The Way it Was

The recent AES Convention held in San Francisco had its typical share of new product introductions — which is, of course, great. Even better for the Surround Professional, however, is that the trend started a few years back is continuing and is more prominent than ever. The trend of which we speak is the inclusion of surround features on nearly every major new product introduction. Combine this with the addition of a surround sound category to the GRAMMYs, and it safe to say that surround mixers will be quite busy in the year to come.

Here’s a glance at some of the surround-related product introductions at AES.

Live and in Surround

From Paul Wolff, formerly of API, comes his new company Tonelux (distributed by Gil Griffith), making discrete audio products for audio production and live recording, the MX5.1 Mixer module. The MX5.1 is one of the modular and customizable multifunction line of products from Tonelux that was previewed at AES and is designed for companion use with a DAW and made to work together in myriad combination with up to 16 modules fitting in the 3U V-Rack housing.

The MX5.1 Mixer is a surround line mixer with many features of a large-frame console. The MX5.1 has a unique mute circuit that, when pressed, the LED turns red, but when the module is on, the LED serves as a level presence indicator, illuminating green to show signal presence. This is very useful in live recording when you need to know quickly if a channel has signal or which has the loudest signal on it. It is also perfect for identifying which channel has the Kick and which has the Snare, etc.

The 5.1 switch turns on the signal to the surround bus, allowing the module to send signal to the aux sends without going to the surround bus. The LCR button switches the pan pot from stereo to LCR, and pans from left, through center, to right, or in 2 channel stereo, allowing phantom center. The two sends are internally configurable for pre- or post-fader signal. One of the sends can be used as the LFE send for Surround Mixes.

Price is $449 or $549 with a direct output option. For more information, visit www.tonelux.com.

Putting the Plus in Dolby Digital Plus

Dolby Laboratories showcased additional features of the Dolby Digital Plus audio format. Originally announced at 2004’s NAB, Dolby Digital Plus offers bit-rate and channel extendibility as an enhancement of the Dolby Digital format.

The next generation of consumer hardware — set-top boxes and DVD players, for example — will be fitted with Dolby Digital Plus hardware that provides backward compatibility with existing Dolby Digital- and Pro Logic-equipped hardware.

While Dolby Digital Plus has new features for low bit-rate coding, the four main benefits of the Dolby Digital Plus codec apply to applications such as the new HD DVD media format (where it, along with the Dolby licensed MLP lossless coding, has been designated a mandatory audio standard) and the format’s anticipated future use in advanced television systems.

One major new advantage of Dolby Digital plus is dubbed Transient Pre-Noise Processing, which is designed to improve audio performance by eliminating pre-noise distortion often associated with “difficult to encode” transient material. Another new enhancement, called Enhanced Channel Coupling, improves audio performance by adding phase compensation to the channel coupling process in effect on high frequencies, increasingly with lower bit rates. The main ECC benefits come where surround channels are matrix encoded-multichannel information encoded into a stereo signal.

Dolby says their new Adaptive Hybrid Transform processing “improves coding efficiency and quality by combining improved spectral resolution, higher resolution bit allocation and improved quantization techniques for pseudo-stationary signals.”

Finally, Dolby Digital Plus can now carry multichannels to “7.1 and beyond.”
Visit www.dolby.com for more details.

Streamlining Surround with Steinberg

Steinberg is showed how their products streamline surround sound production workflow at AES. The company demonstrated how its Nuendo 3 Media Production System can be used to mix, edit, and sweeten surround-format audio locked to HD video, and how their Wave-lab 5 software can be used to edit, master, and burn the final product to DVD-A format audio discs.

With the introduction of new versions of Nuendo and Wavelab, Steinberg now provides a complete solution for audio engineers and producers who are working with surround-format audio. Nuendo is a host-based software system and leaves the user free to choose from hundreds of ASIO compliant hardware I/O options, allowing audio to be captured with a vast array of computers including laptops for location recording. Final mixes can then be opened in Wavelab 5, Steinberg’s multichannel audio mastering and editing tool, for playlist editing, mastering, further sweetening and burning directly onto a DVD-A disc prior to release to production.
For more information, visit www.steinberg.net.

