# How many of you use the JJ mixes with Spitfire Symphonic Orchestra Pro?



## blaggins (Aug 14, 2021)

I realize this may be a tough question to answer because it is so subjective, but do folks find the Fine, Medium, and Broad mixes done by Jake Jackson useful enough to put in an orchestral template? Are they flexible enough to get used in lieu of the CTAO or Alt mic instruments?

I have the Spitfire Symphonic Orchestra Pro, I'm just getting started with trying to create a template, and I'm wondering what microphones to build my own orchestral template around. I'd guess that the most obvious choice is the CTAO mics since those *seem* to offer the most control? The Alt mics and the Mixes are very tempting though. But trying to build a template that uses a combo of ALL the different microphone possibilities seems to be the path to madness.

I could actually see a scenario in which to simplify my microphone choices I might choose to build the entire template JUST using the JJ mixes, and forget about balancing mics altogether. It's tempting... Hence this question. Would it be overly limiting to just use the mixed instruments (thus just the JJ Fine, Medium, and Broad mixes) in a template?


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## Jeremy Gillam (Aug 14, 2021)

I haven't used the JJ mixes much yet, but you might consider is loading the CTAO, Alt, and mix patches into your Kontakts and setting them both to the same MIDI channel, then using CC 22 and and so on to turn on and off the mics/mixes you want to use based on the project.


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## blaggins (Aug 14, 2021)

Jeremy Gillam said:


> I haven't used the JJ mixes much yet, but you might consider is loading the CTAO, Alt, and mix patches into your Kontakts and setting them both to the same MIDI channel, then using CC 22 and and so on to turn on and off the mics/mixes you want to use based on the project.


That's a good idea! Oh boy it's going to be so much work to load everything 3x times though (it's already going to be so much work to load it all even once!)


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2021)

I find the Jake Jackson mixes very convenient, and regularly use them as my default. In SCS (which I happen to have open), for violin 1 main articulations, it's 233.7MB for the JJ mix and .91GB for all mics of CTAO. Most instruments have similar ratios.


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## blaggins (Aug 14, 2021)

Glad to hear that jbuhler. The conundrum I'm facing is now the following.

I was planning on separating the longs and shorts into different audio outputs (I've seen this advice again and again on this forum since it lets you process them differently and apply offsets at the track level if you need it without having to shift your midi data around. Seems convenient and standard practice, I feel like I'm onboard.

But, I also like the idea of using expression maps to give me all the articulations at my fingertips in the same piano roll. No problem right? I load each instrument twice (actually 3x times since the legato patches are separate), once with the short articulations all disabled (routing to Kontakt output 1) and once with the long articulations all disabled (routing to Kontakt output 2) and a third time for the legato patch (also going to Kontakt output 1). Then I purge and save it down as a multi, pop in an expression maps that covers all articulations, and that instrument is ready to go.

You can probably see where I'm going with this though... if I do that for CTAO, Alt, and JJ mixes all in one multi, not only am I multiplying my effort by 3x, but I'm now loading 9 kontakt instruments into every single multi. That seems like cuckoo bananas and surely not something anyone does, right??


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## jbuhler (Aug 14, 2021)

It's not just the number of instances, but the GBs of samples you'll be loading for each instrument.


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## Henu (Aug 15, 2021)

I've always been wondering how those mixes are done. Are they just different blends of mics or is there something else going on on top of that? 

What bugs me in the stereo mixes and why I rarely use them, is that wanting to test them out is a HUGE task. I like to do a lot A/B:ing and it's not like I can just I can replace all the patches with the stereo ones and possibly switch the mics on the fly for 50+ patches quickly. 

The descriptions of the mixes at Spitfire's page are vague at best which doesn't help at all. If the mixes are just blends of mics, it would help a ton if we'd know the usage and volume of each mic (e.g. "Outriggers 75% Tree 20% Close 5%") so we could easily understand what we're getting. Why isn't this documentated anywhere?


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