FSOL on 5.1 audio

[Alkaline]

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.

I sell and have demo'd hundreds of 5.1 systems and 'virtual surround' stereo systems and i have NEVER heard a 'virtual surround' system that comes even close to sounding as good as a 5.1 system, even in optimum conditions in a dedicated sound room.

[Stripey]

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.

It's not only naive, it's just simply wrong to suggest that a piece of music is the same regardless of what kind of system you listen to it on, especially when you are talking about the kind of music FSOL were writing. Try listening to Lifeforms in mono on a tinny little cd player and it is just not the same experience, so much detail and emotion is lost that it undermines the premise of the whole thing. It's not about songs or melody, which yeah, comes through regardless of how you listen, it's about *sound*, and opening up the 3d space is a big leap forward in that kind of music.

I don't have any problem with talking him seriously, they are just excited about the possibilities for their music and who gives a fuck if he puts it across in an animated and articulate way.

[Guest lime ruined my life]

I sell and have demo'd hundreds of 5.1 systems and 'virtual surround' stereo systems and i have NEVER heard a 'virtual surround' system that comes even close to sounding as good as a 5.1 system, even in optimum conditions in a dedicated sound room.

i wouldnt imagine a salesperson would know anything about this topic, such systems don't exist commercially, it is a very active area of research in physics/acoustics. The problem exists in translating ideas which are succesful on headphones to work as well on speakers.

[Guest lime ruined my life]

It's not only naive, it's just simply wrong ...

classic.

[Alkaline]

i wouldnt imagine a salesperson would know anything about this topic, such systems don't exist commercially, it is a very active area of research in physics/acoustics. The problem exists in translating ideas which are succesful on headphones to work as well on speakers.

There are several virtual surround systems that simulate 5.1 using 2 stereo speakers (Bose 3-2-1 series for example) with a delayed firing speaker technique, they're all fairly substandard compared to a 5.1 sytsem.

I have also used something which claimed to be a virtual surround pair of headphones at a dem show. They weren't much different from normal headphones to be honest.

In my line of work you can't afford to be just a salesman anymore, i research the mechanics behind what we sell as well as it helps when people inevitabley want to know that they're getting their moneys worth.

[lepeep]

we have explosives.......

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Guest lime ruined my life]

There are several virtual surround systems that simulate 5.1 using 2 stereo speakers (Bose 3-2-1 series for example) with a delayed firing speaker technique, they're all fairly substandard compared to a 5.1 sytsem.

I have also used something which claimed to be a virtual surround pair of headphones at a dem show. They weren't much different from normal headphones to be honest.

In my line of work you can't afford to be just a salesman anymore, i research the mechanics behind what we sell as well as it helps when people inevitabley want to know that they're getting their moneys worth.

I'm sorry, i'll explain myself better:

"virtulsuroundsound" tries to simulate a 5.1(or 7.1, whatever) system may use a stereo pair and uses circuitry or programming to mix the 5.1 signal into a stereo pair. This is simulating hardware. i am talking about the actual information delivered right to your ears, not the means of delivering the information. This is dealing with the situation on a far greater level than you are even considering. It involves modelling the room, all the various signal paths of ALL the frequency spectrum, and calculating the delays in early reflections and reverberation, as these times vary for left and right ear, THIS is where the spatial information lies that your brain decyphers. In contrast, 5.1 has 6 channels of direct sound, one of them operating only in bass, a much simpler system, your brain then locates 6 independent sound sources, and by panning the sound around it you get a crude localisation effect. In actual fact the sound only ever comes from these speakers, what about all the space where the speakers arn't located in the room? an infinite amount of points are being missed by this sort of system.

this point is one worth reiterating, and should seem perfectly comprehensible: In the real world you detect TWO sounds from your ears, and your brain works out where the original sound was located spatially by looking at the differences between the sounds. This is why we have two ears! if we had one you wouldn't be able to tell where sound came from!!! This is a very good fact for making my point. Consider listening to a 5.1 system with only one ear, you'd still get the full effect with sound bouncing back and forth, but you wouldnt be able to detect where sound was coming from the same. It's the same for your eyes, cover one eye and you don't have the same depth of field. How about we simulate 3d television by having 5 semi transparent televisions one behind the other? It's the same thing as surround sound but for your eyes. It might look kind of cool, but fundamentally its a crap simulation of reality.

I am talking about simulating this at the source, and not hardware. It's in the cd, or the mp3. It's about the actual information arriving at your brain, not about "HOW" it arrives ie. not the quality/quantity of speakers you use.

