# 2CAudio Precedence spatialization plug - opinions



## brett

This has just been released.

I’m interested in opinions, especially from people who have other positioning plug-ins like SPAT, VSS or even the new SP2016 with the positioning slider, that sort of thing. 

Cheers


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## Zoot_Rollo

comparing to Panagement - free version.


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## gregh

i was underwhelmed by Precedence - maybe not using it on the right material, but I did not find it gave a very strong impression of depth in particular.


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## Zoot_Rollo

gregh said:


> i was underwhelmed by Precedence - maybe not using it on the right material, but I did not find it gave a very strong impression of depth in particular.



i had the same experience.

left and right was great, but the free Panagement did a better job with depth.

the manual will be published soon, may reveal operator error.


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## Andrew Souter

Hi guys,

I'm still doing final web preps etc, and compiling demo sounds/mixes etc. I will be sure to come back and discuss this thoroughly here with all you guys asap.

Quickly though, the most important thing to realize regarding Distance is that for Orchestral / Scoring work, we expect/advocate the Precedence be followed by Breeze 2.1, directly on tracks. *Enable P-Link in Breeze 2.1. Then set Breeze Mix/Balance to the same value as Precedence Distance. Now you will have the full expected depth/distance result.*

Precedence provides 100% of the Left-Right positioning and about half of the distance positioning. Breeze 2.1 (or eventually B2 or Aether) supplies the other half.

Distance perception in enclosed spaces is very dependent on the "Direct to Reflected Energy Ratio" (i.e. *Mix* in standard music production terms) and also the "Initial Time Gap" (i.e. *Pre-Delay* in standard music production terms). Everyone knows intuitively "more verb means father away" to some extent", but there is wide misunderstanding about how to use Pre-Delay properly in a manner that agrees with other distance cues.

If you load Precedence and then Breeze on a track and set Precedence Distance and Breeze Mix to the same value the distance illusion will be completed perfectly. If you do this for 16 tracks in parallel and each has a different position in Precedence, you will have 16 instruments properly positioned with a unified space.

Without Precedence, using P-Link in Breeze will still help establish some distance cues and keep them agreeing with one another. It can be nice to work that way even without Precedence. It still gives *some* of the proper perceptual cues. Rather like simple Gain Panning gives *some* perceptual cues about Left-Right position. It works to some degree, but it can be much better when ALL perceptual cues agree with one another.

Breeze defines a space. Precedence can put the source sound anywhere you like within this space.

If you ignore "Direct to Reflected Energy Ratio" and "Initial Time Gap" cues which come from reverb, i.e. if you use ONLY Precedence, you will not get the full distance effect. But this is similar to saying if you mix your dry orchestral samples without reverb it won't sound like a real-world performance. We expect there will be reverb. And ideally that reverb will come from Breeze 2.1.

Without the distance cues related to reverb, the strongest ones are gain and high frequency loss. For music mixing you don't really want us reducing the gain of your tracks drastically based on distance (like it seems the example above does?). This would be physically accurate, and good for sound-FX and virtual reality, but for music mixing, it's best to let the track faders control mix levels IMHO. So we don't add any gain loss purely by distance. 

We do add high frequency loss, but we do not do so in extreme manners bc this would also probably not be appropriate for music mixing. You can increase this effect by increasing the Freq Delta value.

We add other sophisticated distance cues in Precedence, but they are designed to work best in a model of an enclosed space: i.e. concert hall, or algo verb approximation thereof. The signal is pre-conditioned to expect the verb to supply the other cues. Breeze 2.1 will supply them completing the illusion. It's synergistic.

We are exploring now establishing communication between Precedence and Breeze instances, so that changing position in Precedence *automatically* updates Breeze as well. This will be the eureka moment! We hope to have that ready in the next 30-60 days. Until then for orchestral/scoring work:

Add Precedence.
Add Breeze 2.1
Enable P-Link in Breeze 2.1
Set Distance in Precedence
Set Mix/Balance in Breeze 2.1 to match Distance in Precedence


more later, with audio examples... thanks


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## Andrew Souter

Here are a few quick examples:



The first is made by Beat Kaufmann, who was kind enough to make this amazing mix example! It's using VSL libraries as I understand. First the full mix with Precedence and Breeze 2 on each track. Then a mono signal as this what Precedence would have been receiving if you use the mono-input modes. Then the stereo samples, exactly as they came out of VSL with nothing else.

Other misc examples. P with B, and P alone for some ambience effects. A synth example or two. Many more to come.

The Handle Trumpet example and Dual Violin examples I posted here a few months ago, while we were discussing similar topics and I was working on this, in part inspired by discussions that started here!


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## jamwerks

Hi Andrew, excited about this plug-in. Any examples using Century Strings (or Brass) or Anthology would be much appreciated. They are all center recorded libraries!


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## Saxer

How do I update from Breeze 2 to 2.1? Is the Demo version working as a full version when I own a license of Breeze 2? Or is it a payed update?


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## Andrew Souter

jamwerks said:


> Hi Andrew, excited about this plug-in. Any examples using Century Strings (or Brass) or Anthology would be much appreciated. They are all center recorded libraries!



I would like to get in contact with the leading library developers, particularly those with dry libraries, and make some presets to match these specific libraries, yes. Hopefully I could make some progress on this by the end of the year or so. Either myself or others experienced with these libraries, or some collaborative effort.


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## Andrew Souter

Saxer said:


> How do I update from Breeze 2 to 2.1? Is the Demo version working as a full version when I own a license of Breeze 2? Or is it a payed update?



2.0 -> 2.1 is a free update. Just go to "My Downloads" in the web store, and you should see it labeled as Breeze 2.1.

BTW you guys should really like this:



> Ultra low CPU usage is great, but there is one thing even better: zero CPU usage! Beginning with Precedence and Breeze 2.1, we have now introduced an intelligent Suspend-On-Silence feature in our products. If the plug-ins are not receiving any input signal, they will automatically disable processing, and enter an approximately zero CPU usage state! This is huge news for composers who use massive scoring templates and like to auto-load hundreds of instances. Maximum CPU usage will only be reached in such cases when all tracks in the project are active at the same time, which almost never happens in large sessions. Sparse arrangements can save orders of magnitude in CPU-resources, which in turn leads to more creative freedom and less annoyances such as heat and fan noise generated by powerful computers in the studio. Furthermore, if playback is stopped for a coffee break, lunch break, or overnight, processing is automatically suspended, potentially saving you significant money on your electric bill. In other words, we automatically turn the lights off for you, helping to save the planet in the process. We think that is pretty cool.



in both Precedence and Breeze 2.1. I know it was requested here previously, so we did it.


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## Saxer

Thanks!


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## brett

Hi @Andrew Souter 

Does this mean that both Precedence and Breeze need to be insert effects? What about with Breeze as a send?

B


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## JeffvR

Zoot_Rollo said:


> comparing to Panagement - free version.


What annoys me with panagement is you can't pan a mono track. If you pan to the left nothing happens, if you pan to the right it stays mono and in the middle but it acts like a low pass filter. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong? I'd love to pan mono recorded tracks and not have to make them stereo to do so.


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## jamwerks

I'm going to give this combo (Precedence & Breeze 2.1) a try on my VSL WW's template, comparing to MirX Teldex.

Having 32 instruments in the WW's (complete package plus some custom made combos), would 32 instances of Breeze be necessary? Many thanks


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## Andrew Souter

brett said:


> Hi @Andrew Souter
> 
> Does this mean that both Precedence and Breeze need to be insert effects? What about with Breeze as a send?
> 
> B



Well, "need" is an strong word, and absolutes make me uncomfortable.  Precedence should definitely be an insert directly on tracks. I would go as far as to say that is a "need".

What I think is a very interesting new development in spatialization and reverb workflow is to put an instance of verb directly after it on an insert and to link/sync/pair them together either manually at the moment, or to establish communication between them via coding magic so that things can be set synergistically auto-magically. I believe this can open up new levels of spatial realism, and I believe the scoring community would benefit a lot from this. It is a rather novel approach and can theoretically "correct" many of the weakness of using shared verbs. Working this way would mean a 1:1 paring of a spatializer/positioner such as Precedence and reverb such a Breeze. So in this case both Precedence and Breeze should be on inserts, directly on the track, yes. This is the most exciting option IMHO. I suppose a way to think about that paradigm is that it is something like an algorithmic version of the Multi-Impulse-Response approach, but with all the benefits of algo verb such as modulation etc. In this way you have basically an infinite model of a given space, and it is slightly different every-time you play it back. It's akin to an Infinite Impulse Response approach, pun intended.

Other less extreme variations are possible, such as to make small groups of instruments where each track has a Precedence instance, and they all go to a group that holds the verb. In this case you would not use the hypothetical auto-magical link and instead do a manual linking/setting of the Mix/Distance value in Breeze to the average of the tracks in the group.

You might even like to have one or two extra global verbs on sends or on the master that add a little extra shared tail for a final touch of glue. B2 could be good for this.


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## dgburns

@Andrew Souter - why no surround versions?

stereo is so, well.... stereo.


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## Nathanael Iversen

I am very impressed on my initial exploration. I've started with just raw synths - sources that have ZERO spacial information. The combination, when used as Andrew suggests works very well. Sounds push back into the distance, they occupy the assigned position left/right. The slight modulation really helps things come together. It will be a bit before I redo orchestra template stuff - using VSS2.0 right now there, but this is welcome for my synth rig and turning it into a much more dimensional sound.


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## Andrew Souter

dgburns said:


> @Andrew Souter - why no surround versions?
> 
> stereo is so, well.... stereo.




we like surround. we are aware of and share the desire for surround.


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## Garlu

jamwerks said:


> I'm going to give this combo (Precedence & Breeze 2.1) a try on my VSL WW's template, comparing to MirX Teldex.
> 
> Having 32 instruments in the WW's (complete package plus some custom made combos), would 32 instances of Breeze be necessary? Many thanks



Keep us posted!


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## Andrew Souter

Regarding the topic of linking/syncing Precedence and Breeze (and/or other future updates of our verbs):

Another possibility is to keep Precedence as its own standalone product/plug-in, but allow it ALSO to be an "unlock-able add-on module" in our verbs. So in Breeze 2.x for example you would enter a License for the Breeze part, and optionally another License for Precedence (the one you just bought - if you did already - NOT ANOTHER FEE ). Then if you wanted to use Precedence and Breeze together you would just load Breeze and the Precedence GUI would be another page accessible within Breeze.

Pricing for Precedence would be the same. You would still have the ability to use Precedence separately, or with other third party verbs, or by itself etc. You would still have the ability to use Breeze without Precedence.

This would then obviously be less complicated for you to set up than the intra-plugin communication option, and is 100% certain to keep Precedence and Breeze parameters synced in all possible hosts.

Feedback welcome... this product was designed with everyone in this forum in mind, so we are quite open to suggestions on what the best workflow is for you to integrate it into your templates.


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## TGV

Andrew Souter said:


> I'm still doing final web preps etc, and compiling demo sounds/mixes etc.


I thought I'd give it a go, but I've tried several browsers, and nothing happens: the full version and manual links work, but the two demo links stay surprisingly quiet.

There is a work-around, though: copy the links and paste them in the address bar, so it must be the event handler. Does it depend on google-analytics or some other external framework?


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## Andrew Souter

TGV said:


> I thought I'd give it a go, but I've tried several browsers, and nothing happens: the full version and manual links work, but the two demo links stay surprisingly quiet.
> 
> There is a work-around, though: copy the links and paste them in the address bar, so it must be the event handler. Does it depend on google-analytics or some other external framework?



Odd. I just tried Safari OSX, Firefox OSX, Chrome OSX, & Firefox Win and I have no issues. I tied both demo link locations for both win and osx -- no problems for me. This is the first I have heard about trouble downloading the demos.

Demos are listed in the top "media area" where we have the screen-shot slider, sound-cloud player, and demo/buy links. They are also listed in the sidebar.

We have some kind of script that integrates the sound-cloud player, slider, etc in the top area, and handles the fancy animation to collapse/expand that area, but it definitely does not rely on Google for anything. Do you have trouble with the links on the side-bar, or just the ones in the top area?

Anyone else have trouble with the demos?


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## Michel Simons

No problem downloading the (Windows) demo here. I am on a Windows 10 machine using Edge (and Chrome, but I believe I used Edge for this).

Btw, what are the demo limitations for Precedence?


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## jamwerks

Andrew Souter said:


> Other less extreme variations are possible, such as to make small groups of instruments where each track has a Precedence instance, and they all go to a group that holds the verb. In this case you would not use the hypothetical auto-magical link and instead do a manual linking/setting of the Mix/Distance value in Breeze to the average of the tracks in the group...


I hope to see this option covered in the upcoming documentation!


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## Andrew Souter

michelsimons said:


> Btw, what are the demo limitations for Precedence?



here they are:



> 1) No parameters info is published to the Host software. So plug-in state will not be saved in the host software project
> 
> 2) No external parameters control is supported. So no parameter automation and no control surfaces support
> 
> 3) Presets can be saved but cannot be loaded (only factory preset can be loaded)
> 
> 4) One session time is limited to 30 minutes. you need to re-load the plug-in to continue evaluation
> 
> 5) No multiple instances allowed. You can run only one instance of plug-in in your host software
> 
> 6) The total in-use plug-in evaluation time is limited to 80 hours
> 
> NO AUDIO DROP-OUTS, NO NOISE MIXED.



I know #5 is a bit limiting for something that we advocate being used in parallel on lots of tracks, but it is related to 1-3 and part of our SDK unfortunately and SDK topics are above my pay-grade.

#6 means times in use. NOT time from first use. i.e. you could use it continuously 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 2 weeks, or much longer if you use was not as frequent.


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## Michel Simons

Andrew Souter said:


> here they are:
> 
> 
> 
> I know #5 is a bit limiting for something that we advocate being used in parallel on lots of tracks, but it is related to 1-3 and part of our SDK unfortunately and SDK topics are above my pay-grade.
> 
> #6 means times in use. NOT time from first use. i.e. you could use it continuously 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 2 weeks, or much longer if you use was not as frequent.



Thanks. Should be workable enough. After all, it's a demo version.


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## meradium

Instant purchase. Very happy Breeze 2 user here. This new plugin makes it sound even better!


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## wst3

I don't know if I'd call it an instant purchase for me, but I was instantly impressed. It is one of the most flexible reverb plugins I own. If I had to trim the plugin list down to one reverb (heaven forbid!) Breeze 2 would be on the short list, along with Exponential Audio R4 and Phoenixverb. All three are capable of covering a wide range of effects. Breeze is, for me, a bit easier to configure. But the Exponential reverbs can sound better for specific applications, possibly because I've owned them for much longer than I've had Breeze. In many ways (except CPU load and ease of finding "that" sound) they are really quite similar. And I am open the idea that the last 20% may be more about how I use them, or how familiar I am with the various controls.


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## TGV

Andrew Souter said:


> it definitely does not rely on Google for anything.


Turns out it does. Clicking on the download link goes to an event handler which puts it on _gaq, the Google Analytics queue, which you or your web dev probably use to see "conversion rates". Not being fond of facebook, google, and the likes, I've blocked them in my firewall, so that would explain it. If people have this problem, they can copy the link (using the pop-up menu when you right-click).


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## Andrew Souter

TGV said:


> Turns out it does. Clicking on the download link goes to an event handler which puts it on _gaq, the Google Analytics queue, which you or your web dev probably use to see "conversion rates". Not being fond of facebook, google, and the likes, I've blocked them in my firewall, so that would explain it. If people have this problem, they can copy the link (using the pop-up menu when you right-click).


 
Ah. Ok good info. Thanks. 

FYI I am traveling today and in meetings tomorrow and won’t be as immediate to respond in forums for the next couple days. I will be back to full speed later in the week. 

Please Email if you need imediate help with anything.


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## HeliaVox

Andrew Souter said:


> Odd. I just tried Safari OSX, Firefox OSX, Chrome OSX, & Firefox Win and I have no issues. I tied both demo link locations for both win and osx -- no problems for me. This is the first I have heard about trouble downloading the demos.
> 
> Demos are listed in the top "media area" where we have the screen-shot slider, sound-cloud player, and demo/buy links. They are also listed in the sidebar.
> 
> We have some kind of script that integrates the sound-cloud player, slider, etc in the top area, and handles the fancy animation to collapse/expand that area, but it definitely does not rely on Google for anything. Do you have trouble with the links on the side-bar, or just the ones in the top area?
> 
> Anyone else have trouble with the demos?




