Orchestral Sampling Manifesto by Maarten, Thomas and Marc [Archive]

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Marc Floessel

08-25-2001, 03:45 PM

*taptap* Is this thing on?

Well, this has been some time in the making. By no means is it complete yet... there are some issues that need revisiting, clear-up, detailing, expanding or EVEN correcting (we hope not).

Also, we have not covered sampled intervals yet, which is an *extremely* important aspect for more realistic samples. We have some ideas bouncing around but this is all very early. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Anyway. With much simple-heartness we hope this will be an effort met with healthy discussion.

My personal favorite segment of this paper are the anechoic recordings... they rock for demonstration purposes.

Well, let\'s get that show on the road.

Addendum: The linked HTML version has tighter formatting, so you might want to print that one out for easier reading. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Marc Floessel (edited 08-25-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-25-2001, 03:46 PM

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 Orchestral Sampling Manifesto

(Version August 25th 2001)

http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/orchestral_sampling_manifesto.html (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/orchestral_sampling_manifesto.html\")

 



About this paper
Q: Who created this manifesto?

This manifesto is the joint effort of three people:

Maarten Spruijt:

Contact: info@maartenspruijt.com (\"info@maartenspruijt.com\")
/ Website: http://www.maartenspruijt.com (\"http://www.maartenspruijt.com\")

Demo: http://www2.hku.nl/~maarte2/audio/tpsuite.mp3 (\"http://www2.hku.nl/%7Emaarte2/audio/tpsuite.mp3\")

Thomas Rönnen:

Contact: jzjz@online.no (\"jzjz@online.no\")

Demo: http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/Jazz2k_-_Unexplored_Territory.mp3 (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/Jazz2k_-_Unexplored_Territory.mp3\")

Marc Flössel:

Contact: floessel@t-online.de (\"floessel@t-online.de\")

Demo: http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/orchestra_ambience.mp3 (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/orchestra_ambience.mp3\")



All of us are relatively young composers with a (so we hope) firm grip on the
technical side of sampling and sequenced music and the strong urge to push orchestral
emulation beyond expected results. The BIG orchestral hollywood sound is what
we\'re really pushing for.

Q: Why create this manifesto?

This manifesto took a good amount of time and sweat for everyone involved. Frustration
over past commercial library achievements and their shortcomings have fueled
the wish for better orchestral libraries in us. There are limits to everything,
but we feel that current libraries barely scratch the surface of what could
be possible. However the reason for their shortcomings seldom seems to be budget
and time constraint one, but a string of unfortunate choices and library concepts.

In no way is our intent to mock the
achievements and works of past libraries and makers. But we do see the chance
for improvement and we do want to get our views out in public with the glint
hope of discussion and change.

Q: Why even listen to us?

This paper is the result of our combined real-life experience with orchestral
samples, including the applied and practically realized ideas and concepts plus
many weeks and days of further discussion and research. All this research is
going to be directly fed into our own future sampling projects.

Our prime motivation is to gain better
samples and it is our strong hope that the contents of this paper will undergo
a healthy discussion and perhaps even adaption where possible.

Thomas has very successfully used
the theories presented in this paper to create his own rudimentary, yet impressive
brass and percussion library (the result of which you can hear a demo of by
following his demo link) in the past and is currently planning to take on a
larger undertaking with refined concepts.

Maarten currently employs these very
concepts for his own ensemble brass sampling project - an extensive test ensemble
trumpet session is scheduled for the next days and demos will be available eventually.

 

 



Recording

Apart from the minute details of
the miking setup, there are a few fundamental recording choices that have to
me made before: Far-miking vs Close-miking, sampling in a hall vs sampling in
a studio.

On the behalf of flexibility and
sonic clarity the usual choice is being made for close-miking, often in a studio.
The product samples will be dry and ready to be put in any needed acoustic theater
by the means of artificial reverbation.

While this concept might seem logic and workable at first, there are very serious
flaws to it that will wreck any future attempt to get an orchestral sound out
of the samples.

I beg every orchestral sample maker
to take notice, read and digest this article about brass and woodwinds sampling,
mike setups and further advice in the UK pro-recording magazine Sound on Sound:

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jan99/articles/brass778.htm (\"http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jan99/articles/brass778.htm\")



"In a live PA situation, this may be the only possible solution to achieving
enough isolation, but it certainly isn\'t the best technique for recording! Like
most musical instruments, the sound generated by trumpets and trombones needs
space for all the different harmonics to become properly balanced, and so the
microphone needs to be positioned at a respectable distance from the instrument..."



 "With trumpets it is usually
easier to mic from above because most players angle the instrument downwards,
but with trombones I would generally come in from below. As always, though,
placement should be determined by the need to aim the dead side of the (directional)
mic towards the sound sources you wish to reject. Moving the mic closer will
tend to give a cleaner, tighter and brighter sound, whilst moving away will
give a fuller and often more dramatic sound (dependent on the recording acoustics)."



 "The key to recording reed
instruments is to be aware that most of the sound doesn\'t radiate from the bell,
but from the body of the instrument. In the case of the clarinet and similar
instruments the higher frequencies beam from the bell and rely on being reflected
back from the floor to become properly balanced with the lower harmonics..."

(Sound on Sound UK)



In a nutshell: For any kind of classical instrument and even more for orchestral
music, close-miking is a dangerously effective way to irrecoverably damage the
sound of the recorded samples. No amount of reverb or processing will restore
what bad microphones and placement did to the sound. Although the quoted article
is not limited to symphony recording, I would suggest that everyone involved
in such a library making (current or future) prints out and reads it thoroughly.
It has been stated by professional players and engineers over and over again
that the orchestral sound absolutely needs a good, far-miked hall recording
to expand, resonate and become what everyone expects it to be.

Of course there is always the argument
of "flexibility" when it comes to the question of miking. However
I have to ask: Are there really so many of us who write chamber music? Symphony
Orchestras are being recorded all the time in massive halls - surely it doesn\'t
hurt their sound. It would seem to me that the need to use orchestral samples
in an orchestral context by far outweighs the needs of those who would like
to use them in a wholly new context. 

 

 



Recording Examples

Thanks to lengthy research, we eventually
came upon the test CD "Anechoic Orchestral Music Recording" that features
an abundance of orchestral recordings performed by the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra
- a high-profile symphony orchestra known for excellence. These cues were recorded
within a specially set up, completely reverbless stage with a number of different
miking setups.

Keep in mind that this orchestra
has gotten outstanding ratings in normal concerts.

We assembled a short representative demo of the CD, the performed cue being
the opening bars of the 1st movement of Tchaikovsky 4th performed by the Osaka
Orchestra. We found the comparison result to be quite shocking.

First, the recorded cue with natural
hall, far miking and then added artificial hall:

1. <a href=\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/Far_Recording_-_Tchaikovsky_4th_-_Hall.mp3\">4th
- Far Recording - Natural Hall</a>

2. <a href=\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/Far_Recording_-_Tchaikovsky_4th_-_Hall_%2B_TC_reverb.mp3\">4th
- Far Recording - Natural Hall plus TC Native Reverb</a>

Now the real highlight - completely
anechoic recordings:

3. <a href=\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/Osaka_philharmonic_-_Tchaikovsky_4th_-_Anechoic.mp3\">4th
- Closer Recording - Anechoic (reverbless)</a>

4. <a href=\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/Osaka_philharmonic_-_Tchaikovsky_4th_-_TC_reverb.mp3\">4th
- Closer Recording - Anechoic plus TC Native Reverb</a>

This (among the other demos on the
CD itself) demonstrates very well what happens to the orchestral (brass in this
case) sound when sampled too close and without the resonance of a natural hall.
The artificial reverb just can\'t make up anymore what has not been recorded
in the first place. Listening to the anechoic plus TC Native Reverb cue alone
might sound decent, but comparing it to the real hall recording it becomes clear
that the sound is miles off what it should be. This is in fact the case with
every orchestral instrument, although the effect on brass is the most dramatic.



 

 

 

Current Library Concept

Currently a library concept might
look something like this: Each instrument is sampled (chromatically for modern
libraries) in its entire range in a number of different velocities (pp, p, mf,
f, ff), dependant on the amount of timbre shifting that occurs throughout the
instrument\'s dynamic range.

In the example case of a oboe, this would be typically done for at least 3 different
playing styles/lengths:

staccato for the short, hard
attacks

portamento for faster passages and runs

sustained for the longer lines

To make the final samples as flexible
as possible they\'re usually recorded without any player emphasis or expression
so that they stay entirely stable throughout the whole note.

This does not sound very good.

It doesn\'t sound very real either.

How often will an oboe player sustain
a note for 10 seconds without the slighest change of timbre? Very rarely, because
it will sound cold, flat and lifeless. Instead a real player will employ vibrato,
massive changes of dynamics (and thus timbre) and everything else he can use
to shape the sound. Huge recording and playing achievement as they may be -
breathing back life and expression (which orchestral music could not be any
more dependant on) into static samples is frustrating and often impossible for
the composer.

While the use of clever LFO vibrato,
intricate volume curves and even external editing goes a long way to recapture
the realism of a performed instrument, it is still a compromise to realism and
sound quality in the end. For example not only is the strength and depth of
a real musician\'s vibrato constantly shifting, but also the mechanical details
are insanely complex to be emulated. Roland\'s Vari-Phrase Technology (found
in the VP-9000) improves on these aspects, but fails in others.



Q: What about Crossfading velocity layers?

Crossfading velocity layers to allow dynamic movement within the same note is
problematic. For once each of the layers holds a fixed state velocity and interpolating
between these absolute velocities is relatively crude compared to a real velocity
swell.

Worse, especially with Solo Instruments, there is the problem of unwanted chorus.
Even while x-fading between two velocity layers there is a point reached where
both layers play with 50% volume. Suddely you will have double the instruments
playing the same note with different velocities. In an expressive performance
this can be seriously disturbing.

 

 

 



New Library Approach

What we need to have is a way to
employ the experience, talent and rich nuances of the live player in our captured
samples to reach realism and playability. Right now this can only be done by
building the expression into the sample itself, which means we have to sample
the live player in a way that makes sense musically, features a great performance
and in the end is usable in a sequencer.

Clearly using the the same old concept
as described above, just with "expression" thrown in at random, will
be problematic. We would end up with samples very much like those found in the
Miroslav Vitous library. Their usage is limited by their pre-recorded expression
- using them in a different context will result in the composer wrestling with
the sample and sequencer controllers. Using them in the same context as they
were recorded in can result in stunningly realistic parts.

Thus, we need a new library approach
to adequately cover a larger ground.

The solution is to sample each instrument / section in a large number of different
lengths per note.

Reasonable notelengths would look
like this:

Staccato: 0.1 sec, 0.3 sec

Portamento: 0.5 sec, 0.7 sec, 1.0 sec, 2.0 sec

Sustained: 3.0 sec, 5.0 sec

However instead of sampling these
notes in several fixed static velocites throughout their whole length, we also
need to come up with a new system to allow them changes of dynamics (and thus
timbre) while still keeping them within a desired dynamic range:

To achieve this we will record miniature-phrases
that consist of nothing but one single note.

We specifiy the attack velocity and the ending velocity of the recorded length.
To gain further control, we might also add a climax velocity parameter when
recording sustained samples.

Think of it as a recorded arc: For
each recorded notelength, the player will start with the attack velocity, move
naturally to the climax velocity and then fall back (or rise) to the ending
velocity, ending the phrase in time. While playing this one-note-phrase he will
employ as much dynamic shift, expression and vibrato as he would typically use
if this very note length and velocity boundaries were part of a live music piece.

Example: Length: 2.5 seconds, attack
vel: pp, climax vel: mf, ending vel: pp

(a 2,5 seconds long noble swell and decrescendo)

Although the number of possible combinations
of note lengths and boundary velocites might sound staggering, the truth is
that recording a set of well chosen lengths and velocity arcs will cover 90%
of the needed articulations. Even if such a library might miss articulations,
the amount of stunning realism for those that have been sampled, will easily
make up for it. In the end the composer will have a much more powerful and less
time-consuming (since controller editing can be largely avoided) tool.

 

 

 



New Library Concept Realization

Clearly, above theory is that for
now - a theory. We need to find a real world implementation to be able to sample
live players to fit our desired matrix. This real-world implementation can look
like this:

(This is actually Maarten\'s implementation
for his upcoming test session)

4 general velocity zones: p - mf
- f - ff

typical sustained note (lengths to
be taken from above) sampled in 3 variations:

1) normal expression curve - soft attack (neutral)

2) hard attack (aggressive)

3) soft swell

In all three cases the final target
velocity is the same but the way and duration they take for reaching this velocity
differs. Important is that each performance is expressive and makes sense musically.
If it is of a length and performance that you don\'t normally hear in an orchestral
piece, it\'s probably going to be less useful.

