Creating Depths with BREEZE2

Creating Depths with BREEZE2

Creating “acoustic depths” is especially needed for natural-sounding mixes of orchestras.

You may want to place your instruments, as you can see in the picture above. Set Left and Right with the balance knob. But how does one “push” an instrument back or forward?

This can be done by using a reverb plug-in.
“Yes, I know”, you say, “but I do not want more reverb, just push the instrument back, it never works for me.”

Here’s a guide on how to do it with BREEZE2:

If you like, download some Orchestra Audio Tracks from here. Willem Defesch “Sonata” could be good for this experiment. Insert all the Audio-File Solo Violin into your DAW and insert BREEZE2 (See also our Breeze 2 by 2CAudio Review) into the effect section.

BREEZE2

Select the preset: F1 Factory Current / The Med Hall B
Change the following:
Pre Delay = 0ms
Time = 1.0 – 1.2
Now you can push your instrument backwards and forwards with Dry / Wet.

By the way: You get a 3D effect when you press “MIX”“. Then the word MIX changes to BALANCE.

Now you can use the Width controller to adjust the 3D effect. “66% width” is probably enough.

Of course, the “Den Med Hall B” preset is not optimal for our recorder. It sounds too big in the distance because it was taken close. For a more natural reverb sound, you have to dampen the low frequencies a bit. I chose the bandpass in Breeze2 (blue curve).

Remember the following:
Instruments that sound far away can not be far left or right. So the farther away instruments are the more they sound from the middle.
Also: The used preset is only to be understood as starting point. The goal is to have as many early reflections as possible. = nice depths.

How does it sound?

The distance depends on the ratio “dry/wet”
This is how BREEZE 2 sounds with the modified “Den-Med-Hall-B” preset:

This is how BREEZE 2 sounds with the additional adapted bandpass EQ:

And the final mix…There are only 4 audio tracks in the Willem De Fesch Sonata:

• 1 recorder
• 2 organ high
• 3 organ low
• 4 cello
  I summarized the organ in a group track.

This is the “virtual stage” I tried to achieve with the mix.

The organ at the back, far away, the cello back, because it actually belongs to the basso continuo (organ) and then the flute prominently in front of me the listener.
This makes sense because actually, the fetus is a lly instrument, which may be quiet something close to the listener.
Of course, everything is over the top, but BREEZE 2 does a pretty good job.

Audio-Examples:

Without any effect 

With BREEZE 2

Using all this for an Orchestra… I tried to recreate this virtual stage acoustically …

BTW, you can download these Orchestra-Audio-Tracks and try yourself.
See at Work – Files

About the Author Beat Kaufmann:

Beat learned the profession of electronics. His hobby has always been the music. Although he had first learned violin, he was fascinated by the newly released synthesizers in the 70s. In 1975 he bought his first synthesizer and tried to imitate Wendy Carlos, Isao Tomita and so on. So he went through all the techniques from CV via Midi to the first DAWs over the years.

At the appearance of the first professional samples Kaufmann was present as well. He was demo producer for «Vienna Symphony Library» for more than 10 years. Also since 2004 he is the owner of a professional recording studio. www.musik-produktion-createc.ch