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Are any of you doing MUSIC in Surround?


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I'm curious.... Are any of you doing music in Surround (ie., 5.1 or higher)?

 

I've never worked in Surround. It would seem to me-- I could be wrong--- that mixing music in Surround involves a whole new way of thinking.... It would seem to have different goals and different modus operandi... possibly more problems attached to it as well...

 

Do you: try to make the music sound "natural", ie., make the listener feel as if he were "there" (wherever "there" happens to be)?

 

...or do you use the extra speakers to create really novel, exciting or even disconcerting sound location effects, with a kind of "sky's the limit" attitude?

 

what's MOST different or MOST challenging about doing music in Surround?

 

Conversely, does it possibly "free you up" or make certain things easier rather than more difficult than in stereo?

 

Do note that I'm referring to music in Surround.... not cinema soundtracks, because cinema is a different kettle of fish.

 

All comments and reflections welcome...

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For the life of me... I can't figure out why we want music in surround. As soon as articles began appearing in trade mags like Mix, etc. I felt a Deja Vu thing going on. Remembering my uncle's Quad system as a 13 year old and thinking, "Who gives a ...?"

 

Sorry, I know that wasn't your question, and your question is a good one, but I can't seem to work up any steam for surround.

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Surround is simply better Stereo. The word Stereo comes from the Greek word sterios, meaning solid (nothing about two).

 

Our ear/brain mechanism has evolved to hear sounds from all around us. The locality of a single sound, like a person talking or a tiger roaring, can be determined by our two ears even though it can take place anywhere around us.

 

The sonic experience of music, whether in a cave, cathedral, or modern living room, includes the influence of the room, rendering it three-dimensional. The first attempts at stereophonic sound, intended to provide a more realistic, more solid, sonic experience, included three speakers across the front, and a surround channel was used in the first commercial surround sound with Disney's Fantasia.

 

Two-channel stereo music in the home led the way, but cinema stereo ranging from two channels to eight channels followed in movie theaters, and some of these technologies came back home. The 5.1 format succeeded as a good way to put a reasonable 360 degree sonic experience in the home for movies, and music followed.

 

Unfortunately, we don't have a common surround delivery format for music, even though there is a market of over 100 million potential users (surround audio systems in homes). SA-CD and DVD-A are niche products at best. MP3 Surround exists (it's completely compatible with current music distribution), but it hasn't found wide acceptance. There is a market for surround music for film and TV, and many hope that Blu Ray will serve as a common format for surround (and other high resolution) music distribution.

 

5.1 is great because it can serve to deliver music in any format from Mono to 2-channel Stereo to 5-channel Stereo.

 

5.1 music mixes can be use the extra channels in many ways from subtle to wild, and they are all valid if they support the music. 5.1 can much more accurately reproduce the sonic signature of a symphony orchestra playing in a concert hall than can 2.0. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon was born to be heard in surround - even their concerts were surround - and the 5.1 SA-CD and Alan Parsons' original 4.0 mix are both great.

 

Surround does free you. Mixing engineers have spent lifetimes learning how to pan, EQ, and compress to get the sound of a rock band to fit in the narrow letterbox window that 2.0 can provide, and 5.1 can allow them the space to make the image bigger or smaller as needed. The phantom image is no longer the enemy, coloring the center channel sound and restricting the listeners' seating position, but a great tool for focus and spatiality. A singer can be positioned heroically at a mic onstage or intimately crooning into the listener's ear.

 

Surround music mixes should be different that film sound mixes - the center channel is not just for dialog in a movie theater, and the LFE channel is not needed to extend the headroom of the main channels. But in each case a story is there to be told, and 5.1 is a better tool.

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I can safely say I hate surround sound in movies. Utterly hate it.

 

When I was a kid first learning how things worked, and realized that all the sound on a TV came out of the speaker down below the screen -- I was shocked. Because up until that very moment (I was like 4) I had thought the sound followed the actors on the screen. I was convinced of it but quickly disabused myself of the notion by sticking my ear down by the speaker.

