Immersive audio production is rapidly becoming a movement at the center of the sound and music industry. As consumer formats (like theaters, home entertainment, VR, etc) continuously develop, it becomes increasingly essential for audio creatives to keep ahead of technological advancements.
We at Dear Reality are experts in spatial audio production, and design software tools that revolutionize the way artists work with immersive sound. Our pioneering plugin dearVR PRO, for example, gives creators total control over the spatialization of sounds in a 3D space. The spatialization works seamlessly with a range of professional formats, including stereo, binaural, Ambisonics, and multi-channel speaker systems.
In this article, we provide you with some listening demos of dearVR PRO working its magic!
Guitars are a central instrument in a range of musical genres, so knowing how to create an epic guitar sound is important for any producer. In most situations, it’s usually easier to record a guitar through a direct input, rather than micing up an amplifier. While this is easier and more efficient, you lose the acoustic characteristics of recording in a real space. This is where dearVR PRO can make a huge difference.
In this example, PRO serves multiple functions. Initially, it adds a medium room ambience reverb through the acoustic virtualization section, which prodivdes a distinct level of presence and a satisfying spatial impression. This gives the recording some life, which it would lack otherwise.
The second process is spatialization and location automation. The guitar slowly moves around the listener in a 3D space, from left to right, front to back, and above to below. This demonstrates some of the possibilities dearVR PRO offers. By automating the location of the sound, you can create highly immersive mixes, where each instrument sits in the perfect place. Automating this position also adds some interest and progression to your mix, and can be programmed in such a detailed manner, that essentially anything is possible. In this way, dearVR PRO can be used to create some unique spatial effects, which bring a new level of dynamic to songs.
Typically the lead vocal is the most important sound in a mix. Therefore, it needs to have a unique, recognizable, and memorable tone. Recording vocals as dry and clean as possible is always advantageous, as it gives you more control later in the process. However, you need to remember to bring more character to the vocals later in the mixing process.
dearVR PRO is a powerful tool when it comes to adding color and ‘magic’ to a recording, and works particularly well with dry vocal recordings. In this example, a studio room acoustic simulation setting is used, which has a short, crisp decay that brings out a nice level of ambiance.
We automated the position of the vocal to move around the listener, to create interest and excitement in the mix. Achieving this level of spatial automation without PRO would be a long and complex (if not impossible) task. It’s highly efficient to use dearVR PRO to create spatial movement, while it also opens up new levels of infinite spatial creativity that are only limited by your imagination!
Anybody who’s worked with an acoustic drum kit before will know that half of the instrument’s sound is the space it’s played in. This can be problematic, as finding a great drum room and then set up to record in it can take a lot of time and effort. With dearVR PRO, you can create an unlimited amount of acoustic environments to ‘play’ your drum kit through. This saves time, effort, and money, and also provides artists with new creative opportunities for crafting their drum sound.
In this example, the drums are given a static position. Generally, drums should stay in the same place to create a consistent listening experience. dearVR PRO is being used here to bring a range of acoustic impressions to the sound, adding ambiance, or even a slightly longer and richer decay in some settings. The reflections help to thicken up the drum sound, making them more interesting and less dry, while the spatialization section is being used to subtly place the drums in a location where it fits perfectly with the rest of the mix.
Sculpting the cohesion of a mix is important both technically and creatively. Sure, the tracks need to fit together spatially in a clear way without masking each other, but there is also a lot of room to play with the overall balance of a mix creatively.
This example shows the cumulative effect of using PRO throughout your mix, on a range of channels. By controlling the spatialization, acoustics, and placement of each sound individually, you can create immersive, lifelike mixes that give listeners a more visceral experience. The processing of dearVR PRO goes beyond standard panning and filtering and enables you to enhance the spatialization of any sound. When using dearVR PRO on a mix with multiple instruments, it almost feels like you have the power to re-record and direct the musicians as if you were in the studio with them!
