The "Unofficial" Berlin Studio Manual

I have a few other questions that I've either seen on this forum or that I've had in general.

• What is the "auto" button for in the "Source" section?
• What does the "width" knob do in each mic section?
• Any recommendations on which percussion placement to use for the various percussion instruments? Celeste? Timpani?
• What's the difference between the French Horn positions? How do they change the reverb effect?

When the upcoming new plugins are finished, focus will go to documentation and the website.
I will do my best to add answers here.

Alignement - an option that can be used when mixing dry and wet

Each location has a certain distance to the three microphone sets used.

If you mix your dry Source signal with the reverbs from the Mic channels, the onset from your source signal may be audibly "dry" for a very brief moment = the time it takes to bridge the mentioned distance. The Decca Center microphone was used for the distance calculations.

Mixing engineers sometimes use delay lines to make sure that the signal from spot mics is delayed relative to the main hall microphones.

The result is that any brief dry "attack" or onset is gone and that transients are softened, because they are merged/mixed with the more blurred (reverberated) sound from the main microphones.

In Berlin Studio the Align knob can be used for this. It does not use a delay line, because that might give a latency that you do not want when playing and recording. Instead the corresponding amount of time is carved out from the internal impulse responses, which actually "contain" this same distance in the form of silence (so no early reflections are discarded).

When the Auto align switch is On, this correction is applied when you change the current location, or when you switch it to On for the current location.

The upcoming update displays the distance/delay of the current location in terms in msecs, the amount of Alignment, and difference between them.

For some more percussive instruments the effect can be clearly audible, for instruments like woodwinds much less. It is a subtle effect.

Update: I added a bunch more QA to the first post.

Peter Roos said:

Alignement - an option that can be used when mixing dry and wet

Each location has a certain distance to the three microphone sets used.

If you mix your dry Source signal with the reverbs from the Mic channels, the onset from your source signal may be audibly "dry" for a very brief moment = the time it takes to bridge the mentioned distance.

Mixing engineers sometimes use delay lines to make sure that the signal from spot mics is delayed relative to the main hall microphones.

The result is that any brief dry "attack" or onset is gone and that transients are softened, because they are merged/mixed with the more blurred (reverberated) sound from the main microphones.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. If I understand this correctly, that dry attack, could also break the illusion that the instrument is further back in the room since in real life, you'd hear more of that that pre-reflection-dry attack the closer the instrument was to you.

Is that true, and if it is… does that mean using the auto button will ensure the correct amount of "pre-delay" to enhance the illusion of the instrument being close, or far away from the listener?

I'm just trying the demo and liking it. Can I just confirm that I should place an instance of the plugin on each separate instrument track rather then send via a bus?

Keith Cocker said:

I'm just trying the demo and liking it. Can I just confirm that I should place an instance of the plugin on each separate instrument track rather then send via a bus?

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If using via send, pull the Source fader all the way down, as mentioned here:

Keith Cocker said:

I'm just trying the demo and liking it. Can I just confirm that I should place an instance of the plugin on each separate instrument track rather then send via a bus?

Click to expand...

I use it both ways, works very well

mbishop said:

Thanks for the explanation. If I understand this correctly, that dry attack, could also break the illusion that the instrument is further back in the room since in real life, you'd hear more of that that pre-reflection-dry attack the closer the instrument was to you.

Is that true, and if it is… does that mean using the auto button will ensure the correct amount of "pre-delay" to enhance the illusion of the instrument being close, or far away from the listener?

Click to expand...

That "dry attack" is what would also be audible with spot microphones that are not time-aligned. The sound that they return comes earlier than the sound from the hall microphones. This may affect the distance or depth perception. I would avoid the word "illusion", and "breaking" it. We are only tweaking some subtle cues for auditory depth perception.

Most of the distance information is contained in the early reflections as captured in the hall microphone IRs, and they remain present (unless you "over-align", then you lose a small part of them).

And I think this approach also works best if the "close" source signal has a relatively low level, like what you would do with spot mics in an orchestral mix.

Personally I think the softening of the transients in the source signing (by this alignment) is as least as important as getting rid of those short "dry attacks".

Mathematically this alignment results in increasing the correlation between two signals.

The auto-align switch can make sure that the correct amount of time compensation is applied when you select another location/position preset.

Rob said:

I use it both ways, works very well

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Thanks for the replies - but I'm a bit confused! Let's say I have a string ensemble - Vln 1 & 2, Vla, Vc & Cb. So 5 Individual tracks. I think I should put an instance of Berlin Studio on each of the tracks and set the space in each plugin to the specific Instrument - is that correct. If I have several tracks for each Instrument - eg. different articulations - i should in that case set up a send from the eg Violins 4 tracks to a single bus with an instance of BS on it set to Violins 1 - and so on for each group of tracks relating to a single instrument. Am I understanding correctly now?

Peter Roos said:

I would avoid the word "illusion", and "breaking" it. We are only tweaking some subtle cues for auditory depth perception.

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this in such detail. Yes, I think I have been coming at this with the (naïve) idea "How can I make it sound exactly like it would sound if I were sitting in the audience in a hall with no microphones?" and what I'm interpreting from your explanation is A) that there much more to it than that and that's not how sound engineers record orchestras so B) think more about what sound you ultimately want and how you can adjust these parameters to get it.

