Vienna MIR RoomPack 2 - Studios & Soundstages

This is a little-known acoustic gem and a spectacular place for any kind of contemporary music recording - surrounded by the stunning alpine landscape of Austria’s westernmost federal state Vorarlberg, in close vicinity to the Rhine, Lake Constance, and the borders of Switzerland, Germany, and Liechtenstein: Recording Studio Weiler.

We are very proud to present two unusual MIR Venues as a faithful, three-dimensional virtual representation of this well-kept secret to the users of Vienna MIR Pro.

Its history dates back to star-producer Peter Wolf, famous for his work for Frank Zappa, The Commodores, StarShip, and many, many others - and an avid user of Vienna Instruments, by the way. Wolf came back to his home country during the early 90ies of the 20th century. He had a full-blown recording and mixing facility built there for himself by the TechAward-winning specialists of bau:ton Los Angeles, who are undisputedly amongst the leading companies in the field of studio design (… with customers like Remote Control, DreamWorks, Sony Music, Disney, Fox Newman Stage, Oceanway Nashville, The Record Plant, and so on). Not surprisingly, the place is highly remindful of many top studios in the US and around the world, in many respects.

It is worth noting though that the building is founded on the massive concrete fundaments of a former stitchery. For centuries this part of the country has been famous for that kind of textile craft; embroidery machines are very delicate devices and need to run completely vibration-free - the ideal pre-conditions for a recording studio, too!

Once completed, the facility boasted a 70 m² control room with pristine acoustics, a lavishly sized but intimate sounding vocal booth, the 30 m² "Stone Room" with its warm and rather dry sound for solo instrument recordings and drum sets, and most notably the marvelous 170 m² "Live Room", nicknamed the "Rock'n'Roll Hall" - which despite the name can (and already did) accommodate 90-piece symphony orchestras too. While there's a free line of sight between all rooms, they are acoustically more or less completely isolated from each other.

A look at the schematic floor plan on the next page will give you a good overview.

Programmatically, the studio was called "Little America" during the early years. Back then, its technical heart and backbone was a custom-built 96-channel Neve console with 1073 EQs and 1072 microphone pre-amps - one of only five Neve desks ever made with full class-A electronics. The list of artists who worked here is dazzling and encompasses names like BB King, Zucchero, The Scorpions, James Ingram, Oleta Adams, Cliff Richard (who recorded his last album at Studio Weiler!), and many, many more. - Drummer extraordinaire Vinnie Colaiuta used to be the first call in "Little America".

Just before the dawn of the third millennium, Peter Wolf moved back to Los Angeles. In 2003, a group of four visionary musicians and studio enthusiasts bought the facility and ran it successfully as "StarShipStudio" (in respectful reference to its founder) until 2010. At that point, Michael Scheiden took over the shares of his partners and is now the sole owner of "Recording Studio Weiler". - The new name indicates the return to the actual assets of the place: Great rooms with great acoustics in a comfortable environment. Consequently, the subline says "Recording Facility for Sound & More".

Recording Studio Weiler’s spacious Live Room excels with remarkably homogeneous acoustics throughout its whole 170 m² floor space. Still, there are some singularities that come in handy when the recording engineer is aiming for special results.

Looking at the hall from the control room, there's the stone wall on the left side, covered with unpolished stone tiles. This makes for a vivid sound with rich reflections and a sparkling top end in the room’s frequency profile. The corner on the right side houses a huge bass trap (just look a the left picture on this page). Top engineers like the award-winning Austrian producer David Bronner suggest using this part of the room for rather dry, punchy rock-drum recordings with a controlled low-end.

Vienna MIR Pro represents the gorgeous Live Room in its entirety, from two different angles, providing four typical main microphone positions. The average reverb time is about 0.75 seconds. As the hall isn’t meant to be used for public recordings, there are no restrictions regarding instrument positions due to audience areas or other "obstructions". More than 1,100 IRs were recorded for each individual microphone position, about 4,600 for the whole Venue.

Recording Studio Weiler - Live Room wide

As a special gimmick, we have also recorded two remote positions outside the Live Room. One set of impulse responses has been created inside the Stone Room, with the sliding doors halfway opened. Another set was taken from the sound lock - the ante-room that separates the entrance from the Live Room - with its door closed.

Please take a look at the screenshots to get the idea. (Note: The Main Microphone's icons have been darkened for better visibility in this manual.)

Recording Studio Weiler - Live Room (lengthwise)

The 30 m² Stone Room of Recording Studio Weiler is definitely not your usual MIR Venue. As mentioned before, the room is meant to be used for recordings of solo instruments or small ensembles. Its acoustics are rich in early reflections, but almost void of any actual reverb. Its typical reverb time is as low as 0.30 seconds! Studio owner Michael Scheiden likes to refer to its sound as "earthy" and dry.

