(...) No intented sexism here.

You can replace the clothes in your joke by cars or computers with all gadgets, so it will still be sexist, but in the other direction...

It's like the husband who gave a coat to his wife, and the wife thanks and said:

-Now I will need a new pair of shoes to combine with this coat. And also a new dress, and also new hair style, and a new feminine shirt, and...

;-)

Sorry women. Just a little bit of 50's humor. No intented sexism here.

Some reverberation we hear from some albuns are quite impossible to match.  Maybe because in the studio they use several microphones, of variable kinds and with different adjusts.  This plus equalization and eletronic filters.

This music for example, Crown Victoria Custom 53, and others from the same album, got critics due exagerated reverb & equalization.  But I think the reverb it's interesting, even than exagerated.  Bu I can't imagine what they did to get this effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMCA8v17yGo

Attention in 01:34 to 01:37      The sound it's something like I never heard in any other piano recording.

This piano, despite the simple repetitive playing here, get a interesting sound, with a deep and longer presence for the patterns and playing style. 
This same pattern would sound quite simple un-virtuous, if played the same way withou any reverb.

Maybe they get eletronic reverbs diferently form, bass and trebble, and blend different reverberations adjusts.
Just remembering this music was recorded in mastered in 1995.

(...)I'm assuming therefore that the "room" element is to simulate the 1st order reflections which are not handled by the reverb element itself. I.e. the room size slider does not affect the recording "room" that the mikes and piano are in.

Best//Neil

That's what I think. There are no walls in the recording environment, so the room size is irrelevant for that. The reverb unit is supposed to add room, but it is independent of the recording environment.
Because of the lack of walls there are no reflections from walls, and this might nullify the need for directional mics. Maybe I should do some experiments whether there are reflections from the floor...

But, lest we lose sight of the initial post: The ability to swivel the mics still seems important to getting a dryer sound, and I suggested it because the feature might be fairly easy to implement--just take the code for the binaural head and reduce it to one stereo mic, cutting out the filtering\cancellation of the head itself.

Coincident mics as they are in PTQ now won't achieve anything as the mics are not directional.  Omnidirectional mics primarily use phase differences (from the spacing) to achieve stereo presentation, whereas directional mics use primarily differences in sound level.  So with the mics as they are at present, reducing the head size to zero will not give you what you want.

Interestingly, CATT-Acoustic state that their FIReverb suite is used by Deutsche Gramophon to liven-up acoustically dead piano recordings.  Could it be that what you actually want is less reverb, rather than less "room"?  I personally find that with the reverb off, the default solo recording and player positions sound unnaturally close and are not improved by adding reverb but by backing off the mics.

Speaking of the room size, I thought this pertained only to the reverberation settings, which are distinct from the "recording" settings i.e. placement of the microphones in the room.  I'm assuming therefore that the "room" element is to simulate the 1st order reflections which are not handled by the reverb element itself. I.e. the room size slider does not affect the recording "room" that the mikes and piano are in.

Best//Neil

It would be good to be able to dampen the room some. Don't we have the size parameter already, to give us the basics of the room?
And I suspect that what are sometimes heard as room problems may result from the mics being omni's.

Do I want to be able to choose among many mics? Well, yes, eventually. But the ability to set parameters notes by note is on the horizon, and that will give us so much more control over the sound.

I mean, nothing prevents me from disabling Pianoteq's reverb and use Rayspace, but I'm losing the mic placement INSIDE the room, then. In this case, the room is added after the mic placement, which certainly sounds differently.

Yeah, the shape of the room plays an important factor in how you perceive a certain space. It's not like you can hear "oh, I'm in a round room now", but it does give a clue about where you could be. Our ears are amazing.

I would actually subtract from the RaySpace feature set, in this case (merging with Pianoteq):

* room drawing would be left (and since Pianoteq has two views, top and side, we could do really much - RaySpace currently doesn't allow slopes on ceilings, and different ceiling heights throughout the room, but in PTQ with two views this could be easily done)
* for each wall section (between two nodes) there would be an option to scroll with mouse to switch between various wall materials, from concrete and marble to wood, cotton and silk (curtains, anyone?) (instead of RaySpace knobbage for filtering, dampening, etc.)
* positioning the piano in the room would also be possible
* presets, of course!

I'd like to hear what Modartt guys think about this

(...) Merging Pianoteq with RaySpace seems like just the right thing to do!

Ah, yes... RaySpace is a good example for what can awaken desire... And actually is not really needed (in my opinion). Yes, it is fun to place walls and listen how the sound varies... But do you really hear the shape of the room? I think it is rather a combination of reflexion patterns you may or may not like for the music you want to apply it to. And maybe you would get better results if you just used good conventional reverbs and adjusted their parameters to whatever you want to hear. To me this is the difference between good tools and fancy toys (again, I don't say RaySpace isn't good in its way).

Merging Pianoteq with RaySpace seems like just the right thing to do!

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr09/a...pianos.htm
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan08/a...g_0108.htm

I think the answer to your question is yes.  Some references I have had for a while:

http://mixonline.com/recording/applicat...ing_piano/

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan08/a...g_0108.htm

http://www.doghousenyc.com/articles/piano1.php

Glenn