# Plugin to position instruments



## Mark Stothard (Aug 8, 2021)

Hi,

Are there any plugins available that help you position instruments in their own space?

e.g, something that will allow me to push brass instruments to the back of the room, bring strings forward etc?

Thanks


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## doctoremmet (Aug 8, 2021)

Many. Please search the forum for these keywords:

VSL MIR Pro
EAReverb 2
IRCAM Spat
Plugin Alliance DEAR VR Pro
VSS2
2C Audio Breeze / Precedence
Panagement
Meldaproduction MReverb


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## Mark Stothard (Aug 8, 2021)

Thanks very much doctoremmet, I didn’t realise there was so many out there.


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## Trash Panda (Aug 8, 2021)

2caudio’s Precedence and Breeze combo. Or just the former. Can also look at the excellent videos @Cory Pelizzari put out on putting instruments into a space with binaural panning and Seventh Heaven.


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## doctoremmet (Aug 8, 2021)

Altiverb has a Positioner


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## re-peat (Aug 9, 2021)

Never Altiverb’s strongest feature though. In my opinion anyway. The quality of the positioning is very dependent on the IR you use it with — choose wrongly and there’s a good chance you end up with blurry, phase-y mess —, the stereo image of the output is not always what it should be and it’s also a bit limited in what it allows you to do, I find. Love Altiverb to bits, but I never use its positioner.

By far the best spatialization software, to my ears, remains Ircam SPAT. Never came across anything else that comes close. Have had it for years and it still amazes me every single day. Seriously. A bit pointless to recommend it however as the version that struck a near perfect balance of SPAT’s amazing powers and practical user convenience — I’m talking about SPAT v3 — is no longer available ever since it was replaced by the even more powerful but also much more unwieldy SPAT Revolution. Also: this is not cheap software.

Me, I’m still not entirely convinced by convolution-based placement. As I said, Altiverb struggles to be its best self when asked to do placement, what I’ve heard of Inspirata (the demos on the website) sounds very bad to me and VSS, well, let me just say: no, thank you.
So far, MIR is the only software, it seems to me, that somehow manages to avoid the many problems — nearly all related to stereo imaging and phase — that convolution-based spatialization is prone to bring to a mix.

One of the things that makes SPAT such a fabulous piece of software — on top of being insanely versatile and always delivering 100% believable spatialization — is that its output is at all times perfectly solid (image-wise), without even the tiniest hint of phase issues.
It’s also the only solution, I think, where you can move sources around, change their orientation and change the interaction with the room in real time without the software lodging even the smallest of protests. *Check this video* and notice how there’s not a click or crackle to be heard while I kick the trumpet and snare drum all over the place.

Having said all that: with a simple stereo tool, a delay, a decent EQ and a not too bad reverb, you should be able to address, say, 80% of the spatialization challenges that you might come across in a production. In other words: you don’t realy need to buy anything new, your DAW already includes all the tools you require to place any source you can think of anywhere in whatever virtual space your music sounds best in. (Made a video about this too some time ago, but I couldn’t find it just now. If I do, I’ll post it.) You need some understanding of how to create the illusion of space, depth and reverberation though — there’s a couple of rules that need observing in order to get convincing results — if you want to go this way.

_


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## doctoremmet (Aug 9, 2021)

Would love to see that video Piet. And actually the reason I decided to mention Altiverb, was another older post of yours I came across yesterday - with the usual HIGH (and highly valuable) information per word count ratio!


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## Mark Stothard (Aug 9, 2021)

re-peat said:


> Never Altiverb’s strongest feature though. In my opinion anyway. The quality of the positioning is very dependent on the IR you use it with — choose wrongly and there’s a good chance you end up with blurry, phase-y mess —, the stereo image of the output is not always what it should be and it’s also a bit limited in what it allows you to do, I find. Love Altiverb to bits, but I never use its positioner.
> 
> By far the best spatialization software, to my ears, remains Ircam SPAT. Never came across anything else that comes close. Have had it for years and it still amazes me every single day. Seriously. A bit pointless to recommend it however as the version that struck a near perfect balance of SPAT’s amazing powers and practical user convenience — I’m talking about SPAT v3 — is no longer available ever since it was replaced by the even more powerful but also much more unwieldy SPAT Revolution. Also: this is not cheap software.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the info and video Peat, this is exactly what I am looking for and it’s unfortunate I missed the boat on this one. I’d love to see the other video you mentioned.
Thanks
Mark


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## Mark Stothard (Aug 9, 2021)

Trash Panda said:


> 2caudio’s Precedence and Breeze combo. Or just the former. Can also look at the excellent videos @Cory Pelizzari put out on putting instruments into a space with binaural panning and Seventh Heaven.


