# Which MIRx should I buy?



## cadenzajon (May 1, 2016)

With the VSL software sale this month, I'm thinking about picking up MIRx. I use EWQL HO with Spaces and recently bought the orchestral & dimensions strings from VSL along with woodwinds last month.

I'm relatively new at this and not sure if I can expect Spaces to do sufficient magic to make my VSL instruments blend well alongside my Hollywood Orchestra... my general sense is that MIR would do a better job, and although my budget is too limited to go for MIR Pro, I could pick up MIRx on sale.

But... which one? Is there anyone else who uses these libs alongside each other and can recommend the best MIRx room to bring the VSL instruments closer to the EW sound stage that I can use with Spaces for the final polish? I would love some input.


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## leon chevalier (May 1, 2016)

Hello!
I do not own EW stuff but I just bring to your attention that Teldex is the only scoring stage available in MirX. The three others are concert stages.


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## JohnBMears (May 1, 2016)

I own Teldex and really like it. I just realized the other day that you can enable MirX Teldex i.e. on a clarinet, then reduce the wet signal and it won't have the tail, but it will set it back (in orchestral position of course). Then you can use Spaces to match tails with other libraries. I've also found success with Virtual Sound Stage for use on VSL plugins (not for anything else though).


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## JT3_Jon (May 1, 2016)

You can demo them all for 30 days on the VSL website. Just click on each individual pack and there is a demo you can add to your cart: https://vsl.co.at/en/MIRx/MIRx_Bundle

Have a play, do a mockup or two, switch between the halls using the syn feature and see which one works the best to you. I downloaded the demos for all today, and each sounds very different to me, but MIRx delivers on quickly positioning, EQing, Volume balancing, and placing the VSL samples in a realistic space, which is FANTASTIC! For someone starting out and is new to mixing orchestral samples the MIRx concept is perfect and highly recommended. I personally like to tweak my sounds and find them to be way too limiting, but then again they weren't designed for sonic sculpting but for quickly making mockups, and to that end they are great!

Give them a shot.


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## JT3_Jon (May 2, 2016)

Quick thoughts on demoing them for a few hours today - LOVE it on woodwinds and brass! They really make these instruments sit very well in the hall, which can be difficult to do on your own given how dry the original recordings are (need to add your own early reflections and get the right balance between ER's and hall, which is a balancing act). But with MIRx its a single button click! Really cool!! But to me the stand out of MIRx is its instrument profiles. For example, if you load 4 of the same VSL solo Horns on 4 different instances and run them all through the same reverb without EQ and positioning they of course will phase and sound weird. However with MIRx, simply assign each one to their respective "positions" and add a little humanization and it really does sound like a full horn section!! Its like having a very inexpensive version of Dimension Brass! I compared this "horn section" made up solo horn patches vs the VSL section horn samples, and I greatly preferred the solo version with MIRx. Really outstanding and that alone might get me to pick up one of the packs. 

However, so far I cannot get any string sounds I like! I loaded up an old sequence using Appassionata Strings playing some faster spiccato parts, and every hall I tried in MIRx just made it sound extremely blurry. Like there was way too much early reflections going on. I guess I need to spend some more time with it, but so far its this issue with the strings thats keeping me from pulling the trigger. 

As for the halls themselves, they all seem to have their own character and none of them are bad! I'll have to try doing a full mockup before the demos end and seeing how each hall reacts.


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## JT3_Jon (May 2, 2016)

JohnBMears said:


> I own Teldex and really like it. I just realized the other day that you can enable MirX Teldex i.e. on a clarinet, then reduce the wet signal and it won't have the tail, but it will set it back (in orchestral position of course). Then you can use Spaces to match tails with other libraries. I've also found success with Virtual Sound Stage for use on VSL plugins (not for anything else though).



This is not quite true. If you put the dry/wet slider to zero, all you are left with is the stereo image collapse / panning and the Pre-EQ. You are not left with any early reflections. The difference you are hearing is mainly the stereo image collapse, which can be done with Vienna's width panner in VE pro or similar tools.


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## newcreation08 (May 2, 2016)

Many thanks for those inspirations here!!! I am also looking out for buying some of this VSL software now.