New Soundfield Surround Zone Software For Pro Tools

SoundField has announced the release of the new Surround Zone plug-in for Digidesign’s Pro Tools software on both Mac and PC platforms.

The Surround Zone brings SoundField’s surround and stereo processing to the digital domain. It combines the hardware features of both the SP451 surround processor and the MKV System and is designed to accept the B-Format information generated by any of the current SoundField microphone models.
A full surround recording can be captured using a single SoundField microphone incorporating a patented multi-capsule array. Because the microphone captures the sound at a “single point,” as opposed to multiple spaced microphones, all channels are completely phase coherent. This enables surround mixes to be collapsed back to stereo or mono without the loss of any vital audio information. Each microphone system outputs SoundField B-Format, which is a three-dimensional snapshot of any acoustic event.

Once the SoundField B-Format is in the Digidesign environment, the plug-in enables the user to generate various surround mic-arrays with variable polar patterns. Specifically the Surround Zone provides a choice of three separate 5.1 arrays, individual 6.1 and 7.1 arrays, independently variable width of both the front and rear pairs, phase coherent LFE and individual level controls with mute and solo all with bargraph metering.
For more details, visit www.soundfieldusa.com.

New Features, Effects for Two Yamaha Mixers

Past and future converge for the computer-based music production and recording markets with the AES release of Version 2 (V2) software for the 02R96 and 01V96 digital mixers, and five Add-on Effects packages from Yamaha Corporation of America.

V2 software is a major upgrade that provides more than 50 new features, including expanded DAW control and application-specific functions. The advanced DAW integration for Nuendo and Cubase includes Selected Channel Control, which allows hands-on control of all Nuendo’s EQs and dynamics, and complete MMC transport control. Advanced Surround Monitoring features include 6.1 Panning and Monitoring, plus Flexible Surround Bus Setups.

One of the major new features of V2 is the ability to use Yamaha’s Add-On Effects series of plug-ins for the mixer’s internal DSP chips built on Virtual Circuit Modeling (VCM). VCM technology (developed Toshi Kunimoto and his team at Yamaha Japan who created the world’s first physical modeling synthesizer) actually models exact analog circuits of studio classics-right down to the last resistor and capacitor.

For more information, visit www.yamaha.com/proaudio.

Surround Recording According to Holophone

Holophone, a division of Rising Sun Productions, Ltd., presented a specialized surround sound recording seminar at AES. Michael Godfrey, the inventor of the new Holophone H2-PRO surround sound microphone, was the featured presenter.

The presentation provided an in-depth look at the new Holophone H2-PRO, the background behind its development, and its applications. In addition, the audience was treated to live demonstrations of rare 5.1 surround sound recordings made from around the world using the Holophone, including pieces from the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at the recently opened Moscow International House of Music.

For more information on H2-PRO, visit www.holophone.com.

Waves Debuts IR Reverb Surround Version

In a bid to position itself as the new leader in sampled reverb software, Waves Ltd. Initiated a major expansion of their IR Convolution Reverb plug-in series. New entries include the IR-360 for multichannel surround sound; the IR-1 Version 2, which now lets users capture their own samples; and the IR-L, an entry-level light version offering simpler controls. Waves also launched www.Acousics.net, a dedicated Web site that offers a newly expanded library of downloadable impulse response samples created by the company and submitted by users.

A new feature now lets IR-360 and IR-1 Version 2 users capture the sound acoustic spaces and hardware devices by playing an included sweep signal into an acoustic space or through an outboard processor and recording the result. The software then lets users import the recording to create a custom impulse response that’s ready to use. In addition to the new releases, Waves is introducing a set of IR libraries on DVD, with improved sound and additional miking options, as well as surround versions for most sampled venues. A new library preset handling system will organize presets dynamically by scanning the preset folder and developing menu contents based on its findings. Existing and old IR libraries will be supported.

For more details, visit www.waves.com.

Cakewalk Ships SONAR 4 Producer, Studio Editions

Cakewalk released SONAR 4 Producer Edition and Studio Edition. With new version 4, Cakewalk has added powerful recording, editing, comping and navigation tools that optimize workflow for today’s professional. In addition, version 4 combines surround and AV capabilities along with precise engineering tools.

A sample of SONAR 4 Producer Edition’s new features include: