DolbyÆ Laboratories And The Hit Factory Convene Industry Leaders To Discuss ""Making Multichannel Music Work""

16-Apr-01

Over 80 of the music industry's top producers, label executives, engineers, recording artists, and journalists gathered April 4, 2001 at The Hit Factory in Manhattan (New York) to participate in a panel discussion, ""Making Multichannel Music Work."" The evening was co-sponsored by DolbyÆ Laboratories and The Hit Factory. Seven panelists, including composer Wendy Carlos (ìSwitched-On Bach,î ìClockwork Orangeî), Blue Man Group founders Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton, and Chris Wink, and producers Phil Ramone, Frank Filipetti, and John Kellogg joined moderator David Ranada, Technical Editor of Sound & Vision magazine, to discuss how to produce surround music recordings that succeed in delivering a powerful multichannel experience to the consumer.Ranada kicked the proceedings off by emphasizing that the home is where consumers will judge the value of multichannel music. Referring to the proliferation of home theatre systems, Ranada emphasized the importance of mixing engineers setting up home theatre-like environments to check how mixes will actually sound to the consumer. He also played a demo CD, using only two channels to simulate music playback with and without bass management, and to show how critical speaker placement is to the multichannel experience - as little as six inches difference in left-right speaker placement caused a clearly audible delay of a few milliseconds, hurting the clarity of the sound. When an audience member expressed the concern that every playback system would reproduce a 5.1 mix differently, Blue Man Group co-founder Matt Goldman replied, ""Since our music sounds so much better on even the smallest 5.1 system than on any two-channel system,"" differences in playback were not worth agonizing over. While panelists agreed on a number of key issues, including the importance of using the center channel creatively, and the need to introduce more recording artists to 5.1's creative possibilities, audience members posed a range of questions, including the most basic: ""Why fool with 5.1, isn't stereo good enough?"" Replied Frank Filipetti, ""I can remember when people were asking why bother with stereo, since consumers at the time typically put their two mono speakers in different rooms."" While everyone agreed that mistakes in multichannel mixing will be made initially, they also agreed with Phil Ramone that the industry has to get the best recordings to consumers quickly for the format to take off. Goldman of Blue Man Group noted that ""when people hear our DVD-Audio disc (appropriately titled Audio), there is a visceral connection because they are enveloped in the sound."" Fellow Blue Man founder Chris Wink added, ""We have consciously avoided making a record in two-channel because that format cannot capture the tribal nature of our music."" Blue Man founder, Phil Stanton, agreed that there was no way ""to fit 48 channels of the group's innovative music into just two speakers.""Composer Wendy Carlos, having lived through the failed quad experiment of the 70s, proclaimed that multichannel sound allowed ""more clarity for each instrument,"" and, since each of the six speakers has less audio information to reproduce, less distortion. Three multichannel music excerpts were played, courtesy of a 5.1 playback system provided by Meyer Sound. A track from Blue Man Group's Audio started with a two-channel introduction that quickly grew into a 5.1-channel onslaught of drums, guitar, bass, and Blue Man-invented instruments. John Kellogg played ""Tocatta"" from the Rhino Records' Emerson Lake & Palmer ìBrain Salad Surgeryî DVD-A disc. When band members Keith Emerson and Greg Lake heard the 5.1 version, according to Kellogg, they both said ìthis was how we envisioned our music being heard, but we didn't have the format back then.îFinally, Frank Filipetti played ""Line 'Em Up"" by James Taylor, citing it as an example of a familiar, classic recording using the 5.1 soundfield to create a wider ""super-stereo image."" Filipetti believes the wider image gives a sense of clarity and depth, while avoiding the jarring effect that placing various instruments and voices in different speakers on such a familiar recording would cause. After the formal discussion, audience members joined panelists for informal talks. For more information about Dolby Laboratories, visit www.dolby.com.

Read More:
http://www.dolby.com