Merge 2 Instances of MIR (or use just one via Dorico+VEP)?

[wing]

I'm doing a lot of hybrid scoring these days from within Dorico using NotePerformer + NPPE's. I have a complex setup routed from the NPPE 16 multi-outs back into Dorico, which is are then fed into MIR Pro.

However, there are a handful of alternate libraries I like to use (which do not have an NPPE) - various other instruments using VSL VI Pro, Synchron, kontakt, spitfire, OT Sine, etc. I have found for my own sanity the easiest way to use and change these instruments on the fly is using VEPro.

The issue I am running into, is that when I go to add MIR Pro to these instruments that reside inside VEP, MIR will automatically open up a separate room instance. I would love to be able to merge them into one room instance so I can more easily work with them visually in the space together. Is this possible?

FYI I am aware that I can use multiple outs from VEP back into Dorico – and for now, that has been my workaround. But I really dislike Dorico's mixer, and it takes a long time to set up individual inserts, so if I can do all my MIR Pro inserts and additional mixing inside VEP's mixer I would much prefer that. Thank you!

[Dewdman42]

@wing said:

I'm doing a lot of hybrid scoring these days from within Dorico using NotePerformer + NPPE's. I have a complex setup routed from the NPPE 16 multi-outs back into Dorico, which is are then fed into MIR Pro.

However, there are a handful of alternate libraries I like to use (which do not have an NPPE) - various other instruments using VSL VI Pro, Synchron, kontakt, spitfire, OT Sine, etc. I have found for my own sanity the easiest way to use and change these instruments on the fly is using VEPro.

The issue I am running into, is that when I go to add MIR Pro to these instruments that reside inside VEP, MIR will automatically open up a separate room instance. I would love to be able to merge them into one room instance so I can more easily work with them visually in the space together. Is this possible?

FYI I am aware that I can use multiple outs from VEP back into Dorico – and for now, that has been my workaround. But I really dislike Dorico's mixer, and it takes a long time to set up individual inserts, so if I can do all my MIR Pro inserts and additional mixing inside VEP's mixer I would much prefer that. Thank you!

Unfortunately there isn’t a way to merge them all into one room. You can’t even do it when using mir across multiple Vepro instances much less between nppe and Vepro. The good news is there is no difference in sound quality or resource usage presuming you use the same room settings for each mir instance.

You might fancy the notion of having them all in one room so that you can visualize where they are all positioned in the room relative to each other but consider that often times with mir the solution that sounds the best is often not a visually appealing arrangement on the stage. They end up on top of each other and turned different directions and all manner of things and actually it’s a lot easier to manage in some ways when they are split into separate room instances. Use the visuals as a starting place and trust your ears

[dbudde]

@Dewdman42 said:
You can’t even do it when using mir across multiple Vepro instances

MIR Pro 3D does this.

What would be great is if VE Pro server could do a similar thing with a composite mixer across all instances. Then one could create single instrument instances in VE Pro and not have to deal with ports and midi channels.

[Dewdman42]

Oh good to know about vepro instances being able to share a room. Thanks for that!

[wing]

@Dewdman42 said:

@wing said:

I'm doing a lot of hybrid scoring these days from within Dorico using NotePerformer + NPPE's. I have a complex setup routed from the NPPE 16 multi-outs back into Dorico, which is are then fed into MIR Pro.

However, there are a handful of alternate libraries I like to use (which do not have an NPPE) - various other instruments using VSL VI Pro, Synchron, kontakt, spitfire, OT Sine, etc. I have found for my own sanity the easiest way to use and change these instruments on the fly is using VEPro.

The issue I am running into, is that when I go to add MIR Pro to these instruments that reside inside VEP, MIR will automatically open up a separate room instance. I would love to be able to merge them into one room instance so I can more easily work with them visually in the space together. Is this possible?

FYI I am aware that I can use multiple outs from VEP back into Dorico – and for now, that has been my workaround. But I really dislike Dorico's mixer, and it takes a long time to set up individual inserts, so if I can do all my MIR Pro inserts and additional mixing inside VEP's mixer I would much prefer that. Thank you!

Unfortunately there isn’t a way to merge them all into one room. You can’t even do it when using mir across multiple Vepro instances much less between nppe and Vepro. The good news is there is no difference in sound quality or resource usage presuming you use the same room settings for each mir instance.