For years now on Safari I’ve never been able to get the upper part of your website to work. (The area with the audio demos) I always have to switch browsers in order to listen to the demos. For instance, on the current Presidence page, when I click on the play arrow to listen to a demo, I get forwarded to the home page. It doesn’t make me like the products any less, though!


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## Sanlky

When i have some time i might test it. Finishing a mock up, and would love to try 2c audio products, if i can make a mix sounding better with precedence + breeze 2.1 than my typical delays/reverbs chain, i guess its worthy!


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## re-peat

Spent some time with the demo — be it without having it linked to Breeze, and therefore using various other reverbs instead — and there are three things which stop me from being even mildly enthusiastic about Precedence.

(1) the stereo signal that Precedence generates is really rather bad, I find. It has zero mono-compatibility, which is indicative of a stereo signal that's terribly vulnerable and prone to phasing. Major problem, this.
(2) the difference between a value of '0' and a value of '100' for Depth is way too small. To my ears anyway.
(3) Any parameter change causes disturbing degrees of "calculation crackling", which makes the automation of these parameters — something I consider quite important in a spatialization plugin — a complete impossibility.

As a lifelong-madly-in-love SPAT-user, it is unlikely that I'll ever seriously consider switching to something else, but that doesn't mean that I'm not very interested in what that something else might be. Precedence certainly isn't going to be it though, in my opinion. If it were much better than it currently is, I might be convinced to buy it — for those situations where too many SPAT-instances cause my computer to pant with exertion — but it isn't, so I won't.

_


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## gregh

re-peat said:


> Spent some time with the demo — be it without having it linked to Breeze, and therefore using various other reverbs instead —
> 
> (2) the difference between a value of '0' and a value of '100' for Depth is way too small. To my ears anyway.
> 
> _



this has been my impression - I have other reverbs that give a much stronger sense of depth eg R2. If I had Breeze I might feel differently but is not a strong enough effect to pay for. I might feel differently if I could have tried multiple tracks but that is outside the demo capabilities.


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## averystemmler

re-peat said:


> Spent some time with the demo — be it without having it linked to Breeze, and therefore using various other reverbs instead — and there are three things which stop me from being even mildly enthusiastic about Precedence.
> 
> (1) the stereo signal that Precedence generates is really rather bad, I find. It has zero mono-compatibility, which is indicative of a stereo signal that's terribly vulnerable and prone to phasing. Major problem, this.
> (2) the difference between a value of '0' and a value of '100' for Depth is way too small. To my ears anyway.
> (3) Any parameter change causes disturbing degrees of "calculation crackling", which makes the automation of these parameters — something I consider quite important in a spatialization plugin — a complete impossibility.
> 
> As a lifelong-madly-in-love SPAT-user, it is unlikely that I'll ever seriously consider switching to something else, but that doesn't mean that I'm not very interested in what that something else might be. Precedence certainly isn't going to be it though, in my opinion. If it were much better than it currently is, I might be convinced to buy it — for those situations where too many SPAT-instances cause my computer to pant with exertion — but it isn't, so I won't.
> 
> _



Having just bought both breeze 2.1 and precedence, I think your critiques are perfectly valid, but I'm very happy with the combination.

1) This is the one point where I've had the opposite experience. I've been using precedence on sources without too much baked in spacial info (i.e., not in situ orchestral libraries), and have found it to be just fine collapsed to mono. A tiny bit of phasing as you move the signal around in the stereo field, but that'll happen in any situation where one channel is delayed. I'm curious what kind of source material you were experiencing this with, as I haven't tested it with everything yet.

2) It's a subtle thing to be sure, but I'm I enjoy the effect when paired with breeze. Because breeze has a function that links predelay to dry/wet level, pairing these two plugins as inserts (as 2c recommends) on drier instruments is very effective and "musical" to my ears. That said, the effect is cumulative and I really wish there had been a way to test multiple instances before buying.

3) The "calculation crackling" is definitely present, and I assume it does prohibit automation. Breeze has the same, but I believe it is because it is recalculating the effect and introducing some kind of randomization every time you make a change. If you alt-click on the density parameter, for instance, it seems to generate a new variation based on that setting, and does the "crackle," much like it would if you turned the knob. I expect precedence is doing similar, but I'd love to hear from someone more knowledgeable.

All in all, I like precedence as a complement to Breeze (and probably other 2c reverbs), but I can see it being underwhelming otherwise.


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## Beat Kaufmann

I think the surface of Precedence together with the text makes you think you can put an instrument backwards and then it will sound from far away. At first I thought so too. But that's not really the case...
*The distance is set with Breeze.* *What Precedence then adds is not an extra distance, but...
A)* it simulates how an instrument - recorded with two microphones - would sound from the chosen distance. This gives the spatial depth of Breeze2.1 an additional "3D" effect and
*B)* it puts the position in the room, what else one does with a panner.

So you could say *Precedence is a 3D panner that*, together with Breeze (or other reverbs), *lets you set an airy 3D position on the virtual stage.* Nevertheless, Precedence can more because it has a built in modulation and... 
So far I see the use of "Precedence" until now.

*The following 2 short examples show the difference between "with" and "without"Precedence...*

Example "Oboe and Englishhorn" only with Breeze a bit shifted into the depth.
Example "Oboe and Englishhorn". With Prezedence's additional simulation of the sense of space.
_The difference is not very big at first and probably better to hear with headphones, if you do not have good speakers..._
----------------------------------------

I try to mix a whole orchestra sequence - once with precedence and once without. However, I also have to gain some more experience first as well, *because psychoacoustic effects must be used perfectly, otherwise they will do the opposite. *This probably happens alot of users who use Precedence for the first time.

Best
Beat


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## Beat Kaufmann

I'm back with a short music excerpt.
I took an already existing mix that pans instruments from left to right with panners. 





The mix contains 4 reverb depths - all generated with Breeze2. --> Example 1
Then I replaced the panners by "Precedences". All the rest (depths with breeze etc.) Nothing else was changed on the mix.

Example 1: normal mix with pans and 4 different depths.
Example 2: now with Precedences instead of panniers. Rest Dito Example 1

Can you hear a difference?

Have fun
Beat


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## Cinebient

Beat Kaufmann said:


> I'm back with a short music excerpt.
> I took an already existing mix that pans instruments from left to right with panners.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The mix contains 4 reverb depths - all generated with Breeze2. --> Example 1
> Then I replaced the panners by "Precedences". All the rest (depths with breeze etc.) Nothing else was changed on the mix.
> 
> Example 1: normal mix with pans and 4 different depths.
> Example 2: now with Precedences instead of panniers. Rest Dito Example 1
> 
> Can you hear a difference?
> 
> Have fun
> Beat



I can hear a big difference here. At least trough my headphones (Beyerdynamic DT-990 Pro). 
Both sound good but it seems Precedence really glues it together much better like it is indeed actually on teh same stage and not individually recorded.


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## wst3

even on headphones and my laptop speakers I can hear a difference - I want to go listen in the studio now!


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## Cinebient

Sure you can get similar results with a combination of other tools but i find it more easy with Precedence and Breeze 2.1. and i think it just does it a bit better as other (not that i tested them all).
I also like the consistent GUI and workflow across the tools. The chameleon color GUI is the icing for me. 
Maybe not the usual usage but f.e. here 4 synths layered with the same preset. Just the second instance got a midi delay with one repeat, the third with 2 and the fourth with 3 repeated midi notes.
Each instance has the same Precedence and Breeze 2.1 preset but with different distance and angle settings.
So easy said the sound moves from near left to the far right. Of course you could do much more delays and fine steps etc. but i wanted to just do a simple 4 as demo here. Maybe not useful...but however




First dry then Precedence and Breeze 2.1 activated.


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## Olivier1024

re-peat said:


> (1) the stereo signal that Precedence generates is really rather bad, I find. It has zero mono-compatibility, which is indicative of a stereo signal that's terribly vulnerable and prone to phasing. Major problem, this.
> _



I do find the same problems and I think it's important to keep a mono compatibility.

If your music is listened on connected speaker (for TV, multiroom, wireless speaker), it's not a real stereo but more a kind of mono speaker, so mono compatibility must be maintain.

If your music is only listened with headphones (or perhaps speakers with a perfect position), you don't need to take care about mono compatibility. I think there are better solution than Precedence and a reverb, binaural is more funny, try Plugin Alliance DearVR for example (no noises and cracks with automation of the parameters and less CPU hungry than Precedence + Breeze, but less creative).

To illustrate the problems of mono compatibility with Precedence , I have a look on @Beat Kaufmann Example, who explain
"I try to mix a whole orchestra sequence - once with precedence and once without. However, I also have to gain some more experience first as well, because psychoacoustic effects must be used perfectly, otherwise they will do the opposite. This probably happens alot of users who use Precedence for the first time."

I mesure Correlation during the time the files are played , Blue is without Precedence and Orange is with Precedence.

Oboe and Englishhorn




The second example with the stage layout




I also get that kinds of result, I think there is a real problem with Precedence, it's seem impossible to get a efficient mono compatibility.


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## Beat Kaufmann

It is actually a problem to make a stereo microphone simulation that works with runtime differences (AB, ORTF, NOS, DIN etc.) without error in the correlation. Also in reality one gets such correlation problems. But these also make the very nice room feeling, as we enjoy it with certain classical recordings. 

Olivier
Thanks for your measurements. In order to get a sense of the correlation in classical music recordings (real), I recommend you to measure the correlation of a few examples in the same way you've done it with my examples. Compare them with the one you've made above with Precedence ... I am sure you will find much worse examples, especially when they sound very spatial. Nevertheless, I agree with you: The correlation can be a problem with Precedence. 

BTW: Your correlation curve shows the average correlation. 
My observations were that often only in a narrow frequency band extremely negative correlation values were produced, which of course make the average overall appear negative.

I would not go that far and say "Precedence has a real problem" but there is still potential to improve this point. I am convinced that 2CAudio can reduce this "danger" even more.

Beat


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## Andrew Souter

Hi guys.

Some quick notes. I’ll be back in the studio/office next week with full details but I thought I’d try to provide some quick notes. Writing from iPhone please forgive typos.

First thanks for the feedback. We appreciate your insights and suggestions.



re-peat said:


> (1) the stereo signal that Precedence generates is really rather bad, I find. It has zero mono-compatibility, which is indicative of a stereo signal that's terribly vulnerable and prone to phasing. Major problem, this.



Generally speaking the phase correlation should always be positive if measured on a broard band signal such as white/pink/brown noise. This means in general full mixes that use multiple instances will remain in phase. 

Bass frequencies where phase cancelation issues are most critical should also retain positive correlation in almost all cases. The exception being potentially when using extreme width settings.

Narrow ranges of mid to high frequencies can have more variation in phase correlation. Any time there is any form of delay introduced between channels phase differences are introduced. And even a one sample delay can result in some specific frequency being exactly 180 degrees out of phase.

This also happens in the real world with various stereo microphone techniques. The distance between microphones controls this in the real world amoung other things and I am sure many people here can speak more about that than me given some members here have extensive experience recording real orchestras.

Early reflections in reverb can do the same thing. Reverb tails also introduce changes to phase response. Phase differences help create width. 

Using lower width values with reduce differences and increase phase correlation. At 0% left and right will have perfect 100% correlation. This does not defeat all of the effect/benefit of Precedence. Modulation is still active, gain panning will remain, and the signal will will still be conditioned with various distance cues. If you need exactly perfect 100% correlation you can use it in this way. However I question if that is really necessary. Perhaps simply try lower values of width.

If you encounter a setting the produces negative correlation on a particular instrument in a narrow frequency range, you can try a simple click on the “Varation Randomize” button and this will produce another correlation variation similar to adjusting microphone positions by small amounts.

We would like to introduce a phase meter so that you can see such things more immediately without additional tools and make informed decisions.

Finally on this topic: when feeding Precedence into Breeze or other reverb,early reflections and the rest of the reverb will of course alter phase as well and in many cases this helps any potential phase “issues”. Ie if you are using Precedence into Breeze you should measure the output of this full chain. Not just Precednce. 

But obviously we value everyone’s feedback here as this is an important community full of very knowledgeable people, and if there are a lot of requests for less phase width we can look into accommodating that in some fashion. Perhaps we could have different modes or similar.



re-peat said:


> (2) the difference between a value of '0' and a value of '100' for Depth is way too small. To my ears anyway.



Please see my previous post on this. Precedence effectively provides something like 50% of the depth/distance perception and using it together with Breeze 2.1 using P-Link provides the other. We didn’t want to introduce other distance cues such as extreme loss in level or extreme high frequency losss bc while these may be accurate in the real world, and appropriate for virtual reality or game sound design, they are probably not desireable for music mixing. We assume you would prefer to use the track faders to control your levels for example.

However if there are requests we could of course add such distance cues to precedence if you guys felt they were important.




re-peat said:


> (3) Any parameter change causes disturbing degrees of "calculation crackling", which makes the automation of these parameters — something I consider quite important in a spatialization plugin — a complete impossibility.



We think of Precedence as a positioning tool more than a special fx for Doppler etc. internal modulation establishes some motion, but it is generally subtle. Think of it as something like the subtle motion of an instrument performer as he/she performs. They don’t usually get up and run around the orchestra. Perhaps in the future we would consider some derivation that is designed for automated motion fx. It will not be as light on the cpu as it is now though.

The pop/crack you here is do to the nature of our internal parameters which are of a discrete nature. You can perform a single click anywhere in the position display and the internal values will change with only one update and one very small click. This may feel smoother than dragging the position circle bc that results in many updates happening as quickly as possIble which may sound like stuttering.



re-peat said:


> As a lifelong-madly-in-love SPAT-user, it is unlikely that I'll ever seriously consider switching to something else, but that doesn't mean that I'm not very interested in what that something else might be. Precedence certainly isn't going to be it though, in my opinion. If it were much better than it currently is, I might be convinced to buy it — for those situations where too many SPAT-instances cause my computer to pant with exertion — but it isn't, so I won't.
> _



Spat is a great product and very comprehensive. I agree. It does of course cost $1500 though. We are trying to do something a little more simple and feature integration with our reverb engines. That’s the original goal. We hope it can evolve more over its lifetime and we are listening to your feedback for things that are important to the community.


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## Andrew Souter

Seems ironically Beat and I were writing similar things at the same time. Thanks for your insights Beat.


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## re-peat

*Andrew*, I’ve done some testing with SampleModelling’s The Trumpet — the original version, which is a simple, harmless mono source without ER’s (so: definitely not the cause of any subsequent phasing) — and I found that Precedence’s stereo-output already becomes problematic with regards to mono-compatibility when the Width parameter is set no higher than 15%-20%. Surely, that can’t be right?

Below are a few examples, but should you happen to own The Trumpet yourself, try this: simply send The Trumpet into Precedence and choose, say, the Classical Solo preset, and then, in the next slot, insert a plugin with which you can collapse the track to mono. Compare both the stereo output and the collapsed-to-mono output. Strange, right? At times it sounds to me — check audio ex.1 below — as if it might have been a better idea to market Precedence as _a virtual mute_ for brass instruments, instead of as a spatializer. That’s how badly the frequency-cancellation and phasing is.

Here’s *http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Precedence/TrumpetPrecedented.mp4 (a short video)* of how I set up my test: Kontakt (with the Trumpet) > Flux StereoTools (only to illustrate how solidly mono the source is) > into Precedence > into Logic’s Gain plugin (which functions here as a mono switch). A little phrase is repeated three times: first dry, then with Precedence enabled and then with the track collapsed to mono. (There's one parameter I changed in Precedence and forgot to set back to its default value before capturing the video, and that's Depth, which is set to 100. But whatever value it is set to makes very little difference anyway to the severity of the correlation problem, so it doesn't really matter.)

And here are three other examples, doing the exact same thing, but using different Precedence presets (this time with none of their default parameter settings changed) and also a different trumpet phrase:

(1) *http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Precedence/TrumpetPrecedence_ex1_VocalLead_w200.mp3 (example1)*: preset 'Vocal Lead’, which has a width of 200
(2) *http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Precedence/TrumpetPrecedence_ex2_OrchLarge_w75.mp3 (example2)*: preset ‘Orchestra Large’, which has a width of 75
(3) *http://users.telenet.be/deridderpiet.be/Precedence/TrumpetPrecedence_ex3_ClassChmbr_w62.mp3 (example3)*: preset ‘Classical Chamber’, which has a width of 62

You have to forgive me, but if this isn’t the sound of a serious problem, then I don’t know what is.

