See the Appendix for Steve Wilson’s bio.

When I first approached surround sound, I thought, “Ahh, this is going to be great! We’re going to put the drums in all four corners. We’re going to have the dry drum sounds at the front and all the room reflections at the back.” But when I tried it, it sounded horrible. It didn’t work at all. It was like hearing two drum kits, neither of which sounded good, coming unglued. So, I learned by trial and error how certain things don’t work. The surround field seems to come together best with the drums and the bass anchored pretty much at the front. However, some of the things that do really work fantastically in surround are keyboard details, harmony vocals, and acoustic guitars. Also, when you start to work on recording albums with the knowledge that you’re going to be mixing in surround, you start to think, “Well, let’s track this four times,” whereas previously you might just double-track a guitar twice—left and right. Then, you have the option to put one guitar in each corner, and it sounds amazing. That said, it’s really a question of always working from the stereo up for me, so the surround mixes usually will take only a few hours more. Ninety-five percent of the work on a surround sound mix is in actually creating a good stereo mix first. At that point, you have all of the sound processing in place—EQ, compression, reverb, and delays—as well as basic levels and volume rides. While these may need adjustment in the surround picture, it’s unusual for that to be the case, so creating a 5.1 mix simply becomes about moving things into a more three-dimensional space.

When stereo first came along in the ’60s, engineers were doing stereo mixes where they positioned the whole band on one side and the vocals on the other. When you listen to the Beatles, you’re reminded how odd some of the early stereo mixes are. I think some of the early surround mixes kind of went a similar way.

When I first started with surround, I listened to a lot of existing 5.1 releases and didn’t like a lot of them because I thought they were too gimmicky. It was like, “Hey, you know what? We can have the guitar whizzing around the room, we can have the drums over there, and we can have the vocals flipping back and forth between the center and rear speakers. It’s gonna be great!” The trouble was that it wasn’t something you would want to listen to repeatedly. Why would you create a mix like that any more than you would create a stereo mix where things were bouncing backward and forward between the left and right the whole time?

Years ago, I think the whole thing about mono versus stereo was that, ultimately, people were looking at stereo as a way to make the music have a little more spatial dimension. To me, surround is the same approach. You just have an extra dimension, and you’re not looking to be gimmicky. You’re not looking to be distracting with the mix.

The first two Porcupine Tree album surround mixes were done with Elliot Scheiner. I was very lucky to be able to watch him, see how he worked, and figure out how he approached things. So, I started to develop my own vocabulary for mixing in surround, which seems to have gone down well with the people who like that format. But I really just approached it from a very intuitive perspective, trying to make the whole listening experience more immersive. I didn’t want to make it feel like it was just showing off the whole time.

When Robert Fripp was approached about me doing the King Crimson catalog in surround, he was also of the opinion that it was some kind of gimmicky thing, and he really wasn’t interested. But I suggested that I take one album and mix it anyway, as an audition of sorts. I knew that if it was done properly, he would like it. I picked Discipline because of the interlocking guitars, and as soon as he heard it, he was jumping up out his chair and saying, “All right, we’re going to do the whole catalog!” I truly believe that almost any musician could be won over given the chance to hear a sensitively done 5.1 mix of their music. I like to think I could win over even the most skeptical person. Nothing to do with me or the way I do it, but simply because if it’s done even half-decently, it’s a revelation. It’s like you can never go back to mono or stereo after you’ve heard your music in surround.

For me, there’s certainly a style of music that suits surround sound absolutely perfectly: the art/progressive rock tradition. Any album where the production has so many layers to the sound—Pink Floyd and King Crimson are perfect examples. When they are in the studio, they are not bound by the conventions of live music. They’re experimenting with sounds and instrumental relationships that couldn’t necessarily be reproduced live. Because of that, we as listeners don’t have any preconceptions about how the sounds should or should not be positioned in space. That’s perfect for surround, where you can approach those different layers in the production in a similarly experimental way.

Fortunately (and unusually), the great thing about King Crimson is that Robert Fripp, the leader of King Crimson, actually owns all of the rights and the master tapes. We were able to have the tapes baked and transferred. We used UK companies FX and Universal Tape Archive to do the actual transfers. The tapes, some of which were 40 years old, were in very delicate condition; they had to actually hand-wind them in some cases. It was very laborious process.

Along the way, I found a whole bunch of stuff on the tapes that had never been mixed, so the other thing I was able to do was stereo mixes of never-heard-before alternate takes and do new stereo mixes of the actual album tracks themselves.

We had no original recording notes at all, so I was lining up a copy of the existing CD and comparing literally every few bars to make sure I was being faithful to the original mixes. In some of the early tapes, there are many alternate overdubs that are not in the mix or that kind of pop up in the mix for a few moments, then disappear again, so it was a long process to re-create the original mixes in stereo.

I grew up in the ’80s, but I was always listening to music from the ’70s because the music that was around me in the ’80s just didn’t appeal to me at all. I got into the world of recording at the very beginning of digital recording technology. I didn’t really ever have the opportunity to learn how to do things in a “vintage” way, but all the sounds I liked were on records that were made using analog equipment, so I ended up teaching myself how to make those sounds using digital technology. If I had to pick one thing that I would say is my strength, that would be it. Sometimes, people don’t believe that the records I make are completely mixed inside a digital environment, but if I’m good at anything, it’s making digital things sound warm because those are the sounds I like and naturally aspire to. That’s the vocabulary that I want to speak in, even though I don’t have access to the tools those guys had then, and I wouldn’t have a clue how to use them anyway.

I’m using Logic with the Digi TDM engine, so I’m able to use all of Pro Tools’ plug-ins. I rely a lot on the Focusrite d2/d3 compressor, the Line 6 Amp Farm and Echo Farm, and D-Verb, which is a reverb plug-in that comes free with Pro Tools. I think a lot of people don’t use it simply because it’s the free Digidesign one, but I think it’s terrific because it’s so flexible and quite transparent when you need it to be.

Echo Farm does a great job of simulating the old vintage tape slap, and I love being able to add the tape warble to make it sound even more authentic. I also have no qualms about getting plug-ins that are not supposed to sound old to actually sound more vintage. Digital is probably more faithful in the sense that it reproduces more of the top end and the low end, but there’s certainly something special about the sound of those classic vintage recordings. If you have digital plug-ins, put filters across them, and emphasize more of that middle, to my ears you get more of that vintage sound—for example, putting low-pass and high-pass filters on reverbs to take out a lot of what people might associate with being high fidelity. I do that with a lot of the digital plug-ins. This was essential for revisiting the King Crimson albums since they were putting mono plates on a lot of the sounds. So many modern reverbs seem to think it’s their job to sound fantastically impressive in their own right, with vast, shiny stereo reflections. But I think that a lot of times, mix engineers are looking for a more practical application of a reverb as being something that you hardly know is there. It just adds a kind of “halo” around the instrument and makes it sit better in a mix.

