How to Prepare for the Coming Storm of 5.1-Surround Projects

You're Surrounded
How to Prepare for the Coming Storm of 5.1-Surround Projects

by Mike Sokol

Unless you’ve been asleep under a rock for the past ten years, you’ve at least heard about surround sound. During the past several years, it has had a serious impact on movie soundtracks, and it could replace stereo as the de facto music-listening standard. But surround is a new format, and lots of myths, misinformation, and misconceptions about it are floating around. So if you’re not sure what terms like AC-3, DTS, DVD-A, and 5.1 mean, you’re in good company.

You can provide customers with a multichannel surround-sound experience in two different ways. In one method, a number of audio processors synthesize a multichannel signal from 2-channel stereo sources, but no magic surround processor will transform an existing stereo mix into a proper surround mix. Most home-theater systems have some sort of “ambience” setting for this purpose, but it’s the worst-sounding effect you can imagine. A few of the more advanced processors include “matrix” modes, some of which work pretty well, but these modes will never equal a true 5.1-surround mix.

A much better option is to create original multichannel mixes from scratch. Mixing in 5.1 surround requires some extra equipment, which means learning some new techniques. But it’s worth the effort; mixing music in 5.1 surround is the most exciting thing I’ve been involved in. We are witnessing a milestone in audio history. Millions of home-theater systems in the United States can play back surround music mixes and movie soundtracks. It’s time for the recording industry to put out surround product—and it’s not as difficult as you might think.

Early Birds and Worms

Illustration by Dmitry Panich
Meditator Image by Superstock

I’ll start with a little historical perspective. You’re probably familiar with monaural (aka mono) sound: you deal with only one channel of music information. The information can be as simple as a cheap clock radio with a tiny 1-inch plastic speaker or as complex as a concert sound system with dozens of triamped cabinets in large speaker stacks.

Of course, stereo is our standard listening format today. In stereo, you work with two distinct information channels, and you can position various instruments between two speakers typically arranged in front of the listener in an approximately 60-degree spread. This technique allows for some pretty cool psychoacoustic tricks which make the sound seem to emanate from a position between the speakers, even though no sound source exists in the center. This is called virtual, or phantom, center.

You can produce a stereo sound field, or soundstage, in a variety of ways. The easiest is to use a pair of microphones on a live group and direct these two channels to the speakers. But most music today is recorded in multitrack format. The channels are panned left, right, or in between at mixdown, creating an artificial soundstage.

Of course, stereo has been king for more than 30 years. The industry made a brief excursion into quadraphonic (4-channel) sound back in the 1970s, but squeezing four channels of music into a single record groove was beyond the technology’s capabilities. A small group of home experimenters actually set up quad systems, and a few music recordings were released on LP and 4-track reel-to-reel tape. However, quad died an ignoble death, and many people ended up with expensive gear and nothing notable to play on it. The industry never really recovered from this brief affair with quad. To this day, you can make many record executives jump by mentioning the “Q word.”

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