- - -

*Mr. Kaufmann*, we all know that you can’t go from stereo to mono without sacrificing _something_. But that’s not the issue here. If I thought any of this — the severe phasing and frequency cancellation problems, I mean — was normal or has to be accepted as unavoidable, like you want us to believe, I would never have mentioned it. But I don’t think that it is normal — and should you ask around, you will find that few people do — and I happen to have enough audio material and software that proves that it can be avoided. Which makes me conclude that Precedence *does* have a real problem.

If you can point me to a good recording (classical, jazz, pop/rock, whatever you like) that exhibits the same flaws as illustrated above, I sure would like to hear it. After which I will point out to you that it isn’t a good recording.

And none of my other spatialization software — close to a dozen of quality reverbs, and SPAT — struggles the way Precedence struggles. Which should serve as yet another indication that there’s something wrong with this plug-in. SPAT’s stereo output, for example, is always totally solid and pristine. (And what SPAT has to render is infinitely more complex than what Precedence has to render.) And it is not relevant to the discussion that SPAT is more than 10 times as expensive as Precedence is. What is relevant, is that it refutes your and Andrew’s statement that one can’t go from stereo to mono without having to deal with serious correlation problems.

- - -

*Andrew*, back to you. I am 100% willing, eager and keen to keep investigating this and to send feedback to you. I would — honestly — love nothing more than that you’re able to turn Precedence into a sort of “SPAT Lite”, i.o.w. a pretty serious piece of spatialization software that one can bring into ones mixes without having to fear frustrating sonic problems.
I am even prepared to buy Breeze if you think I need it in order to do some serious testing. But then I hope you have a version of Precedence for me which has a few less demo limitations. It certainly needn’t be the full version (I will happily buy Precedence at full price once you get the correlation issue sorted), but maybe a version that has a lifespan of, say, a week or two and no functional limitations? Just a suggestion, you know.

_


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## Andrew Souter

Thanks for the info re-peat. I’ll be back in the office on the 23rd and am more than happy to look deeply into all of this. 

Yes I’d be great to have your input and we can arrange that absolutely.


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## Andrew Souter

Also it seem I forgot to note previously: the W logo for the “Width” knob also functions as a phase invert button. It has three states:no inversion invert L, invert R. 

This functionality is actually there specifically to address the kind of potential circumstances you mention.

Having phase inversion occur at some specific frequency/frequencies is unavoidable afaik it seems. It happens in the real world with stereo mics as Beat and I mentioned. But yes in the real world the engineer would notice if the signal was more out of phase than in-phase for a paticular instrument and if so he would manually phase invert one channel. Most likely it is “corrected” before the final mix yes, but the mics do indeed capture the signal this way originally. 

This is what the W phase invert button does. 

Also please experiment with the “variation randomize” dice on the right. This will also give different phase results. It’s a lot easier than asking your player to pause while you go move your mics by a cm or two. 

Also experiment with lower values of “time Delta”

This post does not negate my previous post. I am very happy to explore more as well and see if things can be better tuned or if default ranges need adjustment or whatever else might be helpful. But meanwhile perhaps this gives a little more info that is helpful.


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## Dex

Olivier1024 said:


> To illustrate the problems of mono compatibility with Precedence , I have a look on @Beat Kaufmann Example



Thank you for pointing this out. With Precedence, Beat's example sounds better in stereo but significantly worse in mono. When I play the example with Precedence, my correlation meter is frequently negative (as you've graphed), my vectorscope shows a ton of info in the sides, and my mid/side RMS meter frequently shows as much energy in the sides as in the middle. That is not ideal - usually the middle should have at least 5-10 more dB of energy than the sides.


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## Andrew Souter

Dex said:


> Thank you for pointing this out. With Precedence, Beat's example sounds better in stereo but significantly worse in mono. When I play the example with Precedence, my correlation meter is frequently negative (as you've graphed), my vectorscope shows a ton of info in the sides, and my mid/side RMS meter frequently shows as much energy in the sides as in the middle. That is not ideal - usually the middle should have at least 5-10 more dB of energy than the sides.




Btw Oliver1024 what tool is used to create these graphs you show?

I would say the first graph shown is really not bad in any way. 100% correlation is mono as I am sure everyone knows. 100% is NOT the target. I would argue something around 0% is the target for a maximally spacious sound. A linear sum of (L+R)/2 gives only -3dB if L and R have 0% correlation. 0% is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. 

Occasional dips into slightly negative ranges is not the end of the world either. -25% like I guesstimate being the worst case in the second example is not even really terrible either. The thing to be avoided if possible is very strong negative values such as -100% or close to it. I don’t see that in the graphs above. 

If you see strong negative correlation happening for extended periods of time on a particular instrument in a specific frequency range, then you simply either use the phase inversion button (W symbol) or you try another variation of the same position using the “position randomize”)

So to repeat:

To reduce “phase width” simply:

1) use lower Width values
2) use lower Time Delta values
3) try the “variation randomize” dice
4) use the Phase Inversion button if needed

Note that phase response is dependent on the frequency content of the input. A preset that gives negative correlation on one instrument in one confined freq range probably does not for another instrument in a different range.

Also as mentioned, I will look at this stuff more this coming week.


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## Olivier1024

Andrew Souter said:


> Btw Oliver1024 what tool is used to create these graphs you show?


https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/products/adptr_metricab.html
You can try it for 2 weeks.
It also shows the realtime Correlation per frequencies.

I did some tests with a mono white noise signal and have a very bad correlation around 33%. The Width reaction is very strange.
I suggest to make your test with mono signal and perhaps add a option to mono-ise the input signal like many other efficient stereo makers plugin.
Breeze is wonderfull and didn't modify the correlation whith the good parameters.
So it's important to focus on Precedence.

I'm on holydays this week, but I could help you when I will be back at home if you need to do some tests on Windows 10 Pro / Reaper.


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## Andrew Souter

Olivier1024 said:


> I did some tests with a mono white noise signal and have a very bad correlation around 33%. The Width reaction is very strange.



So if I understand correctly you see positive 33% correlation on white noise. Is that correct? And that is “very bad”? What is “very good” by your estimation? What value would make you happy?

Do you realize that any good reverb will attempt and oftentimes succeed to give 0% correlation? All of our verbs will give something close to 0% unless you use very low width values. Most others will as well. 

But perhaps you mean that when you send our verbs a mono signal and measure the output when mix is something like 50% or less. In this case you will have a higher positive value yes bc some of the signal is mono. 

If you somehow sent white noise into the air and recaptured it with a stereo microphone in any configuration the collelation will be about 0%.

If you delay one channel of white noise by only 1 sample the correlation will also be roughly 0%. 

If you mean positive 33% this is not “very bad”. It is good. 

If you actually mean negative 33% try with pink noise. Pink noise is much closer to music than white noise. Whatever your result is, the correlation value will be higher on pink and higher still on brown noise. Ie lower freqs are generally more in phase than extreme high freqs and that is where the topic of cancellation from anti-phase upon summing to mono really matters. 

Anyway if you guys want narrower options too of course we can provide them. I’ll look into this this coming week as mentioned.


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## Olivier1024

I did some tests with a mono white noise signal and have a very bad correlation, this means a negative value of the correlation, with the width at around 33%.
Sorry for the words missing in my other message.
I would be happy if you could get some positive value of correlation from mono and also a stereo signals. But let's start with a mono signal.


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## Andrew Souter

Olivier1024 said:


> I did some tests with a mono white noise signal and have a very bad correlation, this means a negative value of the correlation, with the width at around 33%.
> Sorry for the words missing in my other message.
> I would be happy if you could get some positive value of correlation from mono and also a stereo signals. But let's start with a mono signal.



Can you show a screenshot of the current settings that produces this result?


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## wst3

I must be misunderstanding something here, the vast majority of what we do when we mix in stereo is going to have an impact on the mono signal - even microphone placement can have a negative effect, as can delays, filters, and certainly non-linear processors, like reverb.

This is why we check our mixes in mono, although I'm pretty sure the only reason I still do that is habit, and that I'm old. Actually, not true, some of the more severe compression algorithms combine channels in one way or another, so checking for mono compatibility is a good idea.

Still, and I haven't had a lot of time to spend with Precedence yet, I'm a little confused about why a process that plays with panning using the delays to mess with the Haas effect is expected to be largely mono compatible. We are, by definition, changing inter-channel timing. Which will not collapse to mono perfectly. That lack of correlation is how we get the placement.

I can't afford SPLAT, but every other tool I've tried (or assembled) did the same thing.

There are probably some things worthy of comment, but mono compatibility?


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## Olivier1024

Andrew Souter said:


> Can you show a screenshot of the current settings that produces this result?








Here are the value I get using Windows 10 / Reaper from my notebook.
White noise provide from Melda plugin
Mono-ise is done with bx strereomaker, Stereo Exp = 0 => correlation = 1
Precedence, Mod disable
bx control tu measure correlation, value is negative

Something very interested, more I use Precedence, bader is the correlation, like if some variable where not intialise at a good value.


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## Andrew Souter

Olivier1024 said:


> Here are the value I get using Windows 10 / Reaper from my notebook.
> White noise provide from Melda plugin
> Mono-ise is done with bx strereomaker, Stereo Exp = 0 => correlation = 1
> Precedence, Mod disable
> bx control tu measure correlation, value is negative
> 
> Something very interested, more I use Precedence, bader is the correlation, like if some variable where not intialise at a good value.



The blue circle on the left of the W symbol (and the matching hole/cutout in the left stereo circles above the width knob) mean that the left chanel is phase inverted. So no wonder you have negative correlation. Click on the W logo twice more. First the circle and cutout will switch to the right side, meaning the right chanel is phase inverted. And on the second click there will be no circle/cutout meaning neither channel is inverted. This is the normal mode.

So this is basically “user error”. But it is not your fault bc the manual is not posted yet and my quick notes did not explain this.

This is a good sanity check for me too bc afaik you should never be able to get significant negative correlation if applied to white/pink/brown noise. (Unless width is perhaps something close to 200%, then perhaps yes.) but as I said earlier, in normal circumstances you should not be able to create negative correlation on broadband noise signals.

Summary:

W logo is a phase invert button.
No dots, means no inversion
Left dot means left inversion
Right dot means right inversion


It is possible to get negative correlation on narrow frequency range instruments. This is completely dependent on the frequency content of the input signal and the current settings in P. This is exactly how things work in the real world with stereo microphones as well. If you get negative correlation on a particular instrument and preset combo you can use with Phase Invert “W” button to solve the issue. (Exactly as you would with stereo mics in the real world.)

I return to the office tomorrow and will be completing the manual this week and looking into mono compatibility topics more.


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## pipedr

I have been using Breeze 2 for the purposes of mixing my Josh Bell violin with my 8dio string libraries, and all of that with VSL (dry) and Samplemodeling, and it seems to work well and use very little CPU, so I am very interested in Precedence, if it makes that even better. Seems like a great combination, and more practical for me than something as expensive as SPAT.

Here's my little experiment, using 8dio's Claire Alto Flute, which was recorded with close, decca and wide mics. I ran the close mic through Precedence connected to Breeze using pretty much presets and the American Hall Breeze 2.1 preset. It seems to me that if you can run a close mic'd instrument through the combo and get something like the far mic, then it's doing the job well.

I'm no mastering engineer, so the discussion in the past few pages was a little beyond me, but Precedence and Breeze 2.1 sounds pretty good to me. However, not really quite like either the Decca or Wide mic--maybe something in between or maybe closer to the wide mic?

But I don't really understand what it is that sounds different, so maybe there are settings in either Precedence or Breeze that can better replicate these mics?

(I'm waiting for the manual to describe what the AB, XY and ORTF mics are, and why the presets are set so far to the side)

I think a lot of us may be interested in Precedence/Breeze2 to set our wet and dry samples in the proper unified orchestral space. In this case, I might want to use the actual far mics for the flute--but then (since I would be running other dry samples such as SampleModeling through it) would I also use Precedence/Breeze 2.1 on that far mic of the flute? Or is it better to have all sampled instruments on their close mics and run through Precedence/Breeze 2.1?

Also, on my wishlist: is it possible to have Precedence presets for each section of the orchestra? (for those of us who don't have all the positions in our ears)

Also, would love to have Precedence/Breeze 2.1 fully integrated with combined presets. (for those of us who may not understand when to pick a Hall or Chamber, or how to adjust stereo width or the optimal reverb time). Since it's probably going to take some time to program further integration, maybe you could provide some recipes in the manual or on the website...

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/alto-flute-close-mic1022-mp3.15917/][/AUDIOPLUS]

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/alto-flute-decca-mic1022-mp3.15918/][/AUDIOPLUS]

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/alto-flute-wide-mic1022-mp3.15919/][/AUDIOPLUS]

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/flute-close-mic-orch-large-am-hall1022-mp3.15920/][/AUDIOPLUS]

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/flute-close-micab-am-hall1022-mp3.15922/][/AUDIOPLUS]


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## Andrew Souter

pipedr said:


> I have been using Breeze 2 for the purposes of mixing my Josh Bell violin with my 8dio string libraries, and all of that with VSL (dry) and Samplemodeling, and it seems to work well and use very little CPU, so I am very interested in Precedence, if it makes that even better. Seems like a great combination, and more practical for me than something as expensive as SPAT.



Thanks for your compliments. Yes, Breeze 2 is one of, if not THE lowest CPU-usage verbs on the market, and now 2.1 even disables processing when it is not processing any input signal! It's the perfect "many-instance" "direct on track insert" verb. We did this with large templates in mind.



pipedr said:


> (I'm waiting for the manual to describe what the AB, XY and ORTF mics are, and why the presets are set so far to the side)



The first folder of presets are meant simply as suggested templates for various usage cases and music styles. They are concerned mostly with setting the "Delta" values, input modes, and Width values. It is assumed you will move the position parameters (Angle and Distance) yourself to whatever values you want for these presets for your given instrument/track. I tried to save them all with default values of Angle and Distance (0 degrees, 50%), but if some do not have these values, there is no specific reason other than happy accident. 



pipedr said:


> I think a lot of us may be interested in Precedence/Breeze2 to set our wet and dry samples in the proper unified orchestral space.



Yes, this is the ideal usage case, and it is what I had in mind primarily when I started designing Precedence earlier this year. The idea was partially developed as we were discussing Breeze 2 earlier in the year in this exact forum as I saw a lot of discussion and interest in these sort of topics and realized we could offer something unique that should theoretically benefit this specific community quite a lot.

It is very interesting to me personally too since I am also a composer who has done scoring work. Although lately, I spend most of time writing algorithms/code, and only had opportunity to do some solo piano albums and two ambient albums using our Kaleidoscope product. I am not fully up to speed on all the latest string/brass/woodwind/general-orchestral libraries yet bc I have been busy making the 2CAudio products and doing all the required math/dsp research/testing/developing, hence I stuck to solo piano and ambient material using our products so far:

https://soundcloud.com/andrew_souter

...but I mention it to illustrate I understand the goals of composers etc.

So we wanted to get Precedence out into the wild to get extra feedback on it and have community involvement, particularly from this forum, as this is where I think it can really be very valuable. Now that we have the next steps are:

1) listen to your feedback and implement your suggestions and requests etc.
2) explore integration/workflow/presets with/for all the leading sample libraries
3) potentially create preset banks and templates for various libraries

... like you say below, yes...



pipedr said:


> Or is it better to have all sampled instruments on their close mics and run through Precedence/Breeze 2.1?



Ideal is to use close-mic-ed/dry material, and let Precedence spatialize and position it, and then use Breeze 2 to supply additional depth and tail. And perhaps you would still like a shared B2 instance on sends for extra tail.

If you have libraries that already have lots of room info you can use the mono-input-mode to discard one channel and use the other to feed both L and R and then allow Precedence to apply its own spatialization and positioning.

Alternatively, if you are happy with your sample libraries current positioning and "early spatialization" you can use the default pass-through input mode and keep Angle and Distance at defaults in (0deg, around 50% or so) in Precedence and this will help add some subtle animation to your libraries that will bring some extra realism to the final result without repositioning them.



pipedr said:


> Also, on my wishlist: is it possible to have Precedence presets for each section of the orchestra? (for those of us who don't have all the positions in our ears)
> 
> Also, would love to have Precedence/Breeze 2.1 fully integrated with combined presets. (for those of us who may not understand when to pick a Hall or Chamber, or how to adjust stereo width or the optimal reverb time). Since it's probably going to take some time to program further integration, maybe you could provide some recipes in the manual or on the website...



Yes, these are the topics we will be exploring for the rest of the year. I will attempt to procure all the latest libraries and either by myself, or even better with the help of this awesome community and its members (many of whom are much higher level scoring pros than myself), will explore "best practices" and presets/templates for Precedence and Breeze and specific libraries.

