Good to hear that you could solve the issue! Thanks for your deliberate approach. Like I wrote above, I have no idea what could have provoked that strange behaviour.

I mark the thread as "solved". 

All the best,

I have no idea why you see this. I just checked with PT Ultimate 2020.12 under Mac OS Catalina and see all options (s. attachment).

If a re-install doesn't cure the issue, please get in contact with , the VSL support team will take care for you.

Well, of course the hall will sound slightly different when listened to from a different position, in a different viewing angle. Like mentioned before, the original "portrait" setup (with the so-called orchestra shell in the back of the players) is all about depth. As soon as we flip to "landscape" orientation, "depth" becomes "width", and the now closer reflective back-wall becomes more obvious, adding to a brighter impression overall.

Hi Paolo,

I'm not really sure that I really understand what you're actually asking for ...? The sound of the hall is what it is, and the mics present these acoustic aspects.

8-)

"Enveloping", "decorrelation" ... That's techno babble :-) for the feeling of being "surrounded by sound" (or in our case: by the room).

Some online-sources for further reading:

-> https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/decorrelation/

-> https://valhalladsp.com/2010/05/12/shimmer-modulation-auto-correlation-and-decorrelation/

-> https://www.jstor.org/stable/3680992

HTH,

Originally Posted by: Adrien

OK

so the line is showing which way the player is facing, rather than which way the sound is radiating?

Yes, like I said. We already took care for the proper implementation of all instruments that haven't been recorded from their 0°-axis. The Icon's volume bar is always the "nose" of the player. In case of the General Purpose Profiles it is the direction of the loudest, unfiltered output with two exceptions: The "Omni" profile sends the identical signal to all eight directions, while the "Bi-Polar" profile is a Fig. 8 with the maximum output to the left and the right.

If you load (or just look at) all the MIRx settings you will get the idea how _I_ like to do it: Most of the time individual players will point indeed towards the Main Mic, while ensembles try to make use of as much of the signal-inherent stereo information as possible (thus you will see them stretched crosswise or diagonally):

-> https://www.vsl.info/en/manuals/vienna-instruments-mirx/venue-details/konzerthaus-grosser-saal (... just scroll down and/or use the navigation on the left side for screenshots from all seven "MIRx-ed" Venues).

... yes, there are cases when I found that departing from the obvious "looking at the conductor"-paradigm made more sense, soundwise. ;-)

MIR Pro takes care for all of that. :-)

There is no actual display of the radiation patterns, but you can see exactly in which direction the player is looking on stage just by means of the Instrument Icon: The volume handle is also the 0° direction pointer. We talk about it as "the player's nose". 8-)

If you want to hear the effect of the directivity filters in a virtual "anechoic chamber", set MIR Pro to Dry Solo and activate the option for "Directivity Filtering" for the dry signal. - Usually, directivity filtering which is only applied to the signal sent into the convolution core, depending on the data stored in the Instrument Profiles and the rotation of the Icon. By activating this option, also the dry signal will be filtered when you rotate it. - The perceived effect is pretty much the same as the player would turn the instrument away from the spot microphone. This (virtual) spot mic will stay in its perfect relative position as long as the option is switched off.

HTH,

This ^^^^^^^^

It is only the direct signal that gets quieter when you move the instrument's Icon away from the Main Microphone. This means that Natural Volume is still valid, but it is up to you to decide if the effect suits your taste and needs (... which of course also depends on the acoustics of the chosen venue).

HTH,

Hi Adrien,

that's a valid question! It should be answered by the section of MIR Pro's manual called "Think MIR!", or more specifically the paragraphs explaining MIR's Instrument Directivity Profiles.

The ellipse around MIR's Instrument Icon is just an indication of the relative stereo with of the input signal and has nothing to do with ist directivity.

HTH,

Oh sorry, I misunderstood you.

The "Dry Offset" parameter in MIR Pro's Output Format Editor does something similar, but for individual capsules. Especially in surround setups*) it might happen that the dry signal is seemingly to obvious in the rear channels. In these (and similar) scenarios we can lower its volume by means of this parameter.

*) ... from one Microphone Position. This won't happen when you use the Secondary Mic for the rear channels.

Originally Posted by: VirtualVirgin

Thank you Dietz :)

You're very welcome!

If you do a lot of 3D audio work _now_, it's a tedious, but perfectly doable trick with certain Venues to bounce a wet-only second run of your mix with another Main Microphone, preferably one that was positioned higher than the first one. Especially the churches and chapels available in MIR's RoomPacks are a good choice for this workaround.

... MIR 3D will allow for direct use of Secondary Microphones in comparable setups, because then there are enough audio outputs available anyway.

