MIR Pro 3D: Instrument profiles & rotation

[Pixelpoet1985]

As far as I understand some of the instruments in the silent stage were recorded not from the front, but also from the side or the back. Therefore, I usually turn e.g. the flute or the solo horn to degrees of 45 to 90°. Maybe it's coincidence, but I prefer the sound when the instrument is rotated.

The instrument profiles consider the recording distance and rotation, if I remember correctly. Is this true? For example, if the flute was recorded from the right and I place the instrument in MIR Pro. What does the profile do? Does the instrument gets automatically rotated or do we hear the original sound (i.e. from the right)?

I would like to have a feature (maybe a button in MIR Pro 3D) you can activate so that the instruments not only will be placed to the original distance to the main microphone, but also compensates for the rotation. The same example: If the flute was recorded from the right, then I would like to have the instrument automatically rotated to the left. If the flute was recorded from a distance of, let's say, 2 meters, I would like to have the instrument placed at that distance to the main microphone. 

Does this makes sense? Maybe the distance doesn't make sense, but I think this might (or not) be a good feature in general.

[Dietz]

@Pixelpoet1985 said:

The instrument profiles consider the recording distance and rotation, if I remember correctly. Is this true? For example, if the flute was recorded from the right and I place the instrument in MIR Pro. What does the profile do? Does the instrument gets automatically rotated or do we hear the original sound (i.e. from the right)?

You memory serves you right: In case of Vienna Instruments, MIR's Instrument Profiles already take into account the recording situation. This means: Assuming that (say) a trumpet has been recorded from the side, MIR's Directivity Profile is already taking this variable into account when you have it aiming towards the front of the stage.

I would like to have a feature (maybe a button in MIR Pro 3D) you can activate so that the instruments not only will be placed to the original distance to the main microphone, but also compensates for the rotation. The same example: If the flute was recorded from the right, then I would like to have the instrument automatically rotated to the left. If the flute was recorded from a distance of, let's say, 2 meters, I would like to have the instrument placed at that distance to the main microphone. 

Does this makes sense? Maybe the distance doesn't make sense, but I think this might (or not) be a good feature in general.[/quote]

Distance doesn't make much sense indeed, but I've in fact been pondering "general instrument profiles" already, which simply assume that the recording at hand was made with a microphone in front of the player's nose, so to speak. Maybe a new feature for a future update. 😊 Thanks for sharing your ideas!

Kind regards,

[Pixelpoet1985]

Thanks, Dietz! 

Just to make clear I understood correctly: If the spoken trumpet is recorded from the side and I place the instrument in MIR Pro without rotation (i.e. the standard icon). Does it still sound from the side or is automatically turned unter the hood? Didn't know that. I always though the Directivity Profile would only influence the processing.

Concerning the rotation let me give you an example:
I really like the stereo width of the silent stage recordings. And especially the instruments with some recording distance, like the flute or the horn, sound more like having a main / room microphone to me. I don't want to lose this stereo width in MIR Pro.

I know the MIR Pro concept is about having spot microphones, but the silent stage recordings aren't that close. If we say that the horn in the silent stage has actually a main microphone, I never understood why the stereo width gets narrowed so drastically with the instrument profiles. Unfortunately we can't make them bigger. 

The instrument profiles narrow the stereo width to match the original recording. But in my opinion it would make sense to keep the width intact and scale it to make it the same width in the MIR Pro venue. For example: The horn gets narrowed to 1m. But this is the width in the silent stage. In the Synchron Stage, for example, it would be maybe 5m to be the same (5m because the room is five times bigger).

Of course, I could take a general purpose profile, but I don't want to lose all the processing of the Vienna instrument profiles. I only wished that we can define our own width.

[Dietz]

@Another User said:

Of course, I could take a general purpose profile, but I don't want to lose all the processing of the Vienna instrument profiles. I only wished that we can define our own width.

That was a deliberate design decision to restrict the number of inadvertent user errors a bit. Please be aware that MIR's Instrument Profiles aren't meant to be used with Synchron Instruments anyway.

Kind regards,

[Pixelpoet1985]

@Dietz said:

Assuming the Vienna Instrument's trumpet had been recorded from the side, the MIR Icon will take care that the sound emanated into the virtual hall of the MIR Venue is rotated in a way that the player's nose is aligned with the Icon's volume fader. The direct signal is not affected by this rotation - the "spot mic" stays in its ideal position on the side of the instrument all the time (at least as long as you don't activate the option to use the "Directivity Profile for Dry Signal.)

Thanks for clarifying! So this means if I rotate the icon, as I said, so that the dry / spot mic were recorded from the front... then the sound emanation also gets rotated again, isn't it? 😄

Concerning the original recording at the silent stage: Is there any information on the instrument distances / rotations available? I think I already asked VSL support and they said there isn't something like a spread sheet. But this information is saved within the instrument profiles. Can't this be made available? I'm mainly interested in the rotation and it's very tedious to try and guess with the MIR Pro icons. I would be happy with a cryptical XML or anything else you could export from the profiles. 😊

[Dietz]

@Another User said:

Concerning the original recording at the silent stage: Is there any information on the instrument distances / rotations available? I think I already asked VSL support and they said there isn't something like a spread sheet. But this information is saved within the instrument profiles. Can't this be made available? I'm mainly interested in the rotation and it's very tedious to try and guess with the MIR Pro icons. I would be happy with a cryptical XML or anything else you could export from the profiles. :)

Honestly - I don't think VSL wants to disclose too many details about their recording process. ;-) As a rule of thumb I would assume that the average distance of the mics used in VSL's Silent Stage for the sampling of Vienna Instruments was about 1.5 meters in case of solo instruments, and 3 to 4 meters in case of ensembles (depending on their size).

HTH,

[Pixelpoet1985]

@Dietz said:

Honestly - I don't think VSL wants to disclose too many details about their recording process. 😉 As a rule of thumb I would assume that the average distance of the mics used in VSL's Silent Stage for the sampling of Vienna Instruments was about 1.5 meters in case of solo instruments, and 3 to 4 meters in case of ensembles (depending on their size).

I know about the distances, was mainly interested in the rotation. Thanks. I fully understand that VSL doesn't want to disclose too many things. It was just a try to understand a bit more. 😉 It's always astounding what MIR Pro is really capable of in terms of the Vienna instruments or, in other words, what's done under the hood.

[vokars]

Hi Dietz,

concerning "Distance doesn't make much sense indeed":

It would make sense for the dry signal to regard the influence of diffraction (high frequncies behave more like beams, low more like spheres => distance dependend EQing) when using the positioner. The shuffler for adjusting the distance dependend width of the dry signal usually uses a shelf filter to emulate that effect but is of course only an approximation and a working solution needs the information of the recording situation to produce the appropriate correction. But I remember that you have the expert in wavefield synthesis in the VSL team. That is a gift and and an opportunity to discuss that issue.

Best regards

vokars

[Dietz]

@vokars said:

[...] It would make sense for the dry signal to regard the influence of diffraction (high frequncies behave more like beams, low more like spheres => distance dependend EQing) when using the positioner. [...]

In case of the IRs this happens all by itself, simply because that's also the case for the emanated impulse in a hall. We couldn't really avoid it without ridiculous effort, but as a matter of fact we don't want to, for the reasons you mentioned yourself.

The direct signal OTOH is looked at as "ideal close mic", from MIR's POV. Air absorption filter and the additional use of the directivity filtering are nice add-ons for more options when dealing with the dry part of MIR's output, but not the central part of its concept.

Kind regards,