Best complete bundle for orchestral composing

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@Dewdman42

Thank you for your post. The very dry aspect of VSL gave me a lot to think about. I'm going to assume that QL Spaces (their IR reverbs) won't be enough to take the dryness out of the VSL strings?

What exactly does MIR Pro do? What is it? What does it contain? I'm not familiar with it at all so any info you can give me will be greatly appreciated. Also who makes it?

Thanks.

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MIR Pro is made by VSL. It’s a spacialization tool - essentially EQ, panning, and IR reverb. They’ve taken IRs of various rooms, and MIR Pro lets you place your instruments anywhere in those rooms.

It’s pretty expensive - you have to buy MIR Pro and at least one room pack. The advantage is you can place sounds anywhere in the room, including non-VSL sounds.

They have a stripped down version that only works in Vienna Instruments (VI), and is essentially instrument presets / profiles. That’s called MIRx. You load an instrument in VI, enable MIRx, and it automatically loads the corresponding instrument profile. It basically places it at a pre-defined position in the room.

MIRx profiles are a lot less expensive than MIR Pro + room packs, but only work in VI (and thus only for VSL sounds).

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wagtunes wrote:I'm going to assume that QL Spaces (their IR reverbs) won't be enough to take the dryness out of the VSL strings?
No indeed. QL spaces can provide lovely reverb tails, but it can't place an instrument in a virtual space. A cheap and cheerful way of doing this is to add a short early reflection reverb and a pan pot. For any dry signal emulating an orchestral space, the three elements you need are pan (left to right), er (distance from mic), tail (room). I have a basic ER and tail set up on a couple of aux channels in my template for rough and ready blending, and it works pretty well.

Tools like MIR and the highly praised IRCAM SPAT do the whole thing in one elegant solution, with more finesse and precision. I'm sorta interested in how the new version of SPAT works out, it sounds like they have a way to keep the quality but keep the CPU down.
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padillac wrote:I got into this thread prompted by the symphony series offer as well. I skipped it because:

- no solo strings
- ensemble strings offer no more articulations, just more mic positions
- each component (strings, woodwinds, brass, perc) is recorded in a different location by a different developer

I think on the surface it looks good, but I want more consistency and control than I think it offers. I was tempted by the upgrade pretty hard but ultimately decided I’d rather put that money towards something that’s a better fit for me.
So last year I upgraded K11 to K11U during the summer sale and wasn’t blown away. All the best stuff for me (all the engines, most of the pianos) are in standard. I’ve since sold Ultimate and rebought standard. This year, for the same price as K11 to K11U upgrade I’m *much* happier with my Symphony Series crossgrade.

I agree with the other posters, No doubt VSL is amazing (even judging by the Kontakt factory VSL). If I ever go large, I’ll go VSL, but the ease of use of Symphony Series adds a lot of value for me. EWQL HO was just too steep a learning curve, and life’s too short to learn yet another proprietary host (and all its issues!)

If the NI leaks are true, I’ll probably go for K12 standard to get Kontakt 6 (maybe this time next year!) but the added value of Ultimate was minimal for me - more drums, basses, synths, meh, the best extra for me was probably Session Strings and Horns pro versions, but Symphony Series (full) trumps these (plus Symphony Essentials in K11U) for orchestral stuff by a country mile. Oh and the reverbs were great in K11U!

ps probably just my ears, but I don’t hear the different halls / venues thing as any kind of problem when I play these together.

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Sorry, quoted wrong person. Meant to quote generaldiomedes above you!

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yep.

so wagtunes, basically you have soundstage placement and overall room acoustics...the later of which is what you get from QL spaces.. In order to make a truly convincing orch mockup, you need to do more than just use the pan knob to position your various instrument sections in a stereo field. When an orchestra is playing on a stage, the players are forward and back and there are walls behind and to the side of the orchestra which also catch early reflections from the various players in their various positions and facing the directions they are facing...and all of that happens before the sound leaves the stage and goes into the big room to get the big reverb tail.

So how can you emulate all the positioning and early reflections? The hard but cheap way is to use lots of little reverb and delay plugins and kind of try to get it. Personally, my hats off to anyone who is able to do anything really good that way. Another way is to use a tool specially designed for it. MIRPro basically has captured a tons of IR samples from all over the stage. Then you are presented with a visual representation of the stage and the entire venue if applicable. you basically position each instrument where you want it to be on the stage and you can even change the direction the player is facing, change close microphones, choose width, etc. of each and every instrument or section on the stage. you just drag it where you want it, turn it how you want it facing, etc. Then MIRPro uses the right IR's for that location to produce the appropriate early reflections for that spot in that room. And you can buy different packs with different rooms where they captured all these IR's. Its actually quite brilliant software and I got the Pro version so thatI can run other instruments besides VSL through it too.

Alternatively, you have solutions like EWQL and many others that have these room sounds...early reflections, baked into the samples. That makes them a lot easier to work with in a way, but you get what you get. EWQL HO Diamond basically has all the mic positions recorded with each instrument/section in the typical place on stage where they normally would be...so as long as you're going for that big hollywood sound with that sound stage placement in that room...then all that early refection stuff we're talking about is baked into the samples. You can still add a bit more reverb tail to it with QL spaces, etc to make it wetter and change the overall size a bit, but for the most part, you've got one particular room, a very good one, that is recorded from numerous mic positions and from that you can pick and choose which mics to vary the sizenpess of it a bit, but its all done for you and baked in. A lot of the orch libraries out there have baked in rooms, and people seem to like that because its easy.

