I am proposing this mockup of one of Ottorino Respighi's famous symphonic poems, one of my favorite composers. I followed the same procedure as the other piece by the same author that I posted here some time ago, "Pini presso una catacomba" [Pines Near a Catacomb]; that is, with the score in hand, I played all the parts trying to be as faithful to the score as possible. Some clarifications on the instrumentation: I used a string library that does not have muted samples, whereas for the horns I deliberately used the unmuted sample because I didn't like the muted one at all.
Libraries used: Cinestrings (the solo cello is my own combination of Spitfire solo strings and LASS), Berlin woodwinds, Cinebrass, Spitfire percussion, Cineperc, VSL harp.
Altiverb 7 (Film Orchestra hall) and various plugins for mastering.
My goal is always realism; I don't care about so-called "epicness" or the loudness war or similar things. The track has a low overall volume compared to standards because it has a dynamic range that is almost always in p or even pp; I chose this on purpose.
As usual, technical advice and opinions regarding taste are welcome, thank you.
I sent the piece via email to Simone, maybe he will take care of uploading it to the site; it's strange, I have never encountered a similar error before, I tried several times but I can't....
Here is the file, I managed to do it, I had to change some settings in the windows/temp folder. Sorry for the inconvenience, it's just that I had to format my PC recently and therefore not everything is set up as before.
I compared your work with this recording of Toscanini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSl4EemkREo
It is not among my favorite pieces, but I would say the work is good. Percussion remains always (I am not referring to you, but in general) the Achilles' heel
I compared your work with this recording by Toscanini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSl4EemkREo
It is not among my favorite pieces, but I would say the work is good. Percussion remains (I am not referring to you, but in general) the Achilles' heel
Compliments
Thank you for the compliments; I think that if I could have used muted strings, the result could have been even more realistic, but Cinesamples is still developing them; perhaps I could have used LASS. One thing that has caused me quite a bit of thought is the vibrato of the woodwinds, the oboe in particular: no library that I know of has a vibrato as immediate and manageable as what is heard in various recordings with real instruments; perhaps only SampleModeling, which I do not own, comes close. As for percussion, there isn't much in this piece, just a triangle and a cymbal roll.
Very beautiful. Just a few observations... I would have used a pinch more reverb on some instruments, especially in the points of instrumental emptiness, and exaggerated the dynamic range even more. The initial pianissimo isn't quite pianissimo. When there is an instrumental void, the samples become evident, so you either blend them a little with the reverb or, since you could do it here, you play around with the pianissimo (by acting on the velocity and thus exploiting the library's pianissimo, if usable, or by automating the volume and increasing the reverb slightly). The more we are in the [pianissimo] plane, the more the timbre becomes unintelligible and thus easily confused with a real instrument. Remember also that if necessary, you can also automate the "wet" parameter of the reverb; it's a trick used in some points where the artificiality of the libraries becomes evident (obviously without overdoing it too much).
I would also give a bit more Widening on the master, or you didn't use it at all, or you put very little.
Obviously, as usual, I am nitpicking because it is an excellent job regardless.
I thank Simone for his considerations, which are always very useful; regarding the widening, I noticed this: it is Altiverb that pushes the sounds towards the center; I tried to act on the pan but they always result in being more centered compared to the original samples. While I am satisfied with where the woodwinds are positioned, I am not fully satisfied with the strings and especially the horns. At this point, I should use an instance of Altiverb for each instrument so that I can position each instrument in the stereophonic panorama, hoping to have enough RAM (I increased it to 32 GB; this piece, with a relatively smaller instrumentation compared to a large orchestra, takes about 10 GB of RAM). I used 4 instances of Altiverb, one for each section, and 2C Breeze as reverb on the master (15% wet, perhaps this is where I was too conservative, maybe I'll try with 20% and 25%). For the stereo image, I used Ozone's, which allows acting on individual frequency bands, but I was quite sparing to avoid phase problems. I will try to make another version correcting these details.
I recommend using as many instances as there are concentric semi-circles in the orchestra. You place them on different buses (Bus 1 - Semicircle 1; Bus 2 - Semicircle 2, etc., etc.). Then you can adjust the send of each channel in relation to its spatial position and, if necessary, automate the bus where you need to increase or decrease the reverb. In this way, you use fewer plugin instances and save a little more RAM while still obtaining a more than decent effect, since in the end the impulse response is the same for every instance; what changes is the pre-delay, specifically for each semi-circle, and it increases as the radius increases.
To mix the final sound, it is advisable to use another reverb on the master. Normally, a convolution reverb is not used on the master; you only give it a tiny bit to blend the orchestra a little more and recreate the reflections coming from the back of the hall with an even slightly higher pre-delay.
Then remember to make good use of the pianissimo capability, which helps you a lot in orchestral space.
For widening, don't use the one from Ozone; I don't like it very much. I don't remember if you use Mac, but there is the one from DUY which is very simple but does its dirty work very well.
The situation you described is exactly what I do, one instance for each semi-arch, which in practice translates to one Altiverb instance for each orchestral section, with a few exceptions like harp or piano, with pre-delay increasing as the distance from the conductor's position increases. As master reverb, I use 2C Breeze, which is not convolution-based. One thing I wanted to ask: regarding the convolution reverb that I use to create the early reflections, should I exclude the tails or leave them in? Anyway, Altiverb is a bit particular because it colors the sound a lot, but at the same time, it manages to make the libraries sound well-blended.
Another question: in mastering, do all effects go into inserts, or can I send the reverb as a send, i.e., as a bus?
