I'm about to delve into the wonderful world of 5.1 and have a number of jobs lined up which will be in surround. I'd like to start a thread where anyone with 5.1 experience can post ANYTHING they've learnt, no matter how seemingly obvious, for the benefit of those like me who are just starting out, or those thinking of entering 5.1 music. I'd love to hear about some:

Surround recording techniques in general, as well as instrument specific techniques (for both classical and pop music)
Mixing techniques and approaches
Any 'surround bars' you've made that hold 5 mics securely!
Authoring and encoding 
Ideas for additional content for the VIDEO_TS directory on DVD-A discs
Gear and software you've used that makes life easier and/or better
Changes to your control room necessary
Bass management
Any revelations in general you may have had!

There is precious little info on surround recording, so I'd love to benefit from the experience of anyone willing to share. Like I said, any topic is good no matter how obvious or boringly technical.

I have some DVD-A discs ordered and on the way which I'll no doubt learn from - please suggest some good reference 5.1 music releases, both classical and popular. Even if they're 'bad', I'd love to get an idea of the different approaches being taken.

I hope this thread doesn't die before it's begun!

"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.

'Learnt' is British English, and 'learned' is American English - they mean the same thing.


Thanks for your good wishes - I wish myself luck too! I think I'll need it


OK, I'll kick things off. Has anyone tried the 'Halo' approach for micing a drum kit, ie. 5 mics arranged in, well, a halo above the drummer's head? It sounds interesting, but I can't help but imagine there would be a lot of phasing issues here? Why don't I try it and see?! My speakers don't arrive until next week, so I can't start experimenting yet. The reason I'm interested in this particular approach is that my live room isn't really big enough to warrant ambient micing on a kit. I will of course take my gear to a suitable hall and experiment with these ambient techniques at a later date, but initially, I'd like to start recording in a 'dry' acoustic.


Anyone recorded piano in surround? Ah, I can't wait to start experimenting!


If you've dabbled in 5.1, please, please, please post!!

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.

Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention the Pentatone RQR SACD series. The RQR are "Remastered Quadraphonic" recordings originally recorded in the '70s for Quad systems. They are 4 channel surround and I really like them.

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).

 

Thanks for the replies guys. Will get hold of the recordings mentioned, both stereo and surround versions. 

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? Thanks for the link, obviously I'm not going to fork out for an MLP encoder at this point, so alternatives are very welcome! 

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.

Whilst on the subject of authoring, I thought I'd paste some links that Jon (thatonejonguy) gave me to free encoders.

On this link http://24bit.turtleside.com/ there are downloads for the above mentioned Lplex (ac3), as well as DVD-Audiofile, and other useful programs/encoders.

Here is another AC3 encoder http://code.google.com/p/wavtoac3encoder/ 


My monitors still haven't arrived yet, but I'm assured that they're on their way (I'm only using HS80s with a KRK Rokit 10s sub). When they get here, I'll post anything useful that I learn.

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!