As a follow-up to my post in the VI/MIR/Postprod Forum - "Spatialising Synchron Strings - an unorthodox approach" - I've prepared a quick 16 bar audio demo (headphone mix) to illustrate some results of the hybrid mixing techniques I described in that post.
My midistration is from the opening of the 3rd Movement (the delightfully silly and very pretty pizzicato ostinato) in Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony.
I've used only Synchron Strings Pro in Logic.
I've used only the Synchron Mixer's "Main" mics. These are routed separately to:-
(a) two separate mono-to-stereo binaural location devices in Logic, for the 'dry(-ish)' instrument sounds (Logic's own built-in Binaural Panners can be used for this, though I've used a different device);
(b) MIR Pro 3D plugins in which each MIR Instrument Channel is set to 100% wet. (MIR's main mic is the "Stereo - MIR 3D HOA Capsules" preset but with C Volume set to zero; the venue is the Sage Gateshead Stage 1, main mic at the 4th row).
The outputs of the Binaural processors and MIR were then mixed for Logic's stereo output.
In this way the 'dry' location and width I required for each string section was set up and generated only in Logic, whilst the wet location and width I required for the 2D ambience of each string section was set up and generated separately and only in MIR.
This configuration means of course that setting up locations and widths has to be done twice, once for dry-only binaural processing in the DAW, and once for wet-only ambience processing in MIR. In my book, the extra work is worth it for wide Synchron instrument ensembles, especially string sections.
The advantage of this hybrid approach is much better dry string-section width definition than MIR can provide using only 2 channel stereo configuration. MIR's dry location and width definition is probably perfectly fine for single-player instruments, though I have yet to explore that extensively. In short - MIR is great for wet ambience; binaural processing is great for locating any dry(-ish) wide instrument section or group, especially when you want to depart from Synchron's originally-recorded instrument locations.
Attached mp3 files:-
(1) Full mix.
(2) Binaural processing only, no MIR.
(3) MIR 100% wet ambience only, no separate binaural processing.
The audio in (1) is simply (2) and (3) summed.
I must admit my midistration and mixing have plenty of room for improvement. It will no doubt take me many, many hours to become familiar, comfortable and hopefully somewhat adept in using MIR Pro 3D this way.
Let me know what you think.