Hi everyone,
As you may know I'm one who is constantly seeking better ways to mix and to achieve a realistic recording from virtual instruments. Often I scour the internet looking at discussions on what other professionals and newbies have to say. It's quite astonishing how negative the subject of 'Loudness' can be in some quarters. I wanted to start a discussion on this if nothing else but to put down some ideas that come to mind.
I have to say that the main disputed point of orchestral mixing seems to be that many people have never learned how to do it, and aren't likely to be in a position to be able to study it from a live point of view. And so these composers turn to the discussion forums asking the oft asked question "How much compression should I use?", and "Why aren't my recordings as loud as a commercial release?". More often than not these questions are met with frustrated professionals that end up chastising the newbies for their lack of apparrant knowledge of audio and orchestral mixing. In fact these questions are asked so often you'd think there'd be a huge wiki article by now explaining the why's and how's.
After seeing much of this discussions in similar veins it appears to me that several points are not being mentioned by the 'pros'. And these points could actually help the question askers much more than being told "Go take a college course!". So here's my thoughts on these oft asked questions .. feel free to chime in and correct me.
1). Question: "How much compression should I use?"
This usually gets answered with things like 'How dare you even mention the word compression!!'. The better answer should be that in the Virtual orchestra world it's nearly impossible to make a recording of decent volume without compressing your tracks to some degree.
Obviously things like, how you've programmed your velocities and expressions, how close you want your orchestra to be to the mics, and what post-processing you're using .. will all affect the outcome of the overall loudness .. but the fact is that I've never yet had a recording of a big orchestra (with VSL anyways) that didn't need some compression to beef up the volume. That doesn't mean you have to crush it to pieces, be sensible with your compression ratio and just use it to gain volume and stop when you are at a good level.
Yes compression shouldn't be over used, afterall you want to preserve the dynamic range of your recording. In real world recording you may not need compression because a), you're recording in a real hall with real mics, and b), you're probably using a pre-amp to beef up the recording volume anyways. Also you don't need to worry about setting depth and reverb since the hall sound is already there.
That's something else I've discovered. In order to replicate a big environment, your instruments have to appear to be further back in the virtual hall, and in so doing you end up having to loose some volume in order to achieve the effect .. otherwise you'd have an overbearing amount of wet and dry sound to worry about that will most likely overdrive your main output and cause everything to clip.
So I think the answer here is, that you probably don't want to use too much actual compression, but by all means use an overall compressor to raise the overall volume level so your recording comes through at an appropriate level. And use a limiter to get the rest of the gain after you can't compress anymore.
2). Question: "Why can't I get as loud as a commercial recording?"
This also usually gets met with "Why the hell do you want to have your recording as loud as an AC/DC record!!". This annoys me a lot because it's quite clear that the people who are asking this are not particularly wanting to be as loud as is possible to break the monitor speakers .. but simply to be as loud as is the expected industry level. Lets face it when you put as CD in your stereo and find that you have to crank that sucker right up to 9 (on a scale of 10) to hear something at a useful level .. who doesn't think 'Hmm ... this was badly mastered!.
Regardless of the quality we all want to achieve a certain volume in order to appear competent at our mastering process. Of course the thing here is that the industry .. at least in pop / hip-hop recordings are using extreme peak level limiting in order to have that louder than is technically possible loudness. They're using very expensive plugins and mix engineers who have at least 20 years of secret tricks up their sleaves to achieve this kind of sound.
Is is necessary to have this kind of loundess ... no I don't think it is. As long as your recording reaches an expected and happy level of loudness .. and as long as your orchestral recordings remain dynamic then it doesn't really matter. Innovative plugins like Ozone 3 will allow you to boost your levels to some degree, and a clever use of compression, limiting and EQ'ing will also improve your mastering level but these are things that take a while to learn. I would say here .. don't try to compete with the industry .. just try to make your recordings work at the level you find acceptable.