With a lot of the King Crimson stuff, a lot of the effects were printed to tape. Compared to the way most recording is done now, it’s a very different way to work. When I started working with these tapes, I was very impressed with how much was committed to tape and how good it sounded. I’m sure this is true of a lot of the recording during that classic period—it’s the economy in the use of over-dubbing. They made decisions and committed them to tape. Not only did they make decisions, they got incredible tones that didn’t need to be tracked four times to sound impressive. I think that’s becoming a lost art. We now live in a recording era where it’s very easy to track something eight times and make it sound huge. You know, “We’ve got a guitar and unlimited tracks, so let’s get an OK sound but track it eight times.” Back in the ’70s, those guys couldn’t work that way, so they made sure that one guitar’s tones were just huge. There’s that whole thing about necessity being the mother of invention, which is absolutely right. If you’re limited to 16 tracks or eight tracks, then you have to know how to get incredible tones that will sound good without tracking them.

In the Court of the Crimson King, King Crimson’s 1969 debut album, was recorded on eight tracks. “21st Century Schizoid Man” is one pass on eight track tape, but most of the other tracks on the album were bounced down several times before they had a complete master, so the first bounce would be to reduce the chosen take of drum, bass, and guitar from the backing track session to two tracks on a second reel. Then, they’d fill up the remaining six tracks with Mellotrons before bouncing down a second time in order to track the vocals. By the time you get to creating a stereo master, those original drum, bass, and guitar takes could have been through four or five generations of tape, with all the extra hiss, grime, dropouts, loss of transients, and other audio characteristics that this entails. Fortunately, we were able to go back and resynchronize the various session reels. This was important for 5.1, anyway, where we needed to be able to control, move, and work with isolated instruments. Although it was kind of a byproduct of those 5.1 mixes, the idea to also create and release new stereo mixes naturally came up. I was referring to the original stereo mix, and I could hear that the difference was huge. Rather than using second- or third-generation drum or bass tracks, we had first-generation tracks for the first time ever to mix from. It was too hard to resist the chance to produce a definitive stereo master using the new multitrack session that we’d built and that no one had ever had available to them before.

Effectively re-creating the original stereo mix as faithfully as possible became step 1. In the case of King Crimson, I’m very familiar with the originals. I’m such a fan of them that I’m reluctant to change anything, and if there’s anything different on the King Crimson remixes, it’s probably because Robert said he’d like to change something or felt it was never right in the first place. Even then, I think you need to be careful because the quirks and inaccuracies of mixes become familiar to people over a period of years; even if it’s not quite what the artist intended, that’s how people know it. To correct it can sometimes make it unfamiliar and break the spell, so creating the new stereo mixes did involve a fair bit of discussion. If I felt Robert was asking for changes that I felt were not somehow faithful to the spirit of the original, then I would certainly say so, but there were other changes that definitely made sense to me.

It’s only at the point that everyone is happy and agreed on the stereo that I start to break the mix out into the three dimensions of 5.1. Once you have an idea about what does and doesn’t work in surround, it’s actually quite easy and a lot of fun to be suddenly sitting inside the music that until then has only been coming at you from the front.

Credits include: The Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Van Morrison, David Crosby, Seals and Crofts, the Doobie Brothers. See the Appendix for Stephen Barncard’s full bio.

My first surround mix release was Another Stoney Evening, a show from the Crosby & Nash tour of 1971. During that time, Rubber Dubber, a famous vinyl bootlegging label, put out this two-disk pressing called A Very Stoney Evening based on one of the nights of that tour. I don’t know how they recorded it, but it was a fairly decent-quality live recording from that tour.

Unbeknownst to Rubber Dubber, David Crosby and Graham Nash had decided to record the whole tour. They got Bill Halverson, who was a remote recording heavy, to go out with the Wally Heider truck with the famous Frank de Medio eight-channel tube console. It was one of the first modular consoles with these big rotary faders and module strips with the UA 610 amplifiers and great electronics and not much EQ.

Eight tracks were a viable medium to record this tour because it was just two guys with just enough tracks to add a pair of stereo audience tracks, a Wally Heider specialty. This was usually recorded with a far-placed stereo mic pair placed far away in a sweet spot that really captured the expanse of the audience, and as little of the PA as possible.

At this distinguished venue in 1971, audiences were still polite. There was no shouting and rude “Where’s Stephen?” calls. When David Crosby did “Guinevere” or “Where Will I Be?” they were a respectful, listening audience. The recording was done on October 10, 1971, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, which was a classy place, normally a place for classical and theatrical events. David’s dear mother was even in the house that night.

During that tour, Crosby & Nash were so loose and so high and so funny and so good! Both of them had their best batches of songs from both Nash’s and Crosby’s first solo albums, and they did all of these tunes from these great records in a very casual way—just the two of them, two guitars, and a piano.

Thanks to the Wally Heider crew, I had great audience tracks to work with and could build the foundation of the surround mix by placing them in the back channels. Joel Bernstein and Robert Hammer had taken a hundred excellent photos of the show, and I had studied the setting and the positioning of the mics. Looking from the audience, Graham was on the left and David on the right, and you could hear them sitting in their chairs, moving around, and talking. I was influenced by the loose format of the Grateful Dead’s live records and wanted the project to have a casual, vérité feel. A lot of it was really funny. They had great comedic timing that you couldn’t script, and there was an overall dynamic that was staggering. There was also a lot to cut out. That had to wait for the Crosby, Stills & Nash box set and, later, digital editing.

We really didn’t discover this tape that would become Another Stoney Evening until 1991, when Nash called me and asked me to work on the CSN box set. They had all of these tapes in storage, including some instruments they had packed away and forgotten about. Graham Nash loves history and spelunking for old tapes with undiscovered performances. In one of the boxes, we found this series of eight track 1-inch tape reels recorded on the Crosby & Nash tour of 1971. When I saw this, I thought, “This might just be great a future release of some kind.” The recording was pristine—a fantastic live recording by the master live recordist Halverson. So, in 1997, I made an independent deal with Grateful Dead Records for a stereo version, and after DVD-Audio surround was finally standardized in 2002, this all led to contact with DTS, who wanted me to mix a surround version of Another Stoney Evening.

The transfer session for Another Stoney Evening was done at dBTechnologies in Burbank. They did the transfers from eight-track 1-inch to digital, and then gave me the files in 96/24.

I had my monitors measured and set up to the NAB/AES standards. I had and currently have the five speakers set up in a very small surround circle—as small as I can make it to fit around the tables that I’m using. I call it near-field surround mixing, which is basically putting the speakers as close of a radius as possible for one person while maintaining appropriate speaker positioning. This approach has worked well for me.

When I did the surround mix for David’s record If I Could Only Remember My Name, I had transfers of some eight-track and 16-track reels of the sessions. I was able to go back to first-generation elements and found some of the eight tracks had been later bounced to the 16 tracks for further overdubs. I was doing this so the mixes would all be using first-generation tracks and sound better.

I got to get really deep into the acoustic guitar sound on the mixes. In fact, I spent most of my time on the guitars because that’s what David’s album is—a great guitar album (dominated by acoustics) with David’s beautiful vocals. To try and keep the vibe of the original, which was well known to the fans who had heard the stereo version over the years, I would always keep the original stereo version alongside the multitracks to listen to and compare at any point in the song.