Thanks Trash Panda, I’ll check these out.


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## jcrosby (Aug 9, 2021)

Mark Stothard said:


> Hi,
> 
> Are there any plugins available that help you position instruments in their own space?
> 
> ...


I just bought Expanse 3D and it's quite possibly the most useful audio plugin I've bought all year. It can create a huge soundstage that works in all 3 dimensions, it already has a permanent home on all busses in my template... It has a fully functional demo that even lets you save presets...

It's really straight forward in terms of usability. I've created positioning presets for most of the main elements in my template by starting with one of their presets, and adjusting things a bit until everything was audibly separated and the soundstage was much bigger...

It's also not binaural, meaning it's fully mono compatible, and based on the same principles people have been using to sonically place things in all 3 dimensions for decades... The best thing is that any spatialization or positioning you do in front of it has an even more pronounced effect... I.e. A fairly well separated and spatialized mix typically sounds even more spacious and separated as long as you don't over do it...

It's also currently on sale at PB, give the demo a spin and see what you think... I love this thing!! 









Expanse 3D


Expanse 3D, Expanse 3D plugin, buy Expanse 3D, download Expanse 3D trial, United Plugins Expanse 3D




www.pluginboutique.com






I watched this before demoing so I had an understanding of how to choose complimentary settings to create separation and depth between different instruments...


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## re-peat (Aug 9, 2021)

Haven’t been able to locate the video yet, Mark, but I’ll keep looking — it must be on some disconnected HD somewhere, but the problem is: I have many of those — and if needed, I’ll make a new one.

Until then, let me quickly run over the basics of the technique. It’s quite simple actually.

You begin with some sort of stereo tool, to pan the source and, if necessary, narrow its image. (The further back a source is placed in a space, the narrower its image should be.) I use Logic’s DirectionMixer for this, but I guess every DAW has something similar available and in case you’re working in VEPro, simply use its built-in panner. As long as you grab something that can pan and change the width, you should be fine.

Panning needs to be done at this early stage so that the subsequent spatialization can work on the full stereo signal of a panned source. Very important. If you pan after adding spatialization, you pan the spatialization as well, and that’s no good of course.

Next, you insert an EQ. This is needed to roll of the highs a bit when you wanna place something in the back of the mix. (High frequencies die quickest.) A common high shelf attenuation should do the trick.

Then we add a delay. To simulate the early reflections. That is to say, we only need to do so if we’re working in a virtual space that is not too large, say, a small hall or a chamber or anything smaller than that. (If you’re aiming for a big space, you can skip this entire step and jump straight to the paragraph about adding the reverb.)

The reason is that in bigger halls the distinction between the early reflections and the tail of the reverb is much less clear as both tend to dissolve into one another before they reach the listener’s ears. In smaller spaces, on the other hand, this blend doesn’t happen (or to a much lesser degree anyway) because there’s simply no time for it to happen, and then it is of the essence that you have control over the early reflections. And don’t let anyone tell you differently: a simple delay, insightfully programmed, is an excellent substitute for early reflections. Does all it needs to do.

The trick here is to generate a sort of cluster of very short and diffused delays. And mix them in at a very low level, almost subliminally. And if your Delay plug-in is capable of spreading those delays over the entire stereo image (Logic’s Delays can do that), that’s a boon. If not, it’s a bit of a bummer, but no disaster. Important is the timing. Never sync with the track’s tempo — rooms don’t do that either, do they? — simply pick a short enough ‘slap back’-ish value and a fairly short setting for the feedback parameter, so that you end up with a compact muffled cloud of delays. Equally important is the tonal quality of the delays as they’ll contribute a lot to the suggestion as to what type of room the source sound is being generated in. Start with really muffled delays and if you want to suggest a more reflective environment, make those delays a touch brighter. Never too bright though cause that sounds really unconvincing. You’ll hear it as soon as you do it whether you’re on the right track or not, I’m sure. (And don’t despair if it doesn’t quite work the first time you try it. Needs a little practice, that’s all.)

It’s a good idea to explore different settings for delay time, delay lowpass filter, feedback and dry/wet balance as these parameters have a huge impact on how the sound is perceived (with regard to its place in a space and the type of space it is).

