your excellent and concise exposition on 'natural volume'. My understanding of it was kinda converging along those lines, but your insider perspective is of course invaluable and has now helped me to finally firm up my understanding on that topic. Props, Sir.

[William]

I had a startling experience with the volume levels of MIR Pro 3D - I had a legacy MIR project that I had very carefully set levels for an entire orchestra of VI in Vienna Ensemble.  When I upgraded it to MIR Pro 3D I noticed - all the levels were zeroed.  I thought "Oh no!" and that everything was messed up. But actually when I played the entire piece the levels were almost perfect - within and across all the sections of the orchestra.  All I had to do for the rest of the mix was take the first players up a little, or a particular instrument that I wanted to emphasize.  It's extremely accurate for getting a basic level for every instrument of the orchestra - which in the past was very laborious.  

[JaredThirsk]

Thank you, Dietz. That makes sense.

@Dietz said:

Just set all instances of Vienna Instruments to the same level (90, 100, 127 - it doesn't matter as long as the value is the same), 

MIR aside, is there a reason why Syncron/Synchronized presets have different CC7 Volume defaults?  Were they balanced in relationship to some standard (either across the board, or within their own library), or should we not take these defaults into consideration?

Synchron examples of CC7 defaults: (VelXF)

• Strings Pro 1st Violins: 71
• Strings Pro Violoncellos: 95

Synchronized examples of CC7 defaults:

• Special Edition Violin I PLUS: 57
• Dimension Strings 1st Violins full: 71
• SYzd Woodwinds Flute ensemble: 90

[Dietz]

That's a question that should better be asked in VSL's Synchron Instruments sub-forum. I honestly have no idea about these settings.