# How to achieve this awesome room sound / blending of instruments



## marcotronic (May 23, 2011)

Hi there,

I totally love the sound of Thomas Bergersen´s demos here: http://www.samplemodeling.com/en/demos_trumpet.php
(Scroll down to the bottom where it says "User Demos")

I´m wondering how you can create this awesome room / hall sound. This sounds so much different than most user demos I´ve heard so far. Everything blends so beautifully and to me it doesn´t sound like just putting some reverb on a handful of instruments. I´m sure he uses a lot of EQing, too, but how do you get that "monolithic" / "all of a piece" sound. To me it sound completely different from 99% of other orchestral demos I´ve heard so far.

Do you think he uses something like IRCAM Spat or something? Or is it his pure genius?

I´ve always totally adored his stuff.

Thanks for your ideas!
Marco


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## mverta (May 23, 2011)

Couldn't tell you. His stuff is the Gold Standard, as far as I'm concerned. And I have tons of respect for his chops. I don't mean this as egotistically as it will sound, but his pieces are the only ones I regularly hear at least one thing in I wish I'd thought of. 


_Mike


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## marcotronic (May 24, 2011)

mverta @ Tue May 24 said:


> His stuff is the Gold Standard



thanks, Mike. Yes, that´s absolutely true!

Marco


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## Beat Kaufmann (May 25, 2011)

Hello Marco
As far as it seems: Thomas created several depths for his orchestra.
The trumpet uses the closest depth...

For creating several depths you need several reverb instances.
Further you can enhance the distance with EQing (farther signals sound not as clear and bright as close instruments)
Then you should assign the the instrument groups to the different depths .
Usually we route brass and percussion more to "farther" depths, solo instruments, strings are usually closer placed. 
In other words, with this "system" we try to simulate the situation of a concert listener in row 6, so to say.
Of course, it isn't that easy to reach a good sounding depth-reverb concept. 
Thomas is an old hand (alter Hase) and I'm sure he has some room mixes which are optimized over years.

As an example which shall show this "several-depth-system" very clearly: listen to this piece.

All the best
_Beat Kaufmann_


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## Guy Bacos (May 25, 2011)

It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.


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## Andrew Christie (May 25, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Thu May 26 said:


> It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.



agreed


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## Hal (May 25, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Wed May 25 said:


> It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.



its very modest from a master like you


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## marcotronic (May 25, 2011)

Beat Kaufmann @ Wed May 25 said:


> Hello Marco
> As far as it seems: Thomas created several depths for his orchestra.
> The trumpet uses the closest depth...
> 
> ...



Thanks a lot!

As far as this several-depth-system is concerned: Actually I´ve seen your trumpet demo you did with EAReverb (http://www.eareckon.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=74 ) and instantly joined the current group-buy for this plugin (which is 79,- EUR at the moment...). I´m sure it´ll help me "depth-positioning" the several instruments better.

At the moment I have a lot of very different libraries and it´s quite hard for me to blend all that stuff. Some libs are recorded with a beautiful room/hall sound (Symphobia e.g.), some are dry (LASS, VSL stuff e.g.), mostly sample based, partly stuff like Samplemodeling Trumpet/Trombone or WIVI Brass - a whole lot of very different sounds/frequency spectrum actually. Throwing them all into the same reverb (e.g. QL Spaces) seems to be just part of the job. I´ve also tried EQing a lot but it´s really not easy. The hardest stuff to blend seems to be the Samplemodeling and WIVI stuff.

I´m looking forward to experimenting with EAReverb - let´s see if it can help me here (extended Group-Buy will end June, 2nd, as far as I remember)

What did you use for positioning your instruments in your demo, by the way?

@all the others: Thanks for your answer, too - I know that Thomas J. Bergersen is more or less "out of this world" but why not aim to get that awesome sound one day, too  I know that I´ll never get halfway close to anything he does and that his works are more than just a clever mix of positioning and EQing - his compositions are just brilliant, too.

Marco


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## Beat Kaufmann (May 26, 2011)

marcotronic @ Thu 26 May said:


> Thanks a lot!
> 
> ...At the moment I have a lot of very different libraries and it´s quite hard for me to blend all that stuff. Some libs are recorded with a beautiful room/hall sound (Symphobia e.g.), some are dry (LASS, VSL stuff e.g.), mostly sample based, partly stuff like Samplemodeling Trumpet/Trombone or WIVI Brass - a whole lot of very different sounds/frequency spectrum actually...
> 
> Marco


Indeed, that's not an easy job (getting a natural room feeling with dry and wet samples). 
If you can use dry samples together with other dry ones...
Try to create depths with convolution reverbs and with certain IRs.
Maybe you need to shorten the tail so that you just use the very first reflections of the room. You can add the lost tail over all with an algorithmic reverb. So you can achieve really nice room feelings.
It seems that VSL will bring such a combined reverb on the market - within the next days: "Hybrid-Reverb"

I wish you a lot of success
_Beat_

PS. About EAReverb: I've done some tests on my website: http://www.beat-kaufmann.com/extras/tests/eareverb/index.php
You can listen to several demos... have fun


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## marcotronic (May 26, 2011)

Beat, Thomas_J (didn´t know who are a member here, too!  ) - Thanks a lot for your help!