 

I then became fascinated by all the background voices you could just barely hear in most TV shows -- which I eventually realized were the productions staff talking off camera.

 

 

Anyhow, my mind is still more or less open with regard to surround music -- as I've never lived with it (unless you count a brief period when I was experimenting with matrix quad, which I don't think quite counts :D ).

 

But I have to say that nothing I've experienced at this point would make me want to listen on an ongoing basis to surround music. Maybe if I heard some good mixes on a good system. I've certainly heard expensive surround systems and mixes that were supposed to be cool...

 

I am persuaded that I would probably more enjoy subtle surround mixes where the surround speakers are basically used for ambience. I'm really bothered by mixes that have put the listener in the middle of the band/orchestra.

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There are classical DVD-VIDEO available recorded with real surround microphone technique at location.

 

Almost all movie soundtracks and pop and rock music DVD-VIDEO are upmixed to surround from multitrack. This pseudo surround is similar to pseudo stereo, also called directed monophony or positioned monophony, as opposed to natural stereophony.

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One of the issues I have with surround music is the inability for the end user to be able to set up the environment correctly. If I'm at Disneyland and I'm in a controlled environment like a ride or attraction, and the things are set up as the creator of the piece intended... I'm all ears. The format, I'm sure, is astounding if done correctly.

 

But who's going to set it up correctly? Just take a second to remember all the odd stereo speaker setups you've seen throughout the years. You know the ones where they've put one speaker out on the patio "cause they like the tunes outside too!".

 

Sounds fun.

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I would certainly be interested in hearing some real surround classical recordings in a really good listening environment.

 

Having heard over 120 symphonic concerts in my life, it's the type of unamplified performance I'm most familiar with (next to guys and gals sitting around playing guitars in living rooms maybe).

 

I'd be interested to see what surround can bring to that experience -- for sure.

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To me it's one of those things that has barely had the surface scratched to date. My own interest in it lies less in the 'natural' environment nature of it, than exploiting other techniques. My initial experiments have been approaching it as multiple discrete stereo parts - where each pair of speakers, in isolation, produces a fully functional stereo mix - but all work together in full surround as larger than the sum of their parts. It's a fun challenge to take on.

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One of the issues I have with surround music is the inability for the end user to be able to set up the environment correctly. If I'm at Disneyland and I'm in a controlled environment like a ride or attraction, and the things are set up as the creator of the piece intended... I'm all ears. The format, I'm sure, is astounding if done correctly.


But who's going to set it up correctly? Just take a second to remember all the odd stereo speaker setups you've seen throughout the years. You know the ones where they've put one speaker out on the patio "cause they like the tunes outside too!".


Sounds fun.

 

This is why I have to qualify my comments about surround. The only places I've ever heard it are A) in people's living rooms and B) in listening rooms in hi fi shops.

 

And the people who set things up in B) are usually responsible for the way things are set up in A) -- to what I've felt so far were disappointing results.

 

 

 

Ah... but the first time I heard two speaker stereo... wow! That was really a revelation. I was hooked from the instant I heard it. (The fact it was being played back on a tape recorder really made it cool, since I was already fascinated by tape recorders -- it was 1958 and, though there were apparently stereo LPs as early as 1957, I was not aware of them at the time.) And the hi fi buff whose home we were at hadn't even got matching speakers yet -- he was using his Klipschorn and another speaker he'd brought in from the den until he could get two smaller speakers (he said his wife wouldn't allow another Klipschorn into the house! :D ) The record was Arthur Lyman's Taboo and it sounded great... We had the mono record at home -- I still own it -- but this was... so cool.

 

In fact, just talking about it made me put Taboo on just now... I do have to say the stereo is a little on the extreme side... and things tend to pan around a bit clumsily... you can hear some of the percussion tracks sliding into place as they're quickly panned between phrases from one side to the other to create a 'richer' mix. Still, it makes me want to fire up the tiki torches...

