Hi Jason,

You are welcome! 

The LCR is a recorded. So L-R are around 3 ms later than the C depending on where the section was placed in the room!

Best

Bernd

First: I never accused someone. If it sounded harsh, I'm sorry. It's very easy with written words to interpret something. It was not my intention!

@Another User said:

If you want the same situation as in the original recording, just add delay to the mics, increasing it in order of distance. This is hardly what is intended to be ideal in actual use, for the bare reason that we humans hear from a single position. Our brain can add focus on 'spots', and it is on this illusion that a sound engineer plays when mixing mics, delays, reverbs.

Yes, but the problem is: I don't know the numbers. 21m or 42ms seems very vague. Every instrument and each mic would need a number on its own, isn't it?

@Another User said:

Is the vibrato phasing also happening when you have opened just 1 mic?

The curious thing is that it happens after some time of playing and not instantly – no matter which preset (senza, regular, molto). I don't know at the moment, but if I recall correctly it also happens with just the room mix. I haven't tested all possible scenarios (I only have the standard microphones), but figured out that some delay eliminates the phasing.

@Another User said:

I don't know the numbers. 21m or 42ms seems very vague.

On the contrary, that's very precise! Just convert the time to distance, and you get how much the delay moves the instrument to the back of the stage (or the mics toward the listener). As an added information, Bernd wrote above that 21ms (=7m) is also a safe amount, since it doesn't risk to become phasing.

Paolo

@PaoloT said:

On the contrary, that's very precise! Just convert the time to distance, and you get how much the delay moves the instrument to the back of the stage (or the mics toward the listener). As an added information, Bernd wrote above that 21ms (=7m) is also a safe amount, since it doesn't risk to become phasing.

Yes, but using this value for everything would mean that each instrument was recorded at the same position / distance. 7m for the strings? Come on. 

I mean if the original delay of the main mic was e.g. 7ms for the strings and it was negatively delayed by 7ms to match the close mics of the strings. Why do you add 21ms which is way more delay? I don't understand that. This is what I mean with "vague".

I'm asking for the exact numbers and only VSL can give us this information. I don't know at what position the close and mid microphones (and all the other relations) are. Maybe it would have been better if there was no delay built in and all the different delays were made in the Synchron player.

Just posting this follow-up because I thought it might help others...

There are stage plots of the Synchron recording session published on the website, which show where the sections and microphones are placed. Knowing that the Synchron stage is 30m wide and 17-19m deep, it is pretty easy to derive the original distances and spacing between the microphones and the sections. 

It looks to me that the 21ms delay in the string presets (as an example) are right on, as Bernd has already suggested, because the distance between the MAIN L/R and the string sections are between 5-7 meters (so a good delay variable to use as a starting point would be 15-21 milliseconds). 

Additionally, I did some tests in my DAW, and confirmed everything that was suggested in this thread. The microphones are clearly time aligned, meaning that when you disable the delay, or use 0 as a variable, the transient attack of the samples are all aligned to the same starting point. The one minor exception to this is that the relation between the MAIN L/R and the CENTER of the Decca tree were time aligned as a group, for the purposes of maintaining the spatial relationship of L/C/R. 

QUOTE: "And I think it is a very wrong decision by VSL to avoid delay while playing on the keyboard."

I was of a similar mind until I understood what was going on. Now I have to respectfully disagree with this. Time alignment is the right approach because I want minimal latency as a starting point, and it is easy enough to add the delays back in to achieve whatever room layout you'd prefer, including a preset that approximates the original recording layout/timing. I wouldn't want to be in the opposite situation where I was trying to compensate for baked in delays and I was trying to remove them. 

And lastly, a note on phasing, because this is something that I've struggled with in the past. To avoid phasing, you have to play with the channel delays and the phase button in the mixer just like you would in a real recording session. These are real audio signals of real microphones and phasing is an avoidable physics problem. This is an absolute requirement unless you are only using a single microphone. Additionally, you have to be careful of how you are routing signals in your DAW. For example, if you are routing a dry signal then using a send for a reverb with a less than 100% wet mix, this can cause phase issues. Make sure to use 100% wet reverbs on FX sends and be careful of any FX that might be splitting and recombining signals. Finally, make sure your MIDI setup isn't double triggering notes. I use a ROLI Seaboard and it double triggers MIDI if it isn't configured for the VSL Synchron player correctly. These things can also cause phase issues! 