To achieve the desired performance
each to-be-sampled note is actually preceded by a different (lower) note on
the players\' sheets.

 

 



Chromatic Sampling vs Sampling in Thirds

Advantages / Disadvantages for chromatic
Sampling:

- No timbre pitching effect at all (+)

- Takes much time (-)

- Less homogeneous nature of patch due to many different sampled performances
and the chance for a note to stick out like a "sore thumb"

- Takes more samples / more memory (-)

Advantages / Disadvantages for sampling
in Thirds:

- Takes 1/3 of the time of chromatic sampling (+)

- More homogeneous sound throughout

- Less memory and samples needed (+)

- Less natural sound as a result of transposed samples (-)

In the end a mixed approach might
be the best one (thirds for sustained notes, chromatically for staccato) depending
on time and budget constraints.

 

 

 

 



Instrument Specific

Since it is impossible to capture
the full range of possible articulations, expression and velocity of every instrument
member of a complete orchestra, it is of paramount importance that the library
producer makes sure that each sampled instrument at least plays in a manner
that it is most typically heard in and known for.

For example an oboe can be played
to sound harsh and aggressive and while this sound may be a desirable effect
once in a while, the bread-and-butter timbre it is known for is a lyrical, soft,
almost sad one. Should time and resource constraints force the sampling process
to be of limited nature, these respective timbres and articulations should be
sought for with priority, even on the expense of less (or not at all) covered
other ones. A fantastic set of limited but well chosen idiomatic instruments
will have a much bigger impact than a mediocre all-articulations covering set.

Woodwinds

Woodwinds in general are to be used
in more expressive parts and often expose their most interesting timbre in softer,
mellow parts. Apart from flute and bassoon they are rarely needed in unison
playing and thus as samples are most usable as solo recordings.

Woodwinds are very often miced close as they play an important solo part and
easily vanish in the orchestra, but if they are miced too close they respond
badly to reverb.

Enter the note without vibrato, slowly apply vibrato and dynamics, and then
finally slowly "deapply" vibrato. This is typically true for solo
strings as well.

Brass

The "powerhouse" of the
orchestra. Brass samples are useful at any given velocity, from soft and sad,
noble and strong, to fullblast epic.

Ensemble Brass is most sought for
at the epic fullblast level, since this is where past libraries had their weakest
spot. In a typical score, ensemble brass is constantly swelling and moving,
crescendoing within one second from almost silence to storm blast. Without the
ability to emulate these constant shift in dynamic velocity, a true orchestral
emulation is difficult to achieve.

Solo Brass is less useful at fullblast
level, since one instrument alone will not suffice for an epic timbre. On the
other hand, in the lower velocity levels it can be played to achieve a very
emotional tone, deeply touching tone, making it very useful again.


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nicholash

08-25-2001, 06:22 PM

I just felt that I had to express my opinion on the \"Recording Examples\" section of the manifesto. Remember that what follows is just my opinion, which I feel strongly. However, you may have just as strong feelings in the opposite direction.

This may shock some people on this board but, concerning the opening bars of the 1st movement of Tchaikovsky 4th performed by the Osaka Orchestra, I prefered the \'anechoic\' recording by a very large margin. Having been involved with real orchestras, my preference is to be up where it\'s happening, where the music is being made and not somewhere back there in the hall.

The main \'anechoic\' tracks of the Denon \"Anechoic Orchestral Music Recording\" CD (i.e. tracks 1 to 16 if you have the CD) have an exceptional sound clarity allowing each individual part to be heard. These anechoic recordings where recorded principally with 2 main microphones above the head of the conductor, and are not close-miked recordings. (Denon used two B&K type 4006 omni-directional microphones).

The temporary anechoic environment they used for the recordings satisfied the recommend values for semi-anechoic rooms as specified in the ISO 3745 international standard. The environment they used was not completely anechoic, but can be described as semi-anechoic. For the stage, due to a necessity for a hard floor for instruments like cellos, absorbing material could only be used in certain places.

To be honest, I\'m not really sure why I\'m ranting on about all this, but I love those Denon recordings, and I have never desired to add any artificial reverb to them.

Nicholas

Jeff Hurchalla

08-25-2001, 06:37 PM

Interesting topic. I\'ll look forward to seeing what people have to say. One thing I noticed was the anechoic chamber results - it\'s possible you\'ll want to reword the conclusions about reverb and distant miking based on the recordings. One problem is an anechoic chamber would affect both the sound mics pick up and the sound the players hear - they would be missing the reverb cues that are always present when they play. If you want to read a little, I remember Benade\'s Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics has a few pages on how players may depend on reverb cues for accurate intonation. Hope this is of some help. Anyway, I do agree with most of what you\'ve said about problems with close miking. Good luck with the paper, and for any applications-

nicholash

08-25-2001, 07:03 PM

Hi Jeff,

For those Denon anechoic recordings, the conductor and players performed the music whilst monitoring the sound via headphones with artificial reverb added (2 second decay time). This was partly done to avoid shortening the general pauses/fermata in the music, so that the CD can be played in a reverberant environment and maintain the impression of a musically appropriate relationship between sound and silence.

Nicholas

Chadwick

08-25-2001, 08:06 PM

The anechoic recordings reminded me of the current crop of dry, semi close mic\'d recordings. Personally I found them lacking character in comparison to the natural hall recording. It made me suddenly realise that what I regarded as really crappy samples, were actually probably well played and recorded - but wasted due to misguided mic\'ing techniques and a \'lowest common denominator\' approach to phrasing.

Unquestionably, unless I hear something new, my next orchestral library purchase will be one which uses true room acoustics, not one which requires the addition of eq and a digital reverb algorithm.

A question for Maarten et al.,

What do you do about the \'accumulation\' effect? When you record a brass section playing in a hall you get one instance of the hall. When you use a sampler with the section broken down into smaller parts, and play four or five lines to create the same recording you end up with the same size brass section, but with four or five instances of the hall.

Do you guys notices a substantial difference in quality? Is it worse? Better(!)?

Don\'t take this as a negative.

From my POV, you guys are right on the money - not only with the far mic\'ing in a concert hall, but also with the idea of making recordings of a range of useful dynamics/phrasings.

You\'re also right about not wasting resources recording totally esoteric articulations. Most of us would prefer better quality meat and potatos.

One of the things Nemesys has been asked to put at the top of their list is VP9000 style HIGH QUALITY time stretching. Your samples, combined with good time stretching would probably cover any tempo.

Maybe with XP, 2gb CPUs, dual processors, and Tascam support, we\'ll see this kind of facility before we retire....

[This message has been edited by Chadwick (edited 08-25-2001).]

Damon

08-26-2001, 12:18 AM

Excellent demo Marc! Those are the best slow strings I\'ve heard yet played from a keyboard. What strings did you use or combine? They sound fantastic! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif A+ work on the expression as well. What are the flute phrases from also? They remind me of the flute sounds Elfman used in \"A Simple Plan\".
Great job man!

Bruce A. Richardson

08-26-2001, 07:58 AM

I applaud the effort that went into the \"manifesto.\"

However, when it comes to sampling I believe a hall is an inferior choice to a large and well-diffused studio. This affords the amount of air necessary for an instrument\'s timbre to be fully realized--without imprinting a hall\'s reflections and character. Or noise.

Like it or not, even the quietest halls in the world have air you can very much \"hear.\" It is not so bad when you record an orchestra at once...but VERY bad when you record each section of the orchestra at pianissimo, then recombine it to the tune of 10 to 20 times the amount of noise a person would normally experience.

Diffusion is not the same as absorption. Sampling in an anechoic environment is clearly not the way to go. A diffused room can be very live, it just won\'t say \"walls\" in the mix, or \"hall.\" And the advantage of using a controlled and quiet environment far outweighs any other factor.

Bruce

IOComposer

08-26-2001, 12:34 PM

Sounds like you 3 are well on your way to creating the Ultimate Brass Library! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
I\'m glad to see that you guys have decided to work together instead of banging your heads on the floor concurrently on different projects.

I\'m looking forward to your results and hoping that your theories actually translate into practical application.

I don\'t know why you posted this as opposed to keeping it amongst yourselves as an internal brainstorming session, but I can only assume that you did so to garner feedback in order to improve your efforts. That being the case, I\'ll contribute an issue that will need some problem solving on your part. The issue I present to you is tonguing attacks. When I did my brass library, I set out to solve the problem of the machine-gun effect with consecutive staccato attacks. I did so by recording double and triple tongue phrases and chopped them up. It did not work on the first try. I had to have my players come back in and redo all of them after I figured out what was going wrong. However, I will tell you in confidence that I can reproduce fast tonguing passages at any speed convincingly with my samples. I will post an example someday when I get a chance. Based on my experience with this type of sampling, I don\'t see it happening very well with ambient reverb. Your players would have to compensate for reverb decay before the next attack began. You can\'t play fast tonguing passages with breaks in the middle or else it will defeat the desired effect....not to mention killing your players embouchures in a matter of minutes. Allen Vissutti might be able to do that, but it is not something that could or should be expected from mere mortals http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
You guys are onto something when it comes to the expressiveness and natural ambience theories you\'ve proposed, but you seem to be overlooking important issues such as attacks and legato playing. Also, you seem to have settled into the logic that artificial reverbs just won\'t do anymore. I should remind you that most Hollywood orchestra recordings have lots of artificial reverb in them. Also, I would seriously recommend you trying out Altiverb before you do any of your ambient recordings. It really does magical things. I\'ve been tweaking my brass library with it and it gave it an entirely new life. I\'m actually really enjoying my samples now whereas before I was writing them off as a failed first attempt.

Take it for what it\'s worth, and good luck!…I’ll be waiting by your doorstep with cash in hand if you succeed! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
-J

Marc Floessel

08-26-2001, 12:38 PM

Bruce,

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>\"And the advantage of using a controlled and quiet environment far outweighs any other factor.\"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

We disagree. The main goal here is to capture the true acoustics of an orchestral instrument in its native setting. It is therefore imperative that the recording technique in no way differs from that of a normal orchestral recording. The musical sound of a sample by far outweighs the technical aspects of the sample, and orchestral instruments do not belong in isolated recording studios.

One thing to keep in mind is that pp recorded samples are (proper use given) not going to be played back at a louder level than the initial recording.

Through our own research we have tried to determine whether the problem is as big as people would have it.
The following mp3\'s should provide a good indication that, while the noise is still apparent, it does not drastically break down the sound quality.

As a test we sampled one sustained violins part (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/strings_noise_cd.mp3\") from a modern, commercial score CD (\'Meet Joe Black\'). As you can hear in strings_noise_cd.mp3 (first the 1:1 sampled version, then 50% level normalized) the recording does indeed have a good amount of noise.
We used the same violins sample, loaded it into a Gigastudio playable patch and recorded a little multi-polyphonic (5 stereo voices) cue (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/strings_noise_sampled.mp3\") for demonstration. Keep in mind that this is one sample, mapped over one octave (meaning it\'s transposing pretty severely). Still the same basics apply.

CD Sample:
http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/strings_noise_cd.mp3 (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/strings_noise_cd.mp3\")

test cue:
http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/strings_noise_sampled.mp3 (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/strings_noise_sampled.mp3\")

KingIdiot

08-26-2001, 01:07 PM

Mark waht Bruce was ointing out is that if you record 2 violin sections at pp a viola section at pp cellos at pp and all the brass at pp (lets say 4 different instruments) then layer one note from all these instruments 8 times the normal amount of noise. Noise (air) on top of noise does get louder and more apparant. This is a major problem for sampling. While noise reduction can help, it may affect the \"natural\" sound. This is why people prefer to record \"close\" mics with quieter instruments/layers. A combination of close and hall micing would be ideal IMO. Using the close mics to capture some of the sound of the instruments, and mixing it back in to the hall..while using noise reduction on the hall. This allowing for some of the instruments character to be retained and still havng the \"characteristic\" of the hall. Also I would suggest removing some of the low end from the close mic in the mix, to remove \"proximity\" effct and make it mix witht he louder \"just hall\" tracks.

anyhow....noise sucks http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

------------------
Really...I am an Idiot

Bruce A. Richardson

08-26-2001, 01:25 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Jamieh:
Bruce, this makes sense, as a lot of film scores are recorded in studios, not halls, and they obviously do not suffer from any problems with letting the instruments \"breathe\". <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly my point. The \"Hollywood sound\" some folks crave IS a studio sound...even if it happened to be recorded in a hall. There are more microphones in a typical orchestral recording session than cigarette butts on the back-door sidewalk.