 

 

Speaking of speakers on patios... I was lucky to have somewhat indulgent parents who allowed me to wire the house for multiple speakers coming off my stereo which I could control from a switch board I'd crafted out of a cigar box lid and built into my stereo cabinet. (The cigar box was stiff but allowed me to keep cutting in holes for switches with my exacto knife as things got more and more complex.) At one point there were four speakers in my bedroom (OK, I'll admit it, I was into the immersive thing back then. :D ), two speakers in the den/TV room, a speaker in the kitchen and a speaker on the patio. (And, yes, the speaker on the patio and the speaker in the kitchen were, in effect, a stereo pair. I'd worked out an elaborate matrix that delivered the proper impedance to my funky transistor amp [later I traded it for a cool old Williams tube amp that was really bitchen]. I used 8 ohm T-pad pots to keep the impedance relatively steady on the satellites.

 

Of course, all that stereo-geek stuff went out the window when I finally properly discovered girls. (That is, after I'd lost weight and become putatively cool enough to get some.) But at least by then I had a bitchen stereo and didn't have to sweat that...

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I have only heard surround mixes (Studio stuff). I have been to a seminar on how to do it and what is involved for it. I have never been to a studio environment that had a setup though.

 

That said I would love to try it if I had the space, the money, the demand for it and the time to do it.

 

I think it's very weird that people don't like 5.1 audio, in fact I think it's very weird if your an audiophile. I can't STAND watching a movie in 2.1. The last James Bond was amazing in surround. However like someone pointed out I DO know how to setup a 5.1 system.

 

Also: While live mixes are pretty strait forward at least in my opinion, studio mixes are pretty much without rules, I heard stuff where if you compared it to stereo (somehow) it wouldn't make any sense at all.

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I don't like watching movies with full surround because I find it completely distracting. It utterly confounds my immersion into the movie as soon as I hear sounds 'outside' the proscenium arch of the screen.

 

That and the ridiculously bad -- and horridly loud -- sound in movie theaters [inlcuding and/or especially THX certified theatres] is why I haven't gone to a theater in more than a decade -- even though I'm a huge movie buff and spent much of my twenties in art house theaters.

 

With regard to studio mixes of music -- I'm all for no rules -- but if breaking the supposed rules doesn't create an enjoyable experience for me, I don't see the point.

 

I'm keeping an open mind, but so far the surround experience is one that hasn't really moved me -- except negatively.

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But who's going to set it up correctly? Just take a second to remember all the odd stereo speaker setups you've seen throughout the years. You know the ones where they've put one speaker out on the patio "cause they like the tunes outside too!".


 

 

You have a good point there Lee. Surround holds nothing for the casual listener right now. For folks like you describe, or even someone who puts on some music to do the housework, or listens on the ipod while working out or cutting the grass, or for the person who just doesn't like surround sound, surround holds no improvemnet of the experience of hearing music.

 

Surround seems to be a format for some listeners, and while many people will have music on within their earshot, in most circumstances they are not usually really listening.

 

We may have had more listeners 30 years ago in the heyday of records. Before the personal devices and the mega-amp volumes a record often forced you to sit down and listen to it. I'm not making any points about good or bad or good old days or anything like that. But I am saying that this concept of really listening to a recording figures into some of the appeal of surround.

 

I don't find it to be difficult to set up a surround listening environment, and it doesn't have to be extermely expensive either. But one thing it does require in order to appreciate it is listening. I am not saying that if you don't appreciate surround you are not listening. Not at all! Surround is obviously not the be-all and end-all. But for folks that like it, it rocks!

 

I really enjoy surround, and I have done a few mixes just for myself. You often hear from engineers doing surround that they have to EQ less, and that they feel they have more "sonic space" to work with.

 

For me there is also an entertainment factor that goes beyond the actual song I'm listening to. I myself enjoy the little ear candy on the edges of the recording and the little surprises here and there. It seems to engage me a bit more in the listening experience. But I don't have alot of hope for the format taking over the music world.

 

Anyways - that's my nickel (.. 2 cents adjusted for the rise in gas costs ..)

