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Hi!
I am a new user of dear VR Monitor and I am trying to figure out of how to use it. As I understand, I can use it either as a FX plugin or a Post FX plugin in VE pro, but when I set up this, I only get a two channel stereo monitor with dear VR Monitor, despite that I selected 5.(1).4 - Mir 3DHOA DnMx as the main microphone - what am I doing wrong?
Best,
Anders
Hi Dietz,
and tanks for your reply! Yes, I've seen those tutorials before and watched them again yesterday, but they don't helped me to solve my problem of not getting immersive surround out of dear VR Monitor. I must add that I'm not working with Logic Pro or another sequencer program. but I'm working with Finale and VEPro/MirPro 3D as output.
When I'm trying to set dear VR Monitor as a FX-plugin or as a Post FX-plugin I only get two channel stereo, even if I've chosen the multichannel/Immersive output in MIR Pro (see attached files):
I see two problems in your screenshots:
- You're working in a stereo instance of VE Pro (... judging from the panning devices). There's no possibility to do surround or 3D audio in stereo channels.
- In almost all possible scenarios, you are better off using the binauralizer as the last instance of your monitoring chain, i.e. most likely in the monitor path of your audio workstation.
Sidenote for the occasional reader with VST-based hosts: Dear VR Monitor comes in VST3 flavour only, so there's no possibility to use it ATM within VE Pro anyway.
Does Finale even support surround mixing? I doubt it.
Can VePro be run in surround mode even when the DAW is in stereo?
I didn't think so...but anyway this would be a situation where that would be advantageous as then you could do the surround mix in VePro, using dearVRmonitor to reduce it back to binaural stereo before returning back to the stereo-only DAW.
Though also I have to say for this situation, do you really need 3D while working in Finale?
I see two problems in your screenshots:
- You're working in a stereo instance of VE Pro (... judging from the panning devices). There's no possibility to do surround or 3D audio in stereo channels.
- In almost all possible scenarios, you are better off using the binauralizer as the last instance of your monitoring chain, i.e. most likely in the monitor path of your audio workstation.
Sidenote for the occasional reader with VST-based hosts: Dear VR Monitor comes in VST3 flavour only, so there's no possibility to use it ATM within VE Pro anyway.
Hi again,
You're right that some of my channels are set in stereo, but some are off stereo mode. I can change that post FX of stereo panning to dearVRmonitor, but without any result. So after watching these video tutorials, I first now realize that I payed for something that I cannot use in my daily work - frankly, it could be more pronounced that dearVRMonitor does not work within VEPro and that you have to work with sequencer/DAW to use it!
Is there any chance of getting VEPro to work in ¨VST3 flavour¨ in future?
Best,
Anders
Does Finale even support surround mixing? I doubt it.
Can VePro be run in surround mode even when the DAW is in stereo?
I didn't think so...but anyway this would be a situation where that would be advantageous as then you could do the surround mix in VePro, using dearVRmonitor to reduce it back to binaural stereo before returning back to the stereo-only DAW.
Though also I have to say for this situation, do you really need 3D while working in Finale?
Why shouldn't I need 3D? Working with Finale has nothing to do with the distribution of sound.
Cadenza
The issue is that VePro is designed to run in a mode that matches the mix bus of your host (in this case your host is Finale). When the host (Finale) is in stereo, then VePro will also be in stereo (not surround).
MirPro3D in turn is designed to be in the mix mode of where its being hosted. In this case its being hosted in Vepro in stereo...and so it will also be in stereo itself.
Finale, i doubt, has surround mixing capabilities, but that is what you need to happen if you want to use both VePro and. MirPro3D in surround mode.
There is not much point in trying to use dearVRmonitor unless/until you have a surround bus somewhere. That's how it works. It takes a surround bus....and encodes into into two channel binaural. At that point only two of the channels in the surround bus will have audio...which you can then hear in your headphones the binauralized sound. but it still requires an actual surround mix bus to feed it.
In this case you don't have a surround bus in VePro because VePro adopts the same mix bus as the host (finale) is using. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, its not possible to put Vepro into surround mode while using Finale in stereo. *IF* that were possible, then you could put vepro into surround mode...and put dearVRmonitor on the master channel of VePro. But I don't believe that is possible. The main limiting factor for you is Finale not having surround mixing capabilities.
Hej, Cadenza. Given that you have DearVR Monitor plugged into VEP, and the fact that DearVR Monitor is VST3, AU, AAX only, then you must be running VEP on a Mac. The good news then is that you could, if you wish to, use DearVR's free "MICRO 3D" binaural panner plugin (AU) instead of VEP's standard stereo panner, on instrument channels or small instrument-group busses.
I mention this because it might help you achieve the '3D spatialisation' you want, using VEP and MIR Pro 3D both configured for 2 channel stereo, with Finale. I've done something similar, using Logic, VEP and new MIR, all configured for 2 channel stereo throughout.
I create separate dry and wet audio paths, then use new MIR fully wet to produce its glorious spatialised reverb for each instrument position on MIR's stage; while - outside MIR - positioning dry (or dry-ish) instruments in beautifully convincing 2 dimensional space (I'm not interested in height, though it's possible to do). I use binaural panners for each dry instrument audio path, to match the wet instrument positions on MIR's own stage. Then, on mixing these wet and dry audio streams back together (after MIR), I have a very lovely spatialised headphone mix - WITHOUT using DearVR Monitor (which, in this particular case, degrades both the dry binaural panning and MIR's wet spatialisation).
