Surround recording, mixing, mastering and authoring

"learnt" Interesting... I have an Indian (from India) friend who used that term. Surround? ha! I'm still trying to learn stereo!! LOL! Good luck w/Surround, seriously. Your b@!!$ are bigger than mine. I respect your ambition and sincerely wish you good luck.

Why don't I try it and see?!

That's the best thing you can do. Just experiment.

In college I wrote a piece of music for all the pianos in a piano store and 8 players. The concept was to play more with the spatial aspects of the situation rather than harmony/melody. The players would move around to different pianos at different times and the whole thing was recorded with a Soundfield ST-250 mic (now replaced by the ST-350 but you can read a bit about the 250 here.)set smack dab in the middle of the store. So the center, close pianos sounded close and the further pianos sounded far away. (of course) We recorded at night to try to reduce external noise, and I tried to make sure the players moved around quietly.  I ended up with an Ambisonic B-Format recording on 4 tracks of a 1/2" 8 track tape.  I should really try to digitize that at some point...

I just wish Sonar would support surround VSTs properly.

As far as authoring, if you're doing this for your own enjoyment then look in to Lplex. It lets you put 24/48 uncompressed surround on a standard DVD-Video disc so it will play on just about any DVD player.

jamescollins

There is precious little info on surround recording
 

You're probably right on that point ... I haven't seen much.  Owsinski's Mixing Engineers Handbook has a little bit, plus some interviews with engineers who have done some real work in this area.  But overall it's still pretty light.
 
As for reference surround mixes, I'd say Yellow Brick Road is a must, irrespective of what you think of Mr. John's music. 
 
If I were approaching this (trying to learn best practices), I think I'd make myself intimately familiar with two or three tracks in stereo, before I got too familiar with the surround mixes.  Once I knew the stereo mix really, really well, then (and not until then) would I study how surround was used.  I'd bet this approach would be a good one for any reference albums you chose, not just Yellow Brick Road.
 
Other notable surround albums worth checking out:
- Tommy
- Any of the Genisis "middle period" albums such as Trick of the Tail or Wind and Wuthering
- DarkSide of the Moon (my all time favorite surround remix, but unless you've got a lot of sound effects, maybe not the best model for learning surround mixing techniques relevant to what you'd like to accomplish).
- Brothers in Arms (not the most electrifying surround, but tasteful and probably worth attention for mixing pointers).

 

Tarsier, sounds like a fascinating project you did! What were the results like? As far as authoring is concerned, why do you say to use Lplex if it's for my own enjoyment? Why not release it commercially?

Yeah, that project was a lot of fun. The results were... ok... mainly due to the piano store environment still being too noisy. The spatial aspects turned out pretty well, except that it sounded like it was in a piano store. I would have preferred to have all the pianos in a nice hall, but who has the money for that? My piano players were really terrific and enthusiastic about the project, and one of them had the piano store connection. I miss college and that environment of lets-just-try-it!

Regarding Lplex, I dunno why I said that, really. Maybe 'cause it's a beta that hasn't been updated for years? But maybe it hasn't been updated because it just works exactly right and does what it says. If that's the case, and it does what you need, then why not use it for a commercial release? I used it for an experiment and it worked as advertised, so I guess I have nothing bad to say about it.

Bass management. I've been looking around for a good solution (even though it's not necessary, we're told it's a good idea to get some form of BM to check how our music might translate on consumer systems).

I was about to go for the Blue Sky BMC Mk III (http://abluesky.com/products/bmc-mkiii/) and then I came across this little plugin by Voxengo, http://www.voxengo.com/product/bms/ at a fraction of the price of Blue Sky's hardware unit.

Firstly, has anyone used both or either of these systems? If not, would you mind speculating over advantages/disadvantages of the 2 systems, based on construction, design, philosophy etc. I've been thinking about it, and surely a bass management system is just a series of filters? If so, I can't think of any reason why these tasks could not be carried out by a plugin. It just seems too good to be true though!

On this link http://24bit.turtleside.com/ there are downloads for the above mentioned Lplex (ac3)

Lplex is not an ac3 encoder. It writes uncompressed PCM audio to a DVD-Video disc. DVD-Video can do uncompressed PCM audio at up to 24 bit 48 kHz 6 channel. Or 2 channels of 24/96.  Just wanted to make sure that was clear.

Regarding bass management, I haven't used either of those products you mentioned. But yes, bass management is just filtering and routing. I took a quick glance at the plugin.  Since Sonar doesn't properly support surround VST plugins, this might not work correctly in Sonar.  But try the demo and see.

You could also pick up a set of consumer surround speakers to do a mix check. Logitech makes some decent ones.

The Blue Sky unit is going to be your best friend since it is a surround volume control knob.  If you are serious about this, have the cash, and don't yet have a surround volume control, it looks like a good solution. You might want to investigate other surround volume controls as well.

There's lots of information out there about surround music.



I'd start by reading Tomlinson Holman's book http://www.amazon.com/Surround-Sound-Second-Up-running/dp/0240808290/ref=dp_cp_ob_b_title_0. Bobby Owsinski's surroundassociates.com website has lots of info.


