Best Roompack for smaller arrangements?

[littlewierdo]

Probably a common question, I'm doing a lot of smaller arrangements lately to try to improve my music theory and instrumentation skills, working with self-imposed limitations allows me to really have to work harder to make an arrangement sound good without using a huge swath of instrumentation to hide poor/artificial sounding instruments because of lazy MIDI programming (as good as MIDI is these days, it still requires a lot of work to get a MIDI instrument to sound realistic). One of the aspects I am also working on is my mastering skills, including compression, EQ, and reverb.

A lot of what I am doing right now is upbeat chamber music from the medieval era, usually, the kind of thing you might expect to hear in film in a kings court type of settings (think tambourine, small string quartet, some historical winds like recorders and even the crumhorn got some use last night!).

I'm currently using MIR Pro with the starter edition complete libraries (1-7 and 1+ & 2+) in either the VI or Synchron stage variety, depending on which UI I feel like working with. It's worth noting, I really love these libraries, my only wish is that they had progressive vibrato, for the price of these libraries compared to other similar libraries, the others do have progressive vibrato, it puzzles me that the starter editions do not. However, I digress...

My mastering is done completely in Vienna Suite Pro, and I have Ensemble Pro with Instruments Pro, the only room pack I have a license for is Konzerthaus (room pack 1).

Surprisingly, the lobby is actually fantastic, very lively sound, interesting and unusual reflections, it really adds a lot of character to smaller chamber music and I am betting, it's overlooked by many. My guess is, many think the lobby was included as maybe a goof, or, a "why not capture the lobby, we are here", sort of thing, but it really is a fantastic sound, provided you dial down the wet/dry mix and make some small adjustments on the tail (nearly 5s of reverb tail is a bit much haha). I find the tone in the lobby to be warmer and more friendly than the small Schubertsaal venue that is also included. This whole paragraph is all to say, if you have room pack 1, don't overlook the lobby, even if it's for bigger work, again, with the caveat that you adjust the tail and wet/dry ratio.

That said, I'm looking at room pack 4 (Sage Gateshead), specifically, hall 2 wondering if this has a good sound for the kind of music I am writing, or perhaps there are other venues with some tweaking, might be suitable. (I have all of the MirX rooms so that might be an interesting way to preview the bigger Mir Pro room packs).

Anyone have any thoughts on any specific room packs that might be suitable for this and some possible appropriate adjustments to make for a more authentic and warm sound?

[Dietz]

Thanks a lot for this interesting and informative summary!

The lobby of the Vienna Konzerthaus is indeed used for performances and opening ceremonies regularly, so the idea to capture this Venue for MIR wasn't too far-fetched. In the early days of legacy Vienna MIR it was a good replacement for the (back then) still missing "cathedral-like" halls. Truth to be told, it was one of the hardest recording sessions of all, because there's almost no sound-isolation against noise from the outside, and we had only a few hours to run the whole thing. 8-/

The Konzerthaus-lobby is also one of my favourite Venues for MIR demonstrations. It's always funny to have a player "walking up" the stairway, with this very distinctive sense of distance and indirect reflections. 😊

Still I would strongly suggest to look into Vienna Konzerthaus - Mozartsaal for smaller orchestrations and delicate arrangements. This beautiful hall is said to be one of the best environments for chamber music on ths planet - for a reason!

Apart from that, I would be interested in your definition of "warm" sound. The three halls of The Sage Gateshead sound fabulous, but acoustically they are all on the clear, well-defined side, if you ask me. OTOH - of you like the Konzerthaus lobby, you should _definitely_ try our version of the Pernegg Monastery (a.k.a. RoomPack 5). For me, this MIR Venue is maybe the most versatile of all, which lends itself beautifully to all kinds of music (despite its ecclesiastical origin). It can be used in both directions (front > back, back > front), it offers dedicated elevated instrument positions from the organ balcony, and the reverberation time can be brought down to almost "dryish" values without losing the sense of spaciousness. Highly recommended! 😊

Kind regards,

[stephen limbaugh]

I did a film a couple years ago and put 20 instruments in the lobby of the Konzerthaus... sounded amazing and I had a very happy director.  I love that room!