We are open to your feedback.


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## gjelul

+1 on having Precedence presets / Breeze presets!

As a film / tv composer my interest is in products that sound great and that do a lot of work under the hood. When under tight deadlines (which is almost everytime) having access to these presets is a huge help.

Other than that, I own Aether, B2 and Breeze and the expansions and they all sound great!

Just my 2cents


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## Andrew Souter

gjelul said:


> +1 on having Precedence presets / Breeze presets!
> 
> As a film / tv composer my interest is in products that sound great and that do a lot of work under the hood. When under tight deadlines (which is almost everytime) having access to these presets is a huge help.
> 
> Other than that, I own Aether, B2 and Breeze and the expansions and they all sound great!
> 
> Just my 2cents



Thanks for the feedback and kind words!


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## Andrew Souter

Hi guys,

Quick updates:

1) We discovered a bug in the OSX version of Breeze 2.1, where the gain was much lower than it should be.  This effects the wet/dry balance, and also therefore effects the intended result of the Precedence-Breeze 2 interaction. The bug existed only in OS X, and was not actually in our code, but was an odd result of updating to Mojhave and the latest X-Code at the last minute, hence we did not notice it until a day or two ago. We have replaced the OS X build in web-store. You can simply re-download from the /my downloads/ area. The build number of this updated version is shown as [206], and the previous version was [205]. If you use Breeze 2.1 on OS X, please re-download and re-run the installer. Win users do not need to do anything. 

We will post new OS X demo versions tomorrow.

2) I have looked into enhanced mono-compatibility for Precedence as requested here, and should be able to offer something in this direction as a free update some time in November. Probably we would offer it an additional mode which can be used if perfect mono-compatibility is a strong concern in your workflow. My previous suggestions above remain valid as well, but if you'd like even stronger mono-compatiblity, we can meet these requests.


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## Andrew Souter

Meanwhile, here's a quick example of Precedence and Breeze 2.1 in action:

Precedence -> Breeze 2.1 -> Ozone Maximizer (at +0dB simply to limit any minor transient overs):

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/MaleVocal_Mete_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav

I segmented the vocal into different phrases with the following distance/angle settings:

D:10 A: +75
D:20 A: -30
D:00 A: +90
D:30 A: -90
D:50 A: +15
D:100 A: -30

Dry:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/MaleVocal_Mete_Dry.wav


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## Andrew Souter

Here's some more audio demos. I'm adding many to the sound-cloud playlist, but here are some as 24-bit .wav so you can here full fidelity.

First several examples where I use Precedence and Breeze 2 with P-Link, and simply change the position in Precedence and update the Breeze mix value accordingly. (I segment across multiple tracks/instances to do this -- not using automation -- just to quickly demonstrate the diversity of different positions and the left/right front/back positioning...) Some show only Precedence. Some with P and B.

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...Flute_Itzhak_PrecedenceBreeze2_9Positions.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/NehFlute_Itzhak_Dry.wav

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...bak_Pezhham_PrecedenceBreeze2_10Positions.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...ity/Dunbak_Pezhham_Precedence_10Positions.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Dunbak_Pezhham_Dry.wav

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro.../Oud_Pezhham_PrecedenceBreeze2_4Positions.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Oud_Pezhham_Precedence_4Positions.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Oud_Pezhham_DryStereoMic.wav

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...iolin_Pourya_PrecedenceBreeze2_5Positions.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Violin_Pourya_Dry.wav

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/FemaleVocal_Aida_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/FemaleVocal_Aida_Dry.wav

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/MaleVocal_Mete_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/MaleVocal_Mete_Dry.wav


Here are some pretty great contemporary vocals where the combo of P and B produces pretty stellar short vocal ambience appropriate for current mix styles:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro..._TonyVIncent_ABetterWay_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...y/Vocal_TonyVIncent_ABetterWay_Precedence.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Vocal_TonyVIncent_ABetterWay_Dry.wav

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...ocal_TonyVIncent_Tonite_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...nyVIncent_Tonite_PrecedenceBreeze2_Longer.wav


These are all real-world instruments/humans recorded with a mic. The "oud" example is stereo miced which you can year in the dry example. I used the "mono-input" mode to discard one channel and used P to reposition. The rest mono mic-ed. Precedence is responsible for all the positioning info in all of these therefore...


----------



## Andrew Souter

Some more examples:

Drum mix with Precedence and Breeze 2, one instance on each drum instrument. Source was Cubase Groove Agent, which outputs stereo drums, but I disagreed the existing stereo info and used mono sources and repositioned with Precedence and applied Breeze 2:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/DrumMix_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...y/DrumMix_NoKickNoSnare_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/DrumMix_Precedence.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/DrumMix_DryMono.wav

Then two guitars playing a similar phrase, using P and position they widely and a little Breeze for ambience:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/DualGuitar_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/DualGuitar_Precedence.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/DualGuitar_Dry.wav

Then a nice female vocal, using the P->B combo for short vocal space, which would sound mostly dry in a full mix, but have excellent spatialization:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/VocalAmbience_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/VocalAmbience_Precedence.wav
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/VocalAmbience_Dry.wav


----------



## pipedr

Andrew Souter said:


> Here's some more audio demos. I'm adding many to the sound-cloud playlist, but here are some as 24-bit .wav so you can here full fidelity.
> 
> First several examples where I use Precedence and Breeze 2 with P-Link, and simply change the position in Precedence and update the Breeze mix value accordingly. (I segment across multiple tracks/instances to do this -- not using automation -- just to quickly demonstrate the diversity of different positions and the left/right front/back positioning...) Some show only Precedence. Some with P and B.
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...Flute_Itzhak_PrecedenceBreeze2_9Positions.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/NehFlute_Itzhak_Dry.wav
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...bak_Pezhham_PrecedenceBreeze2_10Positions.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...ity/Dunbak_Pezhham_Precedence_10Positions.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Dunbak_Pezhham_Dry.wav
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro.../Oud_Pezhham_PrecedenceBreeze2_4Positions.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Oud_Pezhham_Precedence_4Positions.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Oud_Pezhham_DryStereoMic.wav
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...iolin_Pourya_PrecedenceBreeze2_5Positions.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Violin_Pourya_Dry.wav
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/FemaleVocal_Aida_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/FemaleVocal_Aida_Dry.wav
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/MaleVocal_Mete_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/MaleVocal_Mete_Dry.wav
> 
> 
> Here are some pretty great contemporary vocals where the combo of P and B produces pretty stellar short vocal ambience appropriate for current mix styles:
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro..._TonyVIncent_ABetterWay_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...y/Vocal_TonyVIncent_ABetterWay_Precedence.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Vocal_TonyVIncent_ABetterWay_Dry.wav
> 
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...ocal_TonyVIncent_Tonite_PrecedenceBreeze2.wav
> https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/pro...nyVIncent_Tonite_PrecedenceBreeze2_Longer.wav
> 
> 
> These are all real-world instruments/humans recorded with a mic. The "oud" example is stereo miced which you can year in the dry example. I used the "mono-input" mode to discard one channel and used P to reposition. The rest mono mic-ed. Precedence is responsible for all the positioning info in all of these therefore...


Great sounding examples. What settings do you use on Breeze 2 (e.g. Hall, Chamber and time, etc.) to go well with Precedence? 

It would be great to have screenshots of the settings in these examples (I'm working on orchestral music at the moment so I'm most interested in the violin and flute examples)--would be a good tutorial on how to use the combination.

Another question: If you have a sample that already has hall ambience baked in, or a far mic'd instrument, would you still use Precedence for spatialization, but just setting the distance to a low number?

Impressed by how you are responding to the feedback we've heard on this thread.


----------



## jamwerks

I'm wondering about how one might use two separate mic position with the P-B combo?

For example 8Dio Century harps, which is recorded center, with close, main & wide mic positions. I'd run the close mic through P-B. And I'd like to use the main mic also, so presumably in another instance of P? How so set up? Thanks!


----------



## Andrew Souter

pipedr said:


> Great sounding examples. What settings do you use on Breeze 2 (e.g. Hall, Chamber and time, etc.) to go well with Precedence?



It's obviously dependent on the needs of the source material and what your creative goals are, but Precedence works best with "reasonable" real-world reverb RT-60 times such as 0 to 3-4 seconds or so, such as are found in real chambers, concert halls, etc. Generally some degree of position info is lost in extremely reverberant environments, and while I do personally have a weakness for huge ambient music environments and explore them in depth in B2 and even Aether, Precedence works best with shorter verb times, not "Music for Airports" etc.

Hall and Chamber modes in Breeze 2 are a good match.

Something I have not explored thoroughly yet, but might be quite nice is to use P+B on inserts, using short times in Breeze and potentially adding a B2 on send to add additional global tail. And B2 on sends could still supply whatever modern "larger than life" stuff that might be appropriate for modern scoring needs even if it is not entirely authentic so say Bach chamber music etc.



pipedr said:


> It would be great to have screenshots of the settings in these examples (I'm working on orchestral music at the moment so I'm most interested in the violin and flute examples)--would be a good tutorial on how to use the combination.



Sure. Here you go:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/Violin.png
https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/NehFlute.png

Here's some of the Cubase files that created them:

https://2caudio.com/sitecontent/products/precedence/community/PrecedenceDemos_CubaseProject.zip

Note, as I mentioned above, I used multiple instances to achieve the different positions. We do not claim smooth automation of position at this time. But you would not generally want your instruments to jump around in position like this in a real mix anyway. I just do it as a means of quickly showing the diversity of possible positions. The audio files used by these examples should just be the the dry sounds linked above if you want to play around with the sessions. The zip file just includes the cubase project file.




pipedr said:


> Another question: If you have a sample that already has hall ambience baked in, or a far mic'd instrument, would you still use Precedence for spatialization, but just setting the distance to a low number?



It could still be useful yes, as the modulation in it will help add some additional life and realism. As long as you keep Angle at 0 degrees, you won't be changing the general left-right "azimuth". Distance does not necessarily even need to be kept low. It might be appropriate to set it to something that you guesstimate to be similar to the source sound. i.e. if it is far mic-ed with heavy ambience you might like to try medium to largest distance.

Note if the input signal is already highly spatialized also i.e. it has something similar to 0% correlation, whatever Precedence adds to it will remain in the 0% range, and there is nothing at all to worry about regarding the mono-compatibility topic.



pipedr said:


> Impressed by how you are responding to the feedback we've heard on this thread.



Well thanks. As I said, the idea for Precedence was partially inspired by conversations we had here earlier in the year so it's only fitting we continue to discuss it here. And as I explained, despite being a musician/composer myself, I spend quite a lot of time doing math/DSP RnD these days, and don't have all the great libraries you guys have so I can learn from you guys too regarding best practices with interaction with all the latest libraries.

And there are community members like Beat here who spend their professional lives recording real orchestras on a daily basis, so obviously this kind of experience and whatever insights from it that I am fortunate enough to have shared with me is very valuable to something like Precedence.

We have seen lots of new reverbs lately and in general they all start to approach a reasonably high level of quality. I think one of the things that will continue to differentiate great from pretty-good, are the type of topics that we begin to explore with Precedence. But it is a very rich and deep area to explore, straddling psychoacoustic principals, creative musical needs, and broadcast best-practices. So it's great to have community involvement and feedback for sure. I'm thankful for that!


----------



## Andrew Souter

jamwerks said:


> I'm wondering about how one might use two separate mic position with the P-B combo?
> 
> For example 8Dio Century harps, which is recorded center, with close, main & wide mic positions. I'd run the close mic through P-B. And I'd like to use the main mic also, so presumably in another instance of P? How so set up? Thanks!



I would not generally advocate running two instances of Precedence in parallel on two copies of the EXACTLY same track/instrument. This could/will create phasing if the source sound is exactly identical, but the Precedence instance is different on each track, and the Precedence instance WILL be different no matter what, even if all parameters are identical for both. No two instances of Precedence are ever the same. So if we are talking about two copies of exactly the same source audio file, i'd say: Don't do it!

I am speaking here about two copies of the same audio file. If it is two takes by a real performer from a real instrument, that is generally fine and good bc the audio file/waveform will NOT generally be very similar in the mathematical sense in this case. I'd guess two performances of the same musical content from the same performer using the same equipment settings, position, etc, would have almost exactly 0% correlation, even from a world class performer. So this is perfectly fine and you can build full string sections etc this way from multiple takes for example. 

For sample libraries and MIDI playback of the same MIDI material it would depend on how intelligently the sample instrument playback scripting humanized the performance. If it was done intelligently enough it would function as two takes/performers. If not, you could try things like the Cubase Logical Editor to randomize the MIDI performance slightly so that each take is not exactly the same. This would better create the ensemble sound and it would be OK to use Precedence in parallel in this case.

If we are talking about different microphone positions of exactly the same recording/performance in parallel, it is a little more tricky. It will generally depend on how similar the two are. The more similar they are, the more phasing might be an issue. If we are talking about a very close miced version and some form of room/ambience mic, it would probably be OK.

...but honestly i'd question why you'd want the use the room mic really? If the goal to make different libraries sound cohesive, why not just use the close mic-ed source and allow P + B to supply positioning, spatialization, and verb? If you use the same Breeze preset on different libraries with different Positions in P and different Mix settings in B using P-Link, setting Breeze Mix equal to Precedence Distance, you can create a cohesive space with all the density and realism of the real space anyway. I'm not sure the room mic source would really add anything, and would likely just make it harder to match everything...

If you really want to include the room ambience in the sample library, I assume it has muliple outs and one of the out is the global mix of whatever independent sources it offers? I'd use the mix and apply P to that if you really want to include the room sound in the library. That's my second choice. My first choice is to use as dry of a source as possible.


----------



## jamwerks

Still no User Manual ?


----------



## Andrew Souter

jamwerks said:


> Still no User Manual ?



...this coming week. I just returned to my main office. I'll be testing some "enhanced mono compatibility" concepts this week as well.

We have also been making some progress on the auto P-Link topic...


----------



## Andrew Souter

re-peat said:


> *Andrew*, back to you. I am 100% willing, eager and keen to keep investigating this and to send feedback to you. I would — honestly — love nothing more than that you’re able to turn Precedence into a sort of “SPAT Lite”, i.o.w. a pretty serious piece of spatialization software that one can bring into ones mixes without having to fear frustrating sonic problems.
> I am even prepared to buy Breeze if you think I need it in order to do some serious testing. But then I hope you have a version of Precedence for me which has a few less demo limitations. It certainly needn’t be the full version (I will happily buy Precedence at full price once you get the correlation issue sorted), but maybe a version that has a lifespan of, say, a week or two and no functional limitations? Just a suggestion, you know.
> 
> _



I must be slow today, bc I can not figure out how to send a PM at the moment. 

A question: In SPAT are you using Binaural output or Stereo output? It seems to me upon a very quick look that most (all?) other Binaural tools, the binaural mode are not perfectly mono compatible, and the stereo mode might simply do gain panning.

If I am correct and not missing anything, in Precedence you can control the intensity of the binaural effects by the main Width knob. At 0% width, Precedence becomes an "enhanced gain panner" like some other tools, and is 100% perfectly mathmatically-exactly mono compatible, and this mode does NOT completely undo the magic of Precedence. Modulation is still active, distance cues are still active, etc.

If there is a delay between channels, and the channels are summed to mono, the delay acts like a comb filter, bc it is by definition a "feed-foward" comb filter. That is a basic mathematical truth, and the same happens with spaced stereo microphones in the real world too as we discussed above. Any process that involves time differences between channels such a simple delay, HRTF, etc will not collapse 100% perfectly.

So it seems to me that Precedence can already achieve the same degree of exactly-perfect mono compatibility as others, simply by making Width 0%, which removes time differences between channels, like it seems other perfectly mono compatible tools do as well. Unless i am missing something?

Nonetheless, I have made some progress developing something that can collapse "almost perfectly" and still retains most of the cool benefits of normal binaural techniques, and am working on adding it as an extra mode to Precedence, so there is something "in-between" these two options of "binaural" vs "only-gain panning".

But, as a sanity check, could you clarify if you are using Binaural or standard Stereo (gain panning) modes in your tools? Please send me a PM also, so I can reply.


----------



## Olivier1024

When we use Binaural, we don't care about mono compatibility. Binaural simulates the human spatial hearing (3D) via headphones.
But when we use stereo speaker, mono compatibility is a necessity.

I don't think Precedence is able to generate Binaural output.