I tried to re-create the echoes and expanded the concept to surround. I tried various digital echoes, but ended up liking these stereo stock echo plug-ins that come with Pro Tools. I liked the idea of being able to tune the channels a little more, so I made this little matrix, and once I got these little echoes tweaked up and in surround, I had this blob that I could re-create that almost sounded like the various Wally Heider live chambers. At Heider’s in San Francisco, we had four real acoustic chambers that consisted of shellacked, non-parallel walls where some of them could sound like the Taj Mahal. It took a couple weeks to get the virtual chamber space I created tuned in, but it worked great and I was working totally in the box. I tried to use a control surface, but it was such a pain that I just ended up moving faders on the screen.

During the making of If I Could Only Remember My Name, I had this experience of sitting on a stool in the studio while they were jamming, running tracks down. If you put up the surround mix and play it in a big room, you can walk around and you’re right there in that space. You’re in the musician’s perspective.

On the track “Cowboy Movie,” there are two Jerry Garcias playing lead on it. I placed each Garcia in the left and right surrounds (rears) alone, so you can go over and stand by one side and just listen to Garcia wail, you can go to the other speaker and listen to the other Garcia do the reply licks, or you can go and listen to the acoustics in another speaker and David’s vocal in the center.

I usually kept David up in the front speakers and guests and percussion in the back, but on “Orleans” there were many chiming and picking parts. If there were three parts, then I spread them out in a triangular pattern; if there were four parts, I made a quad. There was a melodic thing that he plays at the end—of multiple acoustics and harmonies—and that was fun. Every song was an absolute joy to invent a sound space for.

I didn’t hold onto any conventions that the center channel had to carry any special instrument in the surround mix. For most listeners with average systems, the bass instruments below 80 Hz were going to be spread by bass management anyway, but in some cases I would move the high-end ticky-tacky part of the bass into the center channel for clarity.

On If I Could Only Remember My Name, I didn’t use the LFE (low-frequency effects or .1) channel at all because I couldn’t find anything in that range on any of the songs that made it worthwhile to attempt it. I had attended several surround conferences and seminars where the participants were divulging their techniques and giving master classes talking about the LFE—the low-frequency effects. LFE was put there by the movie people for rumble stuff like earthquakes, but I don’t think it was intended to be a thing to just add more bass in the mix. Almost all consumer systems have bass management, which is not LFE. Many mixers still don’t get that bass management takes the low-frequency content from all of the surround channels, filters at about 80 Hz the feed to each of the five amplifiers, and mixes a sum of the five to mono, filters all above 80 Hz, and puts that in the sub woofer. The LFE channel is added on top of that, is under the control of the mixer, and goes directly to the subwoofer. But end users may have differently calibrated systems, and a LFE signal may just get in the way—the listener ends up with too much or muddy low end. With that in mind, I felt it was more important to focus the mix toward five full-sized speakers with very occasional use of the LFE channel for impact.

A surround mix gains body and depth by starting in a stereo realm that is already known. This has proven to be more efficient than starting in surround and then folding back into stereo. Once the stereo mix is established, I spread the instruments into a wider soundstage and then further expand with ambience.

There are basically two ways to approach a surround mix. One is with the players in front, as if on a stage, with some kind of ambiance swirling in the back, and we’re the audience sitting in our seats. I think that method is boring.

The other method is filling all corners of the room with instruments, well, separated. There’s motion and activity all around, and surround can truly get you about as close sonically as possible to the real thing. That dance is what this record was about, and if there were any record that would have the deep and interesting sonic sources to draw from, If I Could Only Remember My Name in surround was it. I wanted this to be a “killer app” recording that would help sell the idea of surround to the masses.

Credits include: Aerosmith, Judas Priest, Journey, Iron Maiden, the Black Crowes, Led Zeppelin, Rush, HIM, Metallica, New York Dolls, Dream Theater, Joe Satriani. See the Appendix for Kevin Shirley’s full bio.

Surround adds such a dimension to music. I had my dad in in my studio yesterday. He’s a classical music aficionado, and I played him “Kashmir” from Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded. My dad has never been a fan of anything non-classical. He sat and listened to this, and he had tears in his eyes. He was shaking his head and saying, “I can’t believe it. It’s unbelievable.” To experience immersive sound like that puts you in a different world. It can transport you.

Certainly, on No Quarter, the picture has some relevance to the sound source, but when you’re in surround, there’s so much you can do creatively.

If the surround mix you are doing is a concert, like No Quarter, then you need to feel like you’re in a concert, whether you decide to be in the front row or in the center of the mosh pit. The nice thing is you can really place the listener in the sound field. I think surround sound in live applications like that is incredible. Outside of live concert applications, music is always meant to be about energy or relaxation or fun or anxiety or anger—all these things. Surround sound is so much fun. It’s just fantastic to listen to it and be in that world with things going on all around you. It’s like being in the forest; it’s birds and streams all around you, but only when you stop in one place and really listen, you go, “Wow, this is so fantastic. Why don’t we have this in all our iPods?” That’s why I love it. It’s just so much fun.

My surround monitors are set up a little higher in the rears. It’s a little tighter in the front. The center speaker is really important because it can be really bad. It’s pretty much bent; it hits me pretty hard. I make sure that if there’s anything coming out of the center speaker, I’m not going to be bothered about it being hard.

One of my biggest issues about all things audio is the thought that there has to be a disparity between cinema and music. We have different configurations for surround sound in music and different configurations for when we send stuff for movies. It doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Surround is really cinema. That’s what it is! You don’t really mix surround without cinema because you focus on the picture. I just think that there should be one format for cinema and music. It should be the same.

For anyone who owns a CD and DVD collection, at most you’ll watch DVDs like twice, but you may listen to a CD 50 times, so there’s no doubt that the audio triggers a whole different set of emotions and responses in you than the visual does. You see those visuals, and you kind of analyze them at a much more basic level: “I know what’s going to happen next.” Once you’ve been there twice, it usually doesn’t draw you into many repeated viewings, whereas with audio, you just enjoy it. So why wouldn’t you have that enjoyment as part of your visual experience? Why would you limit that?

You can watch a movie on an iPod, and if you have big sound, it seems much more real. I love what they do with movie audio. Some of these movies, like Apocalypse Now, just sound phenomenal. That’s what I’m striving for. In my surround now, I’m saying, “Forget all the conservative thinking out there about what effects should be in the front and should be in the rear and how much to track from that.” I want my surround audio mixes to play like movies. I want them to be like that—fun, exciting, and explosive, you know? I wish we could just deliver them in a much easier way, so people could actually bother listening to them. That would be great!

I remember my first meeting with Jimmy Page. I discussed with him the architecture of surround and how to place things within the box given that these speakers were giving you this 360-degree space that you can put anything, anywhere, in. I’ve since refined that a little bit in my way of thinking. The subtlety gets lost, and I think that unless you’re in a dead environment like this studio, where you have point-source sound, even then stuff can get lost in the crossfire of all these things. That point-source material is much more effective than some of the subtle things. I find when you can bypass that—rather than putting one audience mic there, one audience mic at 75, one audience mic at 50 percent—it’s almost more effective if you have them in the four corners, like it’s literally coming out of each specific speaker as opposed to being panned somewhere in the middle. I find that there’s a natural convergence anyway that happens in any room.

