Francisco Lamolda
Active Member
Keep in mind that this only works in pro!
Spitfire Appassionata - Release Thread
- Thread starter NoamL
- Start date
Justin L. Franks
Senior Member
Another lesser-known feature in almost all Spitfire libraries is the ability to set separate mic mixes for each articulation.
In BBCSO and other Spitfire player libraries, you turn OFF "Global mode" on the mics page.
In Kontakt libraries, turn ON the "mic mix to articulation linker" option. It's the quavers icon above the mic mixer. Icon "c" in the attached image.
This is very helpful for balancing volume across articulations.
Crossroads
Senior Member
No way haha, I have used some of these libraries for years, why did I never know this for both the Kontakt libraries AND the BBCSO Pro? You guys literally changed my template with this, completely. What the heck?Another lesser-known feature in almost all Spitfire libraries is the ability to set separate mic mixes for each articulation.
In BBCSO and other Spitfire player libraries, you turn OFF "Global mode" on the mics page.
In Kontakt libraries, turn ON the "mic mix to articulation linker" option. It's the quavers icon above the mic mixer. Icon "c" in the attached image.
This is very helpful for balancing volume across articulations.
Crossroads
Senior Member
Fortunately I own pro, thanks for the heads-up!
Robert_G
The End is Near
Alright....I'm not an expert in mixing, but I have some thoughts.
I can't see very many reasons for doing this. If I violin player goes from a legato to a marcato, does he move to another room? No. Does he even move to the other side of the room? No.
With that said, if you have the mic mixes with different depths and panning for different articulations, then it will sound fake. The players don't change spots while playing. It needs to be consistent. Which only leaves volume levels.....*see below*
If the instrument was developed properly, you shouldn't even need to bother with this. A well developed instrument will have what is necessary to change mic volumes within the instrument. But then again....Spitfire Audio is known for inconsistency, so perhaps they need you to do the work in order to fix the volume inconsistencies that they created.
There are very real use cases here - I sometimes like some articulations to have a little more close mic to punch through the mix a bit more, or to effect a certain kind of modulation of sound.
Except for the most hard core classical types (which would probably be using VSL anyway) already quite a lot of what we do is stylized - even the way I always crank up the flautando, and maybe give it a bit of extra close mic. Unless the piece calls for maybe a bit of extra tree mic.
Is it strictly "realistic"? Probably not. Do I care? Absolutely not.
jbuhler
Senior Member
I think it’s pretty standard in media music to set up shorts and longs differently. And recording, even recording of concert hall repertory that is committed to capture rather than representation, has long had its own conventions for recording that differ quite a lot from what you’d hear in a concert hall.There are very real use cases here - I sometimes like some articulations to have a little more close mic to punch through the mix a bit more, or to effect a certain kind of modulation of sound.
Except for the most hard core classical types (which would probably be using VSL anyway) already quite a lot of what we do is stylized - even the way I always crank up the flautando, and maybe give it a bit of extra close mic. Unless the piece calls for maybe a bit of extra tree mic.
Is it strictly "realistic"? Probably not. Do I care? Absolutely not.
Robert_G
The End is Near
Fair enough.Is it strictly "realistic"? Probably not. Do I care? Absolutely not.
That is also true. It's hard enough to be a purest, but even in the live scenario, I'd rather the mixing guy for the most part leave the volumes alone. I realize that it is mostly done to sound better, but a good symphony that plays well together should need only minimal tweaking on the fly.
Crossroads
Senior Member
It's this. And for consistency, I like to not use two instances, one for longs, one for shorts. All other players that I have can do this, and now I know that the Spitfire Player can do this as well. So for my weird little head, it feels nice.
Petrucci
Senior Member
There is also this thing when different articulations have different amount of wetness on the same mic in some libraries for some reason.. For example in BS standard legato sounds wetter than ostinatum legato on Spot+Tree mics - so I can raise the Tree for ostinatum one a little etc.
Robert_G
The End is Near
That's called quality control and goes back to my comment about the developers of the library.
A legato and a marcato in the same room should sound like they are in the same room.
Petrucci
Senior Member
Yeah, maybe sometimes it has something to do with different levels of release on samples or something.. actually I've seen it in many libraries from different developers, for instance I remember marcato patches in NSS and Pacific Strings being little drier than other articulations and so on)
Paul Thomson
Member
This is an interesting one, and I thought worthy of a few lines! So there are a couple of things happening here. One is 'real world' where you get some articulations 'ringing' the room a different amount - and this is partly due to the nonlinearity in the room response dynamically, but also that some articulations have different harmonic content and the 'apparent' response of the room changes.
The other thing is that you can try as hard as you want to get a super clean loud end to a sample, and if - *if* !! - every single player plays the final cutoff at exactly the same dynamic as the loudest part of the sample, and they all come of within milliseconds of each other, you might get a perfect RT.
However, and I have tried this in sessions believe me, we've tried pretty much everything over creating nearly 10 million samples!, the musicality of the actual recording takes a giant nose dive. Musicians are hard wired to play musically, and as hard as they try they can't help a slight shape on the end of a note, its programmed into them from years of playing!
So you have to try to manage the situation, retake for any really unclean ends, allow musicians to do what they need to do to play musically, and then try to reproduce all of the nonlinearity and real world response in the programming.
Its a fascinating part of the process and always one of the things that gets a lot of attention in the programming stage, are we reproducing the real world response of the room accurately.
Just my thoughts!
Paul
The other thing is that you can try as hard as you want to get a super clean loud end to a sample, and if - *if* !! - every single player plays the final cutoff at exactly the same dynamic as the loudest part of the sample, and they all come of within milliseconds of each other, you might get a perfect RT.
However, and I have tried this in sessions believe me, we've tried pretty much everything over creating nearly 10 million samples!, the musicality of the actual recording takes a giant nose dive. Musicians are hard wired to play musically, and as hard as they try they can't help a slight shape on the end of a note, its programmed into them from years of playing!
So you have to try to manage the situation, retake for any really unclean ends, allow musicians to do what they need to do to play musically, and then try to reproduce all of the nonlinearity and real world response in the programming.
Its a fascinating part of the process and always one of the things that gets a lot of attention in the programming stage, are we reproducing the real world response of the room accurately.
Just my thoughts!
Paul
prodigalson
Senior Member
Just a heads up though, if you're using logic and like to use different track delays per articulation you might be frustrated with this approach.
As far as I know, there's no way in Logic to have different articulations respond to different negative track delays when using an instrument multi-timbrally..or at least no way I've been able to find usable.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, I'd love to know how it's doable.
Justin L. Franks
Senior Member
A lot of this is due to natural volume differences between articulations. For example, for strings, flautandos are quieter than con sords, which are quieter than normal sustains. This is reflected in the samples.
But I prefer to have everything normalized to the same volume. So I set my mic mix at "100%" for the flautandos, drop it lower for the CS, and lower again for sustains/legato.
Other people will prefer to leave it as it is.