IOComposer

08-26-2001, 01:26 PM

Just to make my point about not disregarding reverbs, I ran the dry Osaka piece through Altiverb and posted the results here:
http://www.DramaticAudio.com/audio/Osaka_Altiverb.mp3 (\"http://www.DramaticAudio.com/audio/Osaka_Altiverb.mp3\")

Perhaps your point stands true when using crappy reverbs such as the TC Native, but if you really put your theory to the test, you\'ll find that it doesn\'t stand up so well.
-J

added:
I should add that the reason this file sounds so crummy is because it\'s a recompressed MP3 file, so try to listen past the junk.

Here\'s another mix, this time with slight EQ adjustments to make it sound like the hall example you posted. It sounds thin on the low end because I didn\'t have the trombones to eq separtately. I would never do such a drastic low cut on bones, but I would on Horns. Since this demo seemed to be more focused on the horns, I just did the low cut and you\'ll have to excuse it for being too thin on the bones. If I had the bones and horns separately, I think I could have reproduced the hall sound exactly.
http://www.DramaticAudio.com/audio/Osaka_Altiverb2.mp3 (\"http://www.DramaticAudio.com/audio/Osaka_Altiverb2.mp3\")

[This message has been edited by IOComposer (edited 08-26-2001).]

[This message has been edited by IOComposer (edited 08-26-2001).]

[This message has been edited by IOComposer (edited 08-26-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-26-2001, 02:49 PM

King,

I think you missed the idea behind the test cue we posted. It has a polyphony of 5 voices (5 times a very noisy sample) playing at the same time.

Yet, the perceived general noise level didn\'t suddenly rise to 5 times as much volume, as was implied earlier.

That\'s what we wanted to show.

Bruce, if you haven\'t so yet, please listen to Thomas Brass demo. I think recording in a hall can indeed work well.
It did for the Kirk Hunter Virtuoso Strings Series, which I personally regard as the best strings lib out currently.
http://www.ilio.com/ilio/kirkhun/notes_liner.html (\"http://www.ilio.com/ilio/kirkhun/notes_liner.html\")
A quote from the liner note (\"http://www.ilio.com/ilio/kirkhun/notes_liner.html\"):
\"The first section that I wanted to tackle was a really large symphonic section of violins. These were recorded in a very large hall and miked from about 22 feet away to give the section a certain \"breathiness\" and reality.\"

Great post IO and we will reply in our next post.

Bruce A. Richardson

08-26-2001, 04:10 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Marc Floessel:
[B]King,

Bruce, if you haven\'t so yet, please listen to Thomas Brass demo. I think recording in a hall can indeed work well.
[B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You\'ll have to point out where that is located.

KingIdiot

08-26-2001, 05:45 PM

yes I did miss the example and I listened to it.

I agree that when you play samples at the correct volume that the noise isn\'t \"that bad\" but you wont always be doing that and noise will get louder. Also was that sample the short clip from the CD played at different notes?

If so, then there was probably more than just the \"hall\" mics. The only thing I\'m trying to point out is that there is reason to have both close and far mics. Not that halls are worse to record in.

Also (as pointed out) there are many times that scores are recorded in a studio, with added reverb afterwards.

It is really in my opinion that far micing is necessary for resonance (especially with loud brass and percussion), but a large studio room is good for this with being able to \"process\" it later. A mix of close and far mics is what is needed.

Also I wonder what it would sound like playing all different instruments samples at FF , if they\'ve been recorded in one hall. It probably wont sound the same since the halls acoustics will react different to and orchestra playing rather than one instrument section at a time. It may actually sound muddier having all that acoustic decay added on top of each other. Rather than throwing it in a reverb.

now an Ideal library would be one that would allow you to \"mix in the hall\" by playing multiple samples (close and far). It can be done an it can be a HUGE library, but in the end its the only way you\'re going to please everyone.

My firm belief is that the playability of the samples is more important....with a good capture of the instruments character a close second.. and the characteristics of the actual room a distant third. I know you\'re going to say that the room has a lot to do with the character of the instrument, and I agree...but think its a combination of micing and room, not necessarily that the room has to be a hall.

anyhow..why don\'t a few sample developers go out and record one big orchestra and put it on 5 DVDs, sell it and then do it again with another orchestra in another hall, and then again :0 MWAHAHAHAHAHA...we\'ll have diversity wont we http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

BTW why aren\'t we discussing how to get better sounds out of existing libraries? and programming techniques instead of discussing something that may or not happen?

------------------
Really...I am an Idiot

[This message has been edited by KingIdiot (edited 08-26-2001).]

[This message has been edited by KingIdiot (edited 08-26-2001).]

Jamieh

08-26-2001, 11:05 PM

Bruce, this makes sense, as a lot of film scores are recorded in studios, not halls, and they obviously do not suffer from any problems with letting the instruments \"breathe\".

SCARBEE

08-27-2001, 12:52 AM

Bruce is right about the multible \"noise\" problem. Personally I believe in clean samples and trust that the technology will help us out of the ambience/reverb situation.

Maybe TASCAM could begin to create a NFX reverb that uses real-time acoustic modeling?

Scarbee

------------------
Visit www.scarbee.com (\"http://www.scarbee.com\") and check out the demoes from The Scarbee Bass Libraries:)

Michiel Post

08-27-2001, 02:48 AM

Apart from the multiple noise problem I see another big disadvantage in hall-recorded samples. In the manifesto you claim that everyone expects the orchestral sound to sound as in a large hall far-miked recording. This is nonsense. There are so many different styles and types of music and each type has its typical \"space\" involved. Modern composers and engineers need a string quartet with a , far-miked, huge hall sound like a fish needs a bicycle. I think you are limiting the usability of samples for several musical styles when you take too much \"hall sound\" in the recording of samples. What happens when you use \"ambient\" samples in a live performance? No matter in what space the samples are played you will always hear the huge hall. And that is certainly not a natural sound.
The choice to record samples quite dry is not based on a string of unfortunate choices and library concepts as the manifesto claims. It\'s rather based in the insight that you cannot remove reverb from a recording. You can however add reverb. The example that is on Maarten Spruijt\'s website shows exactly that.

I think you could however make a library very very usable when providing dry and wet recordings at the same time in seperate programs. Or, combine boths sounds in one patch where the user can choose the level of the hall by using the modulation wheel.

The problem with a large acoustic space recorded in the samples is the fact one cannot remove the hall sound from the sample.

The manifesto gives us examples of what anechoic recordings sound like after some TC NAtive Reverb applied to it. What does that show us? IMO it shows that the TC Native is not able to produce acceptable natural sounding reverberation. Have any of you ever used the Sony 777 sampling reverb? Believe me that this reverb does produce a very acceptable natural acoustic impression.

Michiel

nicholash

08-27-2001, 03:52 AM

I agree with what Michiel Post says in the previous message to this one.

Best Regards
Nicholas

Thomas_J

08-27-2001, 05:46 AM

There has been an obvious misconception of what we\'re trying to get through with here.
We would like to ask everybody to pay a second attention to the 5 voice noise test mp3 we just posted. It answers a few of your questions regarding noise.

It was never our intention to go out and sample our instruments in a large hall with A/B mic pairs. Nor have we regarded artificial reverb as insufficient. We depend on artificial reverb as much as the next guy here. We would never go out and sample a library soaked in the natural ambience of the hall. That would clearly be a waste of time. Instead we would mic at a greater distance than what has been done with previous libraries in order to let the sound resonate and widen out. Broaden. This is especially important when dealing with brass instruments in order to avoid a nasal character as a result of a mic that
was positioned less than 5 feet from the bell of the instrument.

Do not forget that positioning of mics have a great impact on the sound. Hanging mics down from above is clearly the way to go with any instrument in the orchestra, as the sound radiates from the body and not the bell of the instrument (as stated earlier in the SoS article).

We will of course be adding field mics closer to the ensemble to capture the
neuances.

Michael Post seems very concerned about the limitations of a brass library, sampled by
the guidelines of our manifesto. He is obviously missing the whole point of this post.

We are aiming at the film music sound, and not Pop, rock, disco, funk, chamber, quartets, quintets etc.. therefore we couldn\'t care less about the limitations that sampling by the mentioned guidelines would imply. If you want to compose chamber music, I\'m sure there are plenty (if not only) closemic\'ed libraries out there that would work just fine. Having a dry and perfectly recorded (noiseless) sample as opposed to a true natural sample from a hall with proper placement of A/B\'s and group mics, would be useless to me. Do not forget the obvious difference for the musician when playing in a hall as opposed to a room with less/if any ambience. When you play your brass instrument in a hall you listen as the sound radiates from the instrument and resonate through the hall. You shape the sound with ambience in mind. The instrument sounds like it\'s breathing. The result is a very spacious sound. It cannot be simulated with reverb. Period. No matter how you sample it, it will have limitations.

Craig_L

08-27-2001, 05:53 AM

Just a thought - would it be worth posting a midi-file of the those opening bars of Tchaikovsky\'s 4th (I have one) for people selling libraries to attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of their sounds and in particular to justify their miking/recording techniques - dry versus natural ambience? It shouldn\'t take them long. If reverb is added it should be in their interests to use the best - whether it\'s a Sony 777 etc.

nicholash

08-27-2001, 06:17 AM

Hi Thomas,

Reading the booklet that comes with the Denon anechoic CD, the anechoic example of brass used in the manifesto seems to be recorded with a pair of omni-directional B&K 4006 mics. positioned above the head of the conductor who is a long way from the brass sections if you look at the picture in the booklet.

So, when you say:

\"This is especially important when dealing with brass instruments in order to avoid a nasal character as a result of a mic that
was positioned less than 5 feet from the bell of the instrument.\"

why did you use the (non-close-miked) anechoic recording to try and illustrate your point instead of a true close-miked recording?

The artificial reverb that was added to the anechoic example in the manifesto was dreadful in quality and quantity.

You also say:

\"We will of course be adding field mics closer to the ensemble to capture the
neuances.\"

How close? Less than 5 ft away? http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

Best regards
Nicholas

Thomas_J

08-27-2001, 06:30 AM

You are wrong. Take a look at the picture, and re-read.

I quote:

\"The equipment used for this recording included a total of 29 specially selected and adjusted high performance microphones made by companies such as B&K and Schoeps\"

The brass ensemble alone consists of 5 mics, placed seemingly close. http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/anechoic_miking.gif (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/anechoic_miking.gif\")

You can actually hear they are close miced, so there\'s really no point in arguing here.

And those who prefer the anechoic recording (!!!) .. *tsk*tsk*tsk*

Marc Floessel

08-27-2001, 06:37 AM

\"The artificial reverb that was added to the anechoic example in the manifesto was dreadful in quality and quantity.\"

We supplied a completely dry version of the anechoic recording. Apply your own verb - experiment!

Damon

08-27-2001, 07:04 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by IOComposer:
Perhaps your point stands true when using crappy reverbs such as the TC Native
-J<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I have to disagree with the TC statement. I have gotten great results using TC. It\'s not the most expensive and best reverb out there but it is pretty sweet sounding for the price. As for the Altiverb, I\'m sick of hearing about it since it\'s only available for Mac http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/mad.gif. If it comes out for PC, then I will raise my glass with you since it does sound very good indeed http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif.
By the way Marc, I complemented you on your demo and asked a few questions. Can you reply?

[This message has been edited by Damon (edited 08-27-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-27-2001, 07:26 AM

Sorry Damon - with all the excitement around here, I just forgot your post. I know it\'s disheartening when people don\'t bother to take their time for a reply.

I used Miroslav Vitous Ensemble strings (sustained and tremolo) and nothing else. As you have guessed, much volume controller action was involved.
Miroslav\'s samples are great for \"felt\" parts, but in general I\'d probably use Kirk Hunter Virtuoso Strings nowadays. Although static in nature they have a very modern, full, almost Mediaventures-que sound and flow extremely well with good expression tweaking. The KH violins are the first ones I\'ve found to sound exactly like they do in the big movies. They don\'t instantly inspire you with a rich expression upon loading them though.

I also used Miroslav for bass and contra woodwinds - those are great, extremely expressive.

The flute riffs were from Siedlaczek\'s Advanced Orchestra, from the \"FX\" partition -cut up and reassembled to sound coherent. While I am not too fond of the playable instrument themselves, there are numerous well performed articulations that you can drop into a piece for better realism. Also the brass was Siedlaczek. Numerous percussive FX were either from Siedlaczek or custom.

Damon

08-27-2001, 07:37 AM

Thanks for the reply Marc. I was very impressed with the expression you got with the Miroslav strings, really first rate! What kind of keyboard controller do you use? Is it a mod wheel or slider? I\'m using a ribbon band controller from my Kurzweil SP-76. You use it with your finger and I\'m not real happy with the results. I\'m just wondering if a mod wheel would be any easier.