Credits include: Mark Knopfler (solo and with Dire Straits), Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, Wynonna, and George Strait. See the Appendix for Chuck Ainlay’s full bio.

I got interested in the idea of doing surround sound production after hearing quad recordings in the ’70s. They gave me my initial impressions, as well as hearing films in surround at movie theaters later on. I don’t think I actually thought about doing a music mix in surround other than the work for film tracks that I had done because, at the time, there wasn’t any delivery format that I was aware of. When I was approached by Tony Brown of MCA Records about doing Vince Gill’s High Lonesome Sound for DTS in 5.1, you can only imagine that I leapt at the chance.

When I started, the first roadblocks I encountered were primarily due to the fact that we were forging new ground and little was known. Speaker setup, bass management, and how to monitor in 5.1 on consoles not equipped to do so were some of the technical problems. There were also ideological questions as to what to do with the center channel, what to pan to the rears, and how much to engage the listener with a music-only surround mix.

A lot of my concepts about mixing for surround had to do with how ultimately the casual listener might come into contact with a surround mix, and I realized that most of the conditions would probably be less than perfect. The center channel speaker being a different voicing than the left and right speakers, rear channels intended only for ambience, being underpowered, and having insufficient bandwidth, bass management levels, and car systems were also some of the unknowns.

So far, my experience is with 5.1 only. I haven’t done anything for formats above that, and, really, I think that it is unlikely that the consumer will allow any more speakers in their home. Formats like 6.1, 7.1, and up are for movie theaters and special venues. The formats of music I have done in 5.1 have been delivered on Dolby Digital, DTS, DVD-Video, and DVD-Audio.

Even before I started working with surround, I think the way I’ve always understood mixing was in a three-dimensional environment. The picture I have always tried to create was three dimensional, but the tools I had to create that environment only allowed for a three-dimensional perception within a two-dimensional stereo space. So, I had to create the perception that there was depth, although in reality it was a flat space with tricks to make the mind’s eye view depth.

Personally, I don’t think the thought process I use for mixing 5.1 is really different than when I’m creating a stereo mix. The uninitiated mixer shouldn’t get scared jumping into a 5.1 mix. You are probably already correctly thinking all the things you need to think. The techniques of doing some things are different, but with experience, it’ll become easier and quicker to do. You’re just within the sound field as opposed to looking at it.

With 5.1, we can now actually create a cubicle or an expanse that surrounds the listener, and the vision that was originally perceived for the stereo mix actually can now be expanded in a three-dimensional realm around the listener.

It’s the difference between looking at a canvas and looking at a holographic image. You can get a sense of depth when you are looking at a canvas, but that perception of depth happens only when you look at it one way. With a surround mix or a holographic image, you can walk around that image, or you can be within and look at it from many different angles. Obviously, you can sit in the middle of it, be within that landscape or that painting, and have it surrounding you. You can also move to the edges, look at each corner of it, and see the picture from so many different angles. I think what’s interesting about surround mixing is that it can take on so many different appreciative points of reference.

If you have a picture on the wall, you can look at it straight on, or you can walk over to the side of it and look at it, but it doesn’t really change all that much. You see what the painter had in mind by trying to fill your whole peripheral vision or create depth, but it’s always going to be one landscape that never really changes, no matter how you walk around it to get a different sense of the painting.

With a holographic image or 5.1 mix, you can actually walk around it and see the rear or front of it. You can sit in the center of it, which is the reference perspective, but you can also move about within that landscape and get a different mix of instruments. You appreciate the musical event in a completely different way. You may be able to concentrate more on one instrument than the whole if you’re off to one corner.

As a mixer, I think it’s important to understand that the listener may be hearing this from more perspectives than that one central location, and it is important to accommodate the variety of listening positions by making that mix compatible with many different listening situations. I think that will be the ongoing challenge for people mixing in surround.

There is a real need to create tools that can fine tune signal placement of discreet elements better. That said, it’s almost as if we need to be able to have one of those kind of units on every channel, so that you could take a discreet element and put it through a multi-channel processor that would create the space that you had in your mind. If you had that kind of setup, you would be able to accurately put the discreet element where the sound would be initiated. That way, you could create all the appropriate early reflections and reverberant fields around that within that 5.1 box to accurately reproduce that locale, rather than take a dry element and just put it in the surround field.

Let’s say, for example, you place the signal to the left rear, and then use lots of different reverbs, delays, and so forth to kind of imitate what would happen in a real situation or even an artificial situation that you’d expect to hear.

Let’s say I want a background vocalist to appear from behind me over my left shoulder. If I were to merely pan it, you would be feeding all the speakers the same thing in just slightly different proportions. The problem with that is our ears have trouble with the phase relationship of those different point sources. It’s actually coming from five different places, not one that’s just over our shoulder, so if there is any movement by the listener, there is a comb filter effect. It works fine in stereo because our ears understand the two points where the sound is coming from, and they create the appropriate phantom image. When you have more than two sound sources, the ear gets confused.

What I propose is to feed all speakers something slightly different. That way, it tends to limit the comb filter effect at the listening position. It may be that I feed the front speakers a delay of close proximity, like 10 or 20 milliseconds of delay from the original source. That way, it’s actually something slightly different. It might have some harmonizing to it, or chorusing. That tends to pull the source off the left rear speaker, but it’s a unique element that’s fed to the front speakers.

The way I actually go about doing it is that I set up delays and harmonizers for the front and rear. Then, I can feed those effects varying amounts to create the desired ambient space.

When I’m doing surround remixes, things that may have worked in the stereo mix may not work when they’re exposed in this new setting. An example may be a single delay on a guitar solo that may have created this sort of illusion of sustain and distance in a stereo field. Nevertheless, when the effect is exposed in the surround mix, you may actually hear that single delay in a different light—it sounds like a gimmick. In that situation, you may have to rethink the application of that single delay. Maybe it’s a dual front/back delay that bounces between front and back speakers, rather than the individual delay that was used in the stereo mix. In surround, it’s always more interesting to hear things with movement that utilize this expanded soundstage.

If the album you are remixing to 5.1 is a classic that is held dear by many listeners in stereo, those listeners may feel cheated when they hear the surround if the whole conceptualization has changed too dramatically.

Monitoring is definitely a huge issue in 5.1. It’s important that the monitors be as full range as possible in 5.1. We can get away with small monitors when working in stereo because they’re generally set on top of the console and have an increased bass response due to coupling from the proximity of the console surface.

Since the 5.1 setup will be a midfield speaker arrangement, you have to be careful about the way you handle the bass. There is a very real trap that many 5.1 mixers get caught in when trying to deal with low end. You may be just pumping a lot of low end into the subwoofer channel that, when reproduced on a full-range system, would create an exaggerated low end. It is therefore important to use bass management.

Bass management is a system where the feed to the five speakers is crossed over so that the low end of each channel is combined with the subchannel to feed the subwoofer. As a result, the subwoofer takes over the very-low-end frequency range of the entire speaker system.