[Alkaline]

I'm sorry, i'll explain myself better:

"virtulsuroundsound" tries to simulate a 5.1(or 7.1, whatever) system may use a stereo pair and uses circuitry or programming to mix the 5.1 signal into a stereo pair. This is simulating hardware. i am talking about the actual information delivered right to your ears, not the means of delivering the information. This is dealing with the situation on a far greater level than you are even considering. It involves modelling the room, all the various signal paths of ALL the frequency spectrum, and calculating the delays in early reflections and reverberation, as these times vary for left and right ear, THIS is where the spatial information lies that your brain decyphers. In contrast, 5.1 has 6 channels of direct sound, one of them operating only in bass, a much simpler system, your brain then locates 6 independent sound sources, and by panning the sound around it you get a crude localisation effect. In actual fact the sound only ever comes from these speakers, what about all the space where the speakers arn't located in the room? an infinite amount of points are being missed by this sort of system.

this point is one worth reiterating, and should seem perfectly comprehensible: In the real world you detect TWO sounds from your ears, and your brain works out where the original sound was located spatially by looking at the differences between the sounds. This is why we have two ears! if we had one you wouldn't be able to tell where sound came from!!! This is a very good fact for making my point. Consider listening to a 5.1 system with only one ear, you'd still get the full effect with sound bouncing back and forth, but you wouldnt be able to detect where sound was coming from the same. It's the same for your eyes, cover one eye and you don't have the same depth of field. How about we simulate 3d television by having 5 semi transparent televisions one behind the other? It's the same thing as surround sound but for your eyes. It might look kind of cool, but fundamentally its a crap simulation of reality.

I am talking about simulating this at the source, and not hardware. It's in the cd, or the mp3. It's about the actual information arriving at your brain, not about "HOW" it arrives ie. not the quality/quantity of speakers you use.

Got you chief

[Guest lime ruined my life]

if your interested in this sort of thing there are some basic explanations on wikepedia

Binaural recording - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sound localization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it's not the same thing as stereo mixing, note how it only works properly on headphones, but this is a problem for engineers to solve

on the other hand, if you used a pair of speakers in an anechoic chamber, or padded the walls of your living room, and had good cancelation equipment to stop the channels crossing it may work well.

Theres a recording on the wikepedia site btw http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/BinauralPaper.ogg , he hits the mic a few times and it isnt the best example, but it's still an ok example, the best part is where the paper gets thrown in the bin.

[Stripey]

I'm sorry, i'll explain myself better:

So do you know of any such sophisticated hardware which is available to the general public at dirt cheap prices, already widely installed in lots of homes, and supported by commercially available production software?

No, I didn't think so.

[Guest lime ruined my life]

any audio system would be able to play such files/cd's/dvd's.

As i said, it works best on headphones. All i was saying was 5.1 wasn't cutting edge.

[Stripey]

any audio system would be able to play such files/cd's/dvd's.

The point is, there is no commercially available software to produce things like that, so it's irrelevant. 5.1 is the best we've got at the moment, so why not make use of it?

[Guest lime ruined my life]

The point is, there is no commercially available software to produce things like that, so it's irrelevant. 5.1 is the best we've got at the moment, so why not make use of it?

they could of used binaural recording instead of software...

Dallas Simpson's Homepage

[Stripey]

they could of used binaural recording instead of software...

Dallas Simpson's Homepage

It's hardly a substitute for 5.1, and totally unsuitable for their production technique.

The piece they were commissioned to do was for an installation in a museum anyway, not exactly a setting where you want to tell everyone to put a pair of headphones on.

[waterpump]

Surround - headphone / speakers

I'd just like to add some comments to the 5.1 / binaural / surround sound debate on a previous set of mails.

There are some complex and subtle issues being raised here.

First speaker surround sound. The most sophisticated approach at present is Ambisonics a multichannel speaker system capable of handling up to 32 speaker channels in a number of speaker configurations, but most important the system includes height information. The technology is established, but very high end audio Meridian make decoders. Audio is usually presented in B-Format, 4 channels of specially matrixed audio containing the x,y,z co-ordinate pressure and velocity components of three dimensional sound plus a mono component. In B-Format these are designated W,X,Y,Z, where W is the mono component. There are levels of sophistication described as orders, 1st Order Ambisonics utilises four algorithms to extract the surround information from B-Format, 2nd Order uses nine, and a lot more processing!

The aim of true speaker surround is to try and reconstruct the true surround waveform sampled at a point by a suitable microphone or microphone array. There is no true point microphone at present able to do this perfectly. Soundfield make a mic that is very good and there is the very expensive holophone.

5.1Surround was never intended for true surround sound with height. It evolved from the film / video industry and provided a satisfactory means of delivering a good stereo front image, with central dialogue, and surround fill to the rear. Great for wizz-bang effects if only a crude horizontal planar surround sound field is required. Modern state of the art surround mixing is gradually embracing Gerzon's work. Interestingly Ambisonic material can be re-coded for 5.1 to give a convincing, if rather broad brush stroke, planar surround sound through speakers.