I use Plugin Alliance DearVR to generate Binaural (3D) output :
• Binaural : 2 channel binaural output for playback via headphones.
• FOA Youtube : 4 channel first order Ambisonic output in AmbiX format.
Format used by Youtube.
• 2.0 Stereo : Doesn't work via stereo speaker because it's not mono compatible


There a new Plugin from Plugin Alliance, Schoeps Mono Upmix.
It use a mono input and output a stereo signal with a "good" positionning, distance and stereo width.

Upmix mono → Stereo and LCR (2ch or 3ch)
Control perceived source distance and panning position
Boost diffuse the room/reverb portion of the signal
Works very well with breeze2.

I hope the Precedence update will be even better.


----------



## lucor

Sorry for the slight off topic question, but does 2caudio do black friday sales? I'm very interested in picking up Breeze 2 and possibly Precedence and this would definitely push me over the edge.
Thanks!


----------



## Andrew Souter

Olivier1024 said:


> When we use Binaural, we don't care about mono compatibility. Binaural simulates the human spatial hearing (3D) via headphones.
> But when we use stereo speaker, mono compatibility is a necessity.
> 
> I don't think Precedence is able to generate Binaural output.
> 
> I use Plugin Alliance DearVR to generate Binaural (3D) output :
> • Binaural : 2 channel binaural output for playback via headphones.
> • FOA Youtube : 4 channel first order Ambisonic output in AmbiX format.
> Format used by Youtube.
> • 2.0 Stereo : Doesn't work via stereo speaker because it's not mono compatible



Yes, I am aware what Binaural is/means.  

I would say Precedence is semi/quasi Binaural in most cases unless the Width knob is exactly 0.0%. It does not model ear/Pinna filter cues because in general I don't think they are all that desirable, and even over headphones I don't find the result to be that convincing, particularly in terms of Elevation and the back-of-the-head rear 180 degrees of the circle that Precedence does not allow. So we do not introduce a bunch of Notch filters to model HRTFs because IMHO they cause more harm than good in most cases.

But we do pick and choose other various binaural cues, and as I've written about in the web listing here:

https://2caudio.com/products/precedence#_SpatialEvolution
https://2caudio.com/products/precedence#_GettingDeep

If you want to defeat the quasi-Binaural effects in Precedence completely set the Width knob is exactly 0.0%.



Olivier1024 said:


> There a new Plugin from Plugin Alliance, Schoeps Mono Upmix.
> It use a mono input and output a stereo signal with a "good" positionning, distance and stereo width.
> 
> Upmix mono → Stereo and LCR (2ch or 3ch)
> Control perceived source distance and panning position
> Boost diffuse the room/reverb portion of the signal
> Works very well with breeze2.
> 
> I hope the Precedence update will be even better.



Interesting. And it's mono compatible?

You know it's said people don't have ideas. Ideas have people. It's funny how often there are similar products that come to market at similar times. Other than SPAT and MIR, I was unaware of all the cool tools everyone has mentioned thus far. Seems these ideas want to get out into the market in one way or another. Happy to contribute however I can...


----------



## Andrew Souter

lucor said:


> Sorry for the slight off topic question, but does 2caudio do black friday sales? I'm very interested in picking up Breeze 2 and possibly Precedence and this would definitely push me over the edge.
> Thanks!



we have been known to have a holiday promo or two in the past...


----------



## re-peat

Hi Andrew,

I don't do PM's here. Sorry about that. 
And in SPAT I use stereo.

_


----------



## Andrew Souter

re-peat said:


> Hi Andrew,
> I don't do PM's here. Sorry about that.
> _



Feel free to send us an email if you'd still like to discuss more: https://2caudio.com/support/contact


----------



## jamwerks

I bought Precedence and Breeze2 over a month ago. I'd love to understand how the whole "P-link" thing works. Is that manual anywhere in site?


----------



## Will Blackburn

Black friday Breeze + Precendence bundle please


----------



## Andrew Souter

jamwerks said:


> I bought Precedence and Breeze2 over a month ago. I'd love to understand how the whole "P-link" thing works. Is that manual anywhere in site?



Basically at the moment, you simply turn on the "link" button in Breeze, and then simply enter the same values for

* Precedence Distance
* Breeze Mix/Balance

Here is something I posted in another forum:



> At the moment Breeze 2.1 has a special mode called P-Link, that makes various adjustments to internal parameters, and to "sync" it to Precedence, you MANUALLY type in the same values in:
> 
> * Precedence Distance
> * Breeze Mix/Balance
> 
> The internal setup is established and "correct" for Breeze, but there is no automatic communication yet between Precedence and Breeze. This is what we/Denis is working on right now. We expect to test it in the next couple days. You will then be able to use the Precedence GUI to control parameters in both Precedence and Breeze, so simply adjusting position in Precedence will update things appropriately in Breeze and they will say synced. This is the goal and this is what we are working on right now.
> 
> The link state can be enabled/disabled, so that you can still use Precedence and Breeze independently as well, and you can also use Precedence followed by Breeze on track inserts as we advocate, but disable linking so you can set Precedence and Breeze with whatever settings you like if you happen not to like the setting produced by the auto-linking. (i.e. for electronic music there are less rules about what is real/correct, so maybe you want something non-standard intentionally, etc.)
> 
> When we do the next versions of B2 and Aether they will also be "Precedence aware" and have this link ability. At the moment they are not, but they will be. Meanwhile you can still use them with Precedence and simply adjust the verb settings manually as desired the same way you would with Breeze without using P-Link. Precedence is still useful to use with B2 and Aether even without P-Link.



As of today, we actually have automatic P-Link working in our internal builds and it is quite cool indeed! We will be testing this more over the next week or two to be sure it is robust.

You guys also got me obsessed with the mono-compatiblity topic, so I have been exploring that deeply. 

As both of these topics may result in required changes to documentation, I did not complete/post the manual yet as I want to document the final state. But honestly the theory of "how and why" is well explained on the web listing already, and the quick notes do give the general explanation for the small number of parameters on the GUI.


----------



## lucor

Seems like the Black Friday Sale is on! Breeze 2 is already in my basket, and I think I'll get Precedence as well. While testing the demo I heard the same issues as Piet (some mono compatibilty issues, but mainly that a distance of 100 isn't as distant as I'd like it to be), but overall it's still very promising and the fact that Andrew has been so responsive to problems here makes me very hopeful for the future of this plugin.


----------



## lucor

BTW Andrew: I love your idea of having Precedence as a 'module' in Breeze 2, so that it's possible to do everything from within the same plugin. Please make it happen!


----------



## Andrew Souter

lucor said:


> Seems like the Black Friday Sale is on! Breeze 2 is already in my basket, and I think I'll get Precedence as well. While testing the demo I heard the same issues as Piet (some mono compatibilty issues, but mainly that a distance of 100 isn't as distant as I'd like it to be), but overall it's still very promising and the fact that Andrew has been so responsive to problems here makes me very hopeful for the future of this plugin.



Note that when distance is 100% if you follow it with Breeze 2.1, this basically makes the wet/dry mix 100% wet also, so the total phase result is completely different than what is coming out of Precedence, and the Precedence phase response is basically immaterial. And in general it becomes less and less material as Distance is larger, as when distance is larger we expect more of the energy balance to be coming form the reverb.

But anyway, I have been able to create a more perfectly mono compatible mode in the past couple weeks and we will add this as an option. As and option, not forced bc as noted several times above, phase differences are accurate to the way things work in the real physical world. So if you want a perfect result in stereo or multi-channel, there SHOULD actually be phase/timing differences between channels. But you can not collapse signals with time delay to mono without some degree of cancelation from filter effects. Filters basically ARE delays. Delays ARE filters. So binaural, HRTF, hass, etc won't ever collapse 100% perfectly in the mathematical sense. Reports of other very expensive things being mono compatible, are basically true for their "stereo modes" which seem basically to be gain panning with some additional high frequency loss. It is not true for their Binaural modes. And various stereo widening tools do not usually include panning, and those that do are not perfect when using said panning either. 

However, I have found a bit of a magic trick to further improve matters without throwing away all the benefits of time/phase difference between channels. It'll be in all your hands soon. And we have made some other REALLY COOL developments too. Thanks for pushing us to make Precedence even better!


----------



## Andrew Souter

lucor said:


> BTW Andrew: I love your idea of having Precedence as a 'module' in Breeze 2, so that it's possible to do everything from within the same plugin. Please make it happen!



We decided against this, as we have been able to establish "inter-plug-in communication". This is more robust in the big picture of things. Changing things in the Precedence GUI can now change settings in Breeze 2 and vice versa! It is working already. We may make some form of beta version of this new feature available in the next week or two for those who would like to try it and provide feedback.

and this lead to other developments that are possible now that we can do this sort of thing. So there is a lot of very cool stuff we can do now that we never quite imagined was possible previously. We are working on that now and hope to have a final release of all this stuff in January, with perhaps some development builds along the way to try if anyway wants to. You all will be quite pleased I am sure.

The only thing you may still wish for is smooth automation for motion FX, but that won't happen in this timeframe as it will make CPU usage go up by 4x or more, and we don't envision Precedence to be a motion FX tool. We envision it to be a many-instance positioning tool. We expect it to replace track panners on all you tracks for sessions with 100 tracks etc. We may make a motion FX tool at some point with doppler etc for the more limited times where you might need such a thing, and can afford high CPU for a limited number of instances.

And of course the 1.0.0 is perfectly stable and already in use by tons of people and can be used while we work on these various additional features for the rest of the year. I'll post some videos etc as things progress.

thanks guys,


----------



## Andrew Souter

of course I forgot to mention:

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!


----------



## gjelul

Andrew Souter said:


> Basically at the moment, you simply turn on the "link" button in Breeze, and then simply enter the same values for
> 
> * Precedence Distance
> * Breeze Mix/Balance
> 
> Here is something I posted in another forum:
> 
> 
> 
> As of today, we actually have automatic P-Link working in our internal builds and it is quite cool indeed! We will be testing this more over the next week or two to be sure it is robust.
> 
> You guys also got me obsessed with the mono-compatiblity topic, so I have been exploring that deeply.
> 
> As both of these topics may result in required changes to documentation, I did not complete/post the manual yet as I want to document the final state. But honestly the theory of "how and why" is well explained on the web listing already, and the quick notes do give the general explanation for the small number of parameters on the GUI.




Since you're waiting for all to clear and then produce a manual, is it possible to do a walkthrough for Precedence + Breeze showing what can be done with what we have today??

I own both and would really appreciate seeing something in action, how you use it and so on.

Thanks.


----------



## Andrew Souter

Sure, of course. What specifically is not clear so far?


----------



## Cinebient

An example for setting 6 arps into the same space but give it that 3D touch in sound.
At least for me Precedence with Breeze 2 works really great.


----------



## WindcryMusic

Andrew Souter said:


> Sure, of course. What specifically is not clear so far?



I'd like that too. I haven't yet grasped how to "link" Precedence and Breeze ... the limited documentation thus far seems to talk about matching up certain settings on the two, but it isn't at all clear to me. I also don't know if said "linking" would work if there was a plugin (e.g., a channel strip) in between Precedence and Breeze in the chain.


----------



## Andrew Souter

WindcryMusic said:


> I'd like that too. I haven't yet grasped how to "link" Precedence and Breeze ... the limited documentation thus far seems to talk about matching up certain settings on the two, but it isn't at all clear to me. I also don't know if said "linking" would work if there was a plugin (e.g., a channel strip) in between Precedence and Breeze in the chain.



The P-Link implementation in 1.0.0 was only temporary to demonstrate the concept, while we worked on establishing a more robust and automatic solution. We do now have this robust and automatic solution working now already and are stress testing it now, as mentioned here in the "Precedence Developments" section:

https://2caudio.com/promo/2018holiday/

In the current version you simply need to:

1) Enable the "P-Link" button in Breeze. (looks like a chain "link", below Pre-Delay)
2) Manually type in the same value for Breeze Mix and Precedence Distance 

if you want to change position, the Breeze Mix value should change also. Obviously this manual entry and matching of parameters is sub-optimal in terms of usability, tedious, and not very fun. We had in mind since the very beginning to make the link automatic. We just needed a little extra time to make it happen (as mentioned in the original release notes/web/email).

In the next version (free update) you simply need to turn on the link, and then it stays linked and if you change Position in Precedence, this will automatically change things in Breeze as well -- you do not even need to open the Breeze GUI. You will see shortly. It is MUCH more user-friendly and was the original goal. We have bee able to achieve it. Now we are enhancing it in other ways as well... 

We want to spend December on various other enhancements and release the updated version in January. I'll post some videos along the way.


----------



## Nathanael Iversen

Andrew Souter said:


> In the next version (free update) you simply need to turn on the link, and then it stays linked and if you change Position in Precedence, this will automatically change things in Breeze as well -- you do not even need to open the Breeze GUI. You will see shortly. It is MUCH more user-friendly and was the original goal. We have bee able to achieve it. Now we are enhancing it in other ways as well...
> 
> We want to spend December on various other enhancements and release the updated version in January. I'll post some videos along the way.


Nice! I just used it on a project where I needed to put Sample Modelling Brass (totally dry) into Teldex to mix with Berlin Strings and Winds. I'll be glad for eliminating the back and forth across a half dozen instances. I like it. I think you mentioned future compatibility with B2, which would be very cool. I use B2 as a main reverb, and find it very nice. This is definitely better than VSS. I haven't splashed $1,800 for SPAT yet, so I can't compare to that!


----------



## axb312

hi @Andrew Souter - how about linking across tracks so that volume levels are also kept in check to ensure the depth perception?


----------



## Andrew Souter

yes these sort of things are possible now and these are the sort of the topics we are looking into now.


----------



## Akarin

As someone struggling with blending different libraries together, how does this work with wet libs? Can't it reposition things like Spitfire or OT libraries?


----------



## Andrew Souter

Akarin said:


> As someone struggling with blending different libraries together, how does this work with wet libs? Can't it reposition things like Spitfire or OT libraries?



Regarding lateral "azimuth" positioning, yes, it can absolutely achieve that. Simply use the mono-input mode (single-circle button, directly to the left of the input gain). This will discard one channel, and send the other to both L and R inputs, so that there are no conflicting interaural cues. Precedence will add its own cues, effectively changing the lateral positioning. 

You can also try the mid-side collapse/expand input mode which enables the Input Width slider. In this case you would want to use low input width values such as 25% to 50% or so most likely. This will reduce position info in the stereo signal so that whatever Precedence adds is more prominent. This can work well on large ensemble sounds such as full string sections where the relationship between the input signal channels is already quite complex. The input signal should have a phase correlation of around 0% for this to work best. If the source sound is a solo instrument that was stereo mic-ed it is better to use the mono-input mode instead of the mid-side input mode, as collapsing a stereo mic-ed signal that is most dry can create phase cancelations.

Regarding distance repositioning, it can not remove existing room ambience or early reflections from sample libraries, so if the sample already has lots of room baked-in, it won't be able to make the sample ultra-close to you perceptually. Precedence could move the source back even further, but would struggle to move it forward in such cases, but that is not usually what you want anyway -- usually we are going for mid-range distance in orchestra positioning, so it's not too much of a problem.


----------



## givemenoughrope

Cinebient said:


> An example for setting 6 arps into the same space but give it that 3D touch in sound.
> At least for me Precedence with Breeze 2 works really great.




This is cool. Curious what synths you used here.


----------



## jtnyc

Cinebient said:


> An example for setting 6 arps into the same space but give it that 3D touch in sound.
> At least for me Precedence with Breeze 2 works really great.




Great track! Great sounds! Nice -)


----------



## axb312

Andrew Souter said:


> yes these sort of things are possible now and these are the sort of the topics we are looking into now.



Awesome. I look forward to a way to test/ demo this, hopefully before the intro pricing ends...


----------



## Cinebient

givemenoughrope said:


> This is cool. Curious what synths you used here.


Sorry for the late answer...i used P900 here (dry...beside the included BBD Delay) then just added Precedence and Breeze 2.1 inserts on each instance of course.


----------



## Cinebient

Another example with the same arp as the previous but only 3 Layers and slightly different settings with Precedence and Breeze 2.1 Then a 2 layered pad sound with same settings and for each part different angles in Precedence again. I really like how things Breeze ähh i mean breath  with Precedence and Breeze 2:


----------



## Cinebient

Another test drive with a dry vivid cello and violin.
First dry, then Precedence and Breeze 2 added (each got its own insert of course here with violin 30 degrees angle to the left and the cello 30 to the right, followed by the same Breeze 2 preset).
Then i just added a B2 on top (via a stacked track where the violin and cello are the child tracks with the same settings).


