[Mike Rivers]

I'm not a surround person. I don't even have a surround TV in my
living room, much less a quality monitoring setup in my control room.
So I have zero practical experience working with it, but I do
understand some concepts.

What I'm trying to learn here is that, if you know that you're going
to be mixing your project in surround, whether there's any value to
monitoring in surround while tracking, at the level of the project
studio (and I realize this in itself covers a lot of ground). And if
so, how much of a pain in the butt is this, in terms of setting up a
monitor mix in your DAW, assuming you have hardware wtih enough
outputs to feed all of your speakers.

I've had a couple of multi-channel I/O boxes with DSP monitor mixing
in my playroom recently, and I'm trying to decide to what extent all
the features will actually be used. Assuming that you're doing
overdubs, so you want to listen to a mix of the input source and the
playback from your DAW, would you want your DAW mix to be in surround?
Would you take the time to set up 6-8 submixed outputs in the DAW that
you could send out to the speakers? Or would you be more likely to
just make a stereo mix that's good enough to play to comfortably and
use this while tracking?

The issue is that the hardware has what amounts to eight stereo-out
mixers, each with 30+2 inputs - 12 analog inputs on the box plus up
to 16 ADAT Optical channels and a pair of S/PDIF or AES/EBU inptus
plus 2 returns from the DAW.

So, you'd use one mixer to feed, for example, the LF and RF speakers,
one to feed the LR and RR speakers, and one to feed the LFE and CF
speakers. But all of those mixers have 32 inputs, of which you're
using 2 (the DAW returns) plus whatever live inputs you have for the
overdub. So if you wanted to put your overdub source in the center
speaker, you'd put its fader up in the mixer that's feeding the center
speaker and mute it in all the other mixers. If you wanted it panned
somewhere between the front and rear to the left of center, you'd need
to put it into the mixers that feed the front and rear speakers, and
diddle with the (stereo) pan pots on each mixer to position it.

To me, this seems like a real pain in the butt, both working without
surround pan pots for the inputs, and using a group of 32x2 mixers
most of which will be used only as a 2x2 "funnel." Is there really a
need to do this? Or would you be more likely to not go into surround
monitoring until you had all the tracks recorded and were doing your
mix (on the DAW, which hopefully has better surround mixing capability
than a bunch of stereo mixers)?

Of course the manufacturer likes to brag about all of the mixes that
you can make, but I'm wondering if this is really something of value
or if a simpler design (probably the same hardware, but with a
different software control and more flexible routing) would make more
sense. Or is this the hardware that everyone who works in surround
has been waiting for?

Not mentioning any names here, to protect the innocent.

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
What I'm trying to learn here is that, if you know that you're going
to be mixing your project in surround, whether there's any value to
monitoring in surround while tracking, at the level of the project
studio (and I realize this in itself covers a lot of ground). And if
so, how much of a pain in the butt is this, in terms of setting up a
monitor mix in your DAW, assuming you have hardware wtih enough
outputs to feed all of your speakers.

It's the same question about whether you want to monitor in stereo while
tracking.

If you're recording individual tracks in stereo, you need to monitor in
stereo to check the image. If you want to be able to do check mixes in
the tracking process to see how all the parts fit together, it is very
nice to be able to do it in stereo.

Likewise if you are tracking in surround (with ambience mikes), or you
are doing mixes with heavy surround effects and want to check how the
parts are coming together, you need surround monitoring.

On the other hand, if you are just spot-miking everything and expecting
to do a panpotted surround mix, the need for surround monitoring is a lot
less.

The issue is that the hardware has what amounts to eight stereo-out
mixers, each with 30+2 inputs - 12 analog inputs on the box plus up
to 16 ADAT Optical channels and a pair of S/PDIF or AES/EBU inptus
plus 2 returns from the DAW.

So, you'd use one mixer to feed, for example, the LF and RF speakers,
one to feed the LR and RR speakers, and one to feed the LFE and CF
speakers. But all of those mixers have 32 inputs, of which you're
using 2 (the DAW returns) plus whatever live inputs you have for the
overdub. So if you wanted to put your overdub source in the center
speaker, you'd put its fader up in the mixer that's feeding the center
speaker and mute it in all the other mixers. If you wanted it panned
somewhere between the front and rear to the left of center, you'd need
to put it into the mixers that feed the front and rear speakers, and
diddle with the (stereo) pan pots on each mixer to position it.

This is pain. I have never done surround mixes with a DAW, only with
a physical console. And if your physical console doesn't have a 5.1
buss, you are stuck doing stuff like this.

(My console actually used to have a quadrophonic buss, with two pan
controls per channel, but it was rebuilt when quad turned out to be
a fad and some additional auxes installed and the main buss turned into
stereo.)

