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[JamSync]

Peter  Oxford wrote on Mon, 30 August 2004 23:20

Dear Bob, I agree with Mr Proffitt (sure to be the successor to Alan Greenspan), that to do surround sound really well, is absolutely guaranteed to be really expensive indeed, fraught with coding problems, as the productions chain grows, and involve a very steep learning curve, involving lots of mistakes from everyone to begin with. Peter Poyser

Greenspan, eh? Now there's a job I never want to have! He's rather more pessimistic than I am, though. Surround is already here. What a lot of audio people can't accept is that it is, for the most part, destined to be the partner of film and video since it is not really a portable medium (except in cars...

And, just between us, you can call me KK. I'm not a "mister".

[bobkatz]

Peter  Oxford wrote on Mon, 30 August 2004 18:20

Dear Bob, Perhaps I am just completely hopeless at internet communication.    Probably, that is the case, I expect.    Quite honestly it?s not my intention to argue fine points, twist words, or even narrowly interpret them at all.   You seemed to be saying the sweet spot is better and larger with surround. The way I read the article it seemed to be saying there is a problem with the sweet spot on surround, that it needs to be made larger.

Peter, it's a language and syntax issue.

Let me try to clarify where I believe Thomas Lund is coming from:

a) The sweet spot in Surround is potentially FAR larger than in stereo. Your old friend Michael Gerzon understood this very well. For example, increase the front number of speakers from 2 to 3. Instantly, the horizontal sweet spot is widened. This is becuase the greater the number of direct sources of sound (e.g. loudspeakers) the easier that the ear localizes the sound to each of those sources. The fewer the "virtual" sources, the better the situation.

This is identical to your analogy of how in a concert situation, you can sit most anywhere, and still identify where each musician is standing. This is because each musician is a distinct source of sound. The more louspeakers, the more distinct sources of sound and the fewer "virtual" or "phantom" images of sound.

b) The sweet spot in 5.1 is POTENTIALLY FAR larger than in stereo. The key word is "POTENTIALLY" (as you corrected me, reading Thomas's own words). As Thomas cautions us, if we mix with power panning between front and surround, this potential will be lost and the sweet spot will actually be worse. The ultimate would be a multiple mono signal fed identically to all 5 speakers. NO, IT WILL NOT IMAGE INSIDE YOUR HEAD. IT WILL IMAGE NOWHERE WELL, REALLY, FOR EVERYWHERE YOU MOVE YOUR HEAD, THE IMAGE WILL MOVE TOWARDS THE NEAREST LOUDSPEAKER.

But so what! That's not the way to mix a stereo OR a surround recording. Instead, as Thomas says, when mixes are made with uncorrelated information between front and surround, or using early reflections and natural reverb, then the sweet spot widens, and you can sit in more seats in the listening room and still identify WHERE the sound is coming from. Wider and deeper than in stereo.

Kind of like your concert thing, only much more delusionary, eh? That's it, that's the sum of the points...   Alll right?

-----

On your other points....

As to how realistic surround is compared to real life? Well, let's just say that the old principle of "willful suspension of disbelief" continues to prevail no matter what artificial reproduction system we engineers invent. There are listeners who simply don't get stereo at all! They can't suspend their disbelief. Stereo is a serious illusion requiring great trust on the part of the listener; 5.1 is also an iIlusion, but requires perhaps 10% less work on the part of the listener to suspend disbelief.

Quote:

I agree with Mr Proffitt (sure to be the successor to Alan Greenspan), that to do surround sound really well, is absolutely guaranteed to be really expensive indeed, fraught with coding problems, as the productions chain grows, and involve a very steep learning curve, involving lots of mistakes from everyone to begin with.

That's Ms Proffitt, by the way. And I do agree with you both that doing it right is very expensive. But that's the approach I had to take with stereo, so it is no surprise to me that my budget just on the reproduction side will have to multiply by 4 or 5!

I also agree with the rest of your opinions, such as

Quote:

Personally, I would prefer to do stereo properly than surround badly.

You bet!!! And VERY few people reading this forum have had the privilege of hearing STEREO done well. Or really know how to mix stereo well. When it comes to learning how to use depth and dimension in recording, most recording and mixing engineers are still on their stereo training wheels. I strongly suggest we all master stereo recording before we move to surround. Multiple mono panpotted overcompressed drek does not qualify as "stereo". Learn from Thomas Lund and from many others, including my chapter "How to Achieve Depth and Dimension in Recording", which I plan to expand in the second edition for surround.

Learn from great mixing engineers like Bruce Swedien and George Massenburg. George's excellent stereo and surround mixes of, for example, Lyle Lovett are a joy to behear!