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I'm curious.... Are any of you doing music in Surround (ie., 5.1 or higher)?

 

 

Nope, and don't plan to either.

 

Anything that detracts from the music and makes the listener concerned with things like directionality isn't for me. When I sit down with an acoustic guitar and my voice in a room, the perceived effect is barely stereo. To try and replicate that experience while adding rear speakers and a center channel is the most counterproductive thing I could do to my music.

 

That having been said, I've heard some outstanding symphonic music in surround mixes that were very tastefully done. As a whole, though, for pop and rock and related genres, I see no benefit to it. YMMV.

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I've played around a little bit, but nothing serious. One reason I haven't put much effort into it is that I don't have an accessible way to present the results to outsiders.

 

I am a fan of surround sound. I think it is a shame that more people have not heard it properly presented. Some movie theaters have decent sound, but not everyone is going to have an optimum experience because there are only so many seats in the middle of the theater. Also it seems that at least 50% of all movie theaters have at least one blown speaker.

 

I think it is best heard at home in a properly setup room. I find that good surround can enhance a movie more than high-def video and video monitors because it can engulf you, and sound has a more subliminal effect. It works best for horror movies or thrillers where sound can sneak up on you from behind, or bullets or a helicopter buzz by your head. A lot of TV shows use surround quite effectively-Lost & CSI are two that come to mind.

 

I guess I'm unusual in that I like to really concentrate when I watch a movie or good TV show. My TV and surround speakers are properly placed and I watch in a darkened room.

 

I also like music in surround. Most of it is on video DVDs but I also have a couple of DVD-audios.

 

Before you judge surround, check these titles out on a properly setup system. (By the way you can get a very decent system for under $2k)

 

Steely Dan-Two against Nature DVD

Frank Zappa-Quadraphonia DVD-A

Tabla Beat Science-Live at fillmore DVD

Bjork-Debut DVD-A

BT-This Binary Universe

 

I find surround works great for electronic music and also for a live band in a studio type environment as on the Steely Dan DVD.

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For the life of me... I can't figure out why we want music in surround. As soon as articles began appearing in trade mags like Mix, etc. I felt a Deja Vu thing going on. Remembering my uncle's Quad system as a 13 year old and thinking, "Who gives a ...?"

 

 

Yeah, I felt the same way. I remember the quad gimmicks from the '70s like SQ, QS, CD-4. This surround stuff is just like that, another attempt at selling us more gear that we don't need. I'm content to mix in stereo, I don't want to have to buy 3 additional speakers/amps, worry about the correct 5.1 monitor placement (correct stereo monitor placement is enough of a challenge), and deal with the subtle intricacies of a surround mix. Especially when the end result doesn't sound like it's worth it.

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Bobby O. is definitely a surround guru, and a good guy too.

 

My response is based on my music -- organic, acoustic alt-folk pop kind of stuff. If I was doing techno or some kind of ambient music where the immersion in a field is intended as part of the experience, I'd be more amenable to it. But for me? Meh.

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I became fascinated with surround after experiencing Audium in a very impressionable state of mind. That experience taught me that the motion of sound in space can be part of a musicial experience.

 

Audium description:

"The theatre consists of a foyer, sound labyrinth and main performance space. It is a building within a building, conceived directly for this art form, and built in part with a grant from the National Endowment For The Arts. Listeners sit in concentric circles and are enveloped by speakers in sloping walls, floating floor and a suspended ceiling. Compositions are performed live at each program by a tape performer who directs the sounds through a custom designed console to any combination of the 169 speakers. Sounds are "sculpted" through their movement, direction, speed and intensity on multiple planes in space. Live performance of taped works gives a human, interactive element to AUDIUM's spatial electronic orchestra."

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I became fascinated with surround after experiencing
Audium
in a very impressionable state of mind. That experience taught me that the motion of sound in space can be part of a musicial experience.


