[nickbatz]

On Tuesday, March 26, 2019 at 9:01:29 AM UTC-7, Ty Ford wrote:
On Monday, March 25, 2019 at 1:40:20 PM UTC-4, nickbatz wrote:
Now, I also have to double back and say that if you're after a totally realistic orchestral MIDI mock-up, the most accurate *environment* emulation is Vienna Symphonic Library's MIR with their libraries (MIR = Multiple Impulse Response). It's pretty stunning.

(I'm not saying their libraries are the most "accurate," because that's highly subjective and dependent on what you're doing; most musicians who do that use a combination of libraries, as I said.)

Yeah, I never went for that MIR stuff. I don't really care what the Vienna Symphony Hall sounds like, or what you think your algorithm thinks it sounds like. I think that whole thing was marketing chatter.

Off the point here, but had to toss that in.

The first point is that sampled orchestras are what they are. Nobody thinks they're the same thing as real musicians in a room. But for better and worse samples are here to stay, and if you can't have an orchestra to play with, this is the next best thing (assuming you want an orchestra, of course).

Okay, MIR.

MIR is inseparable from VSL's orchestral sample libraries, because they know what their instruments sound like and use that as part of the process. You can run other sounds through it (including live ones), but it's not the same thing.

MIR comes with a number of sampled spaces, so if you don't like the Vienna Symphony Hall then you just try another. And it has algorithmic reverb you can use - it's a mixing engine rather than a sampled hall, as Dietz (the guy who led the project) always points out.

Now, you may not have liked what you heard - which probably has more to do with those sample libraries (or sample libraries in general) than with MIR - but it's not marketing chatter. The raw concept of positioning instruments with multiple impulse responses is totally sound, and to my ears very successful at what it set out to accomplish.

Another point: VSL now records their libraries in a different place. At the time they developed MIR, they were recording their libraries in the Silent Stage studio they built for the purpose over 15 years ago. The concept was to capture orchestral instruments on a stage - i.e. to get the ERs from the stage - and then you added your own hall tail.

That worked very well for some instruments, for example woodwinds, but their original strings tended to sound a little synthy in the high register. The knock on the original VSL library was that it was all a little too perfect, so they've since added some random parameters in their player. But it still takes work to sound good - by design.

VSL's newer libraries are recorded in https://www.synchronstage.com/en, a new studio, so they probably got tired of the old approach.

I should add that I beta tested MIR, but I don't own it - unfortunately. So I'm not prejudiced.