If you are working in software with a DAW, there's NO REASON not to have
a 5.1 master buss, and if you can't do that, you don't have the right
software.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Ethan Winer]

Mike,

I'm doing surround projects, but I see little value in monitoring in
surround while tracking. And how would you send a surround mix to the
performer's earphones anyway? :-)

Also, if you're working in a DAW, there's more CPU load because all bus
plug-ins have 3 times more channels to process. And other such lower
efficiencies.

So, you'd use one mixer to feed, for example, the LF and RF speakers, one
to feed the LR and RR speakers, and one to feed the LFE and CF speakers.

My surround setup might seem ghetto, but it works flawlessly and cost very
little. I have a Presonus FireBOX on my laptop, and that feeds a consumer
grade Pioneer receiver I paid all of $150 for at Costco. Don't laugh at the
$150 price because this receiver has both powered (100 WPC) and line level
outputs, and so can be used with any loudspeakers. It's also very clean
sounding.

--Ethan

[Deputy Dumbya Dawg[_10_]]

"Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote in message
...
..

My surround setup might seem ghetto, but it works flawlessly
and cost very
little. I have a Presonus FireBOX on my laptop, and that
feeds a consumer
grade Pioneer receiver I paid all of $150 for at Costco.
Don't laugh at the
$150 price because this receiver has both powered (100 WPC)
and line level
outputs, and so can be used with any loudspeakers. It's also
very clean
sounding.

--Ethan

What kind of output does the Firebox feed the Pioneer. Is it
multichannel spdif or Tos like a DVD player out encoded Dolby
Digital?

Or does the Pioneer also have 5 analog inputs?

peace
dawg

[Mike Rivers]

On Oct 18, 8:45 am, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

It's the same question about whether you want to monitor in stereo while
tracking.

Sure, but most people monitor in stereo, or at least with two
channels, because that's what their hardware setup offers. And most
mixers are set up for stereo. Making a surround mix using a stack full
of stereo mixers is, at least for me, a lot less intuitive (not only,
in this case, is there the stack of mixers in the hardware interface,
but also the mixers in the DAW to give you a two-channel mix for each
pair of hardware outputs). I can see it being very time consuming and
I sure wouldn't want to do it with the band in the studio waiting for
the red light to go on.

On the other hand, if you are just spot-miking everything and expecting
to do a panpotted surround mix, the need for surround monitoring is a lot
less.

I suspect that this would be the case for the class of people who
would buy a $1600 Firewire interface rather than a $200,000 console.

If you are working in software with a DAW, there's NO REASON not to have
a 5.1 master buss, and if you can't do that, you don't have the right
software.

Many DAW programs these days have some reasonable approach to surround
mixing, and the hardware interface at issue here has a simple-minded
mode where it's just straight digits in from the computer to assigned
output jacks. I'd put it in that mode at mixdown time. I was just
curious as to what people do (or try to do) when tracking.

Clearly you can't use all the features all of the time, but you can
use some of the features some of the time. I'm looking at how big the
pile of features you'll use none of the time is.

[Mike Rivers]

On Oct 18, 10:19 am, "Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com
wrote:

I'm doing surround projects, but I see little value in monitoring in
surround while tracking. And how would you send a surround mix to the
performer's earphones anyway? :-)

Earphones? Oh, yeah, there are four mixers dedicated to independent
headphone mixes. I suppose you could give one the left front, one the
right front, . . . . I'd hate to be the one stuck with LFE and
center.

Also, if you're working in a DAW, there's more CPU load because all bus
plug-ins have 3 times more channels to process. And other such lower
efficiencies.

True, but people are going to load down their CPUs until they croak,
then buy a faster computer.

I have a Presonus FireBOX on my laptop, and that feeds a consumer
grade Pioneer receiver I paid all of $150 for at Costco.

That'll work, and for someone who has himself as his best client, it's
probably all you'll ever need. I figure that this gadget is more
geared to a studio situation where you'll have a control room mix
(which for me would be stereo, but you have enough gozoutas to make it
surround) plus whatever headphone mixes the players in the studio
want. But the more I think about it (and I've actually tried to dummy
it up here) the more complicated it gets.

And then you shut down and realize that you forgot to save the
setup.

[Scott Dorsey]

Mike Rivers wrote:
On Oct 18, 8:45 am, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

It's the same question about whether you want to monitor in stereo while
tracking.

Sure, but most people monitor in stereo, or at least with two
channels, because that's what their hardware setup offers. And most
mixers are set up for stereo.

Yes, this is true. A lot of tracking work could be done happily with just
mono monitoring. But as I said, if you're stereo miking sources, and that
goes even for drum kits, it's sure nice to be able to hear in stereo.