Audium description:

"The theatre consists of a foyer, sound labyrinth and main performance space. It is a building within a building, conceived directly for this art form, and built in part with a grant from the National Endowment For The Arts. Listeners sit in concentric circles and are enveloped by speakers in sloping walls, floating floor and a suspended ceiling. Compositions are performed live at each program by a tape performer who directs the sounds through a custom designed console to any combination of the 169 speakers. Sounds are "sculpted" through their movement, direction, speed and intensity on multiple planes in space. Live performance of taped works gives a human, interactive element to AUDIUM's spatial electronic orchestra."

Of course this is pretty different from surround stereophony, I guess.

 

But it does sound pretty interesting. But we're talking about a sonic environment that one moves through, as I understand it, which is a pretty different thing than conventional surround.

 

 

Back on the movie front -- I also like to really concentrate on a movie when I'm seriously watching something. But as soon as I start hearing things beside or behind me, the whole suspension of reality thing is shattered and I'm once again painfully aware that I'm looking at a moving picture in a proscenium window in front of me -- instead of feeling like I was immersed in the movie. That may sound paradoxical and it may simply be that I'm a TV baby raised on single point movie and TV audio.

 

That said, I like stereo soundtracks... my speakers are set at the edges of my TV and the spread is just about right. Music sounds good (or at least as good as it will ever sound on my Cambridge 2.1 system ;) ) and soundtrack audio for stereo movies is just about right. None of these funky things where a person talking is in one place but other sounds he's making are off to the sides -- that drives me nuts.

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Blue, you're homing in on the NEXT question I was going to ask: When, exactly, did we humans need better, more elaborate, sound for our home TV viewing?

 

Why can I enjoy a 1956 movie on TCM (with its mono and somewhat muted soundtrack) just as thoroughly as I would a new release motion picture?

 

Even now, I have a 30" CRT TV with two stereo speakers built in (on either side of the screen). Now it seems to me--- just observing myself--- that when I am watching TV, the audio truly is "good enough". I get thoroughly involved with the characters I see on TV (just as I have since 1965) and I can't imagine why I'd need to hear MORE information. When the TV characters speak, I am parsing their speech into sense-meaning, and I'm sure not examining the quality of their voices for pristine realism... or a kind of "hyper-realism".

 

in the 1980's, my Dad bought a huge surround setup for the TV, with enormous KLIPSCH-horns stationed around the room. My little brother and my Dad used to get such a huge thrill out of playing TOP GUN or APOCALYPSE NOW, when airplanes or helicopters would appear to be juggernauting right through the center of their living room.

 

But , as you say, doesn't that rather destroy the "third wall"/proscenium effect?

 

If you watch COLD MOUNTAIN or the biopic RAY in a surround setup, you'll hear flies, crickets, mooing cows and clopping horses sounding off to your sides (L+R middle). The assumption, I guess, is that the viewer is imagining himself literally WITHIN that country environment. But to me, it always interrupts my interpretation of the movie.

 

Now maybe someday we'll get fictional movies in full 360deg virtual reality (with goggles or whatnot)... Only then, do I think, I would appreciate hearing all the sound FX occurring in 360 deg. around me...

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in the 1980's, my Dad bought a huge surround setup for the TV, with enormous KLIPSCH-horns stationed around the room. My little brother and my Dad used to get such a huge thrill out of playing
TOP GUN
or
APOCALYPSE NOW
, when airplanes or helicopters would appear to be juggernauting right through the center of their living room.


But , as you say, doesn't that rather destroy the "third wall"/proscenium effect?


If you watch COLD MOUNTAIN or the biopic RAY in a surround setup, you'll hear flies, crickets, mooing cows and clopping horses sounding off to your sides (L+R middle). The assumption, I guess, is that the viewer is imagining himself literally WITHIN that country environment. But to me, it always interrupts my interpretation of the movie.


Now maybe someday we'll get fictional movies in full 360deg virtual reality (with goggles or whatnot)... Only then, do I think, I would appreciate hearing all the sound FX occurring in 360 deg. around me...

 

 

When I was a little kid, I loved music.

 

And, like I said, I was blown away when I first heard stereo. I had to have it.

