Download and run the installer for your operating system.
On Windows make sure to select the right folders for the VST plug-ins, so your DAW can find them.

Open your DAW and load an instance of Virtual Sound Stage 2.0.
Can't see the plug-in? Read the FAQ or contact support@parallax-audio.com

At first launch you'll be asked for your keyfile. Click "open" and select the keyfile you received with your order.
For the LITE to PRO Upgrade first activate the LITE version, then go to the preferences panel (top right corner), click on Activate Upgrade and then select your Upgrade keyfile.

That's it! Virtual Sound Stage 2.0 is now successfully installed and activated.
Make sure to keep your keyfile and downloaded installers in a safe place for the next installation

Routing

You’ll need an instance of Virtual Sound Stage for every instrument you want to put into the virtual room. So first of all you need to make sure that all of your instruments are available as seperate stereo tracks within your DAW.

Some samplers like Kontakt by default only use one single Master Stereo Output for all patches, but most of them will also give you the possibility to switch to a setup with multiple outputs to route your instruments separatly into your DAW. In general this is a much better setup, as you’ll have more control over your mix directly from within your DAW and it also makes it possible to add VSS to your project without using one instance of your sampler per instrument.

This is probably also a good time to start setting up a reverb send bus with a generic reverb tail, so you can quickly add some reverb to your tracks while setting them up with VSS. For more tips on how to find the right reverb tail also see the next section.

Adding Virtual Sound Stage to a track

Now that the routing is prepared you can start adding VSS as an insert effect to one of your tracks.
I highly recommend that you name your instances instantly and also choose a rough position, so things don’t get messy.

If you are using a sample library, which is included in the preset library you can go ahead and load that preset and start tweaking your sound from there. Otherwise these are the steps to go through:

Start with the Input Offset by activating the Pre-Listen function to hear the signal as it leaves the Input Offset. The goal is to get the input signal as close to the center as possible. You can give the Auto-Detection a try, which will analyze a short section of the incoming signal and try to set the input offset for you. While the gain adjustment is mostly pretty accurate, calculating the right amount of Delay Offset is very hard and for some input signals even impossible, so always double-check and adjust the settings until the signal is in center position.

After you have chosen the right position and direction for your sound source, maybe using one of the seating plans, the next step is adjusting the Early Reflection Level in combination with the Reverb Send, depending on how dry the source material is.

Next you can tweak the sound even further with the Air Absorption, Width and Directivity controls and maybe come back to readjust the ER level afterwards.

Finally you can use the Output Gain to compensate any gain differences between input and output, similar to the makeup gain in a compressor.

Room & Microphone Setup

After you have added Virtual Sound Stage to each of your tracks and adjusted the default settings to the input signal the fun part begins as you can start experimenting with different rooms and microphone setups. As you switch between setups, you can use the master Gain and Dry/Wet controls to quickly readjust the overall balance.

When you change the room remember to also switch to another reverb tail to match the Early Reflections, while using the reverb bus fader to control the overall level of the reverb tail.