Quote:

I?m glad to hear everything is O.K. Bob and your dear wife is alright. Have a happy week!

You too, Peter. We had a tornado after Charley, and now Hurricane Fwhatshername.... is now on her way, oh dear.

[PP]

[JamSync]

Peter  Oxford wrote on Tue, 31 August 2004 23:12

Dear KK, I see you are educated at Vanderbilt. Earlier today I was sat talking with a friend whose son is happily married to one of them. What a very small world indeed, we live in. ........................... Once again, please accept my very sincere apologies,  genuinely given from the heart! Best Wishes Peter Peter Poyser

No need to apologize (or apologise <g>)! How could you have known? I find it amusing.

Yes my undergraduate degree is from Vanderbilt and the students here are back in force, making sure that there is not one solitary parking space available anywhere within ten blocks of the campus! (Our studio is on Music Row, which is just a few blocks from the Vanderbilt campus.)

I've enjoyed reading your posts, although I lurk most of the time...

[PP]

[JamSync]

Peter  Oxford wrote on Wed, 01 September 2004 21:49

Dear KK, There are a number of possible ways to handle this. ....... A real ?quality? area. It sounds wonderfully lush. Perhaps you should park on their lawns. Bye for now, KK.  Have a great week! Best Wishes Peter Peter Poyser

Thanks for all those clever solutions...I like the vertical idea the best! We have our own parking lot, of course, so that's fine for us.

Back to 5.1. Matched speakers please! With dual subs!!

[Bob Olhsson]

George Massenburg wrote on Sun, 29 August 2004 11:57

...it's about doing the best job possible.  And that REQUIRES eqquivilant monitors all around.  Or as close to it as your ears will allow.

One of my best friends, Andy Wiskes, was deeply involved as a mixer in the introduction of surround sound into neighborhood theaters. The film industry had to learn a lot about making surround sound translate between wildly different environments despite a big budget for room calibration.

Probably the biggest lesson, according to Andy, was that there are no cheap substitutes for truly great monitoring if you want good translation. For this reason most feature films are mixed on one of a handful of reliable dubbing stages. It's easy to make something sound great in the room you're in but very difficult to make it sound great in most rooms. It's also very important that the room and volume level one mixes at be comparable to the listening room. One way that accomplishing this was made affordable was by creating premixes of stems in an editing room saving the final critical balances for the dubbing stage and ultimately the final print mastering session for each release format.

Another lesson was that critical balances required identical full-range monitors. In movie theaters, you don't have that in the surrounds and for that reason, only non-critical sound effects are generally placed in the surrounds. What's meant by "non-critical" is elements that wouldn't suffer being played back even 6 dB. too loud or too soft.

So what about music?

My hunch, based on experience with quad back in the '70s and recent experience listening to DVD-Audio is that translation is once again going to be the biggest issue. I suspect to really do it right is going to require a new generation of dedicated mix or even mix-mastering rooms. If it's done wrong, as it was in the '70s, the artists will probably bail once again the first time they hear a mix they slaved over that sounds unacceptable out in the real world. I sincerely believe the reason we don't listen to nothing but surround sound today was the lack of artist support that was created because the industry didn't do its homework about how to create exciting mixes that translate.

[JamSync]

Bob Olhsson wrote on Wed, 01 September 2004 22:22

George Massenburg wrote on Sun, 29 August 2004 11:57 ...it's about doing the best job possible.  And that REQUIRES eqquivilant monitors all around.  Or as close to it as your ears will allow. One of my best friends, Andy Wiskes, was deeply involved as a mixer in the introduction of surround sound into neighborhood theaters. The film industry had to learn a lot about making surround sound translate between wildly different environments despite a big budget for room calibration. ----- My hunch, based on experience with quad back in the '70s and recent experience listening to DVD-Audio is that translation is once again going to be the biggest issue. I suspect to really do it right is going to require a new generation of dedicated mix or even mix-mastering rooms. If it's done wrong, as it was in the '70s, the artists will probably bail once again the first time they hear a mix they slaved over that sounds unacceptable out in the real world. I sincerely believe the reason we don't listen to nothing but surround sound today was the lack of artist support that was created because the industry didn't do its homework about how to create exciting mixes that translate.

The biggest market for surround music is not now and will not be in the future either DVD-A or SACD. It will be the music that accompanies or is accompanied by picture. The largest market for this will be the home theater. Even now, many movies quickly go to the DVD-V format and subsequent DVD-V releases of hit movies are events of note themselves. Ergo, it is critical that the home theater be addressed as a separate, moderately controllable entity. Dubbing stages and large room mixing are an entirely different arena and the old idea that film mixers are necessarily the be-all and end-all for the home theater market needs to go away. I've been saying this for a decade, and I guess I'll keep saying it for another decade.
I don't care how many Oscars a film wins...if I hear a girl whisper in the center channel and she cocks a gun next to her head and I hear it not only in L/R but in the surrounds, I'm going to notice that they didn't take time to make the home theater experience what it should be for the film.