Two pairs of main microphones have been set up in very close vicinity to each other, still, each microphone position will reveal very different, distinguished-sounding room components. Within MIR Pro, the Stone Room is useful for adding some dimension to purely virtual signal sources like synthesizers, instruments based on physical modeling, drum machines, or natural signals that were recorded completely dry.

Vienna MIR Pro represents the Stone Room from two different angles, providing four main microphone positions. More than 190 IRs were recorded for each individual microphone position, about 770 for the whole Venue.

Please take a look at the screenshots below to get an idea:

Studio Weiler - Stone Room

Studio Weiler - Stone Room wide

Meet the MIR Recording Team, relaxing at the stone wall of Weiler's Live Room after two days of non-stop impulse response recording:

Martin Pauser, Dietz Tinhof, Florian Walter, Martin Rajek (behind the camera)

• Impulse Response Editing: Martin Weismayr

• Photography © Karl-Hans Vollrath, Martin Pauser, Michael Scheiden, Dietz Tinhof

For orchestral music, there aren’t many locations in the world that can compete with Teldex Studio in Berlin / Germany. Ideal acoustics for small and large groups, the most modern technology coupled with legendary microphones and competent personnel have made this studio one of the first addresses for international classical recordings. Situated in the spacious green district of Lichterfelde in the southern part of Berlin, the location with its relaxing and inspiring ambiance is a go-to address for the music industry worldwide.

Photo © Teldex Studio Berlin

For decades, the Teldex Studio Berlin, as it is called today, was the recording facility for Telefunken and later (after their fusion with Decca Recordings in the 1950s) Teldec Classics. Hundreds of legendary recordings were made here, both classical and non-classical. After the re-structuring of Warner Music Company and the consequent closing down of the label Teldec Classics International as well as the Berlin Teldec Studios, former studio staff members, the Grammy-winning producers and engineers Friedemann Engelbrecht, Tobias Lehmann, and Martin Sauer in January 2002 founded Teldex Studio Berlin GmbH, thus continuing the history of the studio.

After its modernization in 2003, the studio became one of the largest private recording studios encompassing international standards. Four recording rooms (the biggest one being the famous Recording Hall with 455 m² floor space) and three control rooms, "state-of-the-art" equipment - including a 96-channel SSL 9000 J series console, PMC surround monitoring, and a broad selection of sought-after microphones, - and its experienced staff ensure first-class recordings, be it classical, pop, film scores or spoken word. Quite recently, source-connect technology has been installed, allowing Teldex to transmit recordings live to other studios around the world.

The list of conductors, artists, and orchestras who recorded here reads like the Who-Is-Who of the contemporary music world and encompasses names from the most diverse fields of music, e.g., Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and René Jacobs; Thomas Hampson, Janine Jansen, Lang Lang, and Christine Schäfer; Sarah Connor, Celine Dion, Alicia Keys, Rammstein, Kevin Spacey, Britney Spears and Roger Waters; György Ligeti, David Newman, and Arvo Pärt, as well as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Academy of Old Music Berlin, the RIAS Chamber Choir and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.

A much more extensive credit list is available online: http://www.teldexstudio.de/en/start.html

Originally built in the 1890s as a ballroom (with a shooting gallery and a bowling hall in the basement), the Recording Hall has been in use for studio purposes since the 1950s. Its acoustic construction dates back to the 1960s: an almost alchemistic mixture of material and surface elements gave the hall a unique sonic signature with a remarkable absence of resonances or flutter echoes. The sound reminds one of a few similar "magic" designs of the same era - perhaps (or perhaps not) it is pure coincidence that the stairs leading down from the control room resemble a bit those in the iconic Studio Two of Abbey Road / London.

The studio was rebuilt between January and August 2003, carefully keeping the halls’ acoustic signature intact while renovating it from the ground up. The acoustics of the recording room can be adjusted from very dry to very round in sound. Typically the reverb length is around 1.7 seconds. One of the most remarkable aspects of this room is the detail it lends to the depth and positioning of an orchestra. Even at a maximum distance to the main microphone, the ear is able to discern an instrument's change of position of one meter or less in any direction.

The Recording Hall as seen from the control room

The control room with its impressive SSL console

Orchestral setup for scoring David Newman’s film music for "Animals United" (2010). Photo © Teldex Studio Berlin

Vienna MIR Pro represents the lavishly sized Teldex Recording Hall in its entirety, from two different angles, providing three typical main microphone positions. As the hall isn't meant to be used for public recordings, there are no restrictions regarding instrument positions due to audience areas or other "obstructions". - Please take a look at the screenshots to get the idea.

Almost 1,000 IRs were recorded for each individual microphone position, and almost 3,000 for the whole RoomPack.