And finally we send everything we’ve done thusfar into a nice reverb. (Forgot to mention: I use all these plugins as inserts, one after the other. No sends.) Every DAW these days ships with one or more nice reverbs, so you should definitely have one available.

Difficult to say at the moment though what you need to watch out for at this stage as I don’t know what type of spatial definition you’re aiming for, and the size and character of the virtual space you want to work in makes, of course, a huge difference to the correct setting of the important parameters. So, let’s maybe wait with discussing the details of this until I’ve either found my old video or made a new one.

Finally, a principle I *always* follow when doing spatialization or adding reverb: keep it simple. There are quite a few people who insist that adding reverb or doing placement and suchlike is very difficult and requires a whole lot of advanced expertise plus a sophisticated, complex reverb set-up, but I don’t agree with that at all. You have to know what you’re doing of course and you have to have some understanding of how the phenomena reverberation and placement work, but beyond that: piece of cake. I’m of the opinion that if adding reverb proves difficult, you’re either doing it wrong — making it too complicated, for example — or there’s something else wrong with the mix. The latter is often the case and checking this is particularly instructive, I find. If you start with a good mix that contains good sounds, good balances and that is programmed and arranged in a musical way, you’ll find that adding reverb to it is surprisingly easy. As in: you just add it and it’ll work. (Provided you make compatible choices for all the components of course.) And that works the other way as well: a great test to check the musical health and solidity of your production is to add reverb to it. If you don’t get anywhere decentish fairly quickly, you’ll know you have other problems to solve first. Everytime I experience difficulties with reverb or spatialization, my first step is to look at the arrangement, the sounds I picked, the balance of the various ingredients, in short: making sure I didn’t send problematic sound into the reverb to begin with. 9 times out of 10, that’s how to solve reverb problems, in my experience. (But again: opinions on this subject tend to differ quite a bit, and mine is just that: an opinion.)

_


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## janila (Aug 9, 2021)

Inspired Acoustics Inspirata Personal and upward (not the Lite) belongs on the list. Now that the 1.0.24 seems solid I can wholeheartedly recommend trying it out.


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## obey (Aug 9, 2021)

Re-peat your name could not be more apt, what an insightful writeup!

When you blend different libraries do you try and match the wettest's wetness with a reverb on the dryer library and then send everything into another reverb to try and glue them in a common space? Or just try and chose a library's space as a reference and wet everything up to that? I assume you can only practically only add wet because drying a library up isn't how things work (yet, AI is nuts, haha.) 

Trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of spatialization and your philosophy speaks to my aesthetic senses (keep it simple.)


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## Mark Stothard (Aug 9, 2021)

jcrosby said:


> I just bought Expanse 3D and it's quite possibly the most useful audio plugin I've bought all year. It can create a huge soundstage that works in all 3 dimensions, it already has a permanent home on all busses in my template... It has a fully functional demo that even lets you save presets...
> 
> It's really straight forward in terms of usability. I've created positioning presets for most of the main elements in my template by starting with one of their presets, and adjusting things a bit until everything was audibly separated and the soundstage was much bigger...
> 
> ...



Thanks for pointing this out JC. I’ll try the demo, thanks for the video too.


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## Mark Stothard (Aug 9, 2021)

re-peat said:


> Haven’t been able to locate the video yet, Mark, but I’ll keep looking — it must be on some disconnected HD somewhere, but the problem is: I have many of those — and if needed, I’ll make a new one.
> 
> Until then, let me quickly run over the basics of the technique. It’s quite simple actually.
> 
> ...


Wow re-peat, thanks so much for this very insightful advice. I will be giving this a go Once I understand it fully.

The reason I was asking about instrument placement plugins is that One of my favourite tracks is On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter. I love how it feels so simple, yet complex at the same time. I’ve tried making a track similar to this, but no matter what string library I use, I can’t seem to place them in the correct space. I understand you are not supposed to change the panning etc as they are recorded ready. But sometimes I wish I had the ability to position them anywhere I want and quite easily (Ircam Spat would have been ideal for this)


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## Cory Pelizzari (Aug 9, 2021)

There's also Panpot by Goodhertz:









Panpot, by Goodhertz


New directions in panning.




goodhertz.co





My personal favourite. Also there's one from Klevgrand but it's a little less streamlined to use as you have to pan each individual frequency band.


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## re-peat (Aug 11, 2021)

Had to make *a new video*, couldn’t find the old one. Made this in a bit of a hurry I'm afraid, cause there was other stuff to do, but I think it’ll get the idea and method across.

