dolby 5.1 surround mixing

BoimB son of BoB · Post by **BoimB son of BoB** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:23 pm

some people here that have experience with mixing in a dolby 5.1 surround studio set-up?

i'm considering it for sounddesign project...

in my head i'm dreaming off zillion possible soundeffects and 360 degree soundscapes.

but...

to be honest i haven't even heard a decent 5.1 system or a musical piece mixed for it...

can you truly have the 360 degree effect i'm hoping for or is it just zome glorified stereo effect?

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:26 pm

you totally can but you can do it in Live.

5.1 sound is just 6 channels, one each: left, center, right, left surround, right surround, subwoofer.

installations are around, they sound aaaaa-maaaaazing.

you just need the dolby stuff if you want to master it all as 1 track with separate channels contained in 1 stream.

BoimB son of BoB · Post by **BoimB son of BoB** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:43 pm

but i guess not many people have actual experience in producing music taking full advantage of 5.1.

you said surround left and right. is there anything special about these monitors, or can i use lets say 5 x 300$ identical studio monitors and a subwoofer.

i can imagine the sound effect possibilities to be virtual limitless, but i don't know if it realy is all that amazing in the real world...

i want 360 degree sound control basicly.

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 6:50 pm

BoimB son of BoB wrote:but i guess not many people have actual experience in producing music taking full advantage of 5.1.

you said surround left and right. is there anything special about these monitors, or can i use lets say 5 x 300$ identical studio monitors and a subwoofer.

i can imagine the sound effect possibilities to be virtual limitless, but i don't know if it realy is all that amazing in the real world...

i want 360 degree sound control basicly.

In a movie sense the surrounds are different, in a musical studio there is no surrounds, just speaker #1, #2, #3, #4 etc. For music you want identical speakers all around.

I spoke with a guy who had his own surround installation and was doing research on it, he said really amazing effects could be had my acelerating sounds through a sound field, it REALLY grabs your attention, he said it was likely a learned reponse animals (humans too) have due to having things like lions and tigers rush at us to kill us, it's very unsettling.

In San Francisco there's this place
http://www.audium.org/
which I still need to go to, but I haven't 'cause I'm an ass. there's some other installations around town too.

YILA · Post by **YILA** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 7:31 pm

dude - lots of Electro-acoustic musicians are using surround, making pieces specificly for multi channel. I hate people remixing albums in surround, its a gimmick.

I'm working on some surround pieces at the moment, you can do surround in any program but it means you have to mannually draw in your pans...at the moment im rewireing live into cubase sx3 to utilise its surround panners.

It's allot harder than you think, just like when stereo first come about and eveyone hard panned everything - surround can make pieces sound cheesey unless your carefull.

qveda · Post by **qveda** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 5:59 am

I have a similar question, follow up questions to the original post by BoimB.

I really am after an "immersive" sound experience for live performance, and personal recording. I play in my music room/ home studio 95% of the time. (24' x 15', good sized room)

My computer interface has 8 outs. My new music PC (pcaudiolabs.com - great guys! ) will come with Live6 installed.

I don't think I'll ever need to master 5.1 to CDs or DVDs . But if I create some cool surround music at home, I'd like to be able to record/play it back from the computer utilzing all the speakers.

Earlier in this thread , someone mentioned accelerating sound through the surround speaker environ. - that sounds very cool! but do I need other tools to achieve this, in addition to Live6? some kind of 5.1 plugin ?

And if I want to play a DVD on my music PC that is 5.1, do I need special s/w to play it through this surround system that I want to build ?

-Qua

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 6:08 am

Dunno what tools you might need to accelerate sound, it might be able to be done with careful fader editing, it was something I heard talking to some sound geek at burning man.

If you want to play a Dolby or DTS 5.1 encoded DVD from you computer you need software to do that, it's a decoder that costs money because they're patented, licensed compression schemes.

There are plenty of 5.1 music DVDs out there, I believe Underworld's Everything Everything DVD is 5.1, great freaking DVD btw.

5.1 simply means 5 channels of regular audio and 1 channel of bandlimited bass. There are different ways to convey that, Dolby and DTS have compression schemes, but you don't need them.

b0unce · Post by **b0unce** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 6:13 am

..i think maxmsp could come in handy for this process..
for example, maxmsp could control the volume for all 6 channels, and through maxmsp you could use an XY pad to place the listener anywhere in the 4 speaker box...and since this is done over midi, ableton can even record this movement through the faders

lots of possibilities with maxmsp, maxmsp&ableton
hell you could even use a joystick as a control source..

food for thought maybe

qveda · Post by **qveda** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 6:38 am

Thanks for the helpful advice on the dvd 5.1 software for playing DVDs through my computer. I'll check it out.

And glad to hear I don't need to pay for a special encode/decode to create 6 channel music in my home.

Using max/msp as described above sounds really cool, but frankly I'm nervous about the time it would take me to get up the learning curve to create something close to that. although someone may have already done it, and posted it to the libraries.

OK, so now I need more speakers. I have Accugroove cabs. I could keep them for the front L and R. but I'd need the other channels. any suggestions ? I suppose ideally, you'd want the 5 channels to be similar speakers + a sub. Or, perhaps it doesn't matter that much. even though its just for my home music experimentation and fun, I want the best sound I can manage. afterall, that's why we're here - right

-Q

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 9:31 am

Here's what I'd do.

Go and have a look at http://www.radio.uqam.ca/ambisonic/

The site deals with recording and mixing in Ambisonic format. Normally you would use a Soundfield microphone to capture sounds - but you can jerry-rig one yourself using two or 3 mics placed together in the way he describes.

Then grab yourself any of the open source B-format plugins to process it.

Mix it in a 5.1 capable DAW - Nuendo is good, but costly...or you can get

http://www.cockos.com/reaper/ for free to do the same job.

If you already have a 5.1 soundcard and a speaker set-up, you're away.

The results are astounding.

detroitechno · Post by **detroitechno** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:34 am

I'm heavy into surround sound work. Here is some material I suggest checking out to get a grasp of what people are doing with it.

Nine Inch Nails:
With Teeth (dualdisc)
The Downwards Spiral (dualdisc)
Beside You In Time (blu-ray, hd-dvd, dvd)

Meat Beat Manifesto - In Dub 5.1

Tipper - Surrounded

Depeche Mode - Playing The Angel (double disc)

Richie Hawtin - Transitions (double disc)

Give those a listen, there is some great work in there. The MBM is great! Jack Dangers is the man, no doubt.

qveda · Post by **qveda** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 3:27 pm

Since I don't yet have a way to listen to 5.1, I'm not sure I'd hear the cool things they are doing on the CDs. but thanks for the listing, I'll check them out when I get set up. Also, I heard that BT is coming out (or maybe it is out) with an awesome 5.1 dvd.

I have checked out various Ambionics sites. But since i'm not using any microphones, and for a couple of other reasons, I think 4.1 or 5.1 will be an easier path for me

-Qua