When monitoring to see whether the bass in the mix is properly balanced, I occasionally mute the sub feed to make sure that what I’m doing with the bass is necessary.

I think artists and writers are beginning to think about surround sound from the creation stage. I can’t wait until Mark Knopfler and I make a record together where we’re doing the sounds in surround and conceptualizing the music in surround from the very beginning of the project. One of the main reasons Mark wanted to do this 5.1 remix of Sailing to Philadelphia was to start understanding what 5.1 is.

When we did Dire Straits’ On Every Street, it was back when QSound was available. Mark had been approached to do the album in QSound, but at the time it was just a distraction to Mark because it wasn’t discreet like 5.1. When he first heard 5.1, his comment was, “Well, nobody’s done it right yet, but I can see the potential.” I think that was the same thing he felt when we did this surround remix of a stereo album. With the remix of Sailing to Philadelphia, I think Mark felt somewhat limited in that we were doing a recall. The effects had already been established in stereo, and we were simply expanding everything into 5.1. I know he’s really more intrigued by the idea of conceptualizing something in 5.1 and taking it from beginning to end. I think that’s when 5.1 will be at its most interesting. You will not limited by the whole conceptualization of the original stereo event.

Credits include: Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, Third Day, Mercy Me, Garth Brooks, Aaron Neville, Travis Tritt, Asleep at the Wheel, Martina McBride. See the Appendix for Steve Bishir’s full bio.

For this book, I was asked to give my thoughts, tips, et cetera as they relate to surround mixing. I think the best way for me to do this would be to approach a hypothetical mix and take you through it. It may be a bit stream of consciousness, but I usually work that way anyway. Some of these things were learned the hard way, some through reading books like this, and others through the “ah-ha” moments that I have when playing around with stuff or discussing things with peers.

I’m going to make a couple of assumptions up front: that we are already familiar with the terms of surround mixing, like fold-down, divergence, LF, LR, C, LS, RS, and LFE. Or at least there’s a glossary handy somewhere else in this book.

Let me start with the mechanical aspects of the mix. That would include room setup, speaker setup, gear, et cetera.

In stereo, one has a relatively simple setup: two speakers and maybe a sub-woofer. The speakers need to be relatively balanced, and the sub as well. The mix decisions are limited to left, right, a combination of the two, and volume. We just push up some faders (or in the case of “in the box” mixing, pictures of faders) and there we are—genius! The phantom images appear between the speakers, and everything is beautiful. We can easily have more than one set of speakers, we can have some headphones, or we can make a CD, pop out to the car, and check it out. If the bass isn’t quite right, the vocal feels too loud, or overall it’s too bright or dark, we come back and make tweaks. We can throw it into iTunes and check out how it rocks the little computer speakers and how it compares with all the other songs in our library. Simple.

None of this is quite as straightforward when we move to surround. We can’t easily throw up another set of speakers, we can’t just pop out to the car with a CD (usually), and we can’t just throw on some headphones (usually). The monitoring environment, which includes the room, the speakers, and the interaction between the two, necessarily must be pretty on the money it terms of imaging and frequency balance. We have to know that when we set the EQ just so and place that cowbell just there, that is exactly what the mastering engineer will hear as well.

Who hasn’t put up stereo speakers out of phase before? It’s pretty easy to tell— your head twists unnaturally, and you might have a nosebleed.

So, we flip the phase on the input to one of the speakers. It might not achieve correct absolute phase, but the speakers are in phase with each other, and we can get our work done. In surround, this is a bit trickier; the relative phase difference might not be so readily apparent between, say, the left front and the right rear. Use of positive pulses and a phase checker would be recommended. For correct speaker placement, there are diagrams and measurements dealing with radii of circles, angles of deployment, distances between speakers and subs, et cetera.

The levels for all the speakers and the sub for the LFE must be set as well. Surround setups benefit from a calibration disk and an SPL meter to check for accuracy.

We need to check all the other things in the signal chains as well—the routing from the bus outputs, the sends to whatever device is capturing the mix, the sends to the speakers and sub, the sends and returns from external effects, et cetera. This may seem basic and unnecessary, but anything wrong here will be magnified later.

All this setup may seem like a pain, but it will make things work more smoothly as we move on to the mix.

Okay, we have the speakers set and the measurements made. Now what?

Now the concept questions begin. What kind of surround mix are we making? Is it a live project? If so, where are we, the listener? Are we on stage with the band? Are we in the seventh row, center? Are we at the back of the hall? Is it to film, where we have to track panning, FX, and music to what is happening on screen? Is it a studio project, where there are no rules for anything? Where you can have the guitars fly through your head? All of these approaches are valid and have their place, yet are pretty different in their uses of divergence, panning, and balance.

Since we are suddenly dealing with a sound field that surrounds us, as it were, there are things that we need to consider.

In stereo, there is basically one place for a phantom image to appear: the space between the two speakers. In surround, we now have the phantom image between the front speakers, the center and left, the center and right, the front left and rear left, the front right and rear right, the rear left and rear right, the front left and rear right, the front right and rear left, and the center and everything else. (Wow.) Intimidating as that seems, it’s really a lot of fun. If we want that snare to be in our lap, so be it. The trombone can be hitting us in the back of the head if we want.

Let’s say that our mix in this instance is going to be a live concert. I tend to opt for the seventh-row-center approach here. This means the band is going to be laid out in front and maybe a bit to the sides of us, and the ambience and audience mics are going to fill out the rear.

The band will be panned as if on stage—not only left to right, but also front to back.

How that works in surround is that we are going to be panning things mostly statically among the five speakers. For example, we want the lead vocal to be pulled out from the plane of the front speakers; we want the singer to be hanging in space in front of us. Now, we could pan it to the center speaker only, but that would pin it down in the front and nowhere else, that speaker would be doing all the work, and the center bus would be delivering all the level. If we then want to pull the vocal toward us, we would need to add a little bit into the rear speakers to bring the image forward. This is fine, but a better use of the bus headroom would be to divide the load across all the speakers, maximizing the amount of volume (everything these days is supposed to be loud, right?) before running out of bus headroom.

Using our divergence control, we can add a percentage of the signal into the left and right and/or front and back channels to let some or all of the speakers share the load. If we look at the bus meters now, instead of the center bus being the only bus showing level, some or all of the meters (depending on the setting) will be showing level. They will all be at a lower amount for the same volume at the listening position. This means we can increase the overall bus output and achieve a higher volume without resorting to limiting and without clipping. We get to have volume and dynamics.

Now, if we start out with the vocal out a bit from the center, it means we have room behind the vocal to put stuff. The 3D panning is one of the things I really love in surround; I can not only put stuff side to side, I can also put it front to back. With an orchestra, I can pan and place it in the correct relative position on the imaginary stage.

Once we are happy with where we have everything placed, we can look at another control labeled something like “LFE Send.” The low-frequency effects channel is the .1 in 5.1. This is a potentially dangerous thing in surround music mixing. In film mixing, it is used for explosions and such. In music mixing, I tread lightly here.