----------



## Andrew Souter

Very nice example! 

We're still working away on the updates, and made good progress on some of the other goals this past week...


----------



## jamwerks

Have been waiting for the updates here ! Finally decided to compare the "Precedence-Breeze 2" combo on my complete VSL woodwinds template against MIRx Teldex. Must say I vastly prefer what "P-BZ2" does. Sounds lovely & very musical!


----------



## jamwerks

Every different input source will have different needs (duh! but so true with this combo). After 5 hours of trial and error, I came up with the following setup for VSL WW's:

-Sounded best when preceded by an eq, -4db @5k Q=1

Several different BZ2 presets sounded excellent, I wanted a basic "WW soloists in a med sized scoring stage" sound. Presets like "Front row seats" & "Natural Chamber" gave nice & needed er's. Ended up going with "European Hall", "Balance" set at 50 (same for "Distance" in Precedence). Left reverb time at "1.39".

Probably could have gotten 1 preset to do all, but then put a send on that to my main overall WW verb. Gives my 10+year old VSL WW's new life! In Precedence I used mono in, distance "50", width "20".

All (40) VEP returns of each soloist (or me-made combos) feed directly into 1 group track with BZ2 on it.

This combo sounds great on other things like Century Strings, using the "A Tranquil Place" preset, Balence & Distance at "40".


----------



## Garlu

jamwerks said:


> Every different input source will have different needs (duh! but so true with this combo). After 5 hours of trial and error, I came up with the following setup for VSL WW's:
> 
> -Sounded best when preceded by an eq, -4db @5k Q=1
> 
> Several different BZ2 presets sounded excellent, I wanted a basic "WW soloists in a med sized scoring stage" sound. Presets like "Front row seats" & "Natural Chamber" gave nice & needed er's. Ended up going with "European Hall", "Balance" set at 50 (same for "Distance" in Precedence). Left reverb time at "1.39".
> 
> Probably could have gotten 1 preset to do all, but then put a send on that to my main overall WW verb. Gives my 10+year old VSL WW's new life! In Precedence I used mono in, distance "50", width "20".
> 
> All (40) VEP returns of each soloist (or me-made combos) feed directly into 1 group track with BZ2 on it.
> 
> This combo sounds great on other things like Century Strings, using the "A Tranquil Place" preset, Balence & Distance at "40".


@jamwerks: would you mind sharing an audio example of this? Really interested to hear that combo! I already have breeze 2, so, considering also getting Precedence.
Thanks!


----------



## Emmanuel Rousseau

The "European Hall" is one of my go-to presets in Breeze2  Have to retry the others you mentionned !


----------



## jamwerks

Garlu said:


> @jamwerks: would you mind sharing an audio example of this? Really interested to hear that combo! I already have breeze 2, so, considering also getting Precedence.
> Thanks!


yeah I'll post some comparisons by next weekend.

European Hall seems to have the right pattern of er's for the Silent Stage samples.


----------



## jamwerks

Here's an short example with some VSL Woodwinds. It's just the wind parts where ther's more going on…

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/vsl-precedence-mp3.18786/][/AUDIOPLUS]


----------



## VinRice

There's an offer price of $99 but it keeps trying to charge me $149. Is the offer period over?


----------



## Garlu

jamwerks said:


> Here's an short example with some VSL Woodwinds. It's just the wind parts where ther's more going on…
> 
> [AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/vsl-precedence-mp3.18786/][/AUDIOPLUS]


This is great!!!! Thanks for posting, @jamwerks!!

How are you using it? inserting per instrument? on an AUX sends? 
Is it a preset or did you have to tweak it a lot to get that result? 

Thanks again!


----------



## jamwerks

I did some more tweaks since that example that I like even better. I'll post tomorrow some exact settings. Must say this is sounding better to me than MIRx Teldex.
I have about 40 returns from VEP that each have an eq, then Precedence. The out's of those feed a group track where I have one instance of Breeze 2. Quite simple!


----------



## Living Fossil

VinRice said:


> There's an offer price of $99 but it keeps trying to charge me $149. Is the offer period over?



I guess the intro period ended quite a while ago.
But honestly, once you have this plug in, you simply use it in each project.


----------



## VinRice

Living Fossil said:


> I guess the intro period ended quite a while ago.
> But honestly, once you have this plug in, you simply use it in each project.



I thought it probably was, but it's still showing on parts of the website. Thanks.


----------



## VinRice

VinRice said:


> I thought it probably was, but it's still showing on parts of the website. Thanks.



$99 offer price is working again...


----------



## axb312

@Andrew Souter - Are there any plans to integrate some kind of de-verber or an algorithm to gauge how much room sound a sample/ sound already has and apply reverb accordingly?


----------



## Living Fossil

VinRice said:


> I thought it probably was, but it's still showing on parts of the website. Thanks.



Just saw i mixed it up with the $75 intro price...sorry...


----------



## Andrew Souter

Living Fossil said:


> Just saw i mixed it up with the $75 intro price...sorry...



It is still possible to order at $99.95 as we finish all the extra stuff we have been working on. We have evolved it into something more comprehensive than the initial release and/or even the afformentioned automatic linking between Precedence and Breeze/verbs (which we have accomplished, but we did not stop there). We have done quite a lot of extra work on this and are quite excited to show it to you shortly. We think you will be very pleased.


----------



## Andrew Souter

axb312 said:


> @Andrew Souter - Are there any plans to integrate some kind of de-verber or an algorithm to gauge how much room sound a sample/ sound already has and apply reverb accordingly?



Honestly reverb removal is not something I or Denis have ever thought about or studied. It’s not on the immediate radar for sure. Can’t ever predict too far into the future, and you raise an interesting idea, but there would be a bit a leaning curve for us to get deep into the RnD of such things. Probably we would like to finish the other various things on our plate first. 

You can of course get rid of lateral positioning info in the source by using the mono input mode and feeding both chanels with the same source chanel. This tends to reduce the perception of any existing room/er/verb sound that may be baked into sample libraries as a happy side effect.


----------



## axb312

Andrew Souter said:


> It is still possible to order at $99.95 as we finish all the extra stuff we have been working on. We have evolved it into something more comprehensive than the initial release and/or even the afformentioned automatic linking between Precedence and Breeze/verbs (which we have accomplished, but we did not stop there). We have done quite a lot of extra work on this and are quite excited to show it to you shortly. We think you will be very pleased.



Is there a discount code for breeze 2 owners...?


----------



## axb312

Andrew Souter said:


> Honestly reverb removal is not something I or Denis have ever thought about or studied. It’s not on the immediate radar for sure. Can’t ever predict too far into the future, and you raise an interesting idea, but there would be a bit a leaning curve for us to get deep into the RnD of such things. Probably we would like to finish the other various things on our plate first.
> 
> You can of course get rid of lateral positioning info in the source by using the mono input mode and feeding both chanels with the same source chanel. This tends to reduce the perception of any existing room/er/verb sound that may be baked into sample libraries as a happy side effect.



I think this would be important/ essential to make this the ultimate tool for orchestral positioning...


----------



## kgdrum

axb312 said:


> Is there a discount code for breeze 2 owners...?





+ 1.


----------



## JPComposer

If using multiple instances of Precedence/Breeze2 as channel inserts, is there any way to change the Breeze reverb preset in all instances of Breeze? It's a bit tedious having to go through and change each one separately when experimenting with different stage sounds.


----------



## Andrew Souter

Not at the moment, but these are the sort of topics that have been taking us extra time with this update. You will be pleased shortly I think.


----------



## DANIELE

I found this thread only now. What about CPU performances of breeze in insert on a massive orchestral template?



Andrew Souter said:


> Not at the moment, but these are the sort of topics that have been taking us extra time with this update. You will be pleased shortly I think.



...and what about this?


----------



## Andrew Souter

DANIELE said:


> I found this thread only now. What about CPU performances of breeze in insert on a massive orchestral template?



CPU usage is only consumed while there is active input to Precedence and Breeze. Only a tiny amount of CPU usage is used to "listen for an incoming signal" when there is no signal. So if you have a template with 800 instruments and you load 800 instances of P and B, but only 5 tracks play simultaneously, your CPU usage will be roughtly 5/800, i.e. less than 1%, of what you might expect.



DANIELE said:


> ...and what about this?




Yes, that is done, we call it Global Broadcast. 

We have had an active "public customer beta" for Precedence 1.5 and Breeze 2.5 for the last 6 weeks or so. If you own either, or buy them now, these versions are already available to try now. We will do the official launch this month (with demo versions of course). There was one pesky little bug that has been playing "hard to get" that we are attempting to squash right now, and then we are release ready!

And I am making demos and videos of the full multi-instance workflow and sonic results.

There is dicsussion of this stuff in the "summer promo" thread someone else started. Check that for more info. But let's move the general discusion of Precedence to this thread now.


----------



## Andrew Souter

DANIELE said:


> I didn't know about Precedence, since I already have B2 Reverb I'm asking: do the two plugins "talk" to each other?



No yet, but we are working on that.  All our current and future verbs will be "Precedence Aware". Aware indicates you CAN use them linked with Precedence, but it is not forced. You can contiue to use them shared on sends if you prefer -- or various hybrid workflows. The Precedence manual discusses. 4 Potential Workflows in detail.



DANIELE said:


> Since VSS2 doesn't have an embedded reverb I'm looking to a similar plugin that has everything inside. SPAT is to complex and require an "out of mind" routing (at least with Reaper) plus using external applications plus it is too expensive. MIR PRO is in the middle but it is still costly and I have to study how it works if I want to use it directly in Reaper (because VEP actually doesn't work how I want in it and I have put it apart).



We have "interplug-in communication" between Precedence and other instances of Precednece, between Breeze and other instnaces of Breeze, and between Precedence and Breeze!

We also have:


Multi-Instance Editing
Edit Groups
Global Broadcast
Precedence-Link between P and B

The system is very very powerful and represents the big leap in spatial mixing IMHO. It is also completely self contained within your DAW. The most tedious part of setup is simply changing instance names to match your tracks, but you can just cut/paste track names from your host. Other than that setup is ultra simple and fast!

Global Broadcast is extremely powerful, not only can you switch presets for 100s of instances with one click, but you can also edit single parameters of existing presets and have the changes apply to the entire group. You can use this to make various "macro" transformations. Such as increasing the Gain Loss, or Gain Delta parameters in Predence so you can effecitely increase the "spatail contrast" over an entire existing/established mix for example...

I can run 1000 instances of P and B as pairs on an Intel 18-core 7980xe X-Series i9! This CPU is 2 years old already and a replacement for it is coming next month it is rumored. So we have you covered if you would like to run 800 instances on each to match your template.  There are also 28-Core machines, and even dual 28-core machines for those with really big budgets. If you ask about an 800 track template, I assume you have sustantial resources. For those that don't, 100 instances of both plugs simultaneously is generally easily possible on most recent CPUs. If you are buying a new CPU, consider one with AVX-512 -- we are one of the only companies who have optimized for this and gains are substantial. AVX-2 CPUs are a second choice and still great as well.



DANIELE said:


> So, from what I see, precedence doesn't have embedded reverb too but works well with 2Ca reverb. Do they has some options to configure them together or do I have to works on them separately aswell. Could I embed B2 in precedence?



"Precedence-Link" effectively makes a Precedence-Breeze pair function as a single plug-in more or less. Parameter data is communicated between them and changes in either update both so that the reverb algorithm updates in response to changes in Precedence as well. The reverb engine establishes the "virtual space" and Precedence positions elements anywhere within this space. You can change your space from "rad hall" to "cool church" or whatever for an entire group, while retaining realtive position information!

Linking the plugs in this manner is better than glueing them into one macro product because:


We want Precedence to work with ALL our verbs
We want to enable hybrid workflows
General inter-plugin communcation allows all sorts of other cool future things
We don't want to charge you extra for a fourth verb. we think the three we have cover our basis and instead prefer to ehance their value and build a complete ecosystem around them
Hope it helps!


----------



## DANIELE

Andrew Souter said:


> CPU usage is only consumed while there is active input to Precedence and Breeze. Only a tiny amount of CPU usage is used to "listen for an incoming signal" when there is no signal. So if you have a template with 800 instruments and you load 800 instances of P and B, but only 5 tracks play simultaneously, your CPU usage will be roughtly 5/800, i.e. less than 1%, of what you might expect.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, that is done, we call it Global Broadcast.
> 
> We have had an active "public customer beta" for Precedence 1.5 and Breeze 2.5 for the last 6 weeks or so. If you own either, or buy them now, these versions are already available to try now. We will do the official launch this month (with demo versions of course). There was one pesky little bug that has been playing "hard to get" that we are attempting to squash right now, and then we are release ready!
> 
> And I am making demos and videos of the full multi-instance workflow and sonic results.
> 
> There is dicsussion of this stuff in the "summer promo" thread someone else started. Check that for more info. But let's move the general discusion of Precedence to this thread now.



Thank you Andrew.

I read what you are saying in the manual and I'm very happy you achieved this goal, very useful to manage resources.

I didn't understant if I could use B2 as Breeze ore if I have to buy B2.1 to get the full expected behavior.

Is there some sort of limit for performance in simultaneously usage of the plugins? I.e. with a CPU like mine (look in the signature) how many tracks could I play without dropouts. Consider that I need room for instrument processing and that actually I have a sample rate of 48 kHz and a buffer size of 512 samples (previously I had 256 but because I have to write many automations I had to raise it).

I'm planning to buy a Cascade Lake CPU once it will be out, hoping that it will be good (it will still be X299).

EDIT

You wrote the previous post while I was posting this. 

Well it remains to ask what my actual CPU could do. I don't think I will use this couple on every track. Maybe I will load it on every track but I take everything offline so I will use only "few" of them at a time.

EDIT 2 

I've already read about workflows in the manual. I think I will use the most complete one.
So about B2 I have to wait and I think I should buy Breeze in the meantime.

I hope cascade lake will offer better prices for more cores because I can't buy the top ones, too expensive!!


----------



## Andrew Souter

DANIELE said:


> I didn't understant if I could use B2 as Breeze ore if I have to buy B2.1 to get the full expected behavior.



Breeze 2.5. but ya, as of today, you would order 2.1, and 2.5 would be included.

Breeze 2.0, 2.1, and 2.5 are part of the same upgrade cycle, even though 2.1 and especially 2.5 offered tons of extra develoment. Breeze 1.x -> 2.0 was a paid upgrade. 2.0 -> 2.1 -> 2.5 updates are free.

If we have new versions such as X.y, new X versions are paid upgades, .y versions are free. If it really should be a new X version, but we want to make it free, we call it a X.5 version. 

2.5 is currently in public-customer beta for another week or two, which is why the web site/store does not mention it. We discuss it only in the forums so far, but it is quietly availble in the web store for existing customers alrady for the past 6 weeks or so.



DANIELE said:


> Is there some sort of limit for performance in simultaneously usage of the plugins? I.e. with a CPU like mine (look in the signature) how many tracks could I play without dropouts. Consider that I need room for instrument processing and that actually I have a sample rate of 48 kHz and a buffer size of 512 samples (previously I had 256 but because I have to write many automations I had to raise it).



You have a great CPU! Our software loves the entire Intel X-Series! Of course there is a limit for every CPU, but yours should be quite high. I'd guess around 500 instances on audio tracks. On instruments, it depends some on the instrument of course.



DANIELE said:


> I'm planning to buy a Cascade Lake CPU once it will be out, hoping that it will be good (it will still be X299).



Even better!


----------



## JEPA

I want to say, after one or two months with only Precedence (without Breeze2) this plugin has helped me to clean dense mixes. Applause and thanks a lot for this awesome plugin!


----------



## DANIELE

While I'm experimenting with this and waiting for the new versions to came out of the beta stage a new question cames to my mind.

I'm thinking of using Precedence groups function to separate sections of my orchestral template (strings, woodwinds, etc....), just to have a more clean visualization of them. But I want to put them all in the same space, so could I make different groups in precedence and link them to the same Breeze hall (so I can edit this hall in broadcast mode)?


----------



## Andrew Souter

DANIELE said:


> While I'm experimenting with this and waiting for the new versions to came out of the beta stage a new question cames to my mind.
> 
> I'm thinking of using Precedence groups function to separate sections of my orchestral template (strings, woodwinds, etc....), just to have a more clean visualization of them. But I want to put them all in the same space, so could I make different groups in precedence and link them to the same Breeze hall (so I can edit this hall in broadcast mode)?