 Regards,
Jason Todd Shannon

@Another User said:

And lastly, a note on phasing, because this is something that I've struggled with in the past. To avoid phasing, you have to play with the channel delays and the phase button in the mixer just like you would in a real recording session. These are real audio signals of real microphones and phasing is an avoidable physics problem. This is an absolute requirement unless you are only using a single microphone. Additionally, you have to be careful of how you are routing signals in your DAW. For example, if you are routing a dry signal then using a send for a reverb with a 50/50 wet/dry mix, this can cause phase issues. Make sure to use 100% wet reverbs on FX sends and be careful of any FX that might be splitting and recombining signals. Finally, make sure your MIDI setup isn't double triggering notes. I use a ROLI Seaboard and it double triggers MIDI if it isn't configured for the VSL Synchron player correctly. These things can also cause phase issues! 

Thanks for the input! Very appreciated! But I don't use any processing. The phasing just happens. And it's also not my job figuring this out. In no other library I have there is such a severe phasing issue. I think it's because of the delays.

Hello all
Here are my 2 cents on the subject of microphone signal delay:

My job is "Recording Live Concerts". For this I usually base my recordings on a main mic (ORTF, Decca, EBS etc.). When the formations get bigger, I have to use mic spots especially to bring the rear instruments into the mix a bit to give them back some presence (but also soloists). If you didn't do that, then all the percussion instruments, for example, would sound rather washed out and reflections from walls, ceilings, etc. would then be so dominant, which wouldn't do the overall sound any good at all. In order for the "presence-return" to work well, it is important that the distance "main microphones - spot microphones" is balanced in time (0ms). The trick is to balance the volume of the spot microphones (close) in such a way that the distant instruments sound more present, but are still perceived at their natural distance - in other words, they don't really move closer.

• Example 1 of such a recording with spot microphones.
• Example 2 (really big orchestra also with organ).

To cut a long story short: In a good and transparent recording, the times between the microphones are more likely to be balanced (in time) than not. If there are time differences between the microphones, the main danger of acoustic cancellations is great.
What am I trying to say? Experimentation is always good. If it sounds better, unconventional things are great of course. But with all experimentation, you should always try a variation where all delays are set to 0ms. Then you have the situation that all signals generate the least amount of such (mentioned above) cancellations. It simulates the situation as if all microphones were 0m away from each other in time. So adding delay times by you as the user means restoring the "real recording world", but at the same time " re-worsening" the situation, which the recording engineer tried to correct by all means.

A lot of success

Beat

@Beat Kaufmann said:

Here are my 2 cents on the subject of microphone signal delay:

Beat, thank you very much for being, as usual, clear and informative!

Paolo

Beat, thanks for your input, as I don't have any recording experience. Very appreciated!

Actually, I don't know if I'm still ok with what I wrote. :) I would prefer a time-aligned version, I think, but not the Synchron one. I think there is a sonic difference between an alignment where the main microphones were set to 0 ms instead of delaying the close ones to the main mics. I find the sound very "instant" and "flat" (in lack of a better term), and I can hear this especially in the legatos. There is something missing which I can't fully name and describe. 

With my posts I tried to give ideas to think about. I don't know if this is the solution at all, but I (and many other users) simply don't get warm to the sound. I mean, this has to tell us something? Why does the Synchron libraries does sound so different to other libraries?

Especially the legatos. It is because of the microphones being used or the time-alignment? I don't think that these are the famous VSL legatos. Unfortunately VSL doesn't talk much about these things. Do we still have dedicated legato landing notes or just crossfades like in the older leg-sus patches? For me it sounds more like the latter one, and this would really be a pity. I don't want an overly expressive legato, I wan't the same legato we have in the VI libraries. But again: I didn't want to bring the legato topic back, but for me this is still a huge turn-off from the Synchron series (everything else is top-notch as always with VSL).