Really appreciate that.

Marco


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## Dan Mott (May 26, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Thu May 26 said:


> It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.



No offense to anyone here, especially Thomas, which I love his work too, but I really hate comments like this. I don't know why, but it just bothers me.

It's like saying... "There's Thomas J, and there's the rest of us who are all shit and can't make good music"

Just saying.


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## toddkreuz (May 26, 2011)

Dan-Jay @ Thu May 26 said:


> Guy Bacos @ Thu May 26 said:
> 
> 
> > It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.
> ...



No offense Dan-Jay, but that sounds like a projection of insecurity on your part.

Put up his best work, against yours or my best work, and its painfully obvious that Thomas is on a level high above.
There are some composer/mockup artists here that are really good, including yourself Dan. I'd even say excellent.

But Thomas is many levels up and continues into the rediculously talented realm.

So i think the comment in question was fairly accurate in this instance and context, and doesnt mean that you suck.  

I dont mean to get into the age old nature vs nurture debate.
But you have musicians that "Work really hard". And then you have musicians who are simply gifted. Its easy to tell the difference.

TK


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## Dan Mott (May 26, 2011)

toddkreuz @ Fri May 27 said:


> Dan-Jay @ Thu May 26 said:
> 
> 
> > Guy Bacos @ Thu May 26 said:
> ...



Yes, I see. I understand.


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## Trombotine (May 27, 2011)

Hi guys

I'm a relative novice at this game, and I'm certainly no Tom Berguson, nor even a Guy Bacos, but getting a realistic room sound like that (rather than an "in your face" cinematic sound - great as that is) has been of particular interest to me.

From what I've gleaned so far, it seems necessary to understand some of the physics of room acoustics, and how the position from which a sound emanates is perceived through a pair of ears. This knowledge can then be used to adjust (ideally dry) recordings to sound like they come from wherever we want them to.

For distance positioning, it is largely a question of balancing the mix of dry, early relfections and the reverb tail, while for left-right positioning it is largely a question of mutiple sends from mono tracks, simple delays and EQ.

Beat's (free) tutorials have helped me quite a bit, and I'm tempted to buy the full set, which cover other aspects as well - I especially like the delicate and understated musicality in some of his demo's, as well as the excellent realism of the sound, but the most crucial information for me has come from Mike Novy's excellent book: "The Composer's Approach" ... it may seem a little pricey for the number of pages but it does tell you all that you need to know, so is well worth the money.

In order to use separate early and late reflections (reverb tail) it is not strictly necessary to buy specialist software ... good results can be got with with a free convolution processor like SIR and free IR's like those by Peter Roos (Samplicity) - just use a suitable plate IR for early reflections (finding the best one is the challenge) and a bigger room IR for the tail, adjusting each accordingly.

In the first stages, I think it's more a question of one's knowledge of how to use these tools effectively rather than the quality of the tools themselves that counts, though after that I'm sure that a better convolution processor and IR's and can give even better results.

Tools like Altiverb are great in that they seem to do all this for you in the background, so you don't really get to understand how it all works, and that takes a lot of the fun of it away for me ... apart from being out of my price range!

Cheers!


Peter


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## Guy Bacos (May 27, 2011)

Dan-Jay @ Fri May 27 said:


> Guy Bacos @ Thu May 26 said:
> 
> 
> > It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.
> ...



I think you misunderstood, I'm only talking about his programming skills and mixes, not the musical content, which is also excellent of course, but not what I was referring to. Styles are very individual.


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## Dan Mott (May 27, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Fri May 27 said:


> Dan-Jay @ Fri May 27 said:
> 
> 
> > Guy Bacos @ Thu May 26 said:
> ...



Yes. Sorry for my misunderstanding.


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## Jeffrey Peterson (Jul 13, 2011)

Is your Todd-AO impulse and your Wizoo Cathedral impulse on the same track? All instruments going into the Todd-AO then from the Todd AO into the Wizoo? Or are the Wizoo and Todd AO on two different tracks?

Thanks.


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## david robinson (Jul 13, 2011)

Guy Bacos @ Wed May 25 said:


> It's pretty simple the explanation. There's Thomas Bergersen, and then there's the rest of us.



guy.
you are short changing yourself.
your material is great.
j.


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## tripit (Jul 16, 2011)

I think TJ great chops overall, but where he really shines for mocks is the balancing and mixing. That's an area that requires a lot of time and effort in perfecting and I know he has been studying and woodshedding for those skills for years.


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