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FSOL on 5.1 audio


Stripey

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These are 2 new videos by FSOL talking about their new 5.1 surround sound project, they raise some really interesting points and anyone familiar with albums like Lifeforms or Dead Cities will understand their excitement about mixing in 5.1. I personally can't wait to hear the results.

part 1 -

part 2 -

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These are 2 new videos by FSOL talking about their new 5.1 surround sound project, they raise some really interesting points and anyone familiar with albums like Lifeforms or Dead Cities will understand their excitement about mixing in 5.1. I personally can't wait to hear the results.

part 1 -

part 2 -

they're also on the cover of a magazine this month - Future Music, I think it was - and there's two 5.1 tracks on the DVD with it.

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Give me some dumbass electro made from downloaded samples, in mono at 96 kbps any day.

Hahaha, thats all well and good for a bit of drunken fun ( Have you got RAT001 with Dee-Kline on it? If not I'll send you a copy, it's a classic example of everything that's good about cheaply produced bedroom electro) but the promise of fresh FSOL material and a return to the kind of stuff they were doing in the mid 90's has me salivating, surround or not.

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Guest lime ruined my life

"this is a glorious key to the prison door! i see an opportunity here..."

christ, he can't help but speak crap. what a bunch of pretentious ass-holes.

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5.1?! that's not cutting edge, that's positively outdated. Shame on them for using old technology! I'd expect 7.1 as a bare minimum these days - so really stripey, what are you doing promoting outdated rubbish?

Seen a lot of music albums expressly written for and mixed in 5.1 surround have you?

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Seen a lot of music albums expressly written for and mixed in 5.1 surround have you?

I couldn't care less what an album is mixed for, i'm not an audiophile. But it's still a fact that 5.1 is old technology, isn't it? Show me an album written expressly for 7.1 and I'd be impressed, but it's hardly impressive writing for a technology that's been about for years and years. It'd be like me writing software for Windows 98 - sure, lots of people have such a setup, but it's outdated.

Should we say that 5.1 is the guitar of the audio world, hmm?

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I couldn't care less what an album is mixed for, i'm not an audiophile. But it's still a fact that 5.1 is old technology, isn't it? Show me an album written expressly for 7.1 and I'd be impressed, but it's hardly impressive writing for a technology that's been about for years and years. It'd be like me writing software for Windows 98 - sure, lots of people have such a setup, but it's outdated.

Should we say that 5.1 is the guitar of the audio world, hmm?

No, how about we say you don't know what you're talking about, again?

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I couldn't care less what an album is mixed for, i'm not an audiophile. But it's still a fact that 5.1 is old technology, isn't it? Show me an album written expressly for 7.1 and I'd be impressed, but it's hardly impressive writing for a technology that's been about for years and years. It'd be like me writing software for Windows 98 - sure, lots of people have such a setup, but it's outdated.

Should we say that 5.1 is the guitar of the audio world, hmm?

5.1 surround is an untried format for music recording really. It's a whole different kettle of fish from the 5.1 audio tracks that are present on dvd. There's a lot more in the way of timing issues, recording technique and spatial levels involved in music compared to film audio tracks. When you here music in a film on a dvd it's in stereo fed through the left and right speakers, you might get a subtle 'shadow' of the left and right stereo signal in the rear speakers but that's purely for ambiance.

Different ball game entirely and adapting music to 5.1 would open up a whole new way of listening to music.

And no, DVD-Audio isn't the same before anyone starts.

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5.1 surround is an untried format for music recording really. It's a whole different kettle of fish from the 5.1 audio tracks that are present on dvd. There's a lot more in the way of timing issues, recording technique and spatial levels involved in music compared to film audio tracks. When you here music in a film on a dvd it's in stereo fed through the left and right speakers, you might get a subtle 'shadow' of the left and right stereo signal in the rear speakers but that's purely for ambiance.

Different ball game entirely and adapting music to 5.1 would open up a whole new way of listening to music.

And no, DVD-Audio isn't the same before anyone starts.

Thank you for the technical answer, I appreciate it. Reputation points swinging your way :)

Is there a possibility for music to be done specifically for 7.1 then? I've found some stuff on the internet referring to the possibility of mixing for it, but does the equipment exist to take advantage of it?

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Go on then, why is 5.1 more advanced, modern and cutting edge than 7.1? Edcuate me...

7.1 is just an extension of 5.1 in that it adds a further two speakers to allow for extra depth. Now in truth 7.1 is only really needed in a really large room to make up for the shortfall in throw soundwise. You therefore don't get anything 'more' from having a 7.1 system unless you have a cathedral sized room and even then it's just maintaining ambience.

A 7.1 system will actually sound really bad in a small room, as does 5.1 really, because the sound fields are cluttered and you're ears need a bit of delay time to process what you're hearing.

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Go on then, why is 5.1 more advanced, modern and cutting edge than 7.1? Edcuate me...

Err...but that's not the point. As Stripey said, how many albums expressly written for and mixed in 5.1 surround do you know of?

I can only think of a few albums mixed for 5.1 surround sound (NIN's The Downward Spiral re-release for example) but they have been remixed for that format. They were not originally mixed in that format to begin with.

And by the way, having more speakers does not necessarily mean being more "advanced, modern and cutting edge". Because that's the only difference between 5.1 and 7.1 surround I'm aware of. As the majority of people that have surround sound systems have 5.1 surround then one could argue it makes more sense to mix for 5.1 than 7.1 at present.