Keith Cocker said:

Thanks for the replies - but I'm a bit confused! Let's say I have a string ensemble - Vln 1 & 2, Vla, Vc & Cb. So 5 Individual tracks. I think I should put an instance of Berlin Studio on each of the tracks and set the space in each plugin to the specific Instrument - is that correct. If I have several tracks for each Instrument - eg. different articulations - i should in that case set up a send from the eg Violins 4 tracks to a single bus with an instance of BS on it set to Violins 1 - and so on for each group of tracks relating to a single instrument. Am I understanding correctly now?

Click to expand...

Yes, that is what I would do as well. Make sure you pan your instruments to that location in the stereo field, if they aren't pre-panned in the samples.

I'm starting to think of the instrument locations less as "this is for this instrument" and more like "a sound source located here". That breaks down a little bit though with special functions like the different french horn responses.

mbishop said:

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this in such detail. Yes, I think I have been coming at this with the (naïve) idea "How can I make it sound exactly like it would sound if I were sitting in the audience in a hall with no microphones?" and what I'm interpreting from your explanation is A) that there much more to it than that and that's not how sound engineers record orchestras so B) think more about what sound you ultimately want and how you can adjust these parameters to get it.

Click to expand...

I have no idea how many recording engineers would use an alignment (or time compensation) approach.

My feeling is: not a majority, so please see it as an option, not (even) a recommendation for mixing.

I have once done a mixing class/course with score mixing engineer Dennis Sands at Synchron Studio in Vienna, and I am pretty sure this was not mentioned.

mbishop said:

Yes, that is what I would do as well. Make sure you pan your instruments to that location in the stereo field, if they aren't pre-panned in the samples.

I'm starting to think of the instrument locations less as "this is for this instrument" and more like "a sound source located here". That breaks down a little bit though with special functions like the different french horn responses.

Click to expand...

If possible, use the panning in the Source channel for your instrument sound if you want to position it in the stereo image.

This way the reverb channels will receive "their part" in full stereo (from the Input channel), which is the idea behind how the acoustics were captured in IRs.

The GUI control for panning, by the way, is improved in the upcoming update - it is a bit vague and confusing in the current version.

Peter Roos said:

I have no idea how many recording engineers would use an alignment (or time compensation) approach.

Click to expand...

I don't know either! I was getting that idea from the predelay section in this article, but perhaps it applies more when the goal is a realistic simulation of being an audience member in a hall rather than the goal being a more sculpted, engineered sound.

Sitting in a hall you have a kind of Wall Of Sound (tm Phil Spector) coming from the orchestra if no microphones and amps are used. Indeed a very different approach than a detailed, multi-mic recording.

Answering questions here from another thread

BasariStudios said:

Thanks Peter. I basically have 2 or 3 questions about it. Otherwise it is straight forward.

1. What is the Align on the Source Channel?
2. Anything on Panning on this Plugin?
3. Presets don't change anything except IR/MicPosition right?

Thanks

Click to expand...

1 The Align feature is explained higher up in this thread
2 The panning is explained three replies above this one
3 Presets indeed change IRs internally, BUT, that is not for mics, but for instrument positions in the studio

Cheers

Peter Roos said:

Answering questions here from another thread


1 The Align feature is explained higher up in this thread
2 The panning is explained three replies above this one
3 Presets indeed change IRs internally, BUT, that is not for mics, but for instrument positions in the studio

Cheers

Click to expand...

Couldn't think of a better place to post it, so this seems fine. I bought your product (Berlin Studio) and I love it. Here's my problem (and why I was initially hesitant to purchase) ...........iLok. I have one already so I figured "sure, why not".

Just now, my internet cut off and Berlin Studio stopped working. It seems it's constantly phoning home to check the license; as if once is not already a pain. Look, I understand your need to protect your product from hackers, but making things difficult for people who have decided to support your company is NOT the solution.

I can't work like this. How can I have peace of mind if I know when my internet messes up, I won't be able to use the product I paid for? I'm not certain how it needs to be handled, but you all need to make a patch for the software that does NOT constantly phone home.

I own a couple EW products and they do phone home at start, but they don't continually do it. I hate iLok and I'm sure this is why others do as well. I'm respectfully asking you as a customer to do something about this.

Thanks.

aetherborn7 said:

Couldn't think of a better place to post it, so this seems fine. I bought your product (Berlin Studio) and I love it. Here's my problem (and why I was initially hesitant to purchase) ...........iLok. I have one already so I figured "sure, why not".

Just now, my internet cut off and Berlin Studio stopped working. It seems it's constantly phoning home to check the license; as if once is not already a pain. Look, I understand your need to protect your product from hackers, but making things difficult for people who have decided to support your company is NOT the solution.

I can't work like this. How can I have peace of mind if I know when my internet messes up, I won't be able to use the product I paid for? I'm not certain how it needs to be handled, but you all need to make a patch for the software that does NOT constantly phone home.

I own a couple EW products and they do phone home at start, but they don't continually do it. I hate iLok and I'm sure this is why others do as well. I'm respectfully asking you as a customer to do something about this.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

It is mentioned very, very clearly on the website that it requires iLok USB or iLok Cloud.

As you have an iLok USB key, I advise you to use that for offline use.