Making a surround mix using a stack full
of stereo mixers is, at least for me, a lot less intuitive (not only,
in this case, is there the stack of mixers in the hardware interface,
but also the mixers in the DAW to give you a two-channel mix for each
pair of hardware outputs). I can see it being very time consuming and
I sure wouldn't want to do it with the band in the studio waiting for
the red light to go on.

Yes, but if THIS is the case, you wouldn't want to be doing the mixing
session this way either. It is very, very annoying to do surround mixes
with auxes instead of real panpots. There is no excuse to do that on a
DAW, even though it's common in the real console world.

On the other hand, if you are just spot-miking everything and expecting
to do a panpotted surround mix, the need for surround monitoring is a lot
less.

I suspect that this would be the case for the class of people who
would buy a $1600 Firewire interface rather than a $200,000 console.

Right, but changing the user interface and bussing on the DAW with the
$1600 firewire interface is a simple software change, whereas changing
the bussing on a $200,000 console is a pain in the neck and involves
drill presses and hammers.

If you are working in software with a DAW, there's NO REASON not to have
a 5.1 master buss, and if you can't do that, you don't have the right
software.

Many DAW programs these days have some reasonable approach to surround
mixing, and the hardware interface at issue here has a simple-minded
mode where it's just straight digits in from the computer to assigned
output jacks. I'd put it in that mode at mixdown time. I was just
curious as to what people do (or try to do) when tracking.

Who cares what the hardware interface does, as long as the tracking
application can map the right inputs to the right spots on the control
surface and the right outputs to the right busses? It's all hardware
independant today.

Clearly you can't use all the features all of the time, but you can
use some of the features some of the time. I'm looking at how big the
pile of features you'll use none of the time is.

But the surround routing stuff is something you want to use both during
tracking and mixing, I think.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[seriousfun]

On Oct 18, 5:13 am, Mike Rivers wrote:
....

What I'm trying to learn here is that, if you know that you're going
to be mixing your project in surround, whether there's any value to
monitoring in surround while tracking, at the level of the project
studio (and I realize this in itself covers a lot of ground). And if
so, how much of a pain in the butt is this, in terms of setting up a
monitor mix in your DAW, assuming you have hardware wtih enough
outputs to feed all of your speakers.

....

I've found very few people monitoring surround while tracking.

In the early days of Stereo, studios were often outfitted with three
front speakers - one for each track if they had a three channel
recorder. The idea was one monitor channel for each recording channel,
and the use of L and R for the 2-channel Stereo remix for distribution
on LP. This would be impractical for location recording. This would
obviously be impractical for 48-channel multitrack recording.

Scott's points are well-taken - if you are tracking with a surround
mic of some sort, you should have an appropriately configured monitor
system to check that while tracking (just like you need a 2-channel
Stereo monitor system to monitor 2-mic tracking). Some people use the
surround monitor system as a tool - Dim Solo mono sources in the C
speaker to hear it better while tracking, for example.

A monitor controller of some sort is necessary, whether it is a simple
volume control through a consumer receiver like Ethan and I use, or a
more sophisticated unit. A Martinsound MultiMAX will allow you to have
a 2-channel Stereo and a Mono downmix available at all times, ready to
be sent to a cue system, your main R and L speakers, or a separate set
of speakers. You can also solo and mute individual monitor channels,
add multichannel stems, patch surround processors, etc., depending on
the capabilities of the monitor controller. A unit like this would
neatly tie together you rather convoluted multi-mixer setup.

And yes, DAW software should take care of all panning and bussing - it
can steer any channel to any position in the 5.1 bus without changing
the fact that it's being recorded to a single Mono or Stereo channel.
I use SONAR and Samplitude at home, and both take care of this
admirably; Pro Tools | HD and other systems to this very well, too. I
use an RME Multiface, which has mixer software which allows me to keep
the surround busses going in the DAW software (yes, CPU-intensive)
while monitoring in 5.1, 2.0, Mono, etc., and sending these downmixes
to headphones or alternative reference monitors.

[Bobby Owsinski[_2_]]

Mike,

I've done a lot of surround tracking over the years, but found it to be
mostly a distraction except in the case of surround ambient miking using
either a surround mic (Holophone, Soundfield, etc.) or a specific
surround miking setup (Hamasaki square, halo, IRT cross, etc). Pretty
useful in those situations, I must say, but that usually means the
program material is live and won't contain overdubs later.

I've also had some disasters doing it this way with a Rock band. For
instance, 5.1 drum kit miking is great by itself, very bad with the rest
of the rhythm section. It's pretty obvious now but we had to try
everything when the craze first began.

Bobby

In article . com,
Mike Rivers wrote:

I'm not a surround person. I don't even have a surround TV in my
living room, much less a quality monitoring setup in my control room.
So I have zero practical experience working with it, but I do
understand some concepts.