[littlewierdo]

@Dietz said:

Thanks a lot for this interesting and informative summary!

The lobby of the Vienna Konzerthaus is indeed used for performances and opening ceremonies regularly, so the idea to capture this Venue for MIR wasn't too far-fetched. In the early days of legacy Vienna MIR it was a good replacement for the (back then) still missing "cathedral-like" halls. Truth to be told, it was one of the hardest recording sessions of all, because there's almost no sound-isolation against noise from the outside, and we had only a few hours to run the whole thing. 8-/

The Konzerthaus-lobby is also one of my favourite Venues for MIR demonstrations. It's always funny to have a player "walking up" the stairway, with this very distinctive sense of distance and indirect reflections. 😊

Still I would strongly suggest to look into Vienna Konzerthaus - Mozartsaal for smaller orchestrations and delicate arrangements. This beautiful hall is said to be one of the best environments for chamber music on ths planet - for a reason!

Apart from that, I would be interested in your definition of "warm" sound. The three halls of The Sage Gateshead sound fabulous, but acoustically they are all on the clear, well-defined side, if you ask me. OTOH - of you like the Konzerthaus lobby, you should _definitely_ try our version of the Pernegg Monastery (a.k.a. RoomPack 5). For me, this MIR Venue is maybe the most versatile of all, which lends itself beautifully to all kinds of music (despite its ecclesiastical origin). It can be used in both directions (front > back, back > front), it offers dedicated elevated instrument positions from the organ balcony, and the reverberation time can be brought down to almost "dryish" values without losing the sense of spaciousness. Highly recommended! 😊

Kind regards,

Thanks for the thoughts, I define "warm" is usually a bit more emphasis on the mids and low mids. Its generally less tiring on the ears, but also has a more subdued sound and probably idea for smaller, less bombastic music.

I have all the MIRx rooms and have been playing with the limited options it provides for quite a long time using the Pern monastery, and once the amount of wet dry signal has been adjusted to be a bit more reasonable, it has what is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful, deeply coloured reverb sound I have heard. It is personally my favourite venue of the MIRx groupings, but I have to tell you, the lobby of Konz in MIR Pro is quickly growing on me.

Having only recently had the chance to really dive into MIR Pro (this might be a violation of the terms, but a friend let me borrow his Vienna key so I had a chance to use MIR Pro for an extended period of time while he was out of the States), I finally decided to buy my own license with roompack 1, and Im very quickly wishing I had pern monastery (Roompack 5). There are many reverb engines out there, but nothing tailored for orchestral work with exception to maybe altiverb, which pales in comparison.

The hidden little gem about MIR Pro? I think Paul dropped the ball on this, MIRacles. It gets a 45 second mention in one of the later videos and is never mentioned outside of this. It really deserves its own video, even if you just take the video from Suite pro and drop it into the MIR Pro video collection, because this hidden little gem allows us to really have the best of both worlds, realistic venues with some algorithmic sweetness to iron out resonances, or, in my case, accentuate resonances. Let me explain.

While many sound engineers and composers are looking for a flat sound, I am not. A room plays the biggest role in the sound an instrument makes. Arguably, the sound engineer is "playing" the room when he is mixing. I like to write, compose, and mix to the room. This means, looking at the room, determining the type of reverb, tail length, resonant frequencies, and other key characteristics and writing music tailored for that venue. I am not an expert in sound engineering, nor am I a very good composer, dont take everything I just said as some sort of blow hard set of comments, I only mention this to say that even something as simple as changing the key of a piece to match the acoustics of a room can make a HUGE difference in the tone and timbre of a piece, and it is something every composer should consider.

A trumpet sounds terrible on a street corner when compared to an acoustically tuned room. Add coloration to that room and that adds character. Most sound engineers consider color to be a flaw, I consider it to be character. The most overlooked aspect of composition is the room with which a piece is played in, and if you are not paying close attention to the acoustics of the room, you are missing an important detail of the the timbre of the music.

This is, by the way, why I wish there were more mic positions available, Id love to be able to capture more of the room's tone, but I have digressed. Pern Monastery, I will pick it up in the coming months, the current "crisis" has me broke. Why did every sound font company have to put everything I wanted on sale this last month??