First let me say I'm a big fan of Beat's work, website, and tutorials. All very great stuff! And his VSL ochestral mockups that he provided stems of for educational mixing purposes are phenomenal!
Second let me point out for those who don't know, that Beat spends most of his professional carreer recording real orchestras and classical ensembles, and therefore has very good insights into what happens in real spaces with real mics etc.
Third let me add, that the method he suggests is a pretty good compromise. It works pretty well because different early reflections patterns and different direct-to-ER ratios are applied per track. That is ideal and is a big part of achieving the perfect solution. That conforms to suggestions we advocate also -- we just go one step further as explained below. I will just add some additional clarification below for those interested...
It's not quite that simple unfortunately... The energy of the diffuse late reflections i.e tail is usually somewhat consistent for any position in the room, yes. And the direct sound is NOT consistent in energy -- it is very much dependent on it's position relative to the microphones/listener, as Beat describes, yes. i.e. Distance. Correct.
But this effectively means the Direct to Reflected Ratio changes depending on Distance in an enclosed space. Direct (dry) energy falls with distance, reflected (wet) energy stays somewhat consistent. So let's say the reflected/wet energy is at -12dB, and direct energy at distance 0 is 0dB. We might have:
Distance 0: Direct = 0dB, Reflected = -12dB
Distance 1: Direct = -6dB, Reflected = -12dB
Distance 2: Direct = -12dB, Reflected = -12dB
In DAW/Reverb terms this means more distant sources would have a higher Wet/Dry Mix ratio. Most (good) reverbs use sin/cos mixing for wet dry ratios. So In the above example
Distance 0: = 15.6% wet
Distance 1: = 29.6% wet
Distance 2: = 50.0% wet
the math is:
mixRatio = (2.0 / pi) * atan(pow(10.0, 0.05 * (directDB - reflectedDB)))
(
btw you can use this formula for sends also if you ever wondered what send gain level = what effective wet/dry mix value
mixRatio = (2.0 / pi) * atan(pow(10.0, 0.05 * (-sendLevelDB)))
)
If you put one verb on the master with a fixed Wet/Dry ratio of 10-20%, this will NOT recreate that same situation. All mix elements will have the same relative Direct to Reflected ratio at least for the tails. This is not completely correct.
You can compensate for this to some extent by using extra ER's only direct on tracks, and the result might be reasonably convincing, yes. So Beat's method can acheive pretty good results, yes. But ideally the tail ratio should change also.
In the real world, there is not really a distinction between Early and Late Reflections; there is only a unified "Reflected Energy" which includes both. Early Reflections came about for psychoacoustic research and for convenience to save CPU resources in computer software that has to try to emulate the real world, such as Algorithmic Reverbs, or Acoustics Software used to design concert halls. Performing real physical modeling of a larger concert hall still requires a supercomputer; it's unrealistic. So we talk explicitly about discrete and specific Early Reflections bc they are mostly manageable. And they are arguably perceptually the most important. But even Early Reflections are rarely purely discrete/specular delays. They are usually blurred/smeared in time to some degree and in some fashion or another. i.e. they have diffusion. Generally we talk about Late Reflections as a statistical process which can basically be considered random noise bc it becomes so complex that discerning any kind of structure becomes exceedingly difficult.
The main point is there is not a clear distinction between early reflections and tail in many real spaces. And if you would like to model things as accurately as possible the "Early Reflections" and the "Tail" should ideally be treated in the same fashion. This means among other things:
1) The Direct to (total) Reflected Energy Ratio changes depending on depth/distance.
2) Pre-Delay should apply equally to both, and should be variable depending on depth/distance. The tail should ideally NOT share the same pre-delay for all instruments.
Other aspects also change according to distance.
Precedence Linked with Breeze 2 direct on track inserts in pairs is the only thing I know of that does this completely correctly... sorry if that sounds saleman-y...
You've got me to really rethink my current workflow. Those videos, in the link you posted, are terrific! Thanks again, you have been incredibly helpful!