Listen to a lot of stuff: 
Beck - Sea Change
Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat 
Roxy Music - Avalon 
Porcupine Tree  - In Absentia


To record live acoustic events for surround mixing and distribution, you can use microphones or techniques that you already know. ORTF, X/Y, Blumlein pair, M/S, etc. with a pair or two of hall mics and spot mics for soloists. You can apply this to drum overheads, room mics, etc., for acoustic guitars, pianos, etc. in rock, jazz and pop.


5.1 is an ideal delivery method whether you have one channel or five. A mono mix is at its best delivered from a full range center channel. LCR stereo is almost always better than LR stereo. Quad - 4.0 - can sound great on a 5.1 system (the new Chicago Transit Authority release from Rhino Handmade is great fun http://www.rhino.com/shop/product/chicago-chicago-transit-authority-dvd-quadraphonic). The LFE channel should probably never be used in a music mix.


Five identical speakers with a properly integrated subwoofer are needed. Bass Manaqement is simply the system crossover needed to integrate the subwoofer, as with the Blue Sky unit (I wouldn't use software for this - a plugin does not work at the right point in your gain stage, and will not deliver the best signal to noise compared to a hardware unit right before the power amplifiers). Whatever else you have done to your room acoustics will probably make your surround system work well.


Any audio interface with six or more outputs will work. You will need a hardware surround monitor controller to at least turn up and down the six speakers, like a Martinsound MultiMAX or that Blue Sky unit. I've used the Presonus Firestudio/MSR with good results.


Distribution is tough. You can't burn an SA-CD, you can burn a DVD-A but it'll cost a lot. You can burn a video DVD with 5.1 24/48 audio that plays in DVD-A players with Minnetonka DiskWelder Bronze, and a demo of that with an affordable upgrade came with SONAR Producer at one point. DTS and Dolby Digital encoders are expensive and by nature lossy. Fraunhofer has a Surround MP3 encoder for free (but it's MP3...).
 

Lplex is not an ac3 encoder. It writes uncompressed PCM audio to a DVD-Video disc. DVD-Video can do uncompressed PCM audio at up to 24 bit 48 kHz 6 channel. Or 2 channels of 24/96.  Just wanted to make sure that was clear. Regarding bass management, I haven't used either of those products you mentioned. But yes, bass management is just filtering and routing. I took a quick glance at the plugin.  Since Sonar doesn't properly support surround VST plugins, this might not work correctly in Sonar.  But try the demo and see. You could also pick up a set of consumer surround speakers to do a mix check. Logitech makes some decent ones. The Blue Sky unit is going to be your best friend since it is a surround volume control knob.  If you are serious about this, have the cash, and don't yet have a surround volume control, it looks like a good solution. You might want to investigate other surround volume controls as well.

tarsier

Thank you Tarsier - I had no idea that DVD-V discs support uncompressed audio, thanks for clearing that up - I hate reading false info online, so please correct every error you see!

You worried me slightly by saying Sonar does not properly support surround VSTs - please define 'properly' - what aspect of surround VSTs is limited/unsupported in Sonar?

Regarding gear and monitor controllers, yes, I am serious - as far as my budget for this allows! I've got some basic gear to get me going on order, just waiting for it to arrive - x5 HS80s, monitor controller etc.

Seriousfun, thank you very much for your post, just what I was looking for. I knew Owinski was into surround, but had never come across that site.I've also bought the book you linked to. 

Good read on surround mixing / mastering:

http://emusician.com/tutorials/5-1_mix/

Hi Rootdogg, great that you seem to be getting on well! The correct encoder output option to use depends on your authoring program, I've never used DVD-Audio Solo, so I can't tell you which one it likes - trial and error is probably the easiest way to tell.

Well my speakers have arrived, not my monitor controller yet, but it's all very exciting. I've come across a major bummer though, Sonar does not seem to be the DAW to use for surround. As tarsier warned, no surround plugins work inside Sonar, including the Waves 360 Surround tools which is a major setback for me. In fact, the only plugins that seem to function as they should (even when inserted on a track, not a bus) are the Sonitus plugins! I hope that it's user error, so I'll describe my problem and hopefully someone can tell me I have a small brain and give me a workaround/fix:

I insert a stereo plugin on a stereo track, routed to a surround bus. Depending on the plugin, I either get a weird 'grating' noise, or it starts out functioning as it should, then it's output becomes more and more delayed as time goes on, eg. I insert a reverb on a snare track, and after a while, it's as if I've applied a delay to the snare, I can hear a distinct echo that increases with time. Is this a VST/DXi issue? Maybe there's some delay compensation for surround that I don't know about. But like I said, this happens when inserting across a track, as well as in SurroundBridge on a bus.

A surround plugin I guess is a single plugin with 6 inputs and 6 outputs (for 5.1 that is). The problem with Sonar is that it's designed to adapt stereo plugins for surround ie. it simply inserts 6 instances of the plugin, linking the controls. So when you insert an actual surround plugin with 6 ins and 6 outs, it still inserts 6 instances of that plugin and creates a big mess!

The Sonitus plugins work fine with surroundbridge, but I haven't had any luck with any other 3rd party plugs, eg. Waves, Izotope etc. I really hope it's me that's the problem. I was fiddling around with it again today, and discovered all is well with a track soloed, but when everything is in the mix, that's when the delay is introduced. Sounds like some manual delay compensation is needed...help anyone?