You might fancy the notion of having them all in one room so that you can visualize where they are all positioned in the room relative to each other but consider that often times with mir the solution that sounds the best is often not a visually appealing arrangement on the stage. They end up on top of each other and turned different directions and all manner of things and actually it’s a lot easier to manage in some ways when they are split into separate room instances. Use the visuals as a starting place and trust your ears

Hello, good to see you around here as well - forum #3! You're always so helpful, much appreciated.

Good to know, thanks for confirming that. One of the other reasons for preferring same room is if I decide to make global changes to one - size, mic position, wet/dry offset, or the actual room itself - it's nice to not have to do it twice over – especially if I'm just trying out ideas and not ready to commit. I'm sure there could be creative mixing benefits for some instruments in different spaces with different mic settings, but for the most part with what I'm doing I prefer them living together.

In summary, it seems my options are:

1) use two separate MIR instances and manually match them.

2) set multi-outs from VEP into Dorico's mixer (so I have separate control over each instrument), and then add MIR Pro inserts to each channel so they can all live in the same MIR instance.

The second is usually what I've been doing already, and it does work... it's just very tedious to set up!

This is primarily due to a fault of how they've designed the Dorico mixer and some basic missing features (as you are probably aware): you can't copy inserts from one channel to the next or batch add (like you can in most DAWs as well as VEP with an alt+drag, or with several channels selected hold down alt and the insert gets added to all at once). Also you can't easily search plugins from a list when adding inserts. Would be a lot easier to type "MIR" than dig through submenus. Multiply this by two dozen channels, it really adds up. And that's not to mention that you also have to manually rename all the tracks since coming from Dorico they become stuff like OUT1/2 OUT3/4 etc. But the one advantage is to see everything together.

Whereas the first option (separate room instances) would go much faster from a setup perspective, but like I said having the downside of mental/visual/global setting separation.

I think I'll make the decision for one or the other based on the project and how much time I have available - but I'm happy to learn that if I go with two matched MIR instances they will still "sound" together no problem.

I really hope that Dorico 6 will introduce some updates to the mixer regarding the above, making it easier to add inserts, name, color code, etc.

I would also LOVE if NotePerformer could be used from within VEP, though it seems that's a dream that will be unlikely to ever happen with Wallander.

Shifting gears:

Regarding separate instances of VEP, I'm somewhat new to the app and as I develop and build larger orchestration templates, I am wondering about the best way to implement a large orchestra given that the mixers of each instance are treated as separate entities?

So far, I've made a template which is separate instances for each instrument family (Winds 3333, Brass 4331, Perc/Harp/Piano, Strings). I've done this primarily since that takes up almost a full Midi Port (16 ch) for each family, but also keep them visually separate too for ease of navigation (ironically my opposite issue of MIR where I want them visually together!).

However now that I see discussion that the mixers are separated, I feel that will invariably lead to other issues and confusion down the line. Is it perhaps better to have the entire orchestra in one instance, and use new midi ports for every family (Winds 1, Brass 2, etc)?

[dbudde]

@wing said:
Is it perhaps better to have the entire orchestra in one instance, and use new midi ports for every family (Winds 1, Brass 2, etc)?

This is what I do.

[Dietz]

@wing said:
use two separate MIR instances and manually match them.

In MIR 3D you can save your settings as Venue Preset in its Preset Management (F7, by default), and recall them in the second window or Venue Tab. Much easier like that. 😊

[Dewdman42]

@wing said:
Shifting gears:

Regarding separate instances of VEP, I'm somewhat new to the app and as I develop and build larger orchestration templates, I am wondering about the best way to implement a large orchestra given that the mixers of each instance are treated as separate entities?

So far, I've made a template which is separate instances for each instrument family (Winds 3333, Brass 4331, Perc/Harp/Piano, Strings). I've done this primarily since that takes up almost a full Midi Port (16 ch) for each family, but also keep them visually separate too for ease of navigation (ironically my opposite issue of MIR where I want them visually together!).