I use it to round out the bottom end of kicks, bass, toms, maybe some snares— anything with some low-end content. I don’t put anything only in the LFE channel, but I don’t ignore it, either. The danger arises when the project is mastered and out in the real world. If someone who loves big explosions and has their LFE channel cranked way up gets our mix, and we put the kick and bass mostly or only in the LFE, structural damage followed by complaints may occur.

When it comes to balances, it is really easy to get carried away. If the project is a studio, no-rules mix with extreme panning, and things may be flying around with automated panning, balances that sound kind of cool in surround may be weird when folded down to stereo or mono. I do quite a bit of listening through a fold-down matrix in stereo and in mono. I’ve found that when things stay balanced when folded down, the full surround mix usually sounds better, too.

See the Appendix for Doug Mitchell’s bio.

So, you want to get on the audio bandwagon and do some music mixing in surround? You’ll be glad to know that you are in good company, and you’ll also be glad to know that there are many inventive possibilities with very few rules—in fact, many are being made up as we go along. Additionally, the tools and techniques for mixing in surround are improving at a radical pace to allow you the most creative freedom in your mix.

However, you must first be aware that there is some history to the world of surround music mixing. The first attempts in this arena occurred more than 50 years ago. It was in 1940 that Walt Disney Studios released the movie Fantasia. Fantasia utilized a sound reproduction process known as “Fantasound.” The Fantasound experiments included the placement of three horn loudspeakers across the stage and two horn loudspeakers in the rear corners of the auditorium. The panoramic potentiometer (now known as the “pan pot”) was developed as part of the Fantasound process, allowing two optical tracks on the film: one to be delegated for the center loudspeaker, and another to be divided among the four separate remaining loudspeakers. After experimentation, another pair of loudspeakers was added to the side walls of the theater, and another loudspeaker was added to the ceiling.

Following Disney’s experiments, additional multi-channel formats were developed for wide screen-format film in its competition for viewers with television. Then, the debacle of quadraphonic sound occurred in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Mercifully, the quad era only lasted a few years. The market was unprepared for quadraphonic technology, especially in terms of technological delivery. The numerous competing formats also helped to seal its demise. Multi-channel music delivery would have to wait another 20 years for an appropriate technological delivery medium to be in place.

Blockbuster movies in the late ’70s, including Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ushered multi-channel sound for picture into the public mindset. The soundtracks for these and most other films released throughout the late ’70s and into the ’80s relied on Dolby Cinema technology. Dolby Laboratories developed cinema sound processors that borrowed from previous quadraphonic ideas so that the discrete left, center, right, and monophonic surround channels could be matrixed onto a two-channel optical film soundtrack. In the theater, the two channels are decoded back to the four channel locations. It wouldn’t take long for additional enhancements to bring this type of delivery into the home with Dolby Pro Logic and THX home audio systems in the early ’80s.

Of course, the new delivery formats are in the digital domain, both at home and in the theatre. The Dolby AC-3 specification for digital film sound was introduced in 1992 with the release of Batman Returns. The data reduction technique developed by Dolby placed digital information between the sprocket holes on the film for each of the sound channels (left, center, right, rear left, rear right, and LFE— low-frequency effects). The release of the DVD-Video specification in 1995 allowed for both an increase in the amount of data that could be stored on a CD-style disc and a specification that called for AC-3 coding of the discrete digital audio channels representing a full 5.1 channel listening environment. Two new formats—Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD) and DVD-Audio—are intended to make high-performance audio systems capable of playing back multi-channel audio mixes. Neither of these systems utilizes aural data compression. However, both are intended as primarily music-oriented release formats. Both formats are being developed to allow the inclusion of navigation systems and may include text, artwork, and brief video material as well.

An appropriate place to begin with multi-channel music production may be at the recording end. Just how might you begin to record material that is intended for multi-channel release? As multi-channel music production matures, undoubtedly there will develop new sets of production standards, similar to the conventions presently utilized in two-channel stereo work. However, those who are currently engaging in multi-channel music production are developing their own standards and adapting previously proven techniques. There have been a number of microphone techniques proposed for recording up to 5.1 channels of information, but these continue to be developed. I’ll relate a few of the documented techniques here. However, keep in mind that in this arena there are few rules, and if you think of an idea that might work, try it out!

To begin our discussion of microphone techniques for capturing a multi-channel soundfield, it might be prudent to indicate that the conventions utilized for stereo two-channel microphone technique are applicable, if not more so. Obviously, any technique utilized should minimize phase error to prevent phasing and comb filtering between two or more channels. It might also be a good idea to check the downmix performance of the technique being attempted. Keep in mind that not all consumers of your multi-channel mixes will have the capability of playing them back in full in a 5.1 monitoring environment. We’ll discuss more on the area of downmixing when we examine surround monitoring. Another item to keep in mind is that just as it is certainly appropriate to record certain instruments or amplifier cabinets with a single microphone for stereo mixes, it may also be appropriate to do the same for a multi-channel recording. In fact, monophonic sources in a surround mix are easier to pan to specific locations within the room. Jerry Bruck of Posthorn Recordings has proposed the use of a purpose-built multichannel microphone technique utilizing Schoeps microphones. The system utilizes a Schoeps sphere microphone combined with two Schoeps CCM 8g bidirectional microphones mounted at the sides of the sphere. Schoeps now markets this arrangement as the KFM 360. The Schoeps sphere microphone is 18 centimeters in diameter. Its pickup response simulates the natural pickup of the human head (like a dummy head microphone) and also relies upon pressure-zone response due to the positioning of the omnidirectional elements on the sides of the sphere. Two bidirectional microphones are mounted on the sides of the sphere in the same positions as the omni elements. A mid/side matrix of the resulting pickup allows the engineer to derive both front and rear left/right outputs. The center channel is derived from a separately matrixed and filtered sum of the two front channels. Schoeps separately markets a preamplifier/matrix decoder called the DSP-4 Surround. This unit also allows for the alteration of the resulting front directional pattern from omnidirectional to cardioid to figure-eight. The rear-facing directional outputs may exhibit the same pattern as the front, or a different pattern may be derived to suit the acoustical balance.

Another multi-channel microphone technique has been proposed by John Klepko. This microphone array is composed of three directional microphones representing the left, center, and right channels. The surround channels are represented by pickup from a dummy head microphone. Each of the three front microphones is spaced 17.5 centimeters apart. They are positioned 124 centimeters in front of the dummy head. Each of the five microphones employed utilizes the same transducer element (condenser/large or small diaphragm). The left and right microphones are configured for super cardioid pickup, while the center is configured for cardioid. The elements used in the ear molds of the dummy head are configured for omnidirectional pressure response.

Curt Wittig and Neil Muncy developed the double M-S microphone technique while they taught courses at the National Public Radio Music Recording Workshops in the 1980s along with David Moulton, Paul Blakemore, and Skip Pizzi. It was developed for two-channel stereo as a solution to the problem of making stereo recordings that could be set up quickly with a minimum of fuss and visual clutter when making live and recorded classical music broadcasts for NPR.

The front M-S microphone pair is utilized primarily for direct sound pickup. The rear M-S microphone pair is placed at or just beyond the critical distance of the room (the position where the power of direct sound equals the power of reverberant sound), facing away from the front pair and into the reverberant field.