Do i understand it correctly, that when i am mixing different libraries together in a mockup (mostly i put VSL, Spitfire and Cinesamples together), i can't go with MIRx, right? I would have to use MIR PRO and one ore more of their room bundles?!


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## leon chevalier (May 2, 2016)

Yes, if want to use MIR on others VST than VSL VI Player you would have to purchase at least mir 24.
(But Keep in mind that Spitfire and Cinesamples are wet libraries and I often read that MIR work best on dry Libraries...)

EDIT: 
To be more precise, wet libraries got early reflections, air absorption, positioning (and all the physical parameters that allow ears to place a sonic source) baked in the samples and it's exactly what MIR add to the sample. 

So if you want to use wet lib with MIR you may use only the close mic that have the less "placement information" baked in.

Note that I'm speaking from my understanding of MIR not from experience, so don't take my word as a definitive answer.


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## SomeGuy (May 2, 2016)

MIR can only add reverb, it cannot replace reverb. Once a library is recorded with reverb, it's forever (to a degree). But that doesn't mean you can't blend wet and dry libraries and use them both together.


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## newcreation08 (May 2, 2016)

Ok, thanks!!

My main goal would also be, to get a better room placement of all orchestral instruments in the mix. Will there still be a chance to accomplish this?


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## muk (May 2, 2016)

Mirx works with VSL libraries exclusively,, in MIR you can load third party products as well, or any audio you wish. Whether MIR does help placing a sound in space depends on the sound. If a library is recorded in place, and has reverb baked in, generally you are better off leaving that natural ambience alone. You can feed it into MIR, but you'll have to center the signal first. Usually this doesn't sound very natural if there is reverb baked in.


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## Silence-is-Golden (May 2, 2016)

If its one thing I have learned the past months, and that included doing it wrong( which is a good stage in learning) is that you may get some advice, approach, and methods from others but there is no substitute for applying these ways yourself.
And the risk is that wrong approaches sometimes ( or regularly? ) also get disceminated amongst those like myself who are still learning the midi-mockup trades.

So one of my current approaches is to use EQ on LASS, MIRx and teldex on VSL, and start with some basic mic's with SA libraries. And use a glue reverb( in my case Earreverb2) to get them all as much as possible in the same room(....hmmm sounds like an alexander)
But obviously as we all know too well that is just a rough indication to start off.

So: in my view a MIRx applied to VSL helps with positioning and some wetness. And then the work begins 
And playing around with the wet/dry ammount is one of those parameters to use.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (May 2, 2016)

I personally don't bother with trying to get everything to "sit in the same room". None of this stuff is real, there is no "room". There's no sense in trying to theoretize some approach to realizing it. The reality is that we're all using samples of a bunch of different developers, all recorded in different spaces, with different microphones, from different distances etc. and all you can do is simply to make it sound nice. Which doesn't have to be made rocket science either and finally comes down to arrangement and mixing decisions. It's perfectly doable. There's no need for some crazy, elaborate "room" concept.

"Wet" libraries that have been recorded in place I would leave alone. No panning, no moving around with spatialisation tools, and I don't see the need to use additional reverb either. I don't feel that it does anything to blend different, already ambient libraries together, but only makes things unneccessarily blurry.

For VSL, MIRx is extremely helpful. I just turn it on and leave things as they are - especially the Teldex Venue fits other libraries very well. If the sound is too different, I might dial back the dry/wet slider a bit and use Spaces of some other reverb to add something with a similar tail length and "color".


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## cadenzajon (May 2, 2016)

JT3_Jon said:


> so far I cannot get any string sounds I like! I loaded up an old sequence using Appassionata Strings playing some faster spiccato parts, and every hall I tried in MIRx just made it sound extremely blurry. Like there was way too much early reflections going on. I guess I need to spend some more time with it, but so far its this issue with the strings thats keeping me from pulling the trigger.



I'm working primarily with VSL strings and am curious if other users have tips on how to deal with this?


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## leon chevalier (May 2, 2016)

cadenzajon said:


> I'm working primarily with VSL strings and am curious if other users have tips on how to deal with this?



Same here, MirX teldex user, and fast strings passage become very "synthish" ... Maybe I'm missing something?