However now that I see discussion that the mixers are separated, I feel that will invariably lead to other issues and confusion down the line. Is it perhaps better to have the entire orchestra in one instance, and use new midi ports for every family (Winds 1, Brass 2, etc)?

honestly I think there is no right or wrong answer. Pros and cons both ways. Lots of people work both ways very successfully. I would do whatever works. The nice thing about one big instance is that you don't have to put any thought into how to organize your instances. But on the other hand I personally think it's easier to navigate a multi-instance VePro project, but I also prefer to have few enough instances that the VePro window has all available instance tabs clearly visible without scrolling anywhere, in other words, very painless to switch.

I also have had a hard time deciding how to group instances. should I do it by instrument family or by product? I mean one advantage is you and deactive the instances you aren't using and same some RAM. So that kind of makes sense to group them by product, but on the other hand, grouped more by instrument family makes more sense when using the entire mix coming back to DAW as one or a few down mixed stems. Hard to say for sure. well could always create templates both ways and use whichever makes sense. Dunno.

I also think, hypothetically, that VePro will manage threads and cores on your system better if it's all in one instance. But in my own actual usage, I haven't been able to conclude any observable differences that way, but i haven't done any kind of serious comparison test either. Its just theoretical based on the architecture of VePro.

[wing]

@Dietz said:

@wing said:
use two separate MIR instances and manually match them.

In MIR 3D you can save your settings as Venue Preset in its Preset Management (F7, by default), and recall them in the second window or Venue Tab. Much easier like that. 😊

Thank you - I have been using the preset manager and I love it! However what I mean might be easier with a simple real-world example:

Let's say you're using a room but decide you'd like to just *try* to hear what it sounds like with a little bit of less reverb time scaling, or global wet/dry offset - or move the position or offset of any of the mics. Or maybe you want to try everything in a new room. But at this stage, you're just playing around, to see what you think - you just want to hear the results quickly. Of course you can make these changes to one, save as a preset, then load that preset in the other instance; but in my opinion such a scenario can result in a bit of preset clutter when it's mostly about checking out differences in small changes (of course I know presets are temporary and can always be deleted, but hopefully you see my point about that – if you're playing around and trying lots of different things, saving and recalling presets and then deleting them would get pretty tedious for this goal). In such a case I might personally prefer to manually adjust each room, if it's just about matching two variables like the wet/dry offset. But of course this is minor.

Maybe a future Mir Pro 3D version could have something like a "room instance sync" feature? Like some kind of button where you could select a primary instance and other instances could sync/slave global parameters to the main one?

[wing]

@Dewdman42 said:

@wing said:
Shifting gears:

Regarding separate instances of VEP, I'm somewhat new to the app and as I develop and build larger orchestration templates, I am wondering about the best way to implement a large orchestra given that the mixers of each instance are treated as separate entities?

So far, I've made a template which is separate instances for each instrument family (Winds 3333, Brass 4331, Perc/Harp/Piano, Strings). I've done this primarily since that takes up almost a full Midi Port (16 ch) for each family, but also keep them visually separate too for ease of navigation (ironically my opposite issue of MIR where I want them visually together!).

However now that I see discussion that the mixers are separated, I feel that will invariably lead to other issues and confusion down the line. Is it perhaps better to have the entire orchestra in one instance, and use new midi ports for every family (Winds 1, Brass 2, etc)?

honestly I think there is no right or wrong answer. Pros and cons both ways. Lots of people work both ways very successfully. I would do whatever works. The nice thing about one big instance is that you don't have to put any thought into how to organize your instances. But on the other hand I personally think it's easier to navigate a multi-instance VePro project, but I also prefer to have few enough instances that the VePro window has all available instance tabs clearly visible without scrolling anywhere, in other words, very painless to switch.

I also have had a hard time deciding how to group instances. should I do it by instrument family or by product? I mean one advantage is you and deactive the instances you aren't using and same some RAM. So that kind of makes sense to group them by product, but on the other hand, grouped more by instrument family makes more sense when using the entire mix coming back to DAW as one or a few down mixed stems. Hard to say for sure. well could always create templates both ways and use whichever makes sense. Dunno.

I also think, hypothetically, that VePro will manage threads and cores on your system better if it's all in one instance. But in my own actual usage, I haven't been able to conclude any observable differences that way, but i haven't done any kind of serious comparison test either. Its just theoretical based on the architecture of VePro.

This is all very helpful food for thought. Thanks for responding!