3). Question: "How do I use reverb - I just can't get my orchestra to sound natural?"
Well this one is a well worn one for me. I've been studying reverb for virtual orchestra for many years now and I still don't have any one way that I like to work with this. Again most 'Pros' end up blasting the newbies for not knowing anything about this and I guess I can empathize here a little as this is just one of those things that can't be answered quickly because there are just too many variables to consider. Of all the recordings that I've done to emulate a real orchestra it's usually the ones with the smallest setup, that were figured out by listening to the sound .. that end up sounding right ... rather than the ones I've tried to work out mathematically and trying to think cleverly about using Early reflections, depth etc.
Sometimes just applying one reverb for the whole thing and using a bus send/return system for one reverb can sound more pleasing and realistic that by using 14 different reverbs. Believe me I've tried them all :P. With reverb it's really all down to the Impulse response that you decide to use. Some IR's just simply sound crap. I'm fond of using the TODD-AO Ir's in Altiverb but there are times when I just hate them because they don't give me the right kind of realism. Lately I've taken to using the 'Sydney Opera house' set because it simply sounds right for what I'm doing. And no you don't NEED altiverb to have a good reverb .. the fact is that the built in reverbs on most DAWS are good enough to provide a decent room sound, but I guess it's nice to be able to look through different high end reverbs and be able to compare for yourself what seems better.
And also it really does depend on what sample library you're using. I personally love using VSL because of it's versatility. One can make VSL sound small and close, or big and far with the right kind of reverb setup. Whereas other libraries have a built in sound which is fine but for the most part I don't think I've heard many recordings of a sample library orchestra that don't sound fake to me. Mind you that is mostly down to the performance of the instruments. VSL has the advantage of an amazing legato system that allows for a very realistic playback .. add that with a decent reverb and depth setup and half your battle is already won.
Anyways this isn't meant to be a plug for VSL, but it's true that I have enjoyed much more realistic performances with VSL instruments that with other libraries.
A question of Experience:
I tell you I'd give a LOT to be invited to sit beside an engineer who's recording a classical performance or a filmscore. Because there's no end to the detail one could learn from such a visit. Seeing how they position the instruments .. how much of the close mics they use .. how much of the room mics .. how much processing they use, how much 'fader riding' they do during the mixdown, .. what kinds of gear they're using. The questions are pretty much endless and the sad fact is that the ONLY way to find out is to be able to befriend a mix engineer who can show you these things. For most of us that simply isn't going to happen. There's no book in the world that will describe a good way to mix virtual orchestra .. or indeed to describe how a real orchestra is mixed in the settings of a classical recording, or even a filmscore.
There are books and articles which show a rudiment of how to mix in general but it's incredibly hard to find the right kind of information for the kind of music that we all write here on this forum, and on others. So to the Professionals I can only say 'Try to be kind to the newbies .. it's not like there's any easy way for them to find out for themselves .. if they could they wouldn't ask what appear to be inane questions!'. And to the newbies .. well you've already probably had a telling off from the higher ups so you know not to bother them too much if you can help it. But don't stop experimenting .. perhaps the best way to learn is to throw yourself into the mix .. try everything, every plugin .. see what it does. Compare your mixes till your ears fall off, compare them with recordings that you want to sound like and just keep trying. If nothing else you'll learn quickly what everything does .. even if you've no idea what it's called. If you're unsure about technical terms like "RMS", or "Ratios" or "Limiting and compression" .. look it up on wikipedia .. and try to learn what is all does.
As I said at the beginning I intended this thread to be a discussion on discussing approaches to mix. If you have some ideas on better ways to mix then please do chime in .. I'm always interested to hear ideas and to try them out for myself. What I've tried to lay down here is some of the common questions that usually end up in an argument, and these topics more often that not seem to have missed the crucial points on what could have been answered with rather than just blasting the newbies.
So .. How do YOU do your mixdowns? And what do you think is the proper way to do them?
Good questions I think you'll agree :P