If you fancy trying this alternative, non-orthodox approach, you can do the necessary dry/wet path spltting, routing, binaural panning, and final recombining of of wet and dry audio streams, all in VEP. The crucial step is in selecting a virtual microphone in MIR that produces wide and well spatialised images of fully wet reverb, without having to use a surround speaker output configuration. As a starting point I'd suggest trying out the "Stereo - MIR 3D HOA Capsules" as MIR's main virtual mic, and listening to the fabulous spatial reverb you get when opening out the instrument's width on MIR's stage.
If you discover a different way of using VEP and MIR in 2-channel stereo to produce wonderful positioning and spatialisation, I'd love to hear about it!
And by the way, as far as I'm aware Dietz is the only expert on MIR (by a very wide margin) in this forum - indeed he's VSL's Design Authority for MIR. There is no need to pay any heed to anyone else here trying to tell you (with fake, trumped-up 'authority') what you cannot do!
I might be wrong, but as I see it, Dear VR Micro is a great little binaural panning device, but most certainly not a full-fledged binaural encoder for a multichannel mix.
Maybe you _could_ manually encode individual channels of your bus one by one to mimic virtual speakers with 3-dimensional coordinates, but that's most certainly not for the faint-of-heart. 8-)
Does Finale even support surround mixing? I doubt it.
Can VePro be run in surround mode even when the DAW is in stereo?
I didn't think so...but anyway this would be a situation where that would be advantageous as then you could do the surround mix in VePro, using dearVRmonitor to reduce it back to binaural stereo before returning back to the stereo-only DAW.
Though also I have to say for this situation, do you really need 3D while working in Finale?
Why shouldn't I need 3D? Working with Finale has nothing to do with the distribution of sound.
I hear you.
Well the question I asked is because "typically" finale is used for music notation purpose, not particularly for audio production other then to audition the score you are working on. Its quite typical for people to have to re-mock-up their work in a normal DAW for various different mixing capabilities which are not possible directly in Finale and get deeper midi editing. In this case that includes 2D and 3D surround audio mixing, which is simply not possible in Finale. I hear you it would nice if it were possible, but its not and I doubt it ever will be. Talk to MakeMusic about that.
Something to keep in mind also, is that when you are using both VePro and MP3D will end up adding appreciable latency, which would make it quite unwieldy to use that way with Finale while entering notes into the score.
I tried to explain above why this limitation in Finale makes it impossible for you to use VePro as an extension to it in surround. Its just fundamental in the way VePro works to be an extension of the host daw's mixer. It is not really a totally separated and isolated sub mixer in the sense that it will be using the same mixbus channel configuration as your host daw and functioning as a plugin within that host.
Another possibility, if you really want to hear your Finale score rendered with 2D/3D audio would be to use the standalone version of VePro to host your instruments and MP3D. You would neder to send midi to it using IAC or some other network midi on PC. By using that way, you would theoretically be able to put that standalone version of VePro into surround mode, put all your instruments and MP3D in there, and you could put dearVRmonitor on the master bus in there to render binaural version and hear it in your headphones. That adds to the complexity, but its one way I can think of for you to attempt to get 2D/3D from your Finale score. That will not work if you are using VePro on a separate slave computers..
If that doesn't work you could try to send midi over IAC or on PC by using network midi....to a different DAW that supports surround mixing, and you could do it that way... the other DAW could connect to Vepro (plugin mode) also if you want. By that means you could have VePro on a slave in some fashion.
Lastly, it might be possible to do something with Rewire out of Finale, but I have no experience with that and Rewire is not supported any more by the people who made it, so good luck with that.
Bottom line:- it's NOT absolutely necessary to use DAW or VEP or new MIR configured for multichannel surround, in order to produce a beautifully "spatialised" headphone mix - regardless of what words we might use to name that "spatialisation".
1. For headphone renditions of an orchestra playing in front of an audience in an auditorium, not only can MIR produce very nicely spatialised wet reverberant ambience, but also, if desired, reasonably well defined dry instrument positions on stage, all delivered as 2 channel audio with no need to add the DearVR Monitor plugin for headphone monitoring.
2. For ambitious users who want to improve the quality of dry-only positioning of instruments on stage - using only 2 channel audio throughout and no DearVR Monitor at the end of the chain - it's perfectly possible to deal with instrument dry placement outside of MIR, using a binaural panning plugin (such as the free DearVR Micro plugin - other similar plugins are available) on an audio feed that does not go on to MIR, for each instrument or small group of instruments. In this case, stereo channels carrying the dry binaural placements of instruments are eventually mixed with MIR's wet-only ambience output, and hey presto:- a very nicely spatialised headphone mix!
IMPORTANT: Both these approaches require careful selection (or construction, for very technically-minded users) of the virtual microphone(s) in MIR.
Although the 2nd approach is not necessarily rocket science, it does of course require more setting up than when using MIR alone for both dry and wet signals. After all, MIR is designed for best possible user-convenience.
