So you have a lotta priceless tracks in your archives. There's no such thing as an opportunity to re-record these tracks........the artists are gone, the old studio is gone, your hairline is gone. Yet you really want to bring these recordings into modern times, especially into the world of Surround.

Fear not -- you will be simply amazed at what Surround can do for an old recording. In this installment, we will apply some simple FX plug-ins in some new ways, and make those old tracks sound cooler than you could imagine.

In this first example, I have taken a very basic mono bass-and-drums track, and brought it into my Surround mixer.

Figure 1 (click image for larger view)

In this mixer, I have connected the bass-and-drum track to input channels 2, 3, 4, and 5 (fig. 1). As you can see, I have panned each of these four channels to different corner speakers. So, the bass-and-drum track will be heard out of the four corners.

But wait! I have also dropped a compressor on three of the input channels (i.e., channels 3, 4, and 5). And I adjusted each compressor to have a different threshold. So, even though the same track is going to each of the corner speakers, each one has different dynamics. Channel 2 is not compressed at all, channel 3 is lightly compressed, channel 4 is moderately compressed, and channel 5 is highly compressed.

Next, I adjusted outputs to be about the same average level to each of the corner speakers.

The result? The bass pumps the compressors, and the sound fills the room and moves around in a very lively way that you have to hear to believe. We've taken a ho-hum mono track, and brought it to life.

Homemade Surround Reverb
How do we do reverb in Surround? Until we can get a true Surround plug-in, we have to make our own.

Figure 2 (click image for larger view)

Here, we do a similar trick (fig. 2) . I brought my mono track to 4 separate effects return channels, panned each to a different corner speaker, and dropped a mono reverb plug-in onto each. Tune up the reverbs to each have the same room size, but different delay characteristics. Then adjust the outputs to have about the same levels on average.

Once again, this simple approach makes a sound that is too good to be true. Reverb in Surround is just too cool.

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