The multi-channel application of this technique might be to place the output of the front pair in the front left and right, while the outputs of the reverberant field M-S pair are directed to the rear left and right. The matrix describes no center channel information, although it is easily derived by feeding the output of the front-facing cardioid microphone to the center speaker without the benefit of the M-S matrix. Curt has successfully used this arrangement for a number of years. He also describes a variation of 5.1 stereo by modifying this setup with a sixth captured overhead channel that creates a tangible (and very stable) three-dimensional stereo surround illusion.

Michael Bishop has developed a modified version of the double M-S surround array technique. He uses both the Neumann KU 100 dummy head and laterally positioned M-S pairs. He describes the setup as thus: “The M-S pairs are positioned 3 to 8 feet behind the dummy head and are usually placed about 6 feet apart from one another on each side. For the M-S pairs, I use the Sennheiser MKH50 and MKH30 microphones. When I matrix the M-S pairs, I may have to pan the cardioid microphone to fill the sides. It’s very touchy to get the panning and imaging correct, especially with panning across the sides. Prior to the recording, I’ll have an assistant go out of the room and walk around the microphone array while I listen to the decoded M-S matrix. In order to get the surround microphones to breathe, I place them perhaps a few feet back or even farther if the acoustics of the hall call for it.”

The SoundField MKV microphone is uniquely suited to multi-channel recording. This microphone design consists of four separate microphone elements arranged in a tetrahedron (three-sided pyramid) in the capsule. The outputs of these four separate elements are matrixed in multiple M-S pairs in the SoundField MKV controller unit to form four discrete channels. These channels, called “B-format,” are termed “X” for depth, “Y” for width, “Z” for height, and “W” for omnidirectional pressure.

The SoundField microphone and the corresponding surround system called Ambisonics were developed in the late 1960s by Michael Gerzon of the Mathematical Institute in Oxford, UK, Professor Peter Fellgett at the University of Reading, and others.

In 1992, Michael Gerzon, working with Geoff Barton of Trifield Productions Limited in Britain, proposed a 5.1 version of the decoder. The resulting technique was presented at the 1992 AES convention in Vienna and is now referred to as “G-format.”

SoundField Research now produces a 5.1 G-format SoundField microphone decoder that allows users of SoundField microphones to produce 5.1 outputs from the microphone.

Two Tonmeister students from Germany, Volker Henkels and Ulf Herrmann, developed the ICA-5 multi-channel microphone technique following research they performed comparing various multi-channel microphone techniques. The design calls for five matched dual-diaphragm condenser capsules mounted on a star-shaped bracket assembly.

The front-facing microphones are positioned at 90 degrees to one another and mounted on spokes 17.5 centimeters from the center. The left and right surround microphones are positioned at 60 degrees to one another and are 59.5 centimeters from the center.

Two German companies, Sound Performance Lab (SPL) and Brauner Microphones, collaborated to produce the Atmos 5.1, a commercial version of the ICA-5 system. The Atmos 5.1 utilizes Brauner ASM 5 microphones developed by Dirk Brauner. The bracket allows for adjustable positioning of all microphones in the array. The second component of the Atmos 5.1 system is the controller/preamp produced by SPL. Although the ICA-5 defines the use of cardioid microphones, the Atmos 5.1 system allows for continuous polar variability to accommodate a variety of acoustical environments.

Another development that has gained attention for recording in 5.1 is the Holophone microphone system developed by Mike Godfrey. This football-shaped microphone captures a full 5.1 surround soundfield and may be utilized with wireless transmitters to aid in the portability of the system. This technique has already been used with a high degree of success at major sporting events, including the Super Bowl.

Although most of the techniques described in this article might be most ideally suited for classical or jazz multi-channel recordings, there are certain situations where any engineer might try any one of these arrays. This experimentation is perhaps the most exciting aspect of the process of recording for multi-channel: there are few rules to go by, and we get to make them up as we go along.

The following is the audiophile surround recording adventure of producer/engineer/all-around entrepreneur Cookie Marenco. It deals with her ESE surround recording project and her efforts to present this to the public.

The dusk outside The Site was magical with deep reds, oranges, and grays, as the clouds and mists from the California coastal overcast drifted around the Marin County Redwoods outside the studio tracking room windows. Inside, Glen Moore, of the legendary acoustic fusion band Oregon, was improvising his own magic on his 300-year-old string bass. The rich tonalities filled the room, while an impressive complement of precisely placed microphones captured his performance. When I walked into the control room, it sounded like I was still out on the floor listening to Moore live. It sounded like Moore was in the middle of the Neve console, and when I walked around the room, the bassist’s position hadn’t changed. There was a clear sense of place. Standing outside the array of JMR Speakers were producer/engineers Cookie Marenco and Jean Claude Reynaud. After listening for a few minutes to Moore’s emotive bass playing, Marenco exclaimed, “No bad seats!” She was right.

What I had been listening to were the fruits of almost two years of work, in which Marenco and Reynaud pursued the realization of a surround production approach that would truly bring to life performance-oriented recording in a fashion that was simultaneously intimate and expansive. They called their trademarked technique ESE, for Extended Sound Environment.

Marenco, no stranger to audiophile-level production and engineering, has worked with some of the music world’s most creative talents and has been consulted by a number of the recording industry’s more innovative manufacturers. She also worked as A&R at Windham Hill, during the label’s glory days, where five albums she produced earned Grammy nominations. Marenco’s other producer credits include Oregon, Turtle Island String Quartet, Tony Furtado and Alex de Grassi, and others. As an engineer, she has recorded many notable artists, including Mary Chapin Carpenter, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Charlie Haden Quartet, and Max Roach.

Marenco’s odyssey, which led her to these sessions at The Site, began a few years earlier, when she had grown frustrated by what she saw as a record-industry malaise increasingly accepting of overly compressed recording and compressed MP3 audio. She took a three-month break from everything, trying to figure out what was going to make her happy and whether she even wanted to go back into the studio.

“I knew that I had to go back in with a partner,” says Marenco. “I needed somebody who would motivate me and make me want to be in the studio again.”

It was a 2002 trip to attend a wedding in France that changed things for the frustrated Marenco. It was there that she spotted some Schoeps microphones placed over the drum set at the reception party and became curious about who would utilize such fine mics for such an application. Who Marenco discovered was another equally frustrated producer/engineer named Jean Claude Reynaud.

“I had learned a very classical kind of recording from great old-school engineers in France, and it seemed that everything I had learned was being thrown away by digital sound,” says Reynaud.

Reynaud (whose father manufactured the audiophile JMR Speakers out of France) and Marenco immediately realized they shared many of the same feelings and soon found themselves checking out surround audio at the 2002 AES show. What they found happening with the format at the show was disappointing, and soon they began visualizing a way to make multi-channel recording something that satisfied them.

They booked time at The Site in December of 2002 and began a series of experiments. They were aided by the generous help of manufacturers such as Sony, Millennia, Manley, JMR, and Didrik de Geer.