Technically speaking linked instances of Precedence and Breeze do not need to be on the same track. Linking is establised only by "instance name match". So it is technically possible to have have a group of several instruments such as all your woodwinds, where each woodwind has a Precedence instnace, but not a Breeze instnace. These could be fed into a woodwind group track. Breeze could inserted on the Woodwind group track. Precedence Link could be used between ONE of the woodwinds and the breeze instnace , perhaps the first in the group so that you remember which one is linked. Or you could just not use Precedence Link, and instead set distance and angle manually in Breeze so some values similar to the average of those used in the various group members.

The woodwind group, could still be part of a Breeze Eidt Group. And Let's assume you did the same with strings, brass, etc. You can still use Global Broadcast to change the presets/parameters on ALL the Breeze instnaces. No problem.

I assume the goal here is to save CPU usage bc you'd have fewer Breeze instnaces? I have to wonder if it's really necessary though? Probably it is best to keep 1:1 Precedence to Breeze linked pairs direct on the tracks. It's arguably more conceptually clear, and really it should not take tons of CPU. And of course it is the optimal solution in terms of realism.

Where this sort of thing might make more sense is if you have many different instruments that represent the same musical part. If you have 10 different instruments that represenent Oboe, or Violin 1, then perhaps you might like to have a Violin 1 Group track where all violin parts go into the group. Probably you should have set things up this way already so it is easy to bounce the Oboe, or Violin stem etc. Breeze could be on the group. Most likely Precedence could also just be on the group before Breeze. (unless you are dealing with drastically different sounding libraries that you are trying to make sound like they are the same instrument in the smae position). 

I do personally think things will remain most conceptually clear if you keep linked instnaces on the same track (audio, instrument, or group), even though it is not technically necessary. But I don't know perfectly what kind of weird and wonderful monster templates you guys have out there yet, and maybe there are workflow variations I have not thought of yet. It's certainly possible, and having P and B seperate allows and encourages experimentation.


----------



## DANIELE

Thank you Andrew for the answer but I think you misunderstood me. Maybe because I still cannot write well in english.

What I meant is not to have few instances of B and many of P. I'd like to try the 1:1 approach, so P & B together on every tracks.

I'd like to know if Precedence groups reflect straight to Breeze. I could put all my instruments in group 1 in Precedence for example, and this is the most direct approach because all the Precedence instances are linked to the same Breeze hall (if you do a broadcast configuration).

But if I would like to do the same thing splitting instrument groups in P. groups, could I do a broadcast configuration of many Breeze groups? Breeze groups are linked to Precedence groups or could I put P. groups in one Breeze group?

I don't know if you understand what I mean.


----------



## Guffy

All i know is that precedence is amazing and you should definitely get it.


----------



## Andrew Souter

I see. Yes, you can make all Strings part of Group 1 in both P and B, and make all Woodwinds part of Group 2 in both, and all Brass part of Group 3 etc.

Yes, that is possible. You can then use Broadcast to change P or B properties for only all members of the strings or all members of woodwinds etc. Yes that is possible.

Inside Precedence (and Breeze) you will only see members of the current group in the Position display and the instance list, and "Selection Sync" between Precedence and Breeze will only work within a single group. So you will be able to see and edit all Strings members from a single shared GUI, but if you want to see and edit woodwinds, you will to close the GUIs for P and B from the strings group and open the P and B GUIs from any track in the Woodwinds group for example.

Also if you are obeying normal orchestral seating usually all the woodwinds etc are in a somewhat small region compared to the whole stage. Same for the other groups. So to some extent, I am not sure if you really gain anything by making seperate groups for each instruemnt section. (i.e. if the goal is just gui ergnomics to see group members easily it might not help bc all woodwinds are probably going to be in a small region anyway.) For purely orchestral work, you might just like to have one "orchestra" group that shows everything in the whole orchestra. And if the work is some modern hybrid style, perhaps you also have a "synth group" and an "FX group" and whatever else.


----------



## Andrew Souter

Andrew Souter said:


> CPU usage is only consumed while there is active input to Precedence and Breeze. Only a tiny amount of CPU usage is used to "listen for an incoming signal" when there is no signal.



btw, the way this works it to check the input for signal levels above some very small threshold value. If some instrument or FX plug before our plugs is creatig signal always for some reason, such as some noisy amp sim, or something is generating dither at a semi high level, our logic might see this as a signal that it should process and therefore not disable the dsp. this is maybe somehting for us to look into if CPU usage is higher than expected simply when loading P and B on tracks that seem not to be generating sound at the moment.

Also most hosts these days will use more CPU when a track is record enabled or being monitored, including instrument tracks that have MIDI record/monitor enabled.


----------



## DANIELE

Guffy said:


> All i know is that precedence is amazing and you should definitely get it.



I did it. 



Andrew Souter said:


> I see. Yes, you can make all Strings part of Group 1 in both P and B, and make all Woodwinds part of Group 2 in both, and all Brass part of Group 3 etc.
> 
> Yes, that is possible. You can then use Broadcast to change P or B properties for only all members of the strings or all members of woodwinds etc. Yes that is possible.
> 
> Inside Precedence (and Breeze) you will only see members of the current group in the Position display and the instance list, and "Selection Sync" between Precedence and Breeze will only work within a single group. So you will be able to see and edit all Strings members from a single shared GUI, but if you want to see and edit woodwinds, you will to close the GUIs for P and B from the strings group and open the P and B GUIs from any track in the Woodwinds group for example.
> 
> Also if you are obeying normal orchestral seating usually all the woodwinds etc are in a somewhat small region compared to the whole stage. Same for the other groups. So to some extent, I am not sure if you really gain anything by making seperate groups for each instruemnt section. (i.e. if the goal is just gui ergnomics to see group members easily it might not help bc all woodwinds are probably going to be in a small region anyway.) For purely orchestral work, you might just like to have one "orchestra" group that shows everything in the whole orchestra. And if the work is some modern hybrid style, perhaps you also have a "synth group" and an "FX group" and whatever else.



Ok thank you. And could an hybrid approach be possible? I mean separate instruments in groups in Precedence but taking all together in only one group in Breeze?

I think I'll do as you say anyway, I'll go for a global orchestra group and I will build different groups for Synths, FX etc...


----------



## Andrew Souter

DANIELE said:


> Ok thank you. And could an hybrid approach be possible? I mean separate instruments in groups in Precedence but taking all together in only one group in Breeze?



It's possible yes, but "Selection Sync" between Precedence and Breeze depend on things being in the same group. If you don't care too much about Selection Sync, then it's no problem. Personally I find Selection Sync quite convenient.


----------



## DANIELE

Andrew Souter said:


> It's possible yes, but "Selection Sync" between Precedence and Breeze depend on things being in the same group. If you don't care too much about Selection Sync, then it's no problem. Personally I find Selection Sync quite convenient.



Oh ok, understood, I will go for a single group then!


----------



## Emmanuel Rousseau

Long time Breeze 1&2 user here, and I got Precedence when it came out. I'm currently in the process of updating the orchestral template with the B & P combo. Groups & Global Broadcast make the whole thing very easy to setup and that's a real pleasure to work with. Congrats Andrew for a fantastic step forward.


----------



## DANIELE

I'm playing with P & B and I must say they are really good. So, since I have tons of preset for Breeze, is there anyone of you experienced users that has to advice me on what are the best ones for orchestral purposes?

Something little, something medium and something HUGE!!


----------



## Emmanuel Rousseau

DANIELE said:


> I'm playing with P & B and I must say they are really good. So, since I have tons of preset for Breeze, is there anyone of you experienced users that has to advice me on what are the best ones for orchestral purposes?
> 
> Something little, something medium and something HUGE!!



My default Hall preset is the "European Hall", I love this one. It has everything I like 
Plenty of good stuff in the Chamber category as well, but I don't remember the names.


----------



## DANIELE

whitewasteland said:


> My default Hall preset is the "European Hall", I love this one. It has everything I like
> Plenty of good stuff in the Chamber category as well, but I don't remember the names.



Thank you, I'll do some tests with them.


----------



## averystemmler

DANIELE said:


> Thank you, I'll do some tests with them.



For libraries with some baked in ambience, I've found anything with "Sparse" in the name to be a good starting point.

I'm not usually one to advocate preset packs, but 2C's are very useful. They're a masterclass on all the things you can do with their products. I'd highly recommend Breeze's, and they're cheap on the current sale!


----------



## DANIELE

averystemmler said:


> For libraries with some baked in ambience, I've found anything with "Sparse" in the name to be a good starting point.
> 
> I'm not usually one to advocate preset packs, but 2C's are very useful. They're a masterclass on all the things you can do with their products. I'd highly recommend Breeze's, and they're cheap on the current sale!



Thank you, I will check it out. I already owned all the expansions for Breeze as I did for B2.


----------



## Andrew Souter

Hi Guys,

We have posted the release candidates for Breeze 2.5 and Precedence 1.5. Existing customers can find them here:

https://www.designersound.com/mydownloads
Changes since the last version:


 Vastly less memory usage when using multiple/many instances.

Fixes for any/all remaining known issues with host stability in large, complex host sessions using many instances. We seem to be rock solid now in terms of stability for any size session even massive scoring projects with hundreds of instances. (This was the majority of the time spent -- there were one or two real head scratchers here the consumed lots of time!).

Increased custom menu sizes.

Correction to a minor "sub-optimal dsp design aspect" of Breeze which previously resulted in slightly more "mud" than is ideal in extreme modulation circumstances.

Additional performance gains of 15-20% on some CPUs.

There are no known issues remaining. This will be the official release version unless we hear about something we are not aware of within the next few days.


----------



## Living Fossil

Hi @Andrew Souter , i'm quite for a while using & exploring the Breeze2/Precedence combo (and i have to say, i really, really like that combo...).
So far, i haven't made the update to vs. 2.5/1.5 yet, but still i have some questions that you may answer:

- I have used the combo on mixing lots of different libraries that come with completely different levels of baked in reverbs [to name a few: VSL - the bone dry version - , Spitfire Symphonic Strings, Audio Bro libraries (LASS & Modern Brass), and some 8dio libraries (Cage & Century Brass, Adagietto strings) etc. etc. ]
While i use mix lock, in my experience the results are sometimes better if there is some deviation between distance values (in Precedence) and mix/balance values (in Breeze).

Is there the possibility in vs. 1.5 to use offsets, which would allow to work from within one instance?

And i think you've mentioned something like a "master view/instance" that would offer the possibility to change programs in all instances at once. When using it, is it possible to exclude some instances?


----------



## Andrew Souter

Living Fossil said:


> Hi @Andrew Souter , i'm quite for a while using & exploring the Breeze2/Precedence combo (and i have to say, i really, really like that combo...).
> So far, i haven't made the update to vs. 2.5/1.5 yet, but still i have some questions that you may answer:
> 
> - I have used the combo on mixing lots of different libraries that come with completely different levels of baked in reverbs [to name a few: VSL - the bone dry version - , Spitfire Symphonic Strings, Audio Bro libraries (LASS & Modern Brass), and some 8dio libraries (Cage & Century Brass, Adagietto strings) etc. etc. ]
> While i use mix lock, in my experience the results are sometimes better if there is some deviation between distance values (in Precedence) and mix/balance values (in Breeze).
> 
> Is there the possibility in vs. 1.5 to use offsets, which would allow to work from within one instance?
> 
> And i think you've mentioned something like a "master view/instance" that would offer the possibility to change programs in all instances at once. When using it, is it possible to exclude some instances?




Yes, you have the ability to adjust three things to customzie the behavior as needed if desired:

1) There is a parameter called "Pre-Delay Adjust". This will adjust the exact mapping of Distance to Pre-Delay.

2) There is a parameter called "Direct-Reflected Adjust". This will adjust the exact mapping of Distance to wet/dry early/late energy balance.

3) When using the Link Mode in Breeze, the Gain slider (which typically remains unused and just set to 0.0dB in the normal mode and when using on sends) changes from being an Input/Global Gain, to being a Wet/Tail-Only Gain. Thus increasing/drecreasing its value can adjust have a net effect on the total wet/dry ratio.

Of course you can change all of these using Global Broadcast to establish some set of rules for your current mix en masse. Then you can distable Globtal Broadcast and you can make any per track adjustments that you might need.

Precedence also has various ways to change its own behavior based on distance.

I've also supplied 12 new exmaple presets for using P and B together which you can use as a starting point (and in many cases an ending point.  )

now that we have everything completely bug free AFAIK, we will move on to making some demo videos etc. to help explain further.


----------



## Living Fossil

Thanks for the fast answer! That sounds great...



Andrew Souter said:


> now that we have everything completely bug free AFAIK, we will move on to making some demo videos etc. to help explain further.



I'm eagerly looking forward to watch these videos...


----------



## rrichard63

Andrew Souter said:


> re-peat said:
> 
> 
> 
> Any parameter change causes disturbing degrees of "calculation crackling", which makes the automation of these parameters — something I consider quite important in a spatialization plugin — a complete impossibility.
> 
> 
> 
> We think of Precedence as a positioning tool more than a special fx for Doppler etc. internal modulation establishes some motion, but it is generally subtle. Think of it as something like the subtle motion of an instrument performer as he/she performs. They don’t usually get up and run around the orchestra. Perhaps in the future we would consider some derivation that is designed for automated motion fx. It will not be as light on the cpu as it is now though.
Click to expand...

For me, the "calculation crackling issue" is not primarily about motion fx. It's primarily about the process of positioning instruments on the sound stage. For traditional orchestra compositions, this isn't an issue, because orchestras are seated in one of several fixed arrangements, and the mix engineer doesn't tinker with positioning very often. But for almost all genres of popular music and jazz, the mix engineer has a great deal of latitude. S/he needs to be able to experiment. It's a real workflow killer to have to pause playback every time you want to try an instrument in a different position. That's especially true early in the mixing process when such changes are frequent.

Given Precedence's design, it might not be possible to do much about this. But I think it's an important problem.


----------



## Andrew Souter

We hear you. I wouldn't say it's completely impossible, simply, that is complicates matters tremendously and will increase CPU-usage tremedously as well. Particulalrly if you wish to have a linked instance of Breeze/verb automate smoothly in response to position as well. I think these topics are outside the scope of the current versions. Perhaps for a 2.x version of Precedence at some point when everyone has 100-core CPUs etc.

Here's the info from the manual. * Check out the last paragraph for good workarounds for the current method.*

NOTE: Precedence is designed primarily as a positioning tool not a motion special-FX tool.

Precedence is primarily for virtual stage positioning where we expect many lightweight instances to be used in parallel as a replacement for traditional track panners and imaging tools. It is expected that many instances will run in parallel in your DAW, and Precedence offers multi-instance editing to facilitate such goals. In large scoring templates and other similar projects the expected instance count may be well over 100 simultaneous instances, and therefore CPU-usage must remain as minimal as possible. Parameter edits may also affect more than one instance when using Broadcast features. Furthermore, Precedence may be linked to 2CAudio reverb engines, to achieve next-generation depth positioning within virtual acoustic environments. In such usage cases, changing Angle or Distance values not only updates Precedence’s DSP, but also fully updates the reverb engine DSP in a synchronized manner.

Do to all of the above, smooth modulation and motion are limited to the internal modulation process at the moment. Precedence is not currently designed for smooth/continuous parameter automation from the DAW. We may attempt to make a fully automatable motion FX tool at some point, but it will likely require a lot more CPU resources, and potentially significant design changes. A dedicated special-FX tool dedicated to such goals may make the most sense in our opinion. These topics are our on radar, and we are certainly aware of the desire to automate position in some cases.

Within the current design, most parameters in Precedence and 2CAudio reverb engines are non-continuous in nature and simply cannot automate smoothly from user input because they change in discrete manners. This is true of the Distance and Angle parameters, and therefore when the Position Node is updated in Precedence by manually dragging it to a new location, simultaneously updating the Distance and Angle parameter values, a series of discrete updates will occur. Precedence will perform these updates as quickly as your CPU allows, creating many such updates per second. Each update will result in a small click as various algorithm internals are updated and memory objects are cleared. If Precedence is linked to Breeze 2 or our other reverb engines, the linked reverb plug-in will also undergo a similar update process. On fast computers, the update rate may be so fast that the resulting rapid generation of small update clicks may sound like “stuttering” or "buffer noise".

In short, at the moment, smooth automation of Angle and Distance is not currently possible for all of the reasons above.