What I'm trying to learn here is that, if you know that you're going
to be mixing your project in surround, whether there's any value to
monitoring in surround while tracking, at the level of the project
studio (and I realize this in itself covers a lot of ground). And if
so, how much of a pain in the butt is this, in terms of setting up a
monitor mix in your DAW, assuming you have hardware wtih enough
outputs to feed all of your speakers.

I've had a couple of multi-channel I/O boxes with DSP monitor mixing
in my playroom recently, and I'm trying to decide to what extent all
the features will actually be used. Assuming that you're doing
overdubs, so you want to listen to a mix of the input source and the
playback from your DAW, would you want your DAW mix to be in surround?
Would you take the time to set up 6-8 submixed outputs in the DAW that
you could send out to the speakers? Or would you be more likely to
just make a stereo mix that's good enough to play to comfortably and
use this while tracking?

The issue is that the hardware has what amounts to eight stereo-out
mixers, each with 30+2 inputs - 12 analog inputs on the box plus up
to 16 ADAT Optical channels and a pair of S/PDIF or AES/EBU inptus
plus 2 returns from the DAW.

So, you'd use one mixer to feed, for example, the LF and RF speakers,
one to feed the LR and RR speakers, and one to feed the LFE and CF
speakers. But all of those mixers have 32 inputs, of which you're
using 2 (the DAW returns) plus whatever live inputs you have for the
overdub. So if you wanted to put your overdub source in the center
speaker, you'd put its fader up in the mixer that's feeding the center
speaker and mute it in all the other mixers. If you wanted it panned
somewhere between the front and rear to the left of center, you'd need
to put it into the mixers that feed the front and rear speakers, and
diddle with the (stereo) pan pots on each mixer to position it.

To me, this seems like a real pain in the butt, both working without
surround pan pots for the inputs, and using a group of 32x2 mixers
most of which will be used only as a 2x2 "funnel." Is there really a
need to do this? Or would you be more likely to not go into surround
monitoring until you had all the tracks recorded and were doing your
mix (on the DAW, which hopefully has better surround mixing capability
than a bunch of stereo mixers)?

Of course the manufacturer likes to brag about all of the mixes that
you can make, but I'm wondering if this is really something of value
or if a simpler design (probably the same hardware, but with a
different software control and more flexible routing) would make more
sense. Or is this the hardware that everyone who works in surround
has been waiting for?

Not mentioning any names here, to protect the innocent.

[Jay Kadis]

In article ,
"Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote:

Mike,

I'm doing surround projects, but I see little value in monitoring in
surround while tracking. And how would you send a surround mix to the
performer's earphones anyway? :-)


http://www.bigbruin.org/reviews/ezonicsesound/

-Jay

--
x------- Jay Kadis ------- x ---- Jay's Attic Studio ----x
x Lecturer, Audio Engineer x Dexter Records x
x CCRMA, Stanford University x http://www.offbeats.com/ x
x---------- http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jay/ ------------x

[Mike Rivers]

On Oct 18, 12:12 pm, Bobby Owsinski wrote:

I've done a lot of surround tracking over the years, but found it to be
mostly a distraction except in the case of surround ambient miking using
either a surround mic (Holophone, Soundfield, etc.) or a specific
surround miking setup (Hamasaki square, halo, IRT cross, etc). Pretty
useful in those situations, I must say, but that usually means the
program material is live and won't contain overdubs later.

That makes sense. With a surround mic setup, once you put it where you
want it and get it balanced, you can pretty much leave the knobs in
place all the way to final mixdown.

I tend to keep from getting too bored during overdubs by tweaking the
control room mix so that by the time the band is done, the mix is
about done. With a slick surround console and joystick panning, I
could probably let them go on with overdubs for a couple of extra day
$, but having to use four on-screen mixers adjusting faders and pans
with a mouse would drive me bonkers.

People tend to take a lot of pains-in-the-ass in stride today because
of all the amazing things they can do, and also because they've never
seen the old way that was much easier, though perhaps more limited, or
limiting. I wsa just curious whether this was one of those PITA things
that the virtual "everyone" did but me.

I guess not.

[Ethan Winer]

Dawg,

What kind of output does the Firebox feed the Pioneer. Is it multichannel
spdif or Tos like a DVD player out encoded Dolby Digital?

The FireBOX has six analog outputs, and those go to the receiver's 6 analog
inputs. There's no direct way to get a Dolby encoded digital stream from a
DAW program. Well, I suppose you could buy expensive hardware, but it's
impractical and not needed.

--Ethan

[Ethan Winer]

Jay,

http://www.bigbruin.org/reviews/ezonicsesound/

Yes, I know about such phones. At least this one is affordable. But how
would Mike set up all those different USB streams? :-)

--Ethan