That's good to hear! We'll do our best to meet your expectations. :-)

Exactly. There is no direct signal component present in MIR Pro's IRs, although sometimes the 1st reflection may give you the impression, especially for those IRs that were directed towards the floor. MIR replaces that part with the readily positioned, phasing-free version of the dry input signal - the "perfect virtual close mic".

Hint: As soon as you activate the option to use the chosen Instrument Profile's directivity filtering on the dry signal, too, you can indeed seemingly "turn away" the instrument from that virtual close mic. :-) Just be aware that this might change the sound of the dry signal component considerably.

And yes, it's best practice to use the least reverberant mics of any recording for placement and spatialisation within MIR.

Must have been an untypical recording session! :-) Synchron Instruments (and most of SSV's recording sessions) use the hall in the way its presented as "Wide" setup in MIR Pro.

... e.g. -> https://www.vsl.info/en/instruments/bbo/bbo-a

Kind regards,

Welcome 169127,

An interesting an important question. :-) The good news is that the answer is quite logical and easy to understand.

Of course an impulse response from a real room will almost always contain at least subtle remains of the direct signal - i.e. the part of the source signal that reaches the ear / the microphone first, without being reflected by any surface. Early convolution reverbs indeed presented this part of the signal directly in the IR, so the convolution would "sound like the room". MIR took this concept several steps further, using multiple directional IRs to represent the interaction on an instrument with a room in a previously unachievable complexity. 

The downside of this concept: There is no "ideal" impulse generator in our Real World, only good loudspeakers with little, but still evident phase errors. If MIR would simply mix the IRs including the direct signal component, ugly phasing artifacts would be the result. Not good.

But audio engineers use spot microphones close to individual instruments or ensembles since a long time, to tighten up the sound they get from their room mics. MIR makes good use of this typical workflow: We removed all remains of the direct signal from all our IRs, which gives the possibility to mix in the "perfect" spot mic to any amount, in form of the original input signal: It gets ENcoded to Ambisonics first, to match the original position of the IRs, and it gets DEcoded with the pre-processed IRs according to the chosen Output Format. Like that, no phasing will occur, and the virtual spot mic always matches the timing of the Main Mic (... which is a big issue in Real Life).

.... long story short: Full wet is _never_ the "real room" in case of MIR. The default dry/wet setting of the Icon on a Venue's stage tries to mimic the original ratio to a certain extent, as long as the option for "Distance Dependent Scaling" is ON for the dry signal's volume handling.

If you want to know more about it, there's a little primer covering MIR's ideas and concepts available on this site: -> Think MIR!

HTH,

Depending on the chosen decoding method the difference ranges from "subtle" to "dramatic", even in stereo. :-) It's not so much about "depth" per se, more about enveloping and also about decorrelation.

... but then, MIR 3D is not "just" about Higher Order Ambisonics and 3D audio, but also about new concepts of preset creation and management, and of course an overhauled GUI. :-) 

The Global Dry/Wet Offset is just that: It simply changes the ratio of dry and wet signals for all instruments at once. Center position is default (no changes). If you push the fader to the left you mix will get more dry signal. Push it to the right for more overall wetness. Nothing too fancy, actually. :-)

BTW: The value display is in percent, not in dB.

Thanks for your interest in our developments!

MIR 3D is still work-in-progress, so there might be changes in the feature set in general or specific changes I can't anticipate, but since you asked, I'll try to give you an idea:

- MIR 3D will based on 3rd order Ambisonics throughout its whole signal path, but of course you will be able to decode in 1st order like MIR Pro does, too. We plan to allow for a painless transition from MIR Pro to MIR 3D (not the other way round, for obvious reasons).

- There _will_ be sonic differences for several reasons, so if you need bit-identical recalls you will have switch back to Pro. 3D and Pro can't coexist side-by-side, otherwise there would be no straight-forward way to migrate existing templates to the new version.

- Format-wise the sky is the limit, from a technical POV. :-) MIR 3D will enhance the existing concept of "capsule-based" decoding (i.e. the individual capsules of the virtual microphone arrays we have in MIR Pro) with an approach that could be called "coefficient-based decoding". The latter can be seen as a way to sculpt and organize the Ambisonics output from a loudspeaker-perspective rather than a microphone-perspective. Sounds a bit confusing, I know. 8-) ... In general, things get _really_ complex quickly when dealing with HOA, so there will be (or better: will _have_ to be) Output Format Presets to deal with multi-channel mixes. 

