5.1 Mixing SoundOn Sound - You Are Surrounded Part 8
Last month's instalment of this series detailed how producers Rik Ede and Peter Cobbin were approaching 5.1 mixing,
as well as some of the difficulties they had to contend with. Like them, Gavin Sutherland, Jim Hunter and Elliot
Scheiner are all enthused by the new technology, and the sense of freedom it affords them. Elliot has gone on record
saying that music takes on "an entirely new life" in surround, and although he concedes that there are still a few
matters to iron out, such as a standardised sampling rate for surround mixes, he also plays down these remaining
issues. "The most important thing is to let the consumer hear how wonderful surround is!" Gavin Sutherland is
similarly positive: "I think this is easily as big a move as it was from mono to stereo. When you get thinking about
surround production and arrangement, you're no longer just thinking about when certain instruments should come in,
but also where! In stereo, you're much more limited in that respect, because there are so many conventions about
where you're supposed to put things... if you put, say, your drums all off to the left in a stereo mix, most people
would think you were really daft."
So what are they doing in their mixes, and what do they avoid?
Elliot started mixing for surround with several live projects, and
often attempted to recreate a live soundstage on these, placing
the principal musicians across the Left, Centre and Right
channels, and putting supporting musicians in the Surround
channels to give the listener a stage-based perspective. Since
moving to mixing more studio-based projects, where there is no
need to place instruments 'realistically', he admits that "anything
goes. Studio recordings are usually the most fun and the most
creative. Having said that, in most cases, I will put the drums
and bass and lead vocals in the front. I do put drums in the rear
on occasion; one of the cuts on Van Morrison's Moondance is
like that." The only problem he notes with use of the Surround
channels is when placing overdubs there, such as horns. Unlike
in the narrower stereo soundstage, it's occasionally possible to
spot the changes in the ambiance of a 5.1 mix when overdub
channels punch in and out on the surrounds. Elliot gets around
this by assigning more tracks to the surround channels, such as
backing vocals.
Even more strongly than Peter Cobbin, Elliot prefers not to feel
constrained by how well his 5.1 mixes will fold down into stereo,
feeling that a separate stereo mix should be included on DVDs
for those who don't wish to or cannot listen in surround. "I would
try to fight for no fold-down being allowed; I'm very opinionated
on this issue. A fold-down is extremely dependent on how you've
arranged your 5.1, and if you've done your job properly, it'll
never come close to the original stereo mix — an enormous
amount of time and care usually goes into that. Just put in the
original stereo mix!"
On use of the Centre and Sub speakers, Elliot has been
advising caution since his first surround projects. "You don't
know how people's home systems are configured or if they're
using full-range speakers all around or not, so I just use the
Centre to accent vocals, kick, bass, snare and any other
instruments that need emphasis." The same goes for the LFE
channel, which Elliot only uses for occasional accent on
low-frequency instruments which he's also placed elsewhere in
the mix.
Aside from the odd bit of wild experimentation in their surround test compositions (see the 'Surround Panning' box),
Gavin and Jim's foray into surround has thus far been deliberately low-key, as Jim explains. "Most of the people
we've recorded here, being traditional musicians, like everything to be set up as it would be on the stage, and left
there." And the sparseness of the material doesn't usually lend itself to dramatic surround treatments either, as Gavin
explains: "Obviously, in the movies, you can see the bomber swoop down over there and see the dam blow up over
here, and try to set up the sound accordingly, but if you've got a singer/songwriter with a harmonica and an acoustic
guitar, what are you going to do with that?
"If there's just one folk player and a guitar and his harmonica,
we'll use one mic on him, and put that centre forward in the
surround mix. We'll also use two other mics to capture the
ambience of the studio, and put the signals from those in the
rear Surround channels. That way, it's quite subtle, but you do
get a nice enveloping effect, and it's definitely not as good when
you turn the surround channels off.
"If, on the other hand, you've got enough players that you can
place each of them in different positions around a 360-degree
soundscape, then you can make it sound as though you're
sitting in the middle of a folk club and the players are all around
you. Say you've got a mandolin, fiddle, a bodhrain player or a
percussionist, and maybe an accordion player. We'd just put a
mic on each of them, and put up a couple of ambient mics as
Arc studio's Soundscape hardware units (left), with
well, and then route everything to the appropriate channels for
the stereo power amps on the right. The
placement — you more or less copy where they sit when they're
all-important Denon AVR2801 surround amp is in
playing. It's pretty straightforward really."
the centre.
And what of the Centre channel? Again, Jim and Gavin's use for
these channels is logical given the type of material they work with. Gavin: "Obviously, if you've got a vocalist or lead
Surrounds as well. That really seems to bring it out of the speakers. It sounds really flat when you take it out of the
rears after that."
As for the sub, it hasn't seen much use yet — hardly surprising, given the amount of sub-bass emanating from the
average folk ensemble. Jim: "In the Surround demo pieces we've done here, we fed the sub with the bass, the bass
drum, and the low end of a piano. But the commercial music we're recording here, from traditional instruments like
fiddles and accordions, doesn't really have that much in the way of low frequencies. Put it this way — we have the
facility if it's required."
One of the benefits of the Arc approach is that the signals Gavin and Jim record can be used to make a standard
stereo mix too, though Jim treats this as an entirely separate mixing process. Sometimes, he finds that including the
signals from the ambient mics causes phase problems when mixed with the direct signals for a stereo mix, in which
case he simply doesn't include the signals from the ambient mics in the stereo version. Stereo mixes can be burned
directly to CD-R from Soundscape via Arc's HHB CDR800, so that groups can take away a finished stereo CD straight
away, and no further mastering out-of-house is necessary.
Gavin cheerfully admits, "If that surround setup Jim saw down at Abbey Road is a top-of-the-range BMW, what we
have here is more like a Morris 1000 — but it does work!"
Lulu's Article Review
It's interesting when Elliot said "Since moving to mixing more studio-based projects, where there is no need to place instruments 'realistically', he admits that "anything goes".
I think this thinking is freeing to the sound engineer to take the listener out of the normal frame of what you see when the musician are stage. I agree with Elliot how you can change the experience of the listener through your mix, the creative expression of the mixer can transfer the entire feel of the mix and bring it to life by using movement through your panning.
I really like the idea of the "Arc approach" to "place each of them in different positions around a 360-degree" I think I would like to try to experiment with this idea, "you can make it sound as though you're sitting in the middle of a folk club and the players are all around you". I would like to do a mix to put the listener in the middle of a forest and all of the musical instrument are surrounding you as well as the sounds in nature. I feel doing a mix like this could really relax the listener and make the mix feel more life like. It a good the idea of placing the backing vocals in the rear speakers, like a choir of angels surrounding the person. I hear this effect in the blockbuster movies when they bleed the orchestra choir in the rear to make a large emotional impact.
When doing a Dvd release I think it would be worth while doing a separate stereo mix. It keep the options open for all listeners.
Quadraphonic (or
Quadrophonic & sometimes
Quadrasonic)
sound – the most-widely-used early term for what is now called 4.0
surround sound – uses four channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals that are (wholly or in part) independent of one another. Quadraphonic audio was the earliest consumer offering in surround sound. It was a commercial failure due to many technical problems and format incompatibilities. Quadraphonic audio formats were more expensive to produce than standard two-channel stereo. Playback required additional speakers and specially designed decoders and amplifiers.