Teldex Recording Hall - wide view

Teldex Recording Hall - standard (control room) view

While the "Wide" version of the virtual Teldex Recording Hall seems to be the obvious choice for arrangements that need ample space from left to right, it might be worth noting that the "Control Room View" is regarded to be the standard setting by the Teldex staff themselves. They were kind enough to supply us with the floor plan of an exemplary orchestral recording session, directly from the workbench, as a role model for your own setups.

A typical orchestral recording setup.
Kindly supplied by the Teldex Studio staff

The growing collection of Venue Presets available from your VSL User Area offers ready-made starting points for all microphone positions, including fine-tuned Output Formats and Room EQ settings for each of them.

Both presets for the Teldex Venue stick to the Teldex layout. The "Full Orchestra" preset has about 80 MIR Instrument Icons positioned on the Teldex studio floor, using main microphone position 2; all you have to do is load the respective Vienna Instruments content according to your needs. The smaller "SE Orchestra" preset uses only 32 instruments, all of them part of VSL’s Special Edition bundle; this setup is built around microphone position 1.

The MIR recording crew after 24 hours of recording sine sweeps - Florian Walter, Martin Rajek, Dietz Tinhof, Hannes Breitschädel, Thomas Meitz.

The night before.

The "ORF Funkhaus Wien" (Radio Broadcasting Center Vienna), also known as "Radiokulturhaus", is owned by the Austrian national public service broadcaster ORF. It was built between 1935 and 1939 according to the plans of legendary architect Clemens Holzmeister (supported by Heinrich Schmid and Hermann Aichinger). Being one of the oldest of its kind still in existence, it was planned to house dedicated recording studios from the very beginning - indicated by the utter absence of right angles and other remarkably visionary acoustical ideas. During the last decade, all studios were cautiously modernized by Peter Willensdorfer. Literally thousands of artists, ensembles and orchestras (many world-famous ones among them) have recorded here until today, always supported by the most recent studio technology.

The Grand On-Air Studio is the largest hall at the Austrian Radio Broadcasting Center in Vienna, with a reverb time of 1.5 to 1.7 seconds. Being one of the oldest of its kind still in use, it was planned originally for live broadcasts in the 50s and 60s, where remarkably acoustical ideas such as the utter absence of right angles were implemented. Despite its size, half of its floor is covered by the stage, providing ample space for a full-size symphony orchestra plus an organ at the back wall. The big fixed leather chairs for 230 people are a part of the original design to avoid any noise from the audience during live shows. Literally thousands of artists, ensembles, and orchestras (many world-famous ones among them) have recorded there until today, and public concerts take place several times a week.

View from the stage into the auditory - The concert organ at the back of the stage

Vienna MIR Pro represents this wonderful, vibrant hall from four different main microphone positions - two of them on the stage, and two in the auditory.

Over 5,000 individual impulse responses were recorded to capture this room in its entirety.

The MIR recording crew at ORF’s Grosser Sendesaal:
Christian Kardeis, Markus Wallner, Dietz Tinhof, Michael Haider

On the map, Studio 2 and 3 are almost identical concerning size, but they couldn't be more different acoustically.

As these Studios weren't meant to be used for public recordings, Vienna MIR Pro captures them as whole rooms without any restrictions, from three different main microphone positions. Two of them look at the studio as a stage, while the third one offers a listening perspective from the affiliated control room, for more depth.

In the 1970s, Studio 2 was equipped with absorbers (mainly on the ceiling) for the purpose of a multitude of big band recordings at that time, resulting in an unbelievably "dry" soundstage with a reverb time of 0.5 seconds. For a decade it was the recording room of the "ORF Broadcast Big Band" and is still a sought-after recording room when it comes to contemporary music, with a demand on an extremely precise sound localization.

Studio 3 is the same size as Studio 2 and offers a medium reverb time of approximately 0.8 seconds. It is a versatile recording venue for all kinds of instrumentations and styles of music. Studio 3 can be seen a the typical soundstage for any kind of acoustic and orchestral music - especially film scoring - with an outstanding evenness in its sonic imaging.

As mentioned above, Vienna MIR Pro captures Studio 2 as a whole from three different main microphone positions. Two of them look at the studio as a stage, while the third one offers a listening perspective from the affiliated control room, for more depth.

Almost 3,500 individual impulse responses were recorded to capture this room.

Studio 2 - standard view (wide)

Studio 2 - control room view

As mentioned above, Vienna MIR Pro captures Studio 3 as a whole from three different main microphone positions. Two of them look at the studio as a stage, while the third one offers a listening perspective from the affiliated control room, for more depth.

Almost 3,500 individual impulse responses were recorded to capture this room.

Studio 3 - standard view (wide)

Studio 3 - control room view