Bruce A. Richardson

08-27-2001, 08:09 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Thomas_J:
That would clearly be a waste of time. Instead we would mic at a greater distance than what has been done with previous libraries in order to let the sound resonate and widen out. Broaden. This is especially important when dealing with brass instruments in order to avoid a nasal character as a result of a mic that
was positioned less than 5 feet from the bell of the instrument.

Do not forget that positioning of mics have a great impact on the sound. Hanging mics down from above is clearly the way to go with any instrument in the orchestra, as the sound radiates from the body and not the bell of the instrument (as stated earlier in the SoS article).

We are aiming at the film music sound, and not Pop, rock, disco, funk, chamber, quartets, quintets etc.. therefore we couldn\'t care less about the limitations that sampling by the mentioned guidelines would imply. If you want to compose chamber music, I\'m sure there are plenty (if not only) closemic\'ed libraries out there that would work just fine. Having a dry and perfectly recorded (noiseless) sample as opposed to a true natural sample from a hall with proper placement of A/B\'s and group mics, would be useless to me. Do not forget the obvious difference for the musician when playing in a hall as opposed to a room with less/if any ambience. When you play your brass instrument in a hall you listen as the sound radiates from the instrument and resonate through the hall. You shape the sound with ambience in mind. The instrument sounds like it\'s breathing. The result is a very spacious sound. It cannot be simulated with reverb. Period. No matter how you sample it, it will have limitations.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Are you a brass player? I am. The last paragraph is hooey...a pro will play musically wherever he\'s sitting. That\'s the difference in amateurs and pros.

What makes you think playing in a hall is a pleasant experience? Do you do it? I do. It\'s mostly a frustrating experience, you can\'t hear well even in some of the greatest ones. It\'s hard to hear in Carnegie Hall, I\'ve played there. It\'s hard to hear in Meyerson Symphony Center and the Seoul Opera House. Halls don\'t make a brass player play differently, at least not a pro. This is pure bunk.

There are some other misconceptions here. The primary tone of a brass instrument most definitely IS coming out the end of the horn, and that is the part of the sound which the hall \"reinforces.\" Does the instrument radiate elsewhere? Of course, but the largest percentage of brass sound is coming from the bell, such a large percentage that the \"resonant\" tone is almost moot.

Don\'t believe me? Turn your French Horns around facing bells towards the conductor, and see what kind of sound you get.

And besides, this resonant sound will be recorded even MORE fully on a good soundstage than in a hall, where it will likely be falling below the noise floor and simply be washed away.

There are people here with years of experience trying to help you adjust your manifesto towards a more successful implementation. You can either get defensive about it or try to learn something.

Now, back to this studio thing:

When I recommended you look at a studio instead of a hall, I am not talking about somebody\'s little project studio. I\'m talking about an orchestral soundstage, specifically designed for recording a full ensemble. These rooms are huge, and they sound amazing--BUT they don\'t add un-diffused hard reflections to your work, or excessive noise.

That way, you can get the full bloom of orchestral sound, without printing the \"hall\" onto everything you do.

Why do you think a hall is the perfect recording location? Halls are actually acoustically compromised from the first turn of the shovel--they are designed to artificially project sound onto the largest number of people who can comfortably fit inside a given building...that is their mission first and foremost.

An orchestral soundstage is designed for only one purpose--to make the instruments resonate as fully as possible without architectural amplification, standing waves, nodes, or reflections which would alter their true sound...so a microphone can \"hear\" the instruments the way they actually sound.

Studio doesn\'t mean \"dead.\" On the contrary, good orchestral soundstages have plenty of breath and life. Maybe you\'ve never heard an ensemble playing in a room like this, it\'s a spectacular sound. In particular, you get the true deep bass sound of tubas, pizz bass, bass drums, etc., because there are no standing waves to create impediments to their true tone.

I am suggesting, in short, that you can \"have your cake and eat it too\" by mic\'ing with some space, but doing it on an orchestral soundstage rather than in a hall.

Furthermore, as a businessman, you\'ll need to come to grips with the fact that the people who buy libraries need them to work for more than one thing...unless you don\'t mind sinking a couple hundred thousand dollars of your money and then selling ten or fifteen copies for your trouble.

Besides, when you guys talk about \"film music,\" you\'re not even talking about film music as a whole. You\'re talking about Star-Wars/John Williams/etc., which is the narrowest of genres even within film music.

There is truth in everything that\'s been said in this thread, including your manifesto. You make good points, but so do the people who are pointing out ways to make your manifesto better. That\'s why you posted it, right? Take the advice, examine it fearlessly, and you\'ll see that there is value in it.

Good Luck,
Bruce

PS...still, no one has told me where this \"brass demo\" is. I would be happy to listen to it.

Simon Ravn

08-27-2001, 08:11 AM

An electronic reverb cant make up for recording including a studio or hall ambience! And I am very happy that Thomas \"couldnt care less\" about other uses for his library than filmmusic - YES!!! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif Speaking of reverbs, the Altiverb sounds REALLY nice (not judged by IOComposers bad quality MP3s, but the one on audioease\'s homepage http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif) and I would love having that on PC, but I guess it won\'t happen.

It would be interesting to know if there are REALLY people here who would actually prefer the close mic\'ed recording instead of the full hall sound as present in the posted examples. I for one know that there is no question at all about what I prefer. Of course something inbetween would be possible to, e.g. recording the orchestra in a relatively big studio instead of a giant hall. Star Wars: TPM was recorded in studio 1 at Abbey Road and had some extra reverb added for the CD version of the soundtrack.

Bruce A. Richardson

08-27-2001, 08:47 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Simon Ravn:
An electronic reverb cant make up for recording including a studio or hall ambience! And I am very happy that Thomas \"couldnt care less\" about other uses for his library than filmmusic - YES!!! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif Speaking of reverbs, the Altiverb sounds REALLY nice (not judged by IOComposers bad quality MP3s, but the one on audioease\'s homepage http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif) and I would love having that on PC, but I guess it won\'t happen.

It would be interesting to know if there are REALLY people here who would actually prefer the close mic\'ed recording instead of the full hall sound as present in the posted examples. I for one know that there is no question at all about what I prefer. Of course something inbetween would be possible to, e.g. recording the orchestra in a relatively big studio instead of a giant hall. Star Wars: TPM was recorded in studio 1 at Abbey Road and had some extra reverb added for the CD version of the soundtrack.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

NOW we\'re getting somewhere.

Studio does not equal \"close mic\'ed.\"

Studio does not equal \"little tiny room covered with foam.\"

On an orchestral soundstage, matter of fact, one can mic farther from a given instrument if desired than in a hall, because the noise floor won\'t kill you, nor will the reflections cancel and confuse the imaging and timbres.

AND...with samples mic\'ed in this fashion, you certainly can add reverb effectively...VERY effectively. It\'s done every day all over the world.

I\'m simply pointing out that with brass, a hall will be a less successful recording environment than a studio for the sound you\'re trying to achieve. If you use a good orchestral soundstage, not only can you get the distant \"blast\" effectively, but you\'ll be able to get distant pianissimo and everything in between. You\'ll get full timbre at all dynamic levels, without losing detail to noise. And you\'ll be able to map more effectively...more musicality available at the end product. Isn\'t that the ultimate goal?

Best regards,
Bruce

PS...will someone PLEASE tell me where this mythical brass example is that I\'m supposed to be referencing?

franz

08-27-2001, 08:52 AM

My 2 cents on this:
My engineering career started at the concert house in Vienna Austria. Some of you may know a few examples of my work. Most notably the sound track to the 1984 movie Dune (only 6 mikes used: 2 B&K 4006, 2 Crown PZM, 2 C12). (Check my credits at allmusic.com search: Pusch)
I believe that all acoustic instruments were built to be heard by human ears and to interact with an environment. Using \"regular\" mikes is therefore already a crime no matter what the quality of these mikes is and recordings with acoustically uncoupled single diaphragm mikes (even stereo or multiple) must be called \"synthetic\" because they turn any sound into a simple sinewave which actually could be synthesised by an oscillator array. The only way to record an orchestra or single orchestra instruments is to use \"human hearing\", acoustically coupled mikes within an artficial human head. this will ensure that all subtle arrival time differences of overtones and also the interaction of the instruments with their acoustic environment and with each other is captured. Thus affording the listener a pleasant and completely \"unsynthesised\" audio experience. To synthesise this effect is still impossible to this date. The amount of computing power necessary to simulate complex acoustics still eludes even extremely sophisticated computers.

I have dedicated myself to the introduction of binaural head samples into the music industry and vrsound.com offers some of the results of my research. Most of the users of these samples experience an immediate improvement of their production quality and many contact me to express their enthusiasm and feel inspired by the samples.

Just something else to think about.

franZ

nicholash

08-27-2001, 09:07 AM

Hi Thomas,

You posted a gif image from the Denon CD booklet. Why don\'t you post another two; this time pages 11 and 12. Since I don\'t have a scanner, I will quote from those pages:

\"I:Anechoic Recording Program
This section contains anechoic recordings of orchestral works from each period of music history, from the classical through to the modern periods.
...
...
The positioning of instruments and microphones are shown in Figure (C)-1.
1. This part (Part I) were recorded principally with 2 main microphones above the head of the conductor.

II:Anechoically Recorded Samples for Evaluation
This section contains short samples taken from famous orchestral works of each age.
...
...
As with Part I, the samples gathered here were recorded principally with main microphones (two B&K Type 4006 omni-directional microphones) positioned above the head of the conductor. The sound was recorded dominantly with 2 main microphones, but some spot-microphones were also used for some instruments sounding weak.\"

So Thomas, are you effectively saying that the brass instruments sound weak ? http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

I have done a fair amount of live orchestral recording in fairly dry acoustic environments and, based on my experience using a pair of mics a little behind the conductor\'s position, the Denon anechoic example (from Part II of the CD) is principally not close-miked. Because of the lack of reverberation and hence reduced auditory depth cues, it may give some people the impression that it was completely close-miked.

The Shure SM-81 unidirectional spot mics (one mic per each section of trumpets, trombones, horns and tuba) were used more significantly for section V of the CD (\"V http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/grin.gififferences In Sound Recording Method), e.g. track 43.

Best regards
Nicholas

p.s. You said:
\"And those who prefer the anechoic recording (!!!) .. *tsk*tsk*tsk*\"

Compared with the examples with that dreadful sounding artificial reverb that was added to almost drown the brass in reverb, of course I prefered the (semi-)anechoic version.

nicholash

08-27-2001, 09:20 AM

I very recently bought loads of Franz\'s newly sampled instruments on \'custom\' CDRs.

I think they sound great. In fact, overall, they are amongst the very best samples I have. I\'m a great fan of binaural recording also. In fact, I have been doing research in that area for years, but that\'s another story.

I\'d like to say that I am inspired by Franz\'s samples and am really glad he decided to release and license them.

Best regards
Nicholas

Thomas_J

08-27-2001, 09:31 AM

Bruce,

First of all I want to take the time to point out how much we appreciate your indepth comments and advice. We really do listen. In a forum like this, it can often be difficult to convey an idea of how much or little an argument finds resonance in the discussion partner\'s mind. You are perfectly right that it was us who asked for feedback. Presenting what we hope to be well-reasoned views to be discussed in a broader audience with their results becoming the soil of future productions was another motivation.

About the brass demo - Unless you didn\'t catch the buzz surrounding my \"unexplored territory\" Brass Demo in another thread here on NS, that would be the old brass demo on http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/hornex!!s.mp3 (\"http://www.booyaya.de/enyak/hornex!!s.mp3\")

Having said that, I think there is an adaption process taking place on both sides here.

You make some good points. And you are right about one thing, I\'m no professional brass player. I do have some experience though, having played the trumpet for about 4 years now. It is however not my main instrument (piano is) and so I guess you would be more qualified than me to make these kind of claims or call them statements if you wish.

What I have access to at the moment is unfortunately not an orchestral recording studio ala Abbey Road. I have two alternatives. I could either record it in the student studio in my school (which is small and anechoic, or the orchestra hall nearby. In lack of other choices, I will go with the hall. The way I see it, and what the above mp3\'s to some extent show, noise will not be a problem. Even when multiple noisy samples are triggered.

A word about the usability of our brass samples. You\'re absolutely right that \'Star Wars\' is on our minds. From the start it was clear that we\'re going to shoot for the blockbuster film sound. Any other uses than for film music are not even secondary to us, they are irrelevant. (Classical works should be performable with the samples of course, since film music is largely based on the exact same principles.) However we\'re NOT only focusing on the \'Star Wars\' sound.

As we see it, there are maybe 4 different \"moods\", that are most often employed:

Sad (=emotional), heroic (=Agressive), suspenseful (=Neutral) and frightening.

I think if we succeed in providing these moods with our samples, we have a library that covers 90% of the stuff a typical scoring job needs. We\'re talking about purely generic moods here of course - no special articulations, no cultural colors - \"just\" the hollywood sound.