@Pixelpoet1985 said:

Beat, thanks for your input, as I don't have any recording experience. Very appreciated!

Actually, I don't know if I'm still ok with what I wrote. 😊 I would prefer a time-aligned version, I think, but not the Synchron one. I think there is a sonic difference between an alignment where the main microphones were set to 0 ms instead of delaying the close ones to the main mics. I find the sound very "instant" and "flat" (in lack of a better term), and I can hear this especially in the legatos. There is something missing which I can't fully name and describe...

Hello Pixelpoet1985
I'm going to assume that VSL solved the timing synchronization of all microphones well, so we users don't have to take on the task of doing it ourselves between microphones. By the way, I use the tool "https://www.soundradix.com/products/auto-align/" for this matter in my recordings

But as I read from your post, you somehow don't quite like the sound of the sync libraries. Although you attach this circumstance to the Legatos, I sense from your text that this applies more or less generally. At the same time, it seems that this was not yet the case with the VI libraries...

The thing with the sound went me also so. Just because I myself record orchestras, I hoped that the synchron recordings now correspond to how I record strings, for example: A super natural sound, now new with spatial synchron stage component - and everything as we are used to from VSL: in the best quality.
So I ordered in advance the Synchrons Strings ... and was mighty disappointed. I put them aside and used them no more. I didn't like all the presets. Especially the presets that make the orchestra sound distant were the most unnatural sounding to me.
I had the same bad feeling with the synchronized libraries, some of which I bought but never used...
------------------------------
Then one day came the message from VSL - that we can now use the libraries in "default mode". So unprocessed - the sound shuld be as the instruments were recorded. That was the turning point for me. Suddenly I had the sound available that I actually wanted... The libraries suddenly sounded fresh, natural, I could have the second violins play on the right, layering string libraries resulted in more fresh combinations, etc. free from any setting by VSL. Since then, I am an enthusiastic "unprocessed user" who is thrilled with the new synchronous line. Meanwhile I also do all the mixing (positions on stage of the instruments) in the individual Synchron players and put only one Reverb with a little Tail in the output channel. And because sound is a matter of taste - I found my personal sound with the presets "unprocessed". Listen to some "unprocessed" demos... or also here with the Prime Edition.

In short: Maybe you will find your solution also by using the "unprocessed version" or also called "default". I think with different milliseconds between the microphones you gain little. With all my demos, I just make music. I'm never bothered by legatos that don't sound exactly the same as in reality, because everything together sounds quite real (e.g. a little night music) and fresh... In any case, an independent person would not point out the legatos as a serious problem.

In this sense, perhaps a new approach to also regain more joy in the great VSL samples.
Beat

Beat, thanks for all your lengthy and detailed answers. Very appreciated!

I also pre-ordered Synchron Strings and was also disappointed with the sound. But only with the sound – not the legatos, for examples. At least we had patches VSL had been known for and no other developer had: fast legatos, performance trills. This is a missed chance and totally not understandable why VSL took a new route. The old libraries were and are still miles ahead of the competition and better than the Synchron ones. The new libraries only have this agile legato which is awful and only works in some very special cases – useless for me and extremely out of tune (which might be good for strings, but for the other instruments?). VSL should really think about the current legatos, because these aren't good. You can definitely hear that they use crossfaded legatos instead of dedicated landing notes (a clarification by VSL would be nice, by the way). It's very emotionless. And not only is the natural delay missing, also the slight timbre and tuning change when the legato transition happens.