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Guest lime ruined my life

i think there is a large point being missed here. A song is a the same whether its played on one speaker, 2 or 6. Funnily enough, after all the dissing of stereo, no one has stopped to mention that humans have 2 ears, not six. Sound localisation is acomplished through our brains using two ears, and erecting an array of speakers isn't a very elegant solution. Also ask yourself this questio, How many people have a 5.1 surround system? It's an expensive, bulky technology, and is not the future, which is the message that seems to be coming across over and over in the video.

Pretentious wankery, you really need to listen to the one liners he comes out with in that video. i mean really, how long was he in prison? and who the fuck gave him the key?

Stupid, hippy, fuck.

p.s i actually like fsol, but this video put me off the guy.

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i think there is a large point being missed here. A song is a the same whether its played on one speaker, 2 or 6. Funnily enough, after all the dissing of stereo, no one has stopped to mention that humans have 2 ears, not six. Sound localisation is acomplished through our brains using two ears, and erecting an array of speakers isn't a very elegant solution. Also ask yourself this questio, How many people have a 5.1 surround system? It's an expensive, bulky technology, and is not the future, which is the message that seems to be coming across over and over in the video.

Pretentious wankery, you really need to listen to the one liners he comes out with in that video. i mean really, how long was he in prison? and who the fuck gave him the key?

Stupid, hippy, fuck.

p.s i actually like fsol, but this video put me off the guy.

I think you're missing the point: Sound is directional, and your ears can and do accomodate that. Stereo speakers aren't multidirectional, they project sound out in front of them in a 180 degree arc with it dissipating at the farthest perimeters of the arc. Now if you put speakers behind you, especially using film audio tracks as an example, your body relates better to what you're seeing as there's a degree of spatial perception to the sound, which tricks your brain into feeling like there's something happening behind you as well.

The centre speaker in 5.1/7.1 speakers acts as a focal point by only containing a dialogue channel, which helps you focus on what's going on on the screen.

Now yes, you're right in your first point. Most songs are written,recorded and mixed with the stereo format in mind. But what's wrong with developing the format so it creates another level of 'depth' in the musical field. I'd love to hear music where it felt like you were being surrounded by the music itself. Whether it'll be as effective or not i don't know.

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i think there is a large point being missed here. A song is a the same whether its played on one speaker, 2 or 6. Funnily enough, after all the dissing of stereo, no one has stopped to mention that humans have 2 ears, not six. Sound localisation is acomplished through our brains using two ears, and erecting an array of speakers isn't a very elegant solution. Also ask yourself this questio, How many people have a 5.1 surround system? It's an expensive, bulky technology, and is not the future, which is the message that seems to be coming across over and over in the video.

Pretentious wankery, you really need to listen to the one liners he comes out with in that video. i mean really, how long was he in prison? and who the fuck gave him the key?

Stupid, hippy, fuck.

p.s i actually like fsol, but this video put me off the guy.

You're wrong and it's naive to suggest that a piece of music is "the same" wether you hear it on a shitty mono transistor radio or a ten grand hifi, especially when you are talking about the kind of music FSOL were writing in the mid nineties. It should be obvious to anyone listening to it that they were striving for an immersive experience of sound, which they acheived pretty bloody well too on albums like Lifeforms. Producing in 5.1 is an obvious, natural way forward for that type of music.

Yes, humans only have two ears, but the reason we can sense the position and distance of sounds in three dimensions is because, duh, we live in three dimensional space and the sounds are actually coming from those positions. Being able to trick the brain into perceiving a fabricated 3d soundscape using only 4 speakers is actually quite a feat. What was said about stereo being essentially a 2d cartoon of the reality of sound makes perfect sense, there is nothing pretentious about it.

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Guest lime ruined my life
You're wrong and it's naive to suggest that a piece of music is "the same" wether you hear it on a shitty mono transistor radio or a ten grand hifi, especially when you are talking about the kind of music FSOL were writing in the mid nineties. It should be obvious to anyone listening to it that they were striving for an immersive experience of sound, which they acheived pretty bloody well too on albums like Lifeforms. Producing in 5.1 is an obvious, natural way forward for that type of music.

Yes, humans only have two ears, but the reason we can sense the position and distance of sounds in three dimensions is because, duh, we live in three dimensional space and the sounds are actually coming from those positions. Being able to trick the brain into perceiving a fabricated 3d soundscape using only 4 speakers is actually quite a feat. What was said about stereo being essentially a 2d cartoon of the reality of sound makes perfect sense, there is nothing pretentious about it.

We have two ears, that means we have two points of information which feed the brain, The brain then interprets the information and allows you to localise the original sources. you can therefore reproduce this with two speakers with clever use of variable delay lines for left and right speakers, simulating different early reflection times to both left and right ears. THAT is quite a feat, and that is cutting edge, not 5.1, which i already said, was a cumbersome unelegant solution to the problem. By the way, this technology exsists in research establishments, i've actually heard it and it was pretty chilling. you keep having to check where all the sound is coming from because it feels like it's right around you, its far more convincing than 5.1, which i feel is more of a brute force solution.

5.1 mixes can be quite cool, but it's hardly as ground breaking and revolutionary as they make out on the video. As i said before, you can't take him seriously because of the amount of shit dresses up his sentences with.

You should start trying to understand what people are saying before you start shouting off about everyone in the world being naive but you. It's quite ridiculous.

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Guest lime ruined my life
It costs less than 100 quid for a 5.1 system and like it says in the video, millions of people have them now in the uk.

millions is a lot, your right.

but as a percentage of the music buying public, how many people have a 5.1 system?

i don't know anyone with one. Most of the people i've met with them use them for watching films, and don't buy a lot of music.

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