What I would really like to know is how libraries such as AO and QLB was recorded. Mic position and room. Mainly to avoid making the same \"mistakes\" again. It has come to my attention that many users on this forum are way too concerned about the technical issues surrounding a sampling project. I would like to hear more thoughts on the actual concept we have developed. If we are to take on the huge task of satisfying everyone (interested in the film music sound), we would need to know right away if we\'re onto something or if you believe we are way off. We are open for any suggestions!

Best regards,
Thomas, Marc and Maarten

Endicott

08-27-2001, 09:40 AM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-27-2001, 10:09 AM

May I paraphrase? We all suck.

A lot of issues present themselves for discussion after our \"manifesto\". Pick one and enlighten us.

If that sounds like a plan, email me at floessel@t-online.de

I don\'t think this thread can take another of your rants. \"Oh man\" to how well you understand the human psyche. (Hint: Telling people they are worthless is potentially fun, but insensitive.)

nicholash

08-27-2001, 10:35 AM

Hi Endicott,

Some food for tought:

In an anechoic environment, where sounds are not being \'masked\' by other noise, it should be fairly easy to pickup from a fair distance the almost unison intake gasp of breath from a group of brass players about to play a solid tone from their instruments.

Read this from: http://www.cyberstage.org/archive/newstuff/monsters.html (\"http://www.cyberstage.org/archive/newstuff/monsters.html\")

\"One thinks of John Cage’s research with the anechoic chamber in which he sought the ultimate experience in pure silence, only to find that there was no such thing as total silence. Despite the purging of all external sound, Cage could still hear his heart beating and his circulatory system buzzing. This led the composer to write his famous 4’33\", in which the silent gestures of the pianist David Tudor reveals the ever-present ambiance of the concert hall, turning our attention to the act of listening.\"

Also, here are a couple of paragraphs taken from: http://www.reliance.com/mtr/pcnomn.htm (\"http://www.reliance.com/mtr/pcnomn.htm\")

\"Reliance Sound Room
The sound room, where a great deal of research on motor sound has been conducted for industry, was built by Reliance to determine acoustic performance based on tests in a free-field above a reflecting plane. It is described as an anechoic or \"without echo room\". This description defines one of two categories of sound testing rooms. The other type is the reverberant room with hard acoustically reflective surfaces.

Physically, the room is a sound test facility consisting of two solid concrete rooms, one inside the other. The base of the inner room floats on fiberglass and the walls on cork. The inner walls and ceiling of the room are covered with 30\" deep sound-absorbing wedges to muffle sound and make the room essentially anechoic down to 20 Hz. The meaning of this sound level is best experienced by those who stand in the room and hear the sound of their own heart beat.\"

Also, a quote from: www.arx.com.au/pdf/Connections_SPL12-UPA1P.pdf (\"http://www.arx.com.au/pdf/Connections_SPL12-UPA1P.pdf\")

\"So to do the test we ended up in the large anechoic chamber at the National Acoustics Laboratory in Chatswood. This room is about 1Sm x 9m in size, and is virtually dead. Shut the (huge)door, sit still for a while, and you can hear your heart beating.\"

Also from: http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FC/readings/Thesis.html (\"http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/FC/readings/Thesis.html\")

\"If one listens carefully and the ears are healthy, silence as the absence of sound is clearly unattainable, a suprahuman absolute. Even in the stillness of deep night or the controlled and damped acoustic environment of an anechoic chamber, where we sit or lay as still as possible and listen
attentively, we will still hear at least the heart beating, the flow of the circulatory system, the movement of air in and out of the body, and in many cases, the mild stimulus of the nervous system. Ihde and Slaughter (p. 237) and John Cage (cited from numerous sources) corroborate this from
their experiences in anechoic chambers. In my case, a not uncommon condition, the high pitched ringing of mild chronic tinnitus is also a constant companion.

The reason for this continual presence of sound is that our ears are beautifully well-adapted to the ambient sound level of a quiet environment, incredibly sensitive yet in fact not too sensitive. The threshold of audibility at optimum frequencies-3- is around 0 dB, a healthy ear being so sensitive that \"for frequencies between 2000 and 4000 Hz, the eardrum has to move only 10-9 cm in order for sound to be heard. This amplitude of movement is less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom. ... Thus, for people with hearing that is substantially better than average, having more sensitive ears would be useless because of the continuous thermal background noise present in air. In these cases, the absolute sensitivity of the ear approaches a limit imposed by the nature of sound.\" (Gulick, 218)\"

So maybe it is possible for the B&K 4006s behind the conductor to be able to pick up the brass players\' breathing, in an environment where there is little in the way of acoustic reflections and other noises that would normally mask those sounds.

Best regards
Nicholas

p.s. IMHO the Denon anechoic tracks (1 to 16) have some lovely performances of the music being played.

Endicott

08-27-2001, 12:52 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

IOComposer

08-27-2001, 01:08 PM

Guitar player...say no more http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif
I\'m glad that you\'re able to boast like you do, but you really lack people skills, Dan. Perhaps this serves you in your life. Good luck with that!
-J

btw-The spelling of your name was a typo, I hope that qualifies my opinion of you now.

[This message has been edited by IOComposer (edited 08-27-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-27-2001, 01:10 PM

Before this thread continues, I\'d I\'d like to remind everyone that mud-slinging is not the most professional thing to do and taking part in such actions always takes away from credibility, no matter who is \"right\" or not.

I\'d rather focus on a constructive discussion. Who\'s with me?

Nick Phoenix

08-27-2001, 01:40 PM

Whew!!!
Glad I steered clear of this one!

Endicott

08-27-2001, 01:46 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

08-27-2001, 02:01 PM

\"I\'d like to remind everyone that mud-slinging is not the most professional thing to do and taking part in such actions always takes away from credibility, no matter who is \"right\" or not.\"

Everybody here please read this loud. This is the most true statement I have heard recently on this list.

Jamieh

08-27-2001, 02:06 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>have a look, hear some violins which even at 22k/sec sound more real than everything I´ve heard in this lame community at 192k/sec. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Regardless of anyone\'s credentials, I think labelling this as a \"lame\" community is probably not the best way to deal with the discussion.

Anyway, from what I can see, the strings on your page are REAL. So of COURSE they sound better than sampled strings. I don\'t think anyone has claimed that their sampled strings are indistinguishable from real ones. The point of this forum is to try and get sampled instruments to sound more real than they already do, because most of us don\'t have access to professional string players to record for us.

08-27-2001, 02:09 PM

Ahem.

Anyway, to get back to the issue at hand: There has been some discussion with regards to noise and the accumulation problem, and I feel that I should point out Marc, et al, that there is somewhat of a flaw in your 5 voice experiment.

When different samples play together, they will each have different noise. The noise from the various samples will be uncorrelated. Hence the noise-power will add.

This is *not* the case where there is correlation between the things being added. Since you are using the same sample for each of the 5 voices (even if there is transposition), there would be some correlation between the noise in each sample, and hence the power does not add directly.

Doing a quick experiment with Matlab, generating 2 sets of random noise, and adding them together (combining different samples), gave about 15% more noise power than taking one set of random noise, transposing it an octave up and adding it to the original noise (like your example).

According to how much correlation there is, the 15% would of course be different for each scenario.

Perhaps you should do another experiment, where you take a microphone and simply make 5 takes of a note from any instrument. Then map each take to a separate gig-instrument and have each instrument take each voice. This will give a more accurate reflection of the effect of noise accumulation than does the current example.

To King, et al, it is also worth pointing out that, when each additional sample is triggered, the noise power would increase, but so to would the signal power. So while the SNR may decrease, it will not necessarily decrease as much as might be expected. And then in addition, a particular sample may serve to mask some of the noise present in some of the other samples, depending on frequency content, etc. Of course it is almost impossible to determine to what extent, without actually trying it.

Save to say that noise accumulation is not necessarily going to be a huge issue, but it is still worth bearing in mind.

Endicott

08-27-2001, 03:13 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

Maarten Spruijt

08-27-2001, 04:17 PM

PEOPLE !!! PEOPLE !!! PEOPLE !!! PEOPLE !!!

What on earth IS it with this Northernsounds Forum!!! It\'s all about insulting, yelling, pointing out each other as being arrogant and unprofessional! People tend to feel insulted WAY to easily on NS and start yelling back...

WHY CAN\'T WE HAVE SOME SERIOUS CONVERSATION HERE?!?!

Now, there ARE some very good posts on this thread already, but the thing between Endicott and IOComposer... I mean... come one! If it has to be said, I will: Endicott, listening to some of your mp3\'s I think you\'re a very good guitar player. IOComposer: we already discussed some good things about your and my music through the brass library. Endicott, those insults with the 8-year-old nephew are a little low, don\'t you think? I don\'t like defending my own music like this (talking about TPSuite), but if I really have to - there were really LOTS of people fooled (including the whole film crew and cinema audience), thinking it was a real orchestra.

Now, the last posts are turning towards a more friendly feeling again, let\'s keep it that way, or we could better close this thread and be better off!

This particular thread is about Marc, Thomas and me sharing some sampling ideas of ours with the rest of the online community, trying to reach better sampling theories for all of us. NOT for our personal, commercial purposes!

Best regards,

Maarten Spruijt

------------------
( www.maartenspruijt.com (\"http://www.maartenspruijt.com\") )
ICQ: 37834976

Jamieh

08-27-2001, 04:21 PM

Actually Endicott, the piece I was referring to was \"The Summer\", for which you mention the strings were played by Georgiana Simionescu and yourself. Am I looking in the wrong place?

[This message has been edited by Jamieh (edited 08-27-2001).]

Endicott

08-27-2001, 04:53 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

Jamieh

08-27-2001, 04:58 PM

Gotcha--I will listen to the sampled strings. The song I listened to was \"The Summer\" which definitely had real strings.

Endicott

08-27-2001, 05:02 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-27-2001, 05:41 PM

Ok, final post for me tonight:

Endicott, it\'s fair to note that the piece you mentioned was done by me, not Maarten, and I\'ve actually come to the conclusion that the crescendo wasn\'t realistic quite some time ago. There are other problems with it as well (most of them I\'d rather not elaborate on), so yes, that\'s why I\'ve reacted rather nonchalantly in my email. I was just controller trigger happy back then. I am not going to gloss that over.
We all get smarter with time eventually.

Let\'s try to forget that episode and move on.

Endicott

08-27-2001, 07:49 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

donnie

08-27-2001, 07:54 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Maarten Spruijt:
PEOPLE !!! PEOPLE !!! PEOPLE !!! PEOPLE !!!

This particular thread is about Marc, Thomas and me sharing some sampling ideas of ours with the rest of the online community, trying to reach better sampling theories for all of us. NOT for our personal, commercial purposes!

Best regards,

Maarten Spruijt

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I thought the whole point of this WAS because you guys were going to produce a library. Was I incorrect in assuming this?

Donnie

Endicott

08-27-2001, 11:03 PM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

nicholash

08-27-2001, 11:26 PM

Hi again Endicott,

Where did you get the figure of 15 m from?
In the CD booklet, there is a photograph of the conductor and orchestra in the anechoic environment. I estimate the distance at about 7 m.

In an acoustic environment where there are hardly any sound reflections (i.e. nearly anechoic), the \'pauses\' betwteen loud sounds are not occupied by the reverberant sound which would normally mask quite sounds. The quiet sounds (like the Trombone section\'s gasp of breath) can be heard because they are not masked by the decaying reflected sound circulating the room after the direct sound has stopped.

Best regards
Nicholas

franz

08-27-2001, 11:33 PM

\"The big orchestral hollywood sound\" really sucks.
And can only be achieved by union engineers on donuts and coffee who have not changed their mikes or mike setup in 30 years, and union string players on bagels and cream cheese who talk about Baseball, cars and how much they lost in Vegas last week.

harsh but true.
franZ

nicholash

08-27-2001, 11:43 PM

Franz,

I coudn\'t have said it better myself.

Best regards
Nicholas

IOComposer

08-27-2001, 11:50 PM

Keep going, Dan.
You have a great philosophy and I\'m really enjoying reading what you have to say. I know I have to establish my credibility now, but that\'s not really important. Let\'s just say I\'ve been very lucky not to have to work a non-audio job in 10 years. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
I\'ll be hitting the refresh button until you post chapter 2 http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif
-J

IOComposer

08-27-2001, 11:57 PM

Endicoot,
I think you\'d better make a post to establish your credibility before you say another word on this forum. If you\'re an experienced professional, I\'d love to hear what you have to say but as of now it just seems as though you\'re just an arrogant jerk out to insult with your mighty keyboard rocket launcher! I really hope for your sake that you\'ve got some serious credentials to back up your righteous banter.
-J

MikeGraybill

08-28-2001, 01:58 AM

I was just wondering the same thing, Donnie. I kinda let my hopes rise just a bit, as I think there is definite potential in constructing a brass ensemble of this nature. I\'d like to to add that the examples of the brass mix I\'ve heard so far have been quite convincing, and while perfection is still a distant (and possibly scary) thing in the world of samples, there is a VERY good possibility of, at the very least, contributing a highly useful tool to the music community by releasing this unique set of samples.