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## jamwerks (May 2, 2016)

Just spent a couple of hours with VSL Woodwinds and MIRx. I had been using SPAT before, tried all 4 "rooms", and really like the Teldex presets. Much better that what I was getting with SPAT. Didn't care much for the other 3 rooms choices.

I'll definitely pick up the Teldex package. Much lighter on cpu that SPAT, and no need it seems for eqing...


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## JT3_Jon (May 2, 2016)

Thats the key - They instruments are pre-EQ'ed (if you have that option selected) and then also EQ'ed and stereo image manipulated by the positioning software in MIR before it hits the convolution processes. I can achieve similar results in SPAT if you apply similar processes before hitting the reverb, plus have more control over the individual instrument, though I guess its not a fair comparison given the flexibility SPAT offers and its cost. However for sheer speed to get a good sounding space quickly, MIRx really does deliver. Its ironic though, one of the main selling points for me to purchase VSL instruments is the fact that they are not pre-panned or have any baked in hall sound, which makes them much more flexible IMO. But once you run VSL through MIRx you completely loose this flexibility, but I can see how some just want to get a great sound quickly, and at this price point is a really good solution, and for those who need control they have the full blown MIR options.


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## JT3_Jon (May 2, 2016)

cadenzajon said:


> I'm working primarily with VSL strings and am curious if other users have tips on how to deal with this?


Other then the dry/wet slider (or using a different reverb for short strings) I dont see any solution.

edit: I'm actually getting a pretty good result lowering the wet/dry to 40 and then adding an additional hall tail via reverb send.


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## Rodney Money (May 2, 2016)

JohnBMears said:


> I own Teldex and really like it. I just realized the other day that you can enable MirX Teldex i.e. on a clarinet, then reduce the wet signal and it won't have the tail, but it will set it back (in orchestral position of course). Then you can use Spaces to match tails with other libraries. I've also found success with Virtual Sound Stage for use on VSL plugins (not for anything else though).


Do you reduce the wet/ dry signal all the way to 0?


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## JohnBMears (May 2, 2016)

Not all the way, but for some orchestral settings I've gotten good results with the slider as low as 20, then sent to a reverb like Spaces or such. I see that there was a response earlier that I am not 100% clear on this slider use- it was mentioned that with the slider down, I am just hearing a collapsed stereo image, etc. It is a sound I can use, not sure what is going on, but on stuff like clarinet I feel it distances these close samples.

I also felt the need to EQ the clarinet regardless of this even with the EQ built into MirX turned on. Maybe my ears want the woodwinds to be more distant than MirX Teldex wants them to be HAHAHAHA!


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## Noam Guterman (May 3, 2016)

FWIW, this piece is 80% VST SE instruments with the Teldex MirX set at 64%. The other 20% are; solo horn reinforcement from EW Hollywood Brass Gold to give more bite to VSL's solo horn, Requiem Light choir, EW Hollywood Percussion's shaker, wood blocks and cymbals, and Shevannai solo female vocals.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (May 3, 2016)

Very sweet piece Noam!

Here's another one that's prominently VSL with Teldex. 

https://hearthis.at/mariop/weeping-willow-village/

The slider is set to 35-45 depending on the instrument, and there's a touch of EW Spaces on top just to give it a bit of sweetness. Most of it are Chamber Strings, with some Appassionata added here and there, a whole bunch of Woodwinds and some harp & mallets. I've layered in high string stuff from Albion I, mainly for the short note passages, and have carefully enhanced the low strings with Albion ONE.

No additional reverb for Albion. I'm using decca and outrigger mics mainly, for a spacious, but defined sound, with just a touch of the ambients while disabling the close mics. No need for them, as MIRx does a really good job at positioning the sections where they should sit, while retaining the well-defined, clear VSL sound, and Albion is more in the back, an additional dimension to the overall sound - so it's a good blend of VSLs directness and definition, the convincing positioning of MIRx and the wide stereo spaciousness of Albion.

I think it all works pretty well together and shows that it's not really that important to fuss around trying to create some general room concept for different libraries to sit in. Careful balancing, making everything sound pleasing on its own and a little bit of mixing to just make it sound nice overall already goes a long way.