VSL, prior to synchron series, does not bake in the room...the sounds are very dry and close mic'd with the emphasis on articulation support and capturing the performance of these instruments...leaving it to you to engineer room into your recordings one way or another. They then came out with MIR to support their stuff and I think its pretty great software, I think I could see myself using it for EVERYTHING...even rock music honestly..its brilliant stuff. Its not cheap no. You can search the net and find other work arounds that people have tried to figure out ways to get around buying MIR because of the price and other approaches to capture those early reflections and soundstage placement. Some people have done good stuff without it, but generally I got the feeling that most people that are really into it ended up getting MIR in the end anyway because its just so damn good, and ESPECIALLY if you're using VSL products, there is a lot of little interconnected stuff they built into it when you're using VSL instruments together with VEP and MIR. So I just decided to go that way. You can find MIR Pro for sale used often enough. I got MIR PRO and the two most popular room packs for under $1k.
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Jelly wrote:Sorry, quoted wrong person. Meant to quote generaldiomedes above you!
I am leaning hard towards symphony series crossgrade. The Heavyocity stuff being the only thing giving me pause in k12u .. but those libraries are quite old now anyhow. VSL sounds very good but for a hobbiest like myself probably overkill and a second dongle is a dealbreaker. Ease of use is important.

Thanks for the reply!

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Jelly wrote:
padillac wrote:
I agree with the other posters, No doubt VSL is amazing (even judging by the Kontakt factory VSL). If I ever go large, I’ll go VSL, but the ease of use of Symphony Series adds a lot of value for me. EWQL HO was just too steep a learning curve, and life’s too short to learn yet another proprietary host (and all its issues!)
On this point I just want to say, VSL has maybe the steepest learning curve of any orch library out there, so don't think for a minute that VSL is going to be easier then EWQL HO. VSL's power is in its total flexibility. Their player is capable of a lot more. Some things are easier once you figure out how to work with the software, but the software is 10x more capable and with more capability comes a much steeper learning curve. Personally I don't find EWQLHO to be that difficult to learn. It barely has any key switching capabilities, so basically I consider it to be a very simplistic environment. Unfortunately sometimes that makes it difficult to get done what you need to get done, but the player itself is very simple to understand. Just tedious sometimes to get things done. VSL on the other hand is monumentally more complex and powerful as a player..and that's great...it means ultimately some things can be done in a much easier way, but figuring out how to do that and get through the learning curve is a much much steeper process.
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@Dewdman42

Thank you for all the info.

So this is basically what I've come up for my "minimum" purchase if I'm going to be able to do a "decent" job.

SE Vol. 1 STRINGS - 107.27
SE Vol. 1 STRINGS PLUS - 107.27
SE Vol. 2 STRINGS - 87.23
SE Vol. 2 STRINGS PLUS - 87.23
SPECIAL EDITION Vol. 3 - 285.27
VIENNA INSTRUMENTS PRO 2 - 170.58
VIENNA MIR PRO - 747.94
MIR ROOMPACK BUNDLE - 956.67

Total - $2,549.46

Otherwise, the way I see it, there's no point of my getting any of this and I might as well just stick with EWQL Hollywood Orchestra Diamond and call it a day. And based on what you said, I'm not even sure that the list above is going to cut it.

Thoughts?

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For starters you seem to be listing off just VSL string sections and every conceivable articulation for strings in the "special edition"... and comparing against EWQL HO, which is a complete orchestra, but a LOT less articulations then the above VSL stuff you're listing off.

Second of all, I don't think you need MIR "Pro", and especially you don't need the room pack bundle, that is way overkill. I'd just get the MIRX bundle for $390 which includes all the rooms and will work with your VSL instruments, but nothing else, but essentially will make the VSL stuff sound non-dry in a variety of rooms.

I think you could start with VSL special edition vol1, complete orch, which is around $400-450, maybe less used. Then get Vol2 for another $450 if you want quite a bit more. So personally I think Orch vol1 + MIRx is under $1000. That would probably be comparison to EWQL HO. Add vol2 for another $450 to get quite a bit more and then you can add extra instrument packs if you are needing specific articulations that aren't included above on an as need basis.
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so:

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Special_Editio ... ol1_Bundle

+

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/MIRx/MIRx_Bundle

and maybe this:

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Vienna_Softwar ... uments_PRO


Note that Instrument Pro will enable you to emulate some articulations by using the player with its advanced modes... so they say... You can get a lot of mileage out of just that combo above..
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Dewdman42 wrote:so:

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Special_Editio ... ol1_Bundle

+

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/MIRx/MIRx_Bundle

and maybe this:

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Vienna_Softwar ... uments_PRO


Note that Instrument Pro will enable you to emulate some articulations by using the player with its advanced modes... so they say... You can get a lot of mileage out of just that combo above..
Thanks. This is what I decided to go with.

SPECIAL EDITION COMPLETE - 1201.35
VIENNA INSTRUMENTS PRO 2 - 170.58
MIRx BUNDLE - 376.87

Total - $1,748.80

I can swing this and I think it will have me covered for pretty much everything I'm going to need.

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nice!
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Dewdman42 wrote:nice!
Thank you. You've been a very big help. I owe you one.

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Okay, I've been doing a lot of thinking about this and something just dawned on me. Unless I'm missing something (granted I don't know how this software works) I'm not seeing how MIR X takes all your orchestral instruments and places each one in the proper space on stage.

Assuming that each instrument (strings, horns, woodwinds, percussion, etc.) has to go on it's own track in my DAW, then each track would have to have its own FX insert of MIR X. Correct? If that's the case, then for each instrument I would still have to manually move each one to the space that I want it to occupy.

The only way I can see this as working the way I expect it to work would be if MIR X was actually loaded as a VST shell and inside that shell I can then load as many orchestral instruments as I want and then, based on the template I choose, MIR X places each one in its space automatically. Otherwise, I don't see how this works without my still doing a mass amount of manual labor.

What am I missing?

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