True surround requires integration of all speaker feeds amplitude panning between speakers will not do and this is where the Ambisonic approach, deriving largely from the work of Michael Gerzon, wins through.

Headphone surround - binaural is the primary technique, but headphone surround is a totally different experience and challenge for music and sound art production.

I hope to continue this later, meanwhile I have to set up for a performance in Nottingham today.

Speak soon,

Dallas Simpson.

[Guest lime ruined my life]

i certainly wasn't expecting that. Thanks for the info.

[Alkaline]

Yeah, that was a nice read. Very interesting. I'd love to hear some of those principles in action.

[Stripey]

Fascinating, but none of this stuff is widely available either in the average studio or in consumers homes so it's a moot point.

Lime Ruined My Life - I don't get what you are whining about. Yes there are other technologies, but 5.1 has the the best availability to the consumer and makes perfect sense to use, from the producers point of view, as a way of adding an extra dimension to the music.

[french_disko]

Lime Ruined My Life - I don't get what you are whining about. Yes there are other technologies, but 5.1 has the the best availability to the consumer and makes perfect sense to use, from the producers point of view, as a way of adding an extra dimension to the music.

Completely correct. I'm not sure what the moan is here - that a band are using 5.1, and that's shit because better is available??? what about 99.9% of bands that are still using stereo????

Seriosuly, a complaint like that is the equivilant of moaning to the dodgem guy at Codona's that his ride is shit because there are people out there racing in Formula 1 cars.

[Guest lime ruined my life]

i guess what i'm trying to say is, i'm naive, i don't know anything about anything, and i like a moan.

you guys up for a couple of drinks to sort this out? maybe a couple of libertines songs on the jukebox, down some shots then have a fight in the street? i could puke up down a gutter, and you guys could buy chips cheese, gravy and curry sauce and shout racsist abuse at the owner of the chip shop???

[Stupot]

When it comes to audio, ie your average band making a CD, very few are interested in 5.1 CDs anyway. It's mostly a medium for dvds and films. We've been offering dolby digital ac3 encoding for some time (and one of the very very few in scotland to do so) and we've had very few enquiries to encode a cd. Most people don't reckon it's worth the additional expense to do a surround mix and encoding for a CD. It's usually mixed from the audience perspective anyway, with ambient reverb and audience noise coming from the surround speakers. To mix it as if you're amongst the band feels strange to most people anyway.

For a perfomance piece, written with 5.1 surround in mind and played in a huge space like stripey says, it's ideal.

Very few are picking up on 5.1 CDs at the moment so it'll be some time, if ever, that bands are even considering 7.1 or anything else.

[Cloud]

Completely correct. I'm not sure what the moan is here - that a band are using 5.1, and that's shit because better is available??? what about 99.9% of bands that are still using stereo????

Yup, basically, Stripey has denounced countless Aberdeen bands for being shit because they use guitars, which apparently aren't cutting edge and cool - so people are similarly denouncing 5.1 as being out of date and uncool.

In other words, Stripey's promoting old technology and is looking like a hypocrite for doing so.

[Stripey]

Yup, basically, Stripey has denounced countless Aberdeen bands for being shit because they use guitars, which apparently aren't cutting edge and cool - so people are similarly denouncing 5.1 as being out of date and uncool.

In other words, Stripey's promoting old technology and is looking like a hypocrite for doing so.

Total fucking nonsense. Nobody is "promoting" anything. It's a video by a group talking about why using 5.1 is opening up new creative possibilities for their material, which I posted here because it's interesting to watch.

There is obviously a screw loose in your tiny mind, for you to invent such paranoid drivel out of thin air, I mean why do you post here? You're not even a musician are you? Fuck, you don't even *live here* anymore ballbag.

p.s - I have nothing against guitars, infact I play guitar in some of the tracks I'm working on at the moment.

[Cloud]

There is obviously a screw loose in your tiny mind, for you to invent such paranoid drivel out of thin air, I mean why do you post here? You're not even a musician are you? Fuck, you don't even *live here* anymore ballbag.

Go Stripey, you can't make a single post without attacking someone or something, can you?

[jalepeano death]

Orbital "the altogether" 5.1 dvd that came out in 2001 is worth a listen.

There are some very cool bits in it.

I am delighted someone mentioned Ambisonics here.

Ambisonics is really amazing and is the only way to reproduce surround sound in a large soundfield.

This is what the Chemical Brothers use live and the Dance tent at Glastonbury has also made use of it.

Ambisonic.Net - where surround-sound comes to life

I have downloaded ambisonics files from there that have been encoded as DTS and they sound pretty good.

Looking forward to hearing some new FSOL material.