to the extent that surround is bullshit...

  • Thread starter Thread starter dobro
  • Start date Start date

surround is bullshit, right?

  • yes! surround is wonderful! I always endorse the latest techology, no matter what...

    Votes: 5 3.8%

  • yes! surround is great! It multiplies artistic possibilties by a factor of 3

    Votes: 45 34.1%

  • ho hum - now we've got 5 or 6 speakers worth of boy bandz in the room

    Votes: 32 24.2%

  • there's a guy somewhere who gets paid to invent this horsehshit and the amazing thing is, people hav

    Votes: 50 37.9%
  • Total voters
    132
I think that surround is AMAZING for movies, helps give the person more of a sense of "being there" because often in the back speakers they will put backround noise and for scarey movies, a sound jumpin from behind ya will deffinatly add to the effect. I think surround is wonderful for movies.....

For music, I think to do a mix in full 5.1....... is kinda tacky, thats just a little overboard, maybe with techno I could see it, but other than that I don't think that it would do the song any good, having things jump out everywhere would detract from the song, for the most part.

Although just having the back speakers mimic the front ones can be nice, cause it really fills the whole room with sound and if U close your eyes U can get pretty easily enveloped in the music, which is a feeling a quite enjoy.

in the end....... surround just has to be used wisely so that it won't detract the persons attention from the movie/music. It should just be used to make people feel like they are "there" it shouldn't be glarinly obvious....

Sabith
 
I must be doing something wrong,

cos I could never get a sound to come from behind me. It was always like staring into a room infront of me, or make that on top of me. All the sounds just basically jump to the roof
 
I think surround sound is good for sound effects, like when the airplane is approaching from far behind in the distance, or the gunshots are behind you.

But it has nothing at all to do with music !

On the rear room reflections idea: The room reflection information is already in a standard stereo signal. It is the room reflections of the concert hall, exactly as your ears would hear it in the concert hall. Any additional "room reflections" might sound cool to you, but it has nothing to do with the reproduction of music. :)


Peace,
Rick
 
The first time I did some "surround" was in 67, when I hooked up some rear speakers to my dad's system and build a small variable time delay between 2 amps.
I did my first live quadraphonic gig in 1970, with 4 equal 5 way crossover systems (all powered with tube amps!), with an especially build console which was a huge screw-up, as it had joy sticks on each strip - how the hell can you handle / pan / position over 40 joysticks???? Never thought about that one before, it had never been done. One tour and assignment / bussing came to the resque. After that I worked with live surround systems until around 1976. The costs and logistics involved were quite horrendous.
I did mix some albums to quadraphonic, there were quite a few released here and in europe. The technology just wasn't ready.

However - It CAN be an amazing thing. And I'm going to prove it.
Without trying to be bigheaded, all the stuff I've heard, some ok, some awful, 99% remixes. One of the reasons for building my own place, with a large tracking room, is that I'm going to record for surround. Not just mix to a surround format.
I made all the mistakes you can make with surround sound in the '70's - so now I get to put my ideas into practice.
Watch out - 'coz the sounds are going to freak you out.
 
Give a man a tube mic stand and he thinks he's an engineer.....

To repeat my above statement/question...
"An idea whos time has come?...."
 
it's great for DVD. we have edited a lot of videos and the audio has been mixed in 5.1. in that kind of scenario, surround is good in a film enviroment.

i cant really accept it yet in the music recording enviroment though. i couldn't mix an album for 5.1, seems stupid right now.surround sound isn't even "the norm" yet.
 
So, engineers arrive on the thread, and the votes in favor of surround go up. Conclusion - engineers dig surround.

Long Wave - doesn't it bother you doing sound for video surround when you have to compress the sound?
 
Recording for surround is where all the fun starts! Cannot hide it, I've been turned on major by being "in" sound all my life.
One of the next projects I'm doing will be a CD, also available on DVD, DVDA. Totally different mixes. Non of this "the surround mix has to collapse to stereo" crap
 
The Axis said:
I think surround sound is good for sound effects, like when the airplane is approaching from far behind in the distance, or the gunshots are behind you.

But it has nothing at all to do with music !

Rick
Click to expand...

What? Come on, where are all the Pink Floyd and Queensryche fans out there? Sound Effects can be a part of music.

Sabith said:
in the end....... surround just has to be used wisely so that it won't detract the persons attention from the movie/music.

Sabith
Click to expand...

Absolutely. That's gonna be the major problem. Surround is the new kid on the block. Everyone is going to get it just to have it and use it just to say they did. I saw a thread on here a while ago that asked what the overused effect of the year was. I don't think it will be long till Surround Sound takes that award.

I see many artistic possibilities in surround sound, but I think it could still go further. How about a fully 3D sound environment? Let's mount speakers on the ceiling and on the floor. Let's have complete and total control of sound placement. Let's not view music in terms of live/studio, real/unreal, or anything like that. Let's view music as a pure experience, the nature of which to be decided by the artist.

The point is, if you're doing it just to do it, you probably shouldn't. All it's gonna take is for someone to do an album that uses surround the "right" way that's gonna make everyone go: "wow, I could do something like that on my song."
 
Hey, Sjoko2....

....which reference monitors would you recommend for surround?
 
I've got 2 firm favorite combinations, one of them (the one I'm using) is JBL LSR28P's with an LSR12P sub. I have also worked on the small LSR25's, also with a 12 sub, in a smaller control room, with equally good results.

My other favorite combo - one I think I will pick for our second, large, control room (make some hits first so I can affort them),
is Quested VR3208's with one or 2 VS1115 subs.
 
Sjoko, is DVDA a new format ,I was under the impression that that was Matt Stone and Trey Parkers band.(double vaginal double anal).:D
 
surround?

I once got a pair of quadraphonic headphones from the seventies and they were a real treat to listen to . they came with an old quad systm e with no speakers and it was fun . if you listen to any music any where well there has to be some form of surround fx the waves dont stop when they pass your ears they continue on and bounce of somthing(in my case the drummers head) and come back at you from behind and the side and the drummers head.
 
Well, being a film composer, I guess I'm bias in this discussion, but it seems DVD will probably end up being the medium of choice. I believe it's Pioneer that will be releasing the DVD+RW/CD+RW later this fall for 800 dollars. Soon most people will have one, might as well do something with all that exrta space on the disk, eh? Someday, listening to stereo will be like listening to mono when stereo first came out. Like, why isn't there sound coming out of the rear speakers?? THAT DAM CAT!

And I thought I needed help mixing before!
 
For now it's still a gimmick. But I've heard it done up right before. It's an effect that must be intelligently and imaginatively applied to sound not worse than stereo.
 
Good for strolling musicians

Surround is a gimmick. It's like when stereo first came out - you'd hear the singer for awhile in the left speaker and then for no reason (s)he would whip over to the right. That might be good if you were listening to a recording of a stolling musician. By the way, I agree that it works for movies - where you are being made aware of movement. And yes, I have heard guitars behind me - I'm a singer whose sung with various backup bands. Which reminds me: What's the difference between a bull and a backup band in a lounge? On a bull, the horns are in the front and the assh__le is in the back.:cool:
 
I beg to differ with what seems to be the general opinion. I do not believe surround is a gimmick, it is here to stay.
I do not think it will replace stereo altogether, but in the near future you will be able to get one single disk from which you can play stereo, surround as well as watch video's see interviews etc.
Until such time, CD and DVD will 'live together' as 2 available formats.
 
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