I forget sometimes just how new all of this really is to us all. The technology to DO what we do has only very recently sprung into existence, and when I look at it from that perspective, I\'ve gotta admit I\'m blown away by what our master samplers have done for us all so far. Every one of us is aware of the human technological advancement slope... it soars radically fast and exponentially. We haven\'t gotten it \"just right\" yet, and will be fighting interface issues and a host of problems for some time to come.

As I see it, when Thomas blended his samples into the mix of current prosamples available, he acheived a sound that I found highly attractive. I don\'t think I\'m the only one that would like to have that tool at my disposal. All technical issues involved within the recording of those samples aside, its the results that I\'m interested in. Given time, we\'ll all eventually understand why some things work and others don\'t, and successes will be studied for there merit and faults, and built upon. Knowledge is key to everything we do in this world, and in my opinion, should not be witheld if at all possible, particularly as it pertains to the arts. Helping other people excersise our greatest power - the act of creation - is a noble and good thing, and ANYONE, regardless of their ability or qualifications, that attempts to try to do this has my full support. (If the samples don\'t work for me I won\'t buy \'em, but I\'d wager they will be of some use to someone out there, and if not monetarily gratifying, some measure of success was still acheived.) In this case, it sounds like a signifigant level of success was acheived, and I just wanted to tip my hat, and hope to be given the opportunity to share in the progress.

As always - thanks to the sample makers for making it possible to do what I do. I\'d waste half my life away studying and building the sounds myself, and run out of time to write, which was the whole point in the first place.

Happy Creation All
-Mike-

ps - b4 I got carried away, the point of this post was to ask if the existing samples will be a part of a larger library you are attempting to work on based on the results of the manifesto, or if it was simply to provoke thought...

Thomas_J

08-28-2001, 03:21 AM

To Endicott:

I understand you perfectly well. You need to learn good manners though. Both Maarten and I are music students, and while we are fairly young and inexperienced compared to \"Goldsmith\" etc., I believe we are just as capable to make a decent library as any other developers on this forum. First of all, this discussion is NOT about violins. Sampling violins would be a whole different task. It would require a very different approach. So stop drawing parallells. This is, for the record (which I btw thought was pretty clear already), about orchestral brass. It is well thoughtout, and it will in my opinion be an improvement over todays libraries. As far as the film music sound goes at least.

Endicott again,
Yes of course our goal is to fool Jerry Goldsmith. Of course we want to make this library to earn a fortune. Yes that is what we want. Uh.. duh. I think it is worth telling you, Bandicott, that people have listened to our work, and they believe it sounds very real. I\'ve been able to fool 90% of my typical friends with some of my music, so I do believe it was not a wasted effort. I have yet to fool a music student/professional musician though. That\'s a whole different thing. In the end it is the \"guy next door\" who will end up listening to your music anyway. If the \"professional\" people start paying attention to what you do, you might soon be off on your way to record with an orchestra, as a result of the inspiring samples you had access to when you created the convincing mock-up. I\'m sorry, but I don\'t see you sitting next to Goldsmith yet. Just get this once and for all, okey? and please stop posting to this thread. If you want to question our qualifications and comptence, mail us. We are by no means trying to replace a real orchestra. We\'re trying to make inspiring samples to work with, and of course add a new dimension of realism. The key word here is inspiration. I think Marc put it very well: \"It is so much easier to write a good theme with inspiring samples!\"
I very much agree. I think, to some extent, we all agree. And that is one of our goals. Create a library of inspiring sounds.

We have developed a set of ground rules/guidelines that we will utilize in the sampling sessions to come. We would like to hear any thoughts on these. Are there things that could be better? smarter? more musical? more effective?
We seriously think it can be done, and we look forward to it. The whole idea behind this thread was to get impulses (constructive criticism) and find out if we were on to something or not. I get the impression that this forum consists of people who doubt us. They doubt our competence and they doubt that we\'ll be able to pull it off. Maybe if you\'d been a little forthcoming. Friendly? Apparently there aren\'t as many people interested in achieving the \"film music sound\" as we initially thought. We are obviously looking for advice with the wrong people.

Please, if I\'m wrong, keep posting interesting views on our Manifesto. That is and should be the center of attention here.

Thomas

Endicott

08-28-2001, 06:48 AM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

Thomas_J

08-28-2001, 07:05 AM

Endicott: What are you trying to say? That you are the only one who can make orchestral music with samples sound real? You\'re going on and on about nothing. I\'m sorry if you seem to think you make some useful points for us. Again with your examples of your work. I can\'t believe the amount of imature people who frequent this forum! Well, I\'m recording my brass no matter what you say.

If you want to get personal, MAIL me. Is it that hard to understand?

Thomas

[This message has been edited by Thomas_J (edited 08-28-2001).]

AzureCrystal

08-28-2001, 07:48 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>
Yes, guitar player, like Segovia, if you ever heard of. But my main instrument in the Music Academy (if you ever heard what that is) was violin. Second instrument, piano.
Where are your credentials, you bigmouth? I told you I won´t accept you to do the thing without showing them and without washing your teeth.

Now you give me your credentials, and then - only then - you can do your fav occupation, but not before washing your teeth, coz I fear catching some haemorroides.
Credentials! Oh man!

P.S. To Thomas: You must wash your teeth too before licking it. You are no good developer. You know nothing and you are nothing. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Mr. Aldea; I personally have never heard of you. I have never heard any of your recordings you boast about, neither have any of my colleagues who are all in the industry. I went to your site and was not impressed with the music. All the pieces seems to point to your out of control ego and serve no other purpose than to make you sound good. No, I am sorry to say, you are NOT like Segovia (I sure did not see any classical acoustic guitars in your equipment), and I have worked with far better guitarists, all who seem to have their ego in check. I no longer play for a living, yet I can still play a far better \"Bumblebee\" than you. However, I thought they still taught etiquete at the European conservatories (is that where you studied, there was no mention on your site). You may be qualified to offer a critique of sampling techniques, but no one, no matter how talented (not in your case), can be excused from being foul mouthed and condescending, as you have been over and over in this thread. These gentlemen have been gracious in sharing information, I have learned volumes about sampling, which is a skill I am just acquiring, and even with my musical background, I would never presume to know better than anyone else, music is at best SUBJECTIVE, what you feel is valid, may be garbage to my ears. I am sorry, but this posting enraged me, please keep your bad temper and lack of etiquete to yourself. -Azure

Chadwick

08-28-2001, 07:57 AM

umm...

is it still ok to say I\'d prefer a big natural room/sound stage sound around my horns, rather than the sound of a trombonists heart beat in the NAL at Chatswood?

On a more serious note, I\'m glad Thomas has mentioned that their choices are not unlimited. Now we get to be realists. As they don\'t have access to a sound stage they\'re just going to have to do the best they can with the hall - which could still be great. Shame, but that\'s life.

Dan E - perhaps everything you say is right, but we won\'t really know for sure until they manufacture more sophisticated equipment (samplers, reverbs etc) which will cope with the sample manipulation you have in mind (we may also need a genetically enhanced set of limbs). I think you\'ve got to accept that we\'re all in the crawling stage of real instrument emulation, a bit like the old animation flip cards trying to emulate lifelike movement. For animation, we now have CGI stuff which is sometimes imperceptable (and, I suppose, sometimes glaringly obvious).

For the time being I\'d be quite happy with a brass library which let me spend just a little less time in the \'glaringly obvious\' category - \'cause that\'s where you\'ll find me most days http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by Chadwick (edited 08-28-2001).]

Marc Floessel

08-28-2001, 09:11 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>No prob, Marc, it was my guilt as well.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It speaks volumes that you automatically consider my clear-up post to be some kind of excuse to you. Like you have been wronged by us... *sigh*

Anyway, back to the topic - there so MANY things that would be arguable in our manifesto, I am amazed that we\'ve only made it to hall vs room recordings so far.

Endicott

08-28-2001, 09:21 AM

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[This message has been edited by Endicott (edited 09-08-2001).]

IOComposer

08-28-2001, 09:45 AM

Well, I for one, would like to thank Dan A. for sharing his perspective and insights with his posts. I realize that it took you a while to do that and I appreciate it. Just the fact that you took the time to do that tells me that there\'s a real human being under that rude and arrogant exterior that you propagate. Honestly though, your no more arrogant than many musicians I know (especially for a violinist http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif. Lord knows, I\'ve had my battles with this issue; I\'d be hypocritical to claim otherwise. I just hope for your sake that it doesn\'t prevent you from being where you want to be professionally and artistically.

I could take issue with some things you\'ve said however but I unfortunately don\'t have the time as there were a ton of points made. It did start me thinking about approaching my recordings with more depth in this manner that you speak of and for that I thank you.
Regards,
-J

Simon Ravn

08-28-2001, 09:47 AM

Endicott, maybe we don\'t answer you, because we find most of what you\'re saying either a) arrogant, or b) the most obvious truths that everybody already know. Those are basically the two categories your statements can be divided in, and neither are worth responding to.

I wish the moderator was active here because you should really be banned from here.

AzureCrystal

08-28-2001, 09:50 AM

TO: Maarten, Thomas, and Marc:

Are you planning on expanding this document ? I went to the link and found the same information... Please let me know when you do update this, it has been very interesting reading ! -Azure

Marc Floessel

08-28-2001, 09:58 AM

Azure,

yes, definitely. Right now the manifesto has gaps and is really mostly about brass (because this is all that is on our horizon now) although we do think many of theories can be applied to woodwinds easily and to strings to a certain extent.
Also there is nothing about intervals in the paper yet. The sound of an expressive solo horn performance really is dependant on that.

donnie

08-28-2001, 10:57 AM

Let me ask for all again.....I thought you guys WERE going to be producing a commercial sample library? Is this true or false?

Donnie

AzureCrystal

08-28-2001, 12:00 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Endicott, maybe we don\'t answer you, because we find most of what you\'re saying either a) arrogant, or b) the most obvious truths that everybody already know. Those are basically the two categories your statements can be divided in, and neither are worth responding to.
I wish the moderator was active here because you should really be banned from here.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Simon;

Well said, took the very words out of my mouth, couldn\'t agree more. Let\'s get on with the sharing of ideas and constructive feedback, enough of the blatant and classless insults, no dignified answers exist to such trash! -Azure ;-}

[This message has been edited by AzureCrystal (edited 08-28-2001).]

Bruce A. Richardson

08-28-2001, 01:22 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by franz:
\"The big orchestral hollywood sound\" really sucks.
And can only be achieved by union engineers on donuts and coffee who have not changed their mikes or mike setup in 30 years, and union string players on bagels and cream cheese who talk about Baseball, cars and how much they lost in Vegas last week.

harsh but true.
franZ

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is the funniest thing I have read here in a long time.

Marc Floessel

08-28-2001, 02:19 PM

Donnie,

I would really like to know why you\'re asking. Just a honest answer please and so will I.

Jamey,
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>I certainly hope you\'re planning on giving substantial discounts to those of us who have helped you out here.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No offense Jamey really, but I think you\'ve overshot the mark here. In this thread one issue has been discussed: Recording in a hall vs recording in a (large?) studio.
We can\'t help it, that the given advice (\"use a large studio for orchestral recordings!\") is not practicable for us. Does anyone disagree or want to finance the studio costs?

None of the actual library concepts have undergone discussion at all. Well, apparently it\'s too boring.

(Anyway, even what has been discussed, doesn\'t have to be in vain, as we could try to work it into the paper.)

Finally a word about the bewilderment why we\'ve \"opensourced\" our internal development papers (I wonder if other similiar libraries have these too?). Maarten was perfectly right - our main motivation for writing it in the first place was to get our ideas out to other library makers. It\'s basically exactly the same stuff we\'ve been saying for ages, just in one place and with all the detail, that Donnie and Nick have been asking and asking for in the infamous brass thread. Well, here, sorry it took so long.

That presenting our theories in public and getting them discussed and possibly even debugged was another possibility, occured to us someway down the line and didn\'t seem so horrible indeed.

The test sessions are on this week, \"we will relay any information as it becomes available.\"

Marc Floessel

08-28-2001, 02:23 PM

I forgot to say, \"cc\" I liked your post about the noise problem and the scientific approach you\'ve taken!