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## Noam Guterman (May 3, 2016)

Thanks bud, love your piece too! Aren't those VSL woodwinds just a treat? I love them.
Btw, do you always go to the Chamber / Appassionata strings? How do you find their regular orchestral strings?


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## Jimmy Hellfire (May 3, 2016)

Noam Guterman said:


> Btw, do you always go to the Chamber / Appassionata strings? How do you find their regular orchestral strings?



That's an interesting thing. I indeed mostly use the Chambers and the Appassionatas. I generally love smaller string sections and the VSL Chamber Strings are really lovely and classy, I really like those. Appassionata of course is on the other side of the spectrum - nomen est omen. They're not the default choice for every situation where one might need strings, but they're great when it comes to that fantastic grandeur. When I want chocolate cream on top of a chocolate-filled chocolate cake, I reach for them. 

The Orchestrals kind of sit in an odd space between the other two. I'm always falling in and out of love with them. I really like the short articulations - they're snappy and quite aggressive, but on point. That's the way I like it, and I in fact often combine the Orchestral Spicc & Stacc with the Appassionata ones, which are naturally more flubby and distant, to have the richness and size, but also get the grit and snap that is very important to me.

I generally like that the sound has a good deal of body to it (something that the otherwise wonderful Hollywood Strings, for example, lack). The Orchestral Strings sound nicely regal and elegant, but especially when it comes to long notes, I often feel they're almost too tidy and perfect. The arc of the players, the tuning and the vibrato, it's so uniform ... I often wish everything was actually a little bit more raw, "stringy" and "off" - a bit of tuning wonkiness and even a bit more slurry legato. It's so sleek that in a way the sections appear to sound smaller than they are. It sounds elegant, but a bit timid, which is also a reason why I often go for the much more animated sounding Appassionatas instead.

So that's a bit of a strange relationship I have with them - I really like a lot about them, but often end up wishing they were actually a bit less "perfect", and trying to get that with something else instead.

What do you think?


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## Noam Guterman (May 3, 2016)

I hear ya. Do you have VE Pro by any chance? Maybe you could adjust the Humanize function to your liking. It's pretty deep in that regard.


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## leon chevalier (May 3, 2016)

Noam Guterman said:


> FWIW, this piece is 80% VST SE instruments with the Teldex MirX set at 64%. The other 20% are; solo horn reinforcement from EW Hollywood Brass Gold to give more bite to VSL's solo horn, Requiem Light choir, EW Hollywood Percussion's shaker, wood blocks and cymbals, and Shevannai solo female vocals.



Nice piece Noam !



Jimmy Hellfire said:


> That's an interesting thing. I indeed mostly use the Chambers and the Appassionatas. I generally love smaller string sections and the VSL Chamber Strings are really lovely and classy, I really like those. Appassionata of course is on the other side of the spectrum - nomen est omen. They're not the default choice for every situation where one might need strings, but they're great when it comes to that fantastic grandeur. When I want chocolate cream on top of a chocolate-filled chocolate cake, I reach for them.
> 
> The Orchestrals kind of sit in an odd space between the other two. I'm always falling in and out of love with them. I really like the short articulations - they're snappy and quite aggressive, but on point. That's the way I like it, and I in fact often combine the Orchestral Spicc & Stacc with the Appassionata ones, which are naturally more flubby and distant, to have the richness and size, but also get the grit and snap that is very important to me.
> 
> ...



Very interesting experience feedback Jimmy! Thanks for sharing that!


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## cadenzajon (May 3, 2016)

Thanks all for the input. I'm buying the MIRx Teldex which looks like it can be found most inexpensively (~$40USD!) at Time+Space this month. The extra 25% off their regular VSL s/w pricing is pretty killer.


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## JT3_Jon (May 3, 2016)

Noam Guterman said:


> I hear ya. Do you have VE Pro by any chance? Maybe you could adjust the Humanize function to your liking. It's pretty deep in that regard.


I do no think this will help what Johnny described (great description btw!) If you adjust the humanization tuning / timing for example, its applied to the sample, and thus the whole violin section equally, where ideally you would want different parts of the section to be adjusting their tuning & timing with the section, which add to that magical string sound. I guess this is why they came out with Dimension Strings.

Oh I forgot to add - nice cues both of you! Well done!!


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