Automation question/Stereo Width

[Philvis]

Hi there

I've been trying to automate Stereo Width in Vienna Mir using Vienna Ensemble, so I click View/Automation Mapping, Add, then Learn one of my Midi controllers, but when I move around the stereo width with the mouse to assign Stereo Width, Mir doesn't respond. Alternatively, when I attempt to do it manually using the dropdown menu, there is no assignement for Stereo Width, only Wet/Dry signal, Volume etc.

Is thereb another way of doing this?

Many thanks in advance

Phil

[Dietz]

Hi Phil,

you're right, none of the parameters that would trigger the pre-rendering of a new set of positional IRs can be automated. That's a deliberate restriction, because all the necessary calculations and data-shuffling will cause short, but audible interruptions of the wet signal. The MIR Icon does not allow for the automation of its position, rotation, stereo width and any parameter that depends on the chosen Instrument Profile, therefore. (The same is true for all parameters of the Main and the Secondary Microphone and the selection of the MIR Venue itself.)

As a work-around you could use two otherwise identical MIR Icons with different stereo width and crossfade between the audio signals you get from them.

 

[i]Sidenote: The following text is a quote from [url=http://eu.vsl.co.at/downloader.aspx?FileID=7629]MIR Pro's Manual Addendum "Think MIR!"[/url]:

[b]Positional IR Prerendering and Dynamic Processing[/b]

Computers have become incredibly powerful over the years. But when it comes to intensely demanding tasks like convolution, it is still impossible to have more than a thousand of these processes computed in real time – which is a pity, because as we said before the whole MIR Pro concept relies on multi-sampled rooms. Why that many convolutions, you might ask?

Let’s see: Assuming that we have decided to record 40 positions from a big stage, this number has to be multiplied by 8 for each direction we’ve sent the impulse to (0°, 60°, 120°, 180°, 240°, 300°, to the floor and to the ceiling), which adds up to 320 IR recordings. As we’ve discussed before, every IR is captured (and consequently processed) in 4-channel Ambisonics, which means that in our example the whole multi impulse response set from a single microphone position consists of 1,280 individual IRs.

To overcome the aforementioned limitations, Vienna MIR Pro introduces a proprietary method to take much of this burden off the CPU: Positional IR Prerendering. Cutting down the number of necessary convolutions to a bare minimum, it still allows for the same acoustical results one would achieve by using all those 1,280 IRs.

Without going into detail too far, the principle behind it is easy to understand. Each time an audio source is put on the stage using the MIR Icon, the MIR Pro engine looks up all actually necessary IRs in the complete set and prepares a momentary set of individual IRs for this very signal. The signal’s exact position, stereo width and direction, as well as all instrument-specific meta-data derived from the assigned Instrument Profile and the chosen Output Format are all taken into account. Prerendering takes just a few milliseconds, so every move or change applied to an audio signal is almost instantly reflected in the again newly created impulse response characteristic. [...][/i]

 

PS: We know that having fully automatable MIR Icons is highly desirable, and as a matter of fact this is on top of our wish-list for an upcoming new version of MIR. ;-)

Kind regards,

[Philvis]

Hi Dietz

Many thanks for the reply. Re. your suggestion of using two different MIR icons and crossfading between them, as a workaround I have used 2 parts with exactly the same parameters and placements, but with different stereo widths, have automated the audio levels on both, and when I need a change in stereo width, have been doubling the parts and crossfading between them. I think that's what you mean, and it seems to do the trick.

Thanks again.

Phil