Jeff Hurchalla

08-28-2001, 03:48 PM

Endicott,
If willing and if you still have the post, could you email to me part 2 of your response? Part 1 helped me consider some things I\'d like to do, so it would be great to see the second part. hurchalla @ yahoo.com if possible. Thanks-

IOComposer

08-28-2001, 11:02 PM

I think enough has been said here. You guys have offered up your concept, we\'ve bantered about it for 2 days. Now it\'s time for you guys to ante up with your efforts. We\'re all waiting to see if your concepts will translate into a useable library, now go and do it. I certainly hope you\'re planning on giving substantial discounts to those of us who have helped you out here.
-J

Maarten Spruijt

08-29-2001, 06:07 AM

In the Manifesto, there are some important points made about expression \"performed\" WITHIN the samples, and the different expression curves and note lenghts that would be needed to be able to create more realistic lines.

Now, I would like to introduce a new door and pathway to this big, orchestral \"hall\" of discussion ;-)
I guess everyone on this forum knows about the huge library of custom percussion the guys over at Media Ventures (Hans Zimmer, that is, and all of his loyal associates) use. I don\'t know if it\'s just rumors, but I heard this is the complete London Symphony Orchestra sampled.

This last thing doesn\'t matter now (I wouldn\'t mind, nevertheless, if somebody can verify this rumor for me!). What I would like to point out is that the way the MV orchestral samples are PERFORMED, is -in a lot of ways- exactly the way we want them to be and we talked about in the Manifesto! Portamento samples have just the right lengths to make realistic themes out of them. The longer samples have got very nice expression curves and vibrato.

What I\'m saying is, that IMO, the guys that created this library for Media Ventures, knew EXACTLY what was needed. There must be more reasons MV can create pretty d**m-convincing virtual orchestrations than just their personal know-how in how to use the samples: they have GOD-samples to start with.

I think, if Miroslav and AO would\'ve been performed and recorded in the same way as MV\'s custom samples, there would never have been the need by ANYONE to write something like this Manifesto thing at all! We would have all the samples we need!

I would like to hear your reply on this one. Can we agree? Disagree? If so, why?

Maarten

------------------
( www.maartenspruijt.com (\"http://www.maartenspruijt.com\") )
ICQ: 37834976

[This message has been edited by Maarten Spruijt (edited 08-29-2001).]

Maarten Spruijt

08-29-2001, 06:14 AM

Btw, does anyone know the name (and URL) of that to-studio-converted CHURCH in England, used a lot for professional film scoring sessions? I think it had the word \"glass\" in its name.

Maarten

csduke

08-29-2001, 07:48 AM

>>The primary tone of a brass instrument >>most definitely IS coming out the end of >>the horn, and that is the part of the >>sound which the hall \"reinforces.\" Does >>the instrument radiate elsewhere? Of >>course, but the largest percentage of >>brass sound is coming from the bell, such >>a large percentage that the \"resonant\" >>tone is almost moot.

Bruce Richardson is correct in saying that the *vast* majority of the sound of brass instruments radiates out of the tubing (out then end of the bell from the air cloumn)and is not the result of the metal vibration disturbing the air. A good introduction to this subject (no math required) can be had by reading Arthur H. Benade\'s \"Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics.\"

To prove this to yourself, 1) cut a whole in the wall the size of a trumpet bell, 2) have a player place the bell up aginst the whole and play and 3)listen from the other room ;-)

Regards,

Craig

Oliver

08-29-2001, 11:27 PM

Im sorry but TC reverb sucks! If you do movie score type stuff get a lexicon at least. The hall on the $350 alex fx unit even sounds better than a top of the line TC hall. Id get a pcm 80 and or 91.

btw: bass frequencies need more room to properly form than high ones. It takes about 4 feet before a 100hz wave will go through even one cycle.
Brass sounds nasal up close because they are nasal. They sound \"better\" far away in a hall because the upper mid frequencies are dampened by the walls, audience etc.

ryounger

08-29-2001, 11:29 PM

Hi all.

I might be wrong about this, but I\'ll give it a shot anyway. The problem with milking sounds in a large concert hall is that it tends to make blending other sound libraries a difficult proposition. This makes spacial relationships clash with each other in the mix. If you want that Hollywood sound, I don\'t think that the hall route would be the best because the sounds were probably recorded in a large recording studio anyway, at least that\'s what the Star Wars, Superman soundtracks sound like to me.
The second point is that samples tend to sound fake to me when the vibrato sounds synthetic, and slurred passages have a machine gun attack. If we could get the samples to be able to sit well in the mix and fix the vibrato and slurred notes, we would have a library that would give us the most usable sounds.

Just a thought

Russ

[This message has been edited by ryounger (edited 08-29-2001).]

Bruce A. Richardson

08-30-2001, 12:54 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by csduke:

Bruce Richardson is correct in saying that the *vast* majority of the sound of brass instruments radiates out of the tubing (out then end of the bell from the air cloumn)and is not the result of the metal vibration disturbing the air. A good introduction to this subject (no math required) can be had by reading Arthur H. Benade\'s \"Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics.\"

To prove this to yourself, 1) cut a whole in the wall the size of a trumpet bell, 2) have a player place the bell up aginst the whole and play and 3)listen from the other room ;-)
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Great example. Also, one need look no further into the subject than to note that the latest brass instrument designs are all about reducing the resonance of the horn, \"stiffening\" it so that it siphons off as little of the energy as possible.

Back in the late seventies and early eighties, we were experimenting with just the opposite. Everyone was pulling the braces off their horns, and trying to get as much \"ring\" in the instrument as possible. Ultimately, most people ended up re-soldering the braces back in, because the projection and core tone suffered greatly.

Bruce A. Richardson

08-30-2001, 01:21 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Maarten Spruijt:
In the Manifesto, there are some important points made about expression \"performed\" WITHIN the samples, and the different expression curves and note lenghts that would be needed to be able to create more realistic lines.
What I would like to point out is that the way the MV orchestral samples are PERFORMED, is -in a lot of ways- exactly the way we want them to be and we talked about in the Manifesto! Portamento samples have just the right lengths to make realistic themes out of them. The longer samples have got very nice expression curves and vibrato.

What I\'m saying is, that IMO, the guys that created this library for Media Ventures, knew EXACTLY what was needed. There must be more reasons MV can create pretty d**m-convincing virtual orchestrations than just their personal know-how in how to use the samples: they have GOD-samples to start with.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hans Zimmer made great sounding music on lots of technologies.

Fact is, none of it matters a whit. We\'re musicians. We make noise for a living, and it\'s great. Personally, hit me over the head with a 2 x 4 and kill me, rather than make me fish through seven different key switches to pick the perfect 2.8153 second portamento with that oh-so-perfect swell.

I want to play, not work.

Hans Zimmer does not succeed on the merits of his sample library. He succeeds because he is transparent, and the art flows through him. Give credit where credit is due. He would do as well with a collection of pots, pans, and whistles.

It\'s the witch, not the wand.

Maarten Spruijt

08-30-2001, 03:43 AM

Bruce ;-)

Chadwick

08-30-2001, 05:05 AM

I still need all the wand help I can get http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif

Marc Floessel

08-30-2001, 05:40 AM

Bruce,

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Personally, hit me over the head with a 2 x 4 and kill me, rather than make me fish through seven different key switches to pick the perfect 2.8153 second portamento with that oh-so-perfect swell.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually that is understandable and goes hand in hand with the same phenomen that has been mentioned in other threads:

If you\'re composing music with samplers, you\'re taking away focus from the pure act of composing and instead using a lot of the time and energy on production. If the final work will be performed by live musicians, the best approach is probably to compose on paper.
If the final work has to be the sample-version, you may want to approach the issue from a composing-with-sound approach to ensure that your final work will not suffer from lack of implementation tools. This is unfortunate because often you may find to limit yourself, because of \"This won\'t work well with my samples.\" thoughts (that don\'t even HAVE to be true). You\'re working in a cage.

Anyway, back to your original statement. Just load our middle-of-the-road patch with a very generic swell and use that for composing. If you feel you want to spend more time on the production, the keyswitching action is called for. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

ChrisAxia

08-30-2001, 06:56 AM

Hi Maarten and all,

Wow, it\'s been an interesting thread so far! I\'m new to the forum, from London BTW.

Anyway, Maarten, the studio in London your thinking of is called AIR STUDIOS, Lyndhurst Hall. I was there a few months ago for a small orchestral recording of some people I\'m working with. Very nice studio! The usual Neve desk etc. I don\'t recall how much of the Hall sound was mixed with the \'close miced\' stuff, but some Lexicon was definitely added in the mix.

My first experience of a big \'Hollywood\' recording was with a friend I occasionally work with, Charlie Mole. He scored Othello(Lawrence Fishburne) and An Ideal Husband(Rupert Everett). Anyway, I helped a little on the Ideal Husband score and was really interested to see/hear the orchestral recording at Angel Studios, London. Here I was all these years trying to recreate an orchestra with my samplers, using stereo samples, and when I saw how the orchestra was being recorded, I was shocked!

Each section, first violins, second violins etc were coming up on a single channel on the Neve, and were artificially panned to the desired position. There were some ambient mics capturing the whole orchestra in stereo and I again don\'t know the balance that was used, but the studio was fairly \'dry\', and again the Lexicon 960 provided the Hall Reverb.

There I was all these years using stereo samples and this great sounding \'Hollywood\' score was mixed with mono sources!! So maybe, a reverberant hall is not the way to go for the \'Hollywood\' sound, judging by what I\'ve seen.

Maybe as some people have already said, it\'s about \'close\' and distant micing, which can later be balanced, but in a relatively \'dry\' studio, so you can add reverb to taste. I hope I\'ve been of some help!

Regards, Chris

Maarten Spruijt

08-30-2001, 07:10 AM

Great post, Chris. Thanks for the little insight!

For the brass sample recordings that I will be doing shortly, we will indeed use multiple tracks, that is: a dry setup and a \'wet\' setup, plus some ambient, supporting mics.

ChrisAxia

08-30-2001, 07:40 AM

Hi again Maarten,

Glad to be of help! I look forward to hearing the demos!!

Good luck,

Chris

nicholash

08-30-2001, 07:41 AM

Hi Chris,

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for telling us about your experience at Angel Studios, London. Real world experiences like yours are very useful to hear about. I agree that this has been a very interesting thread so far.

Paraphrasing from what TJ said on another recent thread:
Constructive critical discussion can result in raised standards. It helps people consider how to better what they have currently offered. This sort of discussion can get quite heated at times because initial reactions to \'criticism\' are often defensive, sometimes quite aggressively so http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/wink.gif . However, given a little time to think about things less emotionaly, the result is usually positive.

Best regards
Nicholas
p.s. I\'m from London also.
p.p.s. It is a pity that most of the contributors on this forum seem too afraid to take the (small) risk of responding to my listening test described in another recent thread (which was \'inspired\' by this thread BTW). I\'m sure it would make a good learning experience if only more people would rise to the challenge and contribute responses.

ChrisAxia

08-30-2001, 12:27 PM

Hi Nicholas,

Hey, a fellow Londoner! Whereabouts are you? I\'m in Chiswick, very close to Hammersmith. If you\'re not too far away, drop by sometime!

Also, where can I find this listening test you mention?

Cheers, Chris

ChrisAxia

08-30-2001, 12:30 PM

Sorry, I just found your test! thanks.

nicholash

08-30-2001, 12:45 PM

Hi Chris,

I live in Ealing, so not a million miles away. http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif

Send me an e-mail at:
veridical.sounds@btopenworld.com

I\'m off to sleep for a while, so I\'ll reply later.

Best regards
Nicholas

Maarten Spruijt

08-31-2001, 04:57 PM

I did some research on a selection of familiar movie trumpet themes. What kind of articulations, note lengths and attack-velocities are most common in these themes? This is really a topic to think about!
In other words --- WHAT KIND OF SAMPLED ARTICULATIONS, PERFORMANCES DO WE NEED MOST ?

The results and conclusions to this research I collected in an article, which is free for ANYONE to read here: http://www2.hku.nl/~maarte2/public/articulations.html (\"http://www2.hku.nl/~maarte2/public/articulations.html\")

Please read it, if you can spare the time. In my opinion, the results are really surprising!

BTW I\'m still awaiting some good comment or opinions on the custom MV samples post!