- These output formats will include all typical surround- and 3D-configurations, some of them maybe even in several flavours. MIR 3D will also be able to deliver the un-decoded Ambisonics audio stream, which opens whole new areas of use-cases. But MIR 3D can _not_ output Dolby Atmos-metadata. You will most likely integrate its chosen, discrete multi-channel output in form of so-called "beds" with your Atmos mix. There are no moving "Objects" in MIR Pro, so that's a non-issue for now.

- A final word of the notion "3D" in context of MIR: As you all know, MIR is based on impulse responses from real halls. IOW: If there was no IR source position, then there's nothing we can put a signal in. Of course we found ways to interpolate and do some other nice trickery, but please keep in mind that this is _not_ an algorithmic reverb engine, so don't expect the option to have a singer flying through the hall. ;-) MIR all about a holistic, enveloping presentation of real (!) rooms and the way instruments (or other sound sources) interact with them.

... let me repeat that this info is based on the most recent developments, but things still might change for the actual release version!

Thanks again for your interest! Highly appreciated.

Darn!!! You've caught me at something there. ;-D I've been working with the development versions of MIR Pro and MIR 3D for too long, it seems. Admittedly, I've forgotten that MIRx' Character Presets are tied to their respective Venues in MIR Pro. Sorry for that!

Re: RoomEQ: Each setting will always impact the whole Venue, of course - that's why there's the option to assign different RoomEQ settings to different sources (... 32 of them). In case of MIRx I made sure that their slot numbers are the same for all MIRx Venues, that's why you should be able to interchange them. Of course they weren't adapted for any other Venue when you port them over. But you can still give it a try in case of Synchron Stage's MIRx presets as the room itself is the same, even if it's presented from a different angle.

... in the end, all of this is experimental. You will have to fine-tune your "hybrid" setup by ear anyway. :-)

- Increase the overall wetness of the "wide" project. 

- Use the Character Presets I created for the classical "portrait" setup for instruments in your "wide" project.

- You could also try to export the whole RoomEQ Bank from the "Portrait" setup and import it in your "wide" project. The slots will match, but it's possible that the really specific EQs will do more harm than they will help.

- I wouldn't interchange mic settings, although it's technically possible, of course.

HTH,

Il serait préférable pour nous tous de pouvoir communiquer dans notre langue maternelle, sans aucun doute. Mais le "dénominateur commun" de ce forum est l'anglais. :-) Merci pour l'effort de translation!

*****

Great to hear that it was indeed MIRx presets that have brought you _that_ far. As the guy who created these settings I'm constantly plagued by doubts if it makes any sense at all to create a mix without hearing the music (so to speak). ;-)

Thanks again for sharing!

Welcome Yves,

I admit that the title of your Suite caught my attention as a fan of the Nouvelle Vague. ;-) Nevertheless I liked your music a lot, even without any reference to Godard's famous movie. There are only a few, rare spots where these pieces exhibit their sampled nature. Especially the more quiet and seemingly "free", percussion-driven parts are enthralling. Congratulations!

In your liner notes you mentioned MIRx - The Sage Gateshead - Hall One. May I ask how much you changed and/or adapted these settings? Your mix sounds remarkably balanced and clear, yet vivid and deep (in the acoustic sense of the word).

Thanks for sharing!

Hi Zelorkq,

just for the sake of completeness: I made VSL's software engineers aware of the problem, they already look into it.

Thanks for your patience!

Kind regards,

Originally Posted by: gcorcella

Hello, 

I usually use MIR Pro like I virtually am in a real recording and mixing environment: In the mixing project I put it before any other plugin like the instruments were first recorded in a room and then mixed and processed (I am curious to read about other workarounds though).

That's a valid approach. I tend to do all the stuff that I usually do to "prepare" a signal for the actual mix before it enters MIR Pro, though. This ranges from any kind of restoration processing to "dynamic gluing" by means of compression.

Makes sense. :-) 

MIR Pro's Instrument-faders will never change the the dry/wet ratio, so there's no need to be afraid of any other effects than simple volume changes. What _will_ have implications on the dry volume as well as the dry/wet ratio is any kind of position change, especially when moving the Icon away from the Main Microphone. You can restrict this behaviour to "positioning only" by de-activating the option for Distance Dependent Scaling in the Dry Signal Settings panel.

HTH,

Actually, the CC 7 values don't matter in the context of Natural Volume as long as they are kept at the same value for all instances of Vienna Instruments/Pro (... which is the only source for which this feature makes sense). I seem to remember that Herb Tucmandl - VSL's founder and CEO - kept CC 7 at 100 when he fine-tuned all those Natural Volume settings by ear. :-)

HTH,

Welcome Kimo,

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