Surround

Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener (surround channels).

Those of us who lived throughthe big Quad Boom and Bust of the 70's are gun shy,gexpecting another still born standard, based more on hypethan reality, and something valuable gained for effort expended.

There are other very important issues for good surround recordings that we've not been able to cover here. Many of the techniques and philosophy that go into fine (2-track) stereophony will carry overdirectly into the newest wrap-around systems. If any of the better available setups, like some of those above, is adopted as the basis forour favored system, instruments can be placed in many more apparent positions than ever possible before with two tracks. Attending a live concert in a superb venue like Carnegie Hall, and sitting fairly closely, you'll hear a wide arc or "curtain of sound," and many acoustic reflections and reverberation coming at you from all directions. Your earswill pick up the original sound placements up in front easily, and will certainly hear a large part, but not all, of the ambient information. Such clues of size of the room and shape are the ones to try to capture on arecording. Don't worry about some theoretical ideals of "completely reconstructing the listening space." You can't. Not even with 7.2 channels, you can't.

 So don't fret about whatwill be lost, don't assume you can recreate such effects unambiguously "a posteriori," using a multitrack master and a fine surround mixing studio.Go back to the basics. Get the overall balances between the sounds right, that's not going to change. Set the equalization and wet-dry mods wherethey sound best, the same as usual. Let the reverb come mostly from theside channels, along with at least some of the instruments (don't waste LS& RS just on reverb/echo). Some reverb or ambience ought be heard fromthe front, too, and probably it should use shorter delays and decays, anda bit less level. You can use neat toys like Psi-Networks (for 90 degree constant phase shifting) without worries of incompatibility and corruptionas existed with all the pseudo quad matrix schemes: SQ, QS, RM, etcétera (I'll have more on matrix networks and early quad systems and my trial byfire with SQ in a related page here soon). You can use the widening of"sound-shuffling" processing to great effect on 5.1 channels, it's nothingto be tossed aside just because we're working with more than two channels.The transition to full surround is simply a move to a superset ofeverything else we already know, from creating, engineering and producing, to the "all-enveloping" new playback systems at home. We don't have to begin all over again.

Surround, actually conceive it as a part of the creative process, not something slapped onlater like a coat of paint. 5.1 or .2 is going to be wonderful for therecording arts and sciences. Much much more important than 96k/192ksampling idiocy at a hype-y 24 bits. (Did you hear that? Did I hear what? You know, the tighter ambience, contoured timbral nuance and extended silky imaging?) Spend that extra BD - DVD - SACD bandwidth wisely: give us multichannels!