*Tip: There is an alternative to avoid the potential aforementioned "noisy updates": in the Position Display you can click on any free space within in the Position Display and the Position Node will instantly jump to this new location with only one update and only one very minor click. To reiterate: if you drag circle manually Precedence will attempt to make as many updates as possible as quickly as your CPU allows, and each update generates one small click. Therefore if you perform many updates by dragging the circle it will generate many clicks, sounding something like stuttering as explained above. If you find this update noise objectionable, try the single-click method to jump to new positions. It is generally free of unwanted update noise. 

The keyboard commands are also a good option to try. Up/Down/Left-Right arrows. They can be combined with shift to obtain small changes as well.*

Note also, that in a full mix only the track you are updating creates any update noise. This is quite minimal while a full mix is playing in my experience.


----------



## rrichard63

Andrew Souter said:


> There is an alternative to avoid the potential aforementioned "noisy updates": in the Position Display you can click on any free space within in the Position Display and the Position Node will instantly jump to this new location with only one update and only one very minor click.


Thanks! I missed that when I read the manual. It should help me a lot.

EDIT: when I wrote the next paragraph I hadn't discovered "multi-instance editing" yet. What I was looking for is already there, although you have to turn it on. Sorry to divert this thread unnecessarily. Moral: when you RTFM, do it carefully.

Here is a different question about possible future updates: have you given any thought to an interface where all the instruments appear together on the same visual representation of the sound stage? Two products I know of that do this are VSL's Mir Pro and Parallax Audio's Virtual Sound Stage. When testing Precedence, I find that I want all instances open on the screen at the same time, which gets messy very quickly.

Finally, I'd like to add that the Precedence and Breeze manuals are among the very best I have ever seen. I really appreciate the thoroughness and clarity.


----------



## doctoremmet

Andrew Souter said:


> Yes, you have the ability to adjust three things to customzie the behavior as needed if desired:
> 
> 1) There is a parameter called "Pre-Delay Adjust". This will adjust the exact mapping of Distance to Pre-Delay.
> 
> 2) There is a parameter called "Direct-Reflected Adjust". This will adjust the exact mapping of Distance to wet/dry early/late energy balance.
> 
> 3) When using the Link Mode in Breeze, the Gain slider (which typically remains unused and just set to 0.0dB in the normal mode and when using on sends) changes from being an Input/Global Gain, to being a Wet/Tail-Only Gain. Thus increasing/drecreasing its value can adjust have a net effect on the total wet/dry ratio.
> 
> Of course you can change all of these using Global Broadcast to establish some set of rules for your current mix en masse. Then you can distable Globtal Broadcast and you can make any per track adjustments that you might need.
> 
> Precedence also has various ways to change its own behavior based on distance.
> 
> I've also supplied 12 new exmaple presets for using P and B together which you can use as a starting point (and in many cases an ending point.  )
> 
> now that we have everything completely bug free AFAIK, we will move on to making some demo videos etc. to help explain further.


Hi Andrew, 2caudio team, PBJ users. I have been following this product range with interest from the sidelines for quite some time. In every reverb thread there always seem to be happy Breeze2 users. And Precedence is a tool I have also been eyeing, alongside usual suspects as VSS, Panagement and DearVRPro. For the record: my main / only current tool for ER / sound staging is EAReverb2. Today my interest was rekindled by watching a new reverb shootout video.

So, my question is: it seems to be quiet around these parts and the 2caudio website still talks about “december 2019” deals (as do the ads on this forum). Which is cool, I like sales. But I do hope Andrew and team are doing okay. No updates on further product development objectives, new versions or expanding Precedence with Aether and B2 and stuff like that? The KVR thread seems all but abandoned as well. What’s up guys? Again, first and foremost I hope you’re fine of course!

Is the PBJ deal for $199 still considered to be a good one?


----------



## GNP

I LOVE Precedence. It's meant to be subtle, but if you know how to use it, the difference it makes can be huge.


----------



## JEPA

doctoremmet said:


> Hi Andrew, 2caudio team, PBJ users. I have been following this product range with interest from the sidelines for quite some time. In every reverb thread there always seem to be happy Breeze2 users. And Precedence is a tool I have also been eyeing, alongside usual suspects as VSS, Panagement and DearVRPro. For the record: my main / only current tool for ER / sound staging is EAReverb2. Today my interest was rekindled by watching a new reverb shootout video.
> 
> So, my question is: it seems to be quiet around these parts and the 2caudio website still talks about “december 2019” deals (as do the ads on this forum). Which is cool, I like sales. But I do hope Andrew and team are doing okay. No updates on further product development objectives, new versions or expanding Precedence with Aether and B2 and stuff like that? The KVR thread seems all but abandoned as well. What’s up guys? Again, first and foremost I hope you’re fine of course!
> 
> Is the PBJ deal for $199 still considered to be a good one?


Hello again @doctoremmet ! This bundle is worth the deal! I end using it on every mix. I couldn't recommend it more! But, as you say I am a little concerned because of the silence of the company. In the other thread about issues of Precedence Andrew hasn't post or communicate any more. I have solved my issue due to advice of other forum's members, but it would be nice if someone of 2cAdio shows face...


----------



## doctoremmet

JEPA said:


> Hello again @doctoremmet ! This bundle is worth the deal! I end using it on every mix. I couldn't recommend it more! But, as you say I am a little concerned because of the silence of the company. In the other thread about issues of Precedence Andrew hasn't post or communicate any more. I have solved my issue due to advice of other forum's members, but it would be nice if someone of 2cAdio shows face...


My sentiments exactly... We’ll wait and see. Hope they are doing alright.


----------



## method1

doctoremmet said:


> Hi Andrew, 2caudio team, PBJ users. I have been following this product range with interest from the sidelines for quite some time. In every reverb thread there always seem to be happy Breeze2 users. And Precedence is a tool I have also been eyeing, alongside usual suspects as VSS, Panagement and DearVRPro. For the record: my main / only current tool for ER / sound staging is EAReverb2. Today my interest was rekindled by watching a new reverb shootout video.
> 
> So, my question is: it seems to be quiet around these parts and the 2caudio website still talks about “december 2019” deals (as do the ads on this forum). Which is cool, I like sales. But I do hope Andrew and team are doing okay. No updates on further product development objectives, new versions or expanding Precedence with Aether and B2 and stuff like that? The KVR thread seems all but abandoned as well. What’s up guys? Again, first and foremost I hope you’re fine of course!
> 
> Is the PBJ deal for $199 still considered to be a good one?



I get regular emails from them, the last one was on the 14th of this month for the "end of summer" sale:

https://2caudio.com/promo/2020EndOfSummer/
So I don't think there is anything to worry about regarding 2caudio.
The products have been very stable for me, the PBJ pack is fantastic and I still get lots of use out of B2 & Aether. On the odd occasion that I've needed support, direct emails to the company have been promptly answered.


----------



## doctoremmet

method1 said:


> I get regular emails from them, the last one was on the 14th of this month for the "end of summer" sale:
> 
> https://2caudio.com/promo/2020EndOfSummer/
> So I don't think there is anything to worry about regarding 2caudio.
> The products have been very stable for me, the PBJ pack is fantastic and I still get lots of use out of B2 & Aether. On the odd occasion that I've needed support, direct emails to the company have been promptly answered.


Thanks. This was the positive signal I needed. Somehow, their homepage does not seem active at all. That, and the deafening silence on the fora, had me slightly worried. Apparently, everything is fine! Good to know, thanks for the reassurance.


----------



## Andrew Souter

Hey doctoremmet et al,

Thanks for the concern. We hope everyone here it safe and sound in these crazy times as well. We are perfectly fine. We've just been using this time go deep into the RnD rabbit hole and in our world, this usually means pretty alien mathematics work. I tend to become a bit antisocial at such times because our work requires certain levels of obsessiveness to make perfect.

We usually do a summer promotion around early June, so people tend to hear from us at that time, but to be perfectly honest, in the May-June timeframe I was hoping this pandemic stuff might be better by July-August, so I decided to postpone our summer event by a month or two. In hindsight, the extra month or two didn't seem to help much unfortunately. The net result nonetheless is we waited a bit longer than anticipated, but we did just email everyone:

https://2caudio.com/promo/2020EndOfSummer/
We also just posted a pretty cool interview with some amazing dance music artists/producers/remixers Sultan and Shepard:



2CAudio - VIP Client Story: Sultan And Shepard



I really love their work, and they are awesome guys!

We haven't slowed down. Just working in stealth mode and I perhaps assumed an extra layer of stealth was acceptable since the world had been a bit upside down lately.

We are working on 2.0 versions of Aether, B2, and Kaleidoscope, as well as some new products.

If there were questions about Precedence, Breeze, PBJ that I missed somewhere in another thread, please ask them here. I'll monitor this one and am happy to answer questions!

Thanks for the compliments on PBJ. Glad everyone is liking it!


----------



## doctoremmet

Andrew Souter said:


> Hey doctoremmet et al,
> 
> Thanks for the concern. We hope everyone here it safe and sound in these crazy times as well. We are perfectly fine. We've just been using this time go deep into the RnD rabbit hole and in our world, this usually means pretty alien mathematics work. I tend to become a bit antisocial at such times because our work requires certain levels of obsessiveness to make perfect.
> 
> We usually do a summer promotion around early June, so people tend to hear from us at that time, but to be perfectly honest, in the May-June timeframe I was hoping this pandemic stuff might be better by July-August, so I decided to postpone our summer event by a month or two. In hindsight, the extra month or two didn't seem to help much unfortunately. The net result nonetheless is we waited a bit longer than anticipated, but we did just email everyone:
> 
> https://2caudio.com/promo/2020EndOfSummer/
> We also just posted a pretty cool interview with some amazing dance music artists/producers/remixers Sultan and Shepard:
> 
> 
> 
> 2CAudio - VIP Client Story: Sultan And Shepard
> 
> 
> 
> I really love their work, and they are awesome guys!
> 
> We haven't slowed down. Just working in stealth mode and I perhaps assumed an extra layer of stealth was acceptable since the world had been a bit upside down lately.
> 
> We are working on 2.0 versions of Aether, B2, and Kaleidoscope, as well as some new products.
> 
> If there were questions about Precedence, Breeze, PBJ that I missed somewhere in another thread, please ask them here. I'll monitor this one and am happy to answer questions!
> 
> Thanks for the compliments on PBJ. Glad everyone is liking it!


That is awesome Andrew. As I said yesterday, I was following you here from the sidelines with every intention of getting on the PBJ / 2C train. The silence just meant you were cracking mathematical issues that will make our future mixes sound even better!

Good to hear from you again & can’t wait for more exciting news!


----------



## Andrew Souter

doctoremmet said:


> cracking mathematical issues that will make our future mixes sound even better!



...wrestling with them at least. Sometimes they win.


----------



## Dex

Andrew Souter said:


> Hey doctoremmet et al,
> 
> Thanks for the concern. We hope everyone here it safe and sound in these crazy times as well. We are perfectly fine. We've just been using this time go deep into the RnD rabbit hole and in our world, this usually means pretty alien mathematics work. I tend to become a bit antisocial at such times because our work requires certain levels of obsessiveness to make perfect.
> 
> We usually do a summer promotion around early June, so people tend to hear from us at that time, but to be perfectly honest, in the May-June timeframe I was hoping this pandemic stuff might be better by July-August, so I decided to postpone our summer event by a month or two. In hindsight, the extra month or two didn't seem to help much unfortunately. The net result nonetheless is we waited a bit longer than anticipated, but we did just email everyone:
> 
> https://2caudio.com/promo/2020EndOfSummer/
> We also just posted a pretty cool interview with some amazing dance music artists/producers/remixers Sultan and Shepard:
> 
> 
> 
> 2CAudio - VIP Client Story: Sultan And Shepard
> 
> 
> 
> I really love their work, and they are awesome guys!
> 
> We haven't slowed down. Just working in stealth mode and I perhaps assumed an extra layer of stealth was acceptable since the world had been a bit upside down lately.
> 
> We are working on 2.0 versions of Aether, B2, and Kaleidoscope, as well as some new products.
> 
> If there were questions about Precedence, Breeze, PBJ that I missed somewhere in another thread, please ask them here. I'll monitor this one and am happy to answer questions!
> 
> Thanks for the compliments on PBJ. Glad everyone is liking it!


Thanks for checking in!

I have two questions. I often use Precedence + Breeze with P-link engaged.

1 - Are there plans to have the instrument names in new instances of Precedence and Breeze automatically read from the track name in the DAW instead of "ID 001," "ID 002," etc.? Or at least make this an option?

2 - I often have multiple instances of Breeze in a group with global broadcast on to keep the reverb for the whole session consistent. However, this does not work well when adding new instances of Breeze to the session, even if my default Breeze setting is to load with global broadcast enabled. The new instances do not automatically get the global settings applied. I have to go back into one of the instances of Breeze already in the session and wiggle all of the knobs (or reload a preset) to send the info from each setting to the new instance. Is there a way, or are you working on a way, to keep all settings in all instances of Breeze (other than distance, of course) in sync across the whole DAW session?


----------



## Andrew Souter

Dex said:


> Thanks for checking in!
> 
> I have two questions. I often use Precedence + Breeze with P-link engaged.



Good plan! 



Dex said:


> 1 - Are there plans to have the instrument names in new instances of Precedence and Breeze automatically read from the track name in the DAW instead of "ID 001," "ID 002," etc.? Or at least make this an option?



Yes we would absolutely love to it. The main challenge is that for VST at least this requires VST 3.x and our plugs are still VST 2.x. So we must do the VST 3.x port first, which is admittedly overdue.

Renaming instances (in two places) is a bit of a boner-shrinker (non-offensive technical term ), I know. We would definitely like to read DAW track names directly ASAP.



Dex said:


> 2 - I often have multiple instances of Breeze in a group with global broadcast on to keep the reverb for the whole session consistent. However, this does not work well when adding new instances of Breeze to the session, even if my default Breeze setting is to load with global broadcast enabled. The new instances do not automatically get the global settings applied. I have to go back into one of the instances of Breeze already in the session and wiggle all of the knobs (or reload a preset) to send the info from each setting to the new instance. Is there a way, or are you working on a way, to keep all settings in all instances of Breeze (other than distance, of course) in sync across the whole DAW session?



hmmm. an immediate solution to your challenge would seem to be to either:

1) Enable "Load Last: Yes" pref on the INFO page of the GUI, and make sure the most recent presets tweak you performed is what you want to use, and whatever instead you load should load with these last used settings.

2) Alt/shift/control/command (depending on DAW/OS) the instance you want a copy of in the DAW mixer. This should copy the settings exactly. You should be able to do copy-paste track settings in the mixer, even with coping one track and pasting to many tracks. Cubase Logic and PT can do this for sure.

Regarding "Enforcing Sync", we'd have to think about it more. In general, the current design intentionally allows you to effectively break the "sync" and do "partial sync" by enabling the Broadcast button and changing a single parameter for example. This sets the given parameter the identical value for all instances in the group, but keeps other settings independent within the group. This is quite powerful bc it allows you to first set the entire group to the same preset, and then disable Broadcast and make any desired per-track tweaks you might like. At the moment the way to "resync" the group completely would be to reload the given preset while Global Broadcast is selected. But it is true that if the preset is custom, it may not exist as a saved preset in your presets folder -- it may just be saved in your DAW state.

In fact while we were designing this we debated over the idea of "Sync" vs "Broadcast". "Sync" in technical terms requires some notion of "Group State" that is independent of the states of its members. i.e. if a new member is added to a group it would inherit the Group State. This disallows any per-instance customization though. In the "Broadcast" model, there is no special "Group State". Each instance has its normal instance state -- we simply create a mechanism to change the state of multiple instances simultaneously. This can be easily disabled/enabled/disabled... at will to create hybrid results. It is also less likely to cause host issues since from the host perspective there is nothing particularly unusual.


Maybe what would make sense is to offer some kind of "Rebroadcast State" menu option. This would send the state of the Selected Instance to all other instances of the group. The same as loading a new preset, but in this case the state might not have been an existing preset. It would just be whatever the current settings happen to be in your DAW for the instance you are editing. Would still have to be sure to select the instance that had the state that you wanted to send though. i.e. if you add a new instance with default settings you probably don't want to broadcast that, so you'd load, then select some other instance, then "ReBroadcast". And/or there may be other times you might like to "rebroadcast".

Meanwhile #1 and #2 above should typically solve the issue, and if you just save custom presets often you can always just reload the desired preset while GB is enabled and that will reset/resync the group.

Hope it helps.


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## Dex

Thanks for the response, Andrew! I'm glad that reading track names directly from the DAW is on the roadmap.

Regarding global sync, I definitely understand the usefulness of being able to break the sync for individual instances. I think the best compromise might be a "broadcast state" button, as you've suggested.


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