Maarten Spruijt

------------------
( www.maartenspruijt.com (\"http://www.maartenspruijt.com\") )
ICQ: 37834976

Dis

09-16-2001, 12:51 PM

Thomas_J: With discontent feeling I see that your plans of making libraries with distatnt recording philospohy are somehow fading away, or not? A lot of doubters posted here, why it\'s no good idea (no performance skills of the player are heard, too much backround hiss in pp intruments, not easily possible to add own different reverbs to allready wet sound because of the natural hall reverb recorded, and more..). They say that most people will still prefer more dryer \"classic-method\" libraries, mainly because they want to add different amoutns of reverbs, mix sounds with other ones, make various audio processing, Eq-ing, customizing etc. But they are terribly wrong.
It\'s the clash between the audio-engineering likers and the pure music and composion likers. The first ones will forever say it\'s not good to record instruments from big distance with natural hall reverb, because with such libraries there woldn\'t be any need of such audio-reverb, eq, and other processing toying for the sound of intruments sound at least average, spaceous and realistic.
The idea of distant recording talks to the other group - to these who want to have the most realistic and expressive sounds possible at their fingers. Distant recorded libraries would be revolutionary in the fact, that one would load some GIGs, hit the MIDI keyboard and say: \"This sounds really like a trumpet in the real orchestra!\". The same about other types of istruments. No toilsome audio processing, reverbing, eq-ing and other customizing of sounds would be needed. The instruments, as they load, will sound just great, with real orchestra space, expression and feeling. And that\'s it! Then - one can just concentrate to music composing and don\'t care how to improve terrible dry and thin sound (with previous libraries). And after the basic composing and arranging one hears the music almost exactly like it would sound with real live orchestra. And in a moment! That\'s the hyper-important advantage of the distant recording libraries, if they would be done. And that\'s not all. Still more, mostly important is the fact, that not only one would have realistic sound in a second when a GIG is loaded, but distant recorded instruments sound 10x more realistic, expressive and impressive than classic method libraries with even most expensive and best reverbrators out there. The two posted demos had to convince everyone. There is far the best brass and orchestral percussion out there. It is just other cathegory than todays libraries, it sets a new standard. The only argument against dist.rec. heard here was the lack of the dry samples and (maybe) detailed performance of skilled player is not heard and some unpleasant background sound in pp samples. But these are absolutly minor and unimportant aspects.
Distant recording philosophy would make revolution in sound quality, there\'s no doubt of it. It would bring the quality of samples about a big step closer to the reality. Don\'t let disgust yoursel by doubters which say that it isn\'t a good idea, and please make the libraries with such recording! And not only brass and percussion, but also choirs, strings, woodwinds and other types of instruments. If I imagine what would make distatnt recording with a choir sound.., it would be absolutely great. SOV is not a bad library, but it soo lacks of expression and natural sounds - it is very very far from the real choir sound, and the distant idea is the only thing that would make really expresssive and realistic choir sound. But it would be the same about other types if instruments. Just, please, continue with your work of making such libraries, it\'s the best possible idea for drastically improving quality of sample libraries in general.

[This message has been edited by Dis (edited 09-16-2001).]

nicholash

09-16-2001, 01:44 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Dis:
With discontent feeling I see that your plans of making libraries with distatnt recording philospohy are somehow fading away, or not? A lot of doubters posted here, why it\'s no good idea (no performance skills of the player are heard, too much backround hiss in pp intruments, not easily possible to add own different reverbs to allready wet sound because of the natural hall reverb recorded, and more..). They say that most people will still prefer more dryer \"classic-method\" libraries, mainly because they want to add different amoutns of reverbs, mix sounds with other ones, make various audio processing, Eq-ing, customizing etc. But they are terribly wrong.
It\'s the clash between the audio-engineering likers and the pure music and composion likers. The first ones will forever say it\'s not good to record instruments from big distance with natural hall reverb, because with such libraries there woldn\'t be any need of such audio-reverb, eq, and other processing toying for the sound of intruments sound at least average, spaceous and realistic.
The idea of distant recording talks to the other group - to these who want to have the most realistic and expressive sounds possible at their fingers. Distant recorded libraries would be revolutionary in the fact, that one would load some GIGs, hit the MIDI keyboard and say: \"This sounds really like a trumpet in the real orchestra!\". The same about other types of istruments. No toilsome audio processing, reverbing, eq-ing and other customizing of sounds would be needed. The instruments, as they load, will sound just great, with real orchestra space, expression and feeling. And that\'s it! Then - one can just concentrate to music composing and don\'t care how to improve terrible dry and thin sound (with previous libraries). And after the basic composing and arranging one hears the music almost exactly like it would sound with real live orchestra. And in a moment! That\'s the hyper-important advantage of the distant recording libraries, if they would be done. And that\'s not all. Still more, mostly important is the fact, that not only one would have realistic sound in a second when a GIG is loaded, but distant recorded instruments sound 10x more realistic, expressive and impressive than classic method libraries with even most expensive and best reverbrators out there. The two posted demos had to convince everyone. There is far the best brass and orchestral percussion out there. It is just other cathegory than todays libraries, it sets a new standard. The only argument against dist.rec. heard here was the lack of the dry samples and (maybe) detailed performance of skilled player is not heard and some unpleasant background sound in pp samples. But these are absolutly minor and unimportant aspects.
Distant recording philosophy would make revolution in sound quality, there\'s no doubt of it. It would bring the quality of samples about a big step closer to the reality. Don\'t let disgust yoursel by doubters which say that it isn\'t a good idea, and please make the libraries with such recording! And not only brass and percussion, but also choirs, strings, woodwinds and other types of instruments. If I imagine what would make distatnt recording with a choir sound.., it would be absolutely great. SOV is not a bad library, but it soo lacks of expression and natural sounds - it is very very far from the real choir sound, and the distant idea is the only thing that would make really expresssive and realistic choir sound. But it would be the same about other types if instruments. Just, please, continue with your work of making such libraries, it\'s the best possible idea for drastically improving quality of sample libraries in general. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Dis,

Please tell us what experience you have in making recordings of acoustic instruments and in sampling?

Nicholas

Bruce A. Richardson

09-16-2001, 09:59 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Dis:
Thomas_J: With discontent feeling I see that your plans of making libraries with distatnt recording philospohy are somehow fading away, or not? A lot of doubters posted here, why it\'s no good idea (no performance skills of the player are heard, too much backround hiss in pp intruments, not easily possible to add own different reverbs to allready wet sound because of the natural hall reverb recorded, and more..). They say that most people will still prefer more dryer \"classic-method\" libraries, mainly because they want to add different amoutns of reverbs, mix sounds with other ones, make various audio processing, Eq-ing, customizing etc. But they are terribly wrong.
It\'s the clash between the audio-engineering likers and the pure music and composion likers<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I couldn\'t disagree more with this assessment. Reducing this to a clash between \"engineer\" and musician mindsets is naive. Knowledge of the production process does not preclude any \"purity\" in musicianship or artistic approach. If anything, it enhances it since more knowledge equals more control over the final result.

The crux of this argument continues to ride along on the erroneous belief that the recordings people admire are distant mic\'ed. They are not. More often than not, these recordings are made in studios barely larger than the footprint of the orchestra itself.

Even when a major orchestra records in a hall, the microphone arrays are rarely much different than in the studio. I often use the exact mic\'ing positions that Telarc uses in the Meyerson Symphony Center (since they\'re usually already cabled and ready to go). Guess what? They cover the orchestra with spot mics. Everybody does.

Do they blend in the hall mics? Of course. But the overall timbres are derived much more from the spot mics, the hall mics are literally blended in in the same fashion one would use an artificial reverb unit.

The end result, in terms of what\'s being routed into the mixer and combined, is little different than what\'s being used in a studio situation.

nicholash

09-17-2001, 09:49 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Bruce A. Richardson:
I couldn\'t disagree more with this assessment. Reducing this to a clash between \"engineer\" and musician mindsets is naive. Knowledge of the production process does not preclude any \"purity\" in musicianship or artistic approach. If anything, it enhances it since more knowledge equals more control over the final result.

The crux of this argument continues to ride along on the erroneous belief that the recordings people admire are distant mic\'ed. They are not. More often than not, these recordings are made in studios barely larger than the footprint of the orchestra itself.

Even when a major orchestra records in a hall, the microphone arrays are rarely much different than in the studio. I often use the exact mic\'ing positions that Telarc uses in the Meyerson Symphony Center (since they\'re usually already cabled and ready to go). Guess what? They cover the orchestra with spot mics. Everybody does.

Do they blend in the hall mics? Of course. But the overall timbres are derived much more from the spot mics, the hall mics are literally blended in in the same fashion one would use an artificial reverb unit.

The end result, in terms of what\'s being routed into the mixer and combined, is little different than what\'s being used in a studio situation.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Like Bruce effectively points outs, there are an awful lot of incorrect assumptions out there regarding the miking of ensembles/orchestras. I was quite disappointed by how few responses I got to my original 20 excerpt \'listening exercise\' featuring live recordings of solo and ensemble orchestral acoustic instruments. I gave people a chance to learn what certain miking techniques and recording distances can actually sound like, but few seemed really interested. Perhaps if contributors to this thread want to insist on using certain miking techniques, they can at least tell us what real world experiences they have of using them.

Nicholas

Duncan Brinsmead

09-17-2001, 03:02 PM

My guess is that room resonance is an important feature to capture, as artificial reverbs do not seem to be able to fully duplicate this( perhaps I\'m wrong here, as I\'ve no experience with high end reverbs). For example lets say one recorded an orchestra outdoors on grass with no bandshell using two distant mics(unlike indoor anechoic chambers there is no bass resonance outdoors). Could existing reverbs and EQ make it sound like a great hall? I\'ve played in brass quintets on grass, and man does it ever kill the sound.

Chadwick

09-17-2001, 05:26 PM

What we seem to need here is more real world experience. People like Bruce who aren\'t making any assumptions because they\'ve \'been there\' and do it for a living.

Last week we recorded a 73 piece orchestra in a largish studio and, as nice as the room sounded, it sounded best when the engineer pulled up a 480L reverb over the total mix.

Bruce, any chance of getting a couple more professionals onto this thread to explain what their individual recording setups are for a large orchestral recording/mix?

nicholash

09-17-2001, 06:22 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Chadwick:
What we seem to need here is more real world experience. People like Bruce who aren\'t making any assumptions because they\'ve \'been there\' and do it for a living.

Last week we recorded a 73 piece orchestra in a largish studio and, as nice as the room sounded, it sounded best when the engineer pulled up a 480L reverb over the total mix.

Bruce, any chance of getting a couple more professionals onto this thread to explain what their individual recording setups are for a large orchestral recording/mix?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree with Chadwick that it would be good to hear of more real world experiences. It would be even nicer if these could be supported by short mp3 excerpts to illustrate the different miking, recording and processing techniques being talked about.

Nicholas

astrt4

09-17-2001, 08:03 PM

I may have missed this, so if it has already been brought up, I apologize. Can anyone tell me if the....

(Edited Out)

is also \"not real?\" If this is another bit of ThomasJ sequencing... wow...

Sorry guys. I was trying to be vague in the original post for a reason, as I wasn\'t sure ThomasJ wanted this to be released. Now he has confirmed this, so I\'ve edited out the info indicating where it is.

I apologize for the confusion.

[This message has been edited by astrt4 (edited 09-18-2001).]

Thomas_J

09-18-2001, 03:35 AM

Astrt4, I have no idea how you found that file, but it is sequenced by me. Never intended it to come out though. Thank you for kind words.

About this thread, I think we\'re getting somewhere. Thanks to everyone who have contributed. I\'m still going to record my brass distant. Further away than any other library. We\'ll see how it turns out. I will sample trombones first. Including all pedal tones, as loud as possible.

Thomas

astrt4

09-18-2001, 06:21 AM

Sorry ThomasJ! Your secret is safe again. But again, incredible work. The most expressive and realistic I\'ve ever heard.

We anxiously await your library!!!

Thomas_J

09-18-2001, 06:36 AM

Thanks again, Astrt4. The reason why I don\'t want it available to everybody is because of all the bickering and accusations I was confronted with in my previous thread. I sort of promised myself I wouldn\'t post any more of my work to Northern Sounds. I intend to keep that promise until people start behaving here http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif For those who are interested I will launch a new website in the near future, featuring mp3s of my recent work.

Thomas

Plundrik

09-18-2001, 07:47 AM

That would be great, Thomas_J! http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif
It is always interresting to listen to music others create with giga.

Maarten Spruijt

09-18-2001, 02:29 PM

Hi everyone,

Remember the orchestral brass sampling project I started a topic about some months ago?

We just finished our test-phase recording sessions for the orchestral trumpet section samples.

They turned out really great, following some of the theories described in this \"Manifesto\" and my \"Articulations reseach\". Very useful different portato and staccato sample lenghts!

We are now editing, processing and programming the samples.

When we have some real demos, I will post them on this forum.

Maarten Spruijt

------------------
( www.maartenspruijt.com (\"http://www.maartenspruijt.com\") )
ICQ: 37834976

Maarten Spruijt

09-19-2001, 12:11 PM

A FIRST SAMPLING DEMO IS AVAILABLE!

All posts about the new library, including the demos, will continue on:
http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/Forum3/HTML/001293.html (\"http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/Forum3/HTML/001293.html\")