I also miss the natural dynamic behaviour of the VI series, i.e. the vibrato naturally increases with your dynamics. We now have crossfade-able vibrato, but it's not the same, especially with VSL's clean approach. And to get the same feeling as in the old libraries, you have to use crossfade all the time. These espressivo patches are also useless for me, the vibrato kicks in way too late. I don't understand this. But hey, it's only me! :)

Back to the sound:

To be honest, I also tried the unprocessed preset. But where to start? And why has it always be so difficult with VSL? In any (!) other library I have I take the tree and the sound is good. With Synchron I have to experiment and use many microphones (and delays!) to get the same result. Phew! ... We have thousands of presets and they aren't good and not to my taste. Why not drastically reduce them to, let's say, three mixes. I want a classical (scoring stage) sound like in other libraries, with some reverb, EQ, saturation, limiter. For example, the lush presets are ridiculous with all the delay and processing. In which normal situation should these be taken?

Some presets are good, but not unified across the instruments. For the strings I like the ambience mix, for brass the close or classic mix. Why not make, as I just said, one or three mixes with a good classical sound in which the instruments share the same base microphones? I mean, in which normal recording situation you have various settings for the tree? Never. It's always the same.

I hope it didn't sound harsh again. Because I start to think if you get too harsh you won't get any answers. I'm still waiting for Bernd to answer some of my previous questions ... ;)

I produced a video...

How to enhance (improve) the legatos of newer string libraries?

Have fun

Beat

Hi Beat,

just to be double sure, in your video, the violins1 and 2,  and viola solo unprocessed use MIR though right? 

Best, 

 

Rubens

@Beat Kaufmann said:

I produced a video...

How to enhance (improve) the legatos of newer string libraries?

 

Have fun

Beat

Laying first chairs has always been a good addition, but doesn't solve the problem.

I've spent a long time with the legatos (maybe too much :D) and come to a new conclusion:
The playability is indeed different as in the VI libraries, more instant, more direct, and – neglecting the delay I mentioned earlier – the only thing I miss is a fast legato (and not a slower one). As said, the agile legato is useless for me and can only be used for very fast movements or runs. The normal legato (I'm talking about Elite Strings here) is indeed quite "long", but it should only be used at a specific (i.e. slower) tempo. If you play faster we need a faster legato with different attacks and shorter transitions, like in Synchron Strings I and all of the VI libraries. This is missing across the whole Synchron range. Yes, we have the agile legatos, but I miss a fast legato without these out-of-tune, portamento-ish transitions which is described as a new approach by VSL. Please, VSL give us the normal fast legatos back and, at least, I will be happy. 

As I also said earlier, the fast legatos and performance trills have always been VSL's killer feature and I can't understand that they took a new route. The old ones were perfect. Without "proper" fast legatos it very easily does sound synthetic and midi-ish like in the majority of other libraries on the market, because these also doesn't have fast legatos. But at least, they have some kind of mechanism that alters the transitions via your playing speed. 

@Rubens Tubenchlak said:

Hi Beat,
just to be double sure, in your video, the violins1 and 2,  and viola solo unprocessed use MIR though right? 
Best, Rubens

Hi Rubens

No, the Solo Strings are completely unprocessed, as are the String Ensembles. Neither the Synchron String Ensembles nor the Solo Strings use MIR. Everything is truly "unprocessed". The very dry solo strings are only "panned" to the right place (L, R, M).  Finally there is just some "reverb tail over all" in the output channel of the daw... (see the mixer in the attachment)

All the best

Beat

Hi Beat,
Synchron Strings Pro and Elite are inside the Synchron stage, being that, the sound comes already with some treatment "by nature", by the choosen mics, and there is no need of MIR, that is clear.
The confusion of mine was how to deal with the violin 1 (vi version for example). The answer is: it will be completely raw, having only the same amount of tail as the other ensembles and panned, right? In other words, ensembles inside the Synchron stage room and violin 1 only some algorithm tail.
Sorry to insist! :-)

@Rubens Tubenchlak said:

The confusion of mine was how to deal with the violin 1 (vi version for example). The answer is: it will be completely raw, having only the same amount of tail as the other ensembles and panned, right?

I'm not Beat, but I would guess that the added Solo Strings are like spot mics on the first chairs. The drier they are, the more their raw character will emerge, emphasizing their legato (among the other things).

Paolo

Great answer, thank you Paolo!