×
What's new
By:

Samplicity announces Berlin Studio plugin

JeffvR said:
All sounds great! How does it compare to MIR and the Teldex stage?
Click to expand...
Just did a quick 'n dirty trumpet example in Berlin Studio followed by MIR3D Pro Teldex Wide. The solo trumpet is from Cinesample Brass Core, using the "close" mic.

Both samples use their default settings. Note I had to set the MIR location approximately by hand as you can place instruments anywhere in MIR.

View attachment Test Trumpet - Berlin Studio - MIR3D Pro Teldex Wide.mp3

I didn't try to match the exact tone as there is a ton of settings in MIR but it should give you an idea of how the spaces sound.

MIR lets you tweak virtually every parameter including orientation, mic type, directivity, air absorption, mic offset, distance dependent volume scaling, width etc.

Personally I love the immediacy, clarity, beautiful sound, and ease of use of Berlin Studio.
 
Peter Emanuel Roos said:
Thanks!

I tested the regular Mid-Side coding, but I did not like the results (yet). When the dust settles a bit and I am working on new functionality the width is certainly high on my list. I will also research decorrelation techniques etc. (needed for a future surround version).
M-S has also side effects (pun) in the phase and frequency department.
I have also experimented with manipulating the cross-channel information ("the middle channels in true stereo"), also not useful in my opinion.

Saturation might be interesting for my other (upcoming) plugins, but I want to have Berlin Studio focused on real/realistic acoustics.
Click to expand...
I was not necessary talking about M/S encoding, just frequency band decorrelation and harmonic saturation. Both, used conveniently can increase the sense of realism particularly when using static mono sources. And as pointed before, it works pretty well on Berlin Studio using the Melda plugin. Just give it a try!
 
rudi said:
Just did a quick 'n dirty trumpet example in Berlin Studio followed by MIR3D Pro Teldex Wide. The solo trumpet is from Cinesample Brass Core, using the "close" mic.

Both samples use their default settings. Note I had to set the MIR location approximately by hand as you can place instruments anywhere in MIR.

View attachment Test Trumpet - Berlin Studio - MIR3D Pro Teldex Wide.mp3

I didn't try to match the exact tone as there is a ton of settings in MIR but it should give you an idea of how the spaces sound.

MIR lets you tweak virtually every parameter including orientation, mic type, directivity, air absorption, mic offset, distance dependent volume scaling, width etc.

Personally I love the immediacy, clarity, beautiful sound, and ease of use of Berlin Studio.
Click to expand...
Great contribution, thank you very much

I have once been in the VSL Synchron studio for a few days, for a mixing workshop with Dennis Sands and had a few brief talks about convo reverbs with the guys there, very interesting.

Such an impressive recording hall and control room!

I have opinions on what you can and also cannot do with IRs, that have led to the current options in Berlin. The "Size" option is a last-minute add-in, that I liked very much when I made it for my Gemini BM7, but I was at first very opposed to stuff like that, because it inflates the Teldex studio with acoustic helium :) and goes against my initial concept of maximum realism.
 
manuhz said:
I was not necessary talking about M/S encoding, just frequency band decorrelation and harmonic saturation. Both, used conveniently can increase the sense of realism particularly when using static mono sources. And as pointed before, it works pretty well on Berlin Studio using the Melda plugin. Just give it a try!
Click to expand...
Top, will do!
 
Peter Emanuel Roos said:
I will check this as well in my searches for the AU validation issue. The plugin should be relatively light on the CPU, the internal convolution engine is very efficient. I benchmark the engine in the form of my BM7 plugin against another wellknown product with Bricasti IRs, and it uses 50% less CPU.
Berlin uses three engines in paralel, so it needs some more CPU, but still, I have once used 16 instances in Reaper on a modest i5 laptop with CPU around 50%. So your situation is not good. Will include this in my checks and tests.
Click to expand...
I'm actually seeing high single-core CPU load on my system as well, even with a single instance, sometimes overloading depending on the instrument I use. I was putting it down to the fact that I was using the VST 3 version via Blue Cat Patchwork, but maybe that's not the reason. I'm in Logic Pro 10.7.4 (Big Sur).
 
Ok, so far I've tried it on quite some libraries:
VSL woodwinds (the old & good ones), VSL harps, Modern Scoring Brass, Vista, Century Strings, Nashville Scoring strings, Soniccouture Celesta, HY Ascend Piano

The plugin is fantastic, that's for sure.
The approach with the different Mic options is simply amazing.
I guess I will make small adjustments over the next weeks each time i start working with fresh ears.

There's one really important feature request:

It would be a huge improvement if we could address different instances as "groups"
So, adjusting the Mic-Mix in one instance would also affect all other instances that share the same group.
E.g. in the "Strings" group adjusting the Decca would happen in the same time for V1, V2, VA, VC and DB.
 
Kalli said:
I'm actually seeing high single-core CPU load on my system as well, even with a single instance, sometimes overloading depending on the instrument I use. I was putting it down to the fact that I was using the VST 3 version via Blue Cat Patchwork, but maybe that's not the reason. I'm in Logic Pro 10.7.4 (Big Sur).
Click to expand...
Kalli, I will include this in the current investigations.