While old-style film mixing should be on every 5.1 engineer's list of subjects to study, there's something quite different happening with this technology. Perhaps people will wake up to this after they've run out of prizes to give the Rolling Stones (yawn). Can't we just let the 60's die the death it should have sometime in the early 70's? Please?

[PP]

[Bob Olhsson]

JamSync wrote on Wed, 01 September 2004 17:52

... it is critical that the home theater be addressed as a separate, moderately controllable entity. Dubbing stages and large room mixing are an entirely different arena and the old idea that film mixers are necessarily the be-all and end-all for the home theater market needs to go away.

I suppose I could have written more clearly when I just said:

"It's also very important that the room and volume level one mixes at be comparable to the listening room."

ABSOLUTELY material intended for home theater or TV should never be mixed on a dubbing stage. On the other hand, it's ridiculous to ignore the lessons the movie industry learned the hard way about the need for very high quality monitoring in order for a surround mix to translate well.

I also disagree that surround music must involve picture. That's comparing apples to oranges. They are completely different forms of entertainment and must be treated as such.

[JamSync]

Bob Olhsson wrote on Thu, 02 September 2004 02:55

JamSync wrote on Wed, 01 September 2004 17:52  ... it is critical that the home theater be addressed as a separate, moderately controllable entity. Dubbing stages and large room mixing are an entirely different arena and the old idea that film mixers are necessarily the be-all and end-all for the home theater market needs to go away. I suppose I could have written more clearly when I just said: "It's also very important that the room and volume level one mixes at be comparable to the listening room." ABSOLUTELY material intended for home theater or TV should never be mixed on a dubbing stage. On the other hand, it's ridiculous to ignore the lessons the movie industry learned the hard way about the need for very high quality monitoring in order for a surround mix to translate well. I also disagree that surround music must involve picture. That's comparing apples to oranges. They are completely different forms of entertainment and must be treated as such.

I never said that surround music *must* involve picture, just that music-only products will not have the market presence in surround that they did in stereo, primarily because it's not a very portable medium. Very few people want or have the time to sit and just concentrate on surround music. Perhaps some engineers and some musicians do, but most people multitask and, frankly, most kids today don't dream of being in a famous band. Most of them want to make movies and they see being musicans as a part of that entire thing. I have to laugh when people say "will it be DVD-A or SACD?" NEITHER! It will be STREAMED CONTENT!! The container for content continues to be of less and less importance (except as storage for backup) as time goes on. Would I rather order a bunch of plastic that I have to maintain and store or would I rather stream it from a server and have access to it for a fee? Increasingly, the answer is: forget the container. Now, depending on where you are, you get to use limited content (in a car where you have to pay attention to driving, or you should be...) or extremely rich content ( your "kiva" or modern equivalent of where you do your thinking, reflection and intake of information...no, not the bathroom! the den, the playroom, the studio, family room, etc.)

I've found that once a room has been accepted as the place for rich content, usually everything that distributes rich content will be ON. The TV is on, the surround system is on, and the wireless laptops are scattered about downloading stuff to be perused later. These "rich content" rooms are generally where surround audio will be heard, so there's definitely going to be picture content available, if not running all the time with the sound off (news junkies who need that scrolling eye candy while they listen to music and answer email at the same time).

I also never said that anyone should ignore the need for very high quality monitoring (are we setting up the straw bull here?). However, if you are monitoring in a room designed for home theater, you will need to use bass management to deal with room modes. Again we are at the impasse of those who say "only five 'full-range' speakers"  and those of us who say "use a full range monitoring *system*".  

Surround music doesn't have to involve picture, but that's the primary part of the market that is growing. It's also the only market that doesn't involve 90% rehashing of product that was conceived to be stereo. I've been working with several young filmmakers lately and I find them incredibly refreshing on a musical level. They don't approach music with a lot of the restrictions that I'm seeing in the music industry. Music is an organic part of *creating* the experience, not an afterthought. I believe it is emerging now because we have the first young adults who are truly savvy at creating art in the virtual environment. In a way,  they parallel the young carvers at Zuni who have taken the traditional carving skills of their parents and supercharged them with diamond drills and other modern tools so that their sculptures are often more realistic, but just as often more fanciful and less "concrete" than those of their elders.