About the reverb: originally I had chosen Logic’s Chroma reverb, but then I decided to replace it with the SP2016 because the Chroma has too many parameters I didn’t wanna go into as they would only make things more confusing. The SP2016 is, outwardly anyway, a very simple reverb with just a few essential parameters. (Extremely good plugin though.)

Normally, I would have annotated the video with a bit of illuminating text, but again, being a bit pressed for time, I thought I’d explain whatever needs explaining in the thread itself, if there’s any need to, that is. Besides, it’s all very simple. Not much explanation needed, I’m sure.

I chose 4 bassoons to spatialize (treating them as one group), three from VSL and one SWAM. The accompaniment is made up of pizzicati (Spitfire), 2 horns (Orchestral Tools) and a short doubling by the flutes (Spitfire again).

During the first pass of the tune, you’ll hear the bassoons where my ears tell me they should more or less sit in the mix, meaning: all the plugins are enabled. (Their level is a bit too high however, but as they're the focus of this thing, I left it. Normally, I'd put them in a bit quieter.) In the course of the next passes plugins get disabled and re-enabled, I tweak a few parameters here and there, and there’s also a bit where I silence the accompaniment, leaving the bassoons stark naked for a few seconds. Then I gradually enable the plugins again until we’re back where we started. The entire thing lasts about 4’30” and weighs 88Mb.

Oh, one more thing: I did a little bit more with the EQ than just apply a high shelf. Thing is, those VSL bassoons have a rather pronounced resonance around 590Hz in some of their samples, and that really annoyed me so I attenuated quite drastically around that frequency. Also rolled off some of the lows because the VSL woodwinds have more than enough of those due to being recorded from so close up. It's not quite the 'proximity effect' they're exhibiting (excessive bass due to close miking), but it's potentially problematic nonetheless if you leave it unaddressed.

_


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## Mark Stothard (Aug 11, 2021)

Thanks very much for creating and sharing the video re-peat. This was really insightful and taught me a lot. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this.


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## Miklós Vigh (Sep 6, 2021)

re-peat said:


> Had to make *a new video*, couldn’t find the old one.
> 
> _


I was about to watch the video you made, but it seems the mp4 file is not on the server anymore. May I ask you to re-upload it? Thank you!


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## Kent (Sep 6, 2021)

jcrosby said:


> I just bought Expanse 3D and it's quite possibly the most useful audio plugin I've bought all year. It can create a huge soundstage that works in all 3 dimensions, it already has a permanent home on all busses in my template... It has a fully functional demo that even lets you save presets...
> 
> It's really straight forward in terms of usability. I've created positioning presets for most of the main elements in my template by starting with one of their presets, and adjusting things a bit until everything was audibly separated and the soundstage was much bigger...
> 
> ...



What kind of latency do you see when using this plug-in?


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## jcrosby (Sep 6, 2021)

kmaster said:


> What kind of latency do you see when using this plug-in?


With oversampling off there's no latency at all. Oversampling adds 16 ms, but I use it with it off in my template... It's also really light on CPU, almost as efficient as any basic native Logic plugin...


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## Kent (Sep 7, 2021)

doctoremmet said:


> Many. Please search the forum for these keywords:
> 
> VSL MIR Pro
> EAReverb 2
> ...


I’d recommend against EAReverb 2, FWIW. It’s got a metallic element that is nearly impossible to dial out.


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## doctoremmet (Sep 7, 2021)

kmaster said:


> I’d recommend against EAReverb 2, FWIW. It’s got a metallic element that is nearly impossible to dial out.


I quite like it actually. But to each his own of course. Lately it’s been crashing my Ableton Live, so there’s that haha.


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## Vladinemir (Nov 26, 2022)

Trash Panda said:


> 2caudio’s Precedence and Breeze combo. Or just the former. Can also look at the excellent videos @Cory Pelizzari put out on putting instruments into a space with binaural panning and Seventh Heaven.











Seventh Heaven Described As 'Game Changer' In Latest Video Review - LiquidSonics


An excellent video from YouTuber Cory Pelizzari outlining why he considers Seventh Heaven to be a 'game changer'




www.liquidsonics.com




Watched the video and noticed that Cory uses ERs in 7thH even though convos that come with some instruments are already applied. Doesn't this create doube ERs? I read that EW Spaces IIRC have built-in ERs so one must be careful not to add them with another plugin. Just trying to learn dos and don'ts.


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