For everyone reading and maybe owning this plugin, I can disclose this technical detail:

All processing in Berlin Studio is done during the "callback from the host". This is not ideal, but:

The convolution engine I developed during the last 1,5 year (this is complex stuff) has a multithreading feature. The calculations that take longer are done outside of the "callback" from the host. This makes efficient use of the computer's multi-core/threading options.

There are discussions on the JUCE forum since this summer about audio thread problems on Macs with Silicon chips, where the cores are not treated equally. Developers using audio multithreading have reported serious issues.

Since I also use JUCE ;) I have disabled the convolution threads in my plugins until this is all settled and well implemented in Juce. There are already changes in Juce, but they are "breaking ones", forcing me to refactor some stuff and again do serious unit testing. Long story short: one of the upcoming updates will make the plugin more efficient in its CPU use.

Doing all the processing during the call-back may lead to single core spikes, if you have a lot of processing going on in the computer, or use very very short buffers and/or high samplerates.
I have no idea if this is occurring here, but I wanted to comment on the single core observations mentioned above.

I suspect that the reported AU issues are related to parameter handling and I am focusing on that area now, not on processing.
 
Last edited:
Using Logic 10.7.5 seems to be a no-go at present. All settings produce massive distortion. It affects my whole system.
 
Jett Hitt said:
Using Logic 10.7.5 seems to be a no-go at present. All settings produce massive distortion. It affects my whole system.
Click to expand...
I run Logic 10.7.4 on an i7 Intel MacBookPro with Monterey 12.5.1 and it sounds good.
Can you be more specific about your no-go?
 
Peter Emanuel Roos said:
Kalli, I will include this in the current investigations.

For everyone reading and maybe owning this plugin, I can disclose this technical detail:

All processing in Berlin Studio is done during the "callback from the host". This is not ideal, but:

The convolution engine I developed during the last 1,5 year (this is complex stuff) has a multithreading feature. The calculations that take longer are done outside of the "callback" from the host. This makes efficient use of the computer's multi-core/threading options.

There are discussions on the JUCE forum since this summer about audio thread problems on Macs with Silicon chips, where the cores are not treated equally. Developers using audio multithreading have reported serious issues.

Since I also use JUCE ;) I have disabled the convolution threads in my plugins until this is all settled and well implemented in Juce. There are already changes in Juce, but they are "breaking ones", forcing me to refactor some stuff and again do serious unit testing. Long story short: one of the upcoming updates will make the plugin more efficient in its CPU use.

Doing all the processing during the call-back may lead to single core spikes, if you have a lot of processing going on in the computer, or use very very short buffers and/or high samplerates.
I have no idea if this is occurring here, but I wanted to comment on the single core observations mentioned above.

I suspect that the reported AU issues are related to parameter handling and I am focusing on that area now, not on processing.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the explanation!

Just to clarify, the CPU issue may well be related to my system (although I don't have many processes running at the same time). I just wanted to inform you since you're looking into it anyway. I've read that some CPU issues have been resolved by updating to Logic Pro 10.7.5, but I'm still on Big Sur so I haven't been able to try that yet.
 
Peter Emanuel Roos said:
I run Logic 10.7.4 on an i7 Intel MacBookPro with Monterey 12.5.1 and it sounds good.
Can you be more specific about your no-go?
Click to expand...
I am running Ventura with Logic 10.7.5 on an M1 Mac Studio with an Apogee Duet (2, I think). I had to validate the plugin manually, and when I put it on a track, all sound becomes massively distorted system-wide. So if I put Logic in the background and play a .wav file or a Youtube video (for example), the sound is distorted. Returning to Logic and removing the Berlin plugin restores my system to normal.
 
Last edited:
very promising plugin! Sorry, if this has been stated before (couldn't find it): How long will the intro sale last?
 
Jett Hitt said:
I am running Ventura with Logic 10.7.5 on an M1 Mac Studio with an Apogee Duet (2, I think). I had to validate the plugin manually, and when I put it on a track, all sound becomes massively distorted system-wide. So if I put Logic in the background and play a .wav file or a Youtube video (for example), the sound is distorted. Returning to Logic and removing the Berlin plugin restores my system to normal.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the details. I believe this is the first report of distorted output. At what sample rate is Logic running?
I will test the plugin with Logic on a machine with a Silicon chip as well.
 
Peter Emanuel Roos said:
Thanks for the details. I believe this is the first report of distorted output. At what sample rate is Logic running?
I will test the plugin with Logic on a machine with a Silicon chip as well.
Click to expand...
Switching to 48 Khz solved some issues. 44.1 doesn't work at all. At 48, I still have quite a few pops and clicks, and the surround mics don't work at all.

Edit: only the decca tree sort of works, but just sort of.
 
Jett Hitt said:
Switching to 48 Khz solved some issues. 44.1 doesn't work at all. At 48, I still have quite a few pops and clicks, and the surround mics don't work at all.
Click to expand...
A very strange combination, I am really puzzled.
If the surround channel does not work then the others should not work either.
Switching between sample rates does not do any re-processing on the internal impulse responses, the plugin just loads different versions from a single library file.
My gut feeling is that this installed library file is not OK.
The noise you experienced also hints in this direction, convolving with bad data is terrible.
Can you try to re-install from the package?
If you want to remove any previous files, send me a PM, I can tell you were the files are installed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom