Surround Sound

Post, March, 2003 by David John Farinella

Yes, it's true -- surround sound has made its mark. Zane Vella, co-founder and president of MX Entertainment (www.mxentertainment.com) calls the climate for 5.1 a "fast moving train and it's hard to keep up with. What I see is a massive industry wide shift to DVD audio and video."

That statement seems more true than ever, with consumers' increasing demand for 5.1 products a la the DVD market, advertisers opening their eyes to the possibilities of surround spots (check out the commercials that show before a theatrical release of many motion pictures for proof) and even some Internet entertainment outlets (BMW Films, for one) calling for 5.1 mixes. Many facilities around the country have already geared up for the coming turn and there are even some that are building whole new facilities. The good news for many post companies is that their major purchases of years ago are still useful these days, while the technology of surround hardware and software is continuing to improve.

John McGleenan, facility director at San Francisco-based One Union Recording Studios, believes the 5.1 climate is strong. "It has a very strong pulse, [but] it's still in puberty," he says. "Once you come out of where it could be and where it is, it's a little bit disappointing. While the US is leaps and bounds ahead of audio production in certain facets, we're behind in other ones. It's a matter of time, but it's going to be years instead of months. It's like knowing [that on] the horizon is a tsunami and I would hate to be someone who is trying to retrofit prior to the wave coming in."

Hand in hand with advances in audio, many facilities are seeing more and more creative video. That -- along with viewers who are looking to be impressed -- is driving mixers, sound designers and composers to create compelling audio. With that in mind, Post checked in with a half-dozen facilities across the United States who are performing a wide variety of projects in surround sound.

GOODSPOT OFFERS D-TH EATER

The team at Santa Monica's Goodspot (www.goodspot.com) has been working with Artisan Home Entertainment and JVC mixing a handful of promotional spots that highlight a new technology known as D-Theater, a new high definition record and playback system that looks like VHS tape but has the capabilities of HD video and 5.1 surround sound. According to Goodspot's senior editor, Luis Martos, the project "allowed us to get really nasty with the sound and very loud. They gave us five or six movies and they asked us to do a two-and-a-half-minute piece that explained D-Theater." To accomplish that goal, Goodspot took a number of sound design effects, music and dialogue and had it mixed (via Mackie's D8B) in 5.1 while editing the video together.

Martos reports the challenge came during the mixing session. "I edited it with the 5.1 tracks, but you really don't get that feeling until you take it to the mixing session and you lay it all out," he says. Martos edited with an Avid Media Composer and then the sessions were imported to the mix stage at Complete Sound (now called Technicolor Sound Services Hollywood) via Digidesign Pro Tools OMF files. "First I had to prepare an eight-track mix, then I prepped it for the [mixers] by spreading it all out," he explains." The disadvantage in the Avid is that you can only listen to eight tracks at the same time, so in order for me to listen to more than that, I would have to mix down those eight tracks." What made the process a bit easier, Martos explains, was that the Technicolor Sound Services mixers had the 5.1 source. "But what really helped the audio tracks is when they added the bottom," he notes. "Those guys can take any noise and make it sound like it's an earthquake."

ANGEL GETS NEW FACILITY

"We are very much gearing up for surround right now," reports Angel Mountain's director of engineering, Carl Cadden-James. So much so, in fact, that the Angel Mountain (www.angelmtn.com) brain trust is building an 18,000-square-foot facility from the ground up with the primary tracking and mixing room stocked with an SSL 9000K and a 5.1 Quested soffited monitoring system in an acoustically designed room. The six wide surround buses that come out of the SSL are being fed to a Dolby 570 monitoring tool.

That primary room serves as an audio room, while the facility's next room is a lock-to-picture room complete with a Digidesign ProControl that feeds the Dolby 570. Surround encoding is done via a Dolby Digital 563 and the 564 reference decoder. That room also features Foley pits and a large plasma screen on the wall to do lock to picture work.

Angel Mountain, which is based in Bethlehem, PA, took great care to get the technology correct for a number of reasons, including their proximity to Philadelphia and New York City. "Secondly, we believe very much that surround, maybe not today but in the foreseeable future, is going to be a viable and acceptable playback preference by the general listening public," he says.

With its new facility, Angel Mountain's aim is to become an all-inclusive post solution from mixing to composing. Indeed, its large studio room boasts enough space to fit up to a 70-piece orchestra, and they've equipped the space with the latest in sampling technology. Additionally, a mix theater features a Series I 2 Harrison 96-input digital console and is THX approved. "The whole idea here is that we think we can do every component required in a post audio specific job," Cadden-James says. "We can compose, we can track the composition, we have Foley pits, we have an ADR rig, we have all the traditional nonlinear editing tools, we've got Digi Beta layback, all of our rooms are Pro Tools HD and they are tied by a 2GB back playing Fibre Channel network to a Studio Networks Solutions."