 

When the first portable stereo (an RCA, changer, no radio2) showed up in the Blue Chip trading stamp catalog, I began a long and dogged campaign to save them up toward one.

 

When we finally got it... it was cool for about 20 minutes.

 

The fact that the speakers were built into the little portable cabinet, about 18" apart -- and were those awful little 2.5" x 5" speakers they used to put in portable TVs -- and it had three knobs -- a left volume, a right volume and a tone control that went from muddy to tinny but nothing happy in between -- that and the fact that my old man would not let me saw it apart -- I even drew plans for precisely how I'd do it -- I was 9 or 10 -- drove me to vow to make my own stereo. I'd got done building some walkie talkies from Allied Radio kits and I was ready to tackle something meaningful...

 

Anyhow... that started my audiophile period (I loved that self-descriptive -- it really set me apart from the other jr hi kids... like I needed to be any farther apart)... I became obsessed with improving my funky stereo and really identified with other "hi fi bugs." If I found out someone had a good component stereo I attached myself to them like a limpet. I hung out most afternoons after school and often all day in the summer at the local component shop. Giving advice to adults when the owner was otherwise distracted and likely driving away plenty of biz.

 

It was during that period that I first heard the term, monomaniac. I heard it a lot.

 

 

Someplace along the way, when I was obsessing over the latest test records and sound FX discs and rejecting favorite old albums because they were mono or lo fi... I started realizing I'd lost sight of why I got a stereo in the first place: to listen to music.

 

So -- I can really identify with your old man and brother thrilling to the subsonic throb of those chopper blades... (And you might be surprised at just how many times I've heard about the sound of those chopper blades from people talking first about the movie in the theatre and then about how cool their home theatres theatres were.)

 

Anyhow, I don't mind having halfway (better make that 1/8 way) decent sound attached to my (27" CRT) TV in the form of my funky, plastic Cambridge 2.1 system -- the sound on the built in speakers is pretty sucky and muffled -- not what aging punk rockers are looking for when they're watching movies or TV with overlapping dialog -- but the sub's discreetly balanced in and the left and right are essentially at the edges of the screen (no room to flank it so I popped them on top like little white, square, mickey mouse ears -- easier to hear throughout the room, too, with them at ear level).

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I'm keeping an open mind, but so far the surround experience is one that hasn't really moved me -- except negatively.

 

I can understand the theature thing (waaaayyyy to loud). I honestly don't like the exsperience at the theature is that great honestly.

 

I guess I understand the movie thing (although I don't have the same reaction when a jet flys by that doesn't knock me out of the movie or anything) although what you hate I probably love :lol:.

 

When I heard the unique studio mixes at the seminar it was through $2,400 monitors (5 of them) all the same and obviously setup by someone who knows what he is doing. It just sounded fantastic to me. I dunno, I was dazzled by the different ideas and rules you can have when doing studio mixes.

 

for instance (one of the mixes)

 

Guitars were panned L and R both front and back.

Bass guitar front L and R

Kick drum was the only thing in the C speaker

Vocals were L and R rear

 

Now I personally wouldn't even know where to begin with mixing in surround but the idea have having 3 more places to put things makes for an interesting exsperience.

 

Again just opinion. :thu:

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I think our problem is we see surround as an extension of stereo so it doesn't really impress, but I know there are kids today who are mixing their home recordings in surround where the kick is dead center of the room, the snare in the rear speakers, the guitars in front and the singers on the sides. They have no preconceived ideas about placement and are having a ball playing with it.

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Bobby O. is definitely a surround guru, and a good guy too.


My response is based on my music -- organic, acoustic alt-folk pop kind of stuff. If I was doing techno or some kind of ambient music where the immersion in a field is intended as part of the experience, I'd be more amenable to it. But for me? Meh.

 

 

Actually I totally see your point. I don't think acoustic/ folk stuff would be that great to listen to in surround unless it's a live performance (in which case that is awesome because it sounds like your their if the mix was done well) and even then I would want it do sound natural with what I was watching and never just a CD (I think I would want the visual as well as the aural).

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