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Early reflections, positioning and panning

Messiaen99

New Member
Hello all. I want to start discussion about positioning instruments in the room, panning and early reflections.

Since Vienna mir Pro is to pricey, what is the way to go for panning and positioning, Virtual sound stage 2, Precedence or is it better panning in the Daw and making depth with some convolution reverb? Let's suppose that we are working with dry samples.

Thanks to all.
 
Hey, great first post and welcome to the forum

I wouldn’t recommend Precedence because the developer is going through some difficult times right now, so there are some questions surrounding continuity.

This is a topic that has been discussed thoroughly at other moments, so there are quite a few threads on it already, using search you’ll be able to find a lot of prior discussion.

Search for: Panagement, MIR, DearVR Pro, Precedent/Breeze, and you’ll find lots of users opining and sharing their experiences.

If you happen to use Ableton, I quite like IRCAM’s Spat tools (free), some of the best algo’s I’ve heard. Also available commercially as regular plugins through FLUX.

Another great resource for spatial mixing is fellow forum member @Beat Kaufmann - his posts and examples are always truly insightful. I also recommend his website for writeups on this topic.
 
look for a reverb that has two distinct sections of control. Cinematic rooms is perfect for this.

In Orchestral settings there are really 3 blocks. Strings, then WW, then Brass and Perc.

Strings you want close:

CR STRINGS.PNG

WW sit behind:

CR WW.PNG

And brass Further back still

BRASS.PNG

Finally you want a Touch of hall ( with less reflections) to blend the lot together:

HALL.PNG

Strings and Brass have no tail , just a smidge in WW . They are JUST the reflections. The strings are closer and smaller. Each subsequent room is slightly bigger and further back. The 224 Just adds tail.

Best

ed
 
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The 1st choice should always be your mic mix. You can pan close or spot mics for a wider image, then add decca/ambient/wide/outriggers to taste, (non-panned) to increase depth and width. If something still needs additional depth then PanBox followed by Berlin Studio are my weapons of choice, (but I'll always try to accomplish where I want things placed via mics 1st)...
 
I mean, I tried Virtual Sound Stage 2 for free, played with parameters, spaces and mics and I had pretty fine results, so that why I put it in the question.
 
I keep considering VSS2 as an algorithmic alternative to MIR, because it looks like exactly what I would want. I've never bought it because it doesn't seem to be supported anymore (much like Precedence + Breeze). Am I wrong about this?

If you really care about full positioning control in different kinds of rooms and use truly dry instruments where you need to simulate microphones (which not everyone does), I would also recommend saving for MIR. I went through a long period trying not to buy it and ended up cobbling together things like Precedence, SP2016, EQ, and various other reverbs. I would have saved quite a bit of money and time if I'd just bought MIR years earlier. The results I get now are (far) better with much less effort, especially when I'm spatializing live-recorded signals. Beyond the technology itself, there are a lot of very high quality, distinctive rooms.

But as others are saying, there're actually many good options if you don't need that degree of control.
 
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I’ve just made a video about Oxford Reverb which I’ll upload in a few weeks, it always gets overlooked as it’s 20 years old now but I use it on nearly everything. Definitely wait for sales though, it was 83% off last month, and there’s also a 15-day trial.

If they remade it today I think it would be the best by miles for this sort of purpose, but careful EQ & lots of control over early reflections should be enough for most situations
 
Great comments about MIR and mic positions. I suggest trying (or learning about esp. in the case of #3):

- SP2016 (in Modern Stereo Room mode it's got the tightest ERs, also... sounds really great at other settings)
-Cinematic Rooms Pro for beefed up control compared to SP2016 but with a (still small, but) notably larger baseline "smallest space"
- Panbox by JDFactory, at least expose yourself to the ideas presented by this plugin (esp. the function of the Smart Pan knob). I can pretty easily recommend this now over Precedence, it doesn't do front-to-back depth in the same way (not designed to) but you'll get great results for depth probably anyway just by using the properties of sound over a distance (less wide, less direct, less transient, less high frequency content)
 
The 1st choice should always be your mic mix. You can pan close or spot mics for a wider image, then add decca/ambient/wide/outriggers to taste, (non-panned) to increase depth and width. If something still needs additional depth then PanBox followed by Berlin Studio are my weapons of choice, (but I'll always try to accomplish where I want things placed via mics 1st)...
excellent advice. These Libraries are recorded in good spaces with superb engineers for a reason. Trust them first !

Best

ed
 
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Another question about panning, if my 2nd violins are recorded panned to the left, but I want to use them on the right side, placing them right in the field wouldn't make desired effect. How to swap stereo so it is sounding like it's recorded from the right side? So then I can place it corectly on the right side afterwards.
 
I’ve just made a video about Oxford Reverb which I’ll upload in a few weeks, it always gets overlooked as it’s 20 years old now but I use it on nearly everything. Definitely wait for sales though, it was 83% off last month, and there’s also a 15-day trial.

If they remade it today I think it would be the best by miles for this sort of purpose, but careful EQ & lots of control over early reflections should be enough for most situations
That’s the old Sony reverb right? Looking forward to your video!
 
look for a reverb that has two distinct sections of control. Cinematic rooms is perfect for this.

In Orchestral settings there are really 3 blocks. Strings, then WW, then Brass and Perc.

Strings you want close:

CR STRINGS.PNG

WW sit behind:

CR WW.PNG

And brass Further back still

BRASS.PNG

Finally you want a Touch of hall ( with less reflections) to blend the lot together:

HALL.PNG

Strings and Brass have no tail , just a smidge in WW . They are JUST the reflections. The strings are closer and smaller. Each subsequent room is slightly bigger and further back. The 224 Just adds tail.

Best

ed
Hi Ed,

Thanks for sharing! Are your Cinematic Rooms set as sends or inserts?

GC
 
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