After trying out many mic and speaker configurations, they realized that the ITU layout most ideally suited their goals. Not only did they utilize the ITU setup for the listening environment, they also echoed it exactly with microphone setups in the tracking space and in The Site’s 19 × 13 × 17-foot Live Chamber. Additional close miking was applied for the musicians.

The session proved to be very enlightening, motivating the team to reconvene at The Site in December 2003.

“The ESE technique uses a combination of mic placement in the tracking room that is an ITU configuration in front of the musicians, in addition to close mic positions for a more ‘direct’ sound from the instrument. We find the combination of close and room miking more pleasing than using one and not the other…as well as providing an alternative to surround listening,” says Marenco. “Surround listening offers only one ‘optimum’ listening position, which is in the center of the five channels…. Our ESE technique is designed to be able to have a three-dimensional approach to multi-channel listening and offers the listener the ability to listen outside the speaker circle as well as walking ‘through’ the speakers and in the center.”

One of the themes of The Site dates was “no compromise”—an aesthetic that was followed all the way from selection of gear to the players involved.

“The results are dependent on the quality of the microphones, speakers, pre-amps, speaker cable, recorder, and FX used,” adds Marenco. The team determined for their purposes to record to 2-inch analog (Studer A-800 2-inch W/24 track and 16 track heads) with Dolby SR for the multitrack format at 15 IPS and mix down the 5.1 to Sonoma 1-bit DSD system, which was provided by Sony for the mix-down. The two-track format for mixdown to stereo was 1/2-inch analog (Studer A-80 VU 1/2” with two and four track heads) with Dolby SR at 15 IPS, as well as backups to the Sonoma system for two-track editing.

The Site’s Neve 8078 console had 72 inputs (plus 32-channel jukebox) and was modified for surround mixing. The signal was bussed out to Sonoma with Ed Meitner converters, recorded in DSD 1-bit, and returned to the console with a six-channel monitor section monitored out to Nelson Pass amps, which were wired with JM Reynaud silver cable to Offrande JM Reynaud speakers single-wired and a JM Reynaud Furioso self-powered subwoofer.

“Because of the delicate phase issues created, we use one track for every mic used in the recording, and for our initial experiments have intentionally kept the ensembles to duos and solo performances, with no option for overdubs,” says Marenco. “This led to our choice of exceptional musicians capable of great live performances and interactive dynamics. The use of headphones is not an option at this time.”

“The choice of 1-bit recording and avoiding the use of PCM digital also led us to choose not to use digital effects in the process, instead choosing to use the chamber for additional reverb,” Marenco adds. “We miked the chamber in the ITU configuration with two to four speakers placed inside with individual sends from the board. We did use very minimal compression on some of the direct mics on mix-down only; however, we realized the issues created with compression and only used it sparingly, if at all.”

For the tracking room, Marenco and Reynaud used 5 DPA or B&K 4003 to the Millennia 8-channel HV-3D mic preamp. All the mics used to capture the room sound were set facing up about 45 degrees and to the outside walls. The mics that were used for close miking the guitars were DPA 2 4041s placed about 8 inches from the guitar, pointing 45 degrees from the sound hole. Didrik de Geer mics with Neve preamps from the console were used for vocals and set about 24 inches from vocalists. Only one B&K 4041 mic was used on guitars when a vocal was also being recorded. For dobro, a B&K 4011 in an X/Y configuration about 24 inches above the instrument was employed. For Glen Moore’s acoustic bass, they also used a B&K 4041 on top with a Didrik de Geer mic on the bottom. In this case they used the Millennia pres.

The subsequent mixdown of the session was done at Skywalker on a Neve 72 88R surround console. The 80 × 60 × 30-foot scoring stage was used as the reverb chamber, and the ITU was enlarged to accommodate space.

The feedback from the players involved was most gratifying.

“I think what gave us the most gratification were remarks from musicians who would say that the recordings really sounded like them. It was not the sound of a guitar. It was the sound of my guitar. It wasn’t the sound of a voice. It is the sound of my voice,” says Reynaud.

Marenco agreed, enthusing, “After four albums producing Tony Furtado, he came in and said, ‘Cookie, you finally got my banjo sound!’ I thought, ‘Was this what I had to do to get your banjo sound?’ [Laughs] That was amazing.”

Even though the team was committed to the concept of no compromise, that also ultimately meant working in service of the most important aspect of the whole undertaking—the highlighting of the emotional spirit of the event. In that light, the striking intimacy and enveloping ambiences of the ESE recordings were most interesting in that they seemed to highlight the existence or lack of chemistry between the players even more so than before.

“You are capturing that moment in time, and that moment in time is about the vibe,” enthuses Marenco. “We tried putting great musicians with each other who didn’t have that friendship of years and years and years of playing together, and it didn’t quite work. We realized that they needed to be friends on a musical level, because our technique was going to enhance that dynamic or lack of dynamic. When it worked, it was an amazing experience to see it come to life.”

“I had my moment at the end of the sessions, where I realized that we had really captured the vibe and that we were recording respect for the sound and respect for great musicianship and respect for the long-term relationship that each of the players had with each other. With the depth immediacy of sound that ESE provided, I felt that we were recording more than music. We were recording respect for the sound and respect for great musicianship and respect for the long-term relationships of the people involved in making the music and who have supported us over the years.”

“Most people haven’t heard this kind of sound in so long, and even when we bring out our two-track stereo mixes of these sessions, people go, ‘Wow.’ It forces people to listen,” continues Marenco. “It seems that people have stopped listening, and it is part of the reason that the music industry is in a shambles. The way much of the music is recorded now, it is not providing emotion. The current fashion is to be over-compressed and to hit everything as loud as possible. It is horrible, and we don’t want it anymore. We see ESE as an opportunity to bring back the real sound…the real emotion, and that comes from dynamics.”

It might be of interest for the readers to know what happened to The Vibe sessions after Rick’s incredible article. I believe an honest assessment is valuable for those of you thinking that there is ever an Easy Street in this business. Even after 20 years in the business, it was very difficult to create a new identity. Here’s my account of all the trials and tribulations that come with pursuing a dream.

In December 2002, Jean Claude Reynaud and I entered the studio without really knowing what we’d find or where it would lead. From the experiments of that first session, we knew there had to be more. It was on the third day, during Keith Greeninger and Dayan Kai’s performances, that Gus Skinas from Sony said, “I hope you’re making this into an album!” Without hesitation, I exclaimed, “YES!” Did I know what I was getting into? NO!

At a time when the record industry was beginning to collapse, it seemed crazy to consider having a limitless budget to experiment with an acoustic 5.1 surround recording, but the results from this first session were too good to think otherwise. I was encouraged by potential investors. Jean Claude was willing to move to the USA, and the second sessions in December 2003 were scheduled. The investors never came through, the long and expensive process for getting Jean Claude a work visa was tackled, and I refinanced my house to have the limitless budget. This isn’t something I’d suggest to those who have a low tolerance for risk. But, for those of you pursuing a career as an engineer or producer, get used to risk or get out now.

In December 2003, Rick Clark was kind enough to come to the sessions and document the process, which even after 20 years of recording was a new and exciting experience for all of us. It was magic, as Rick wrote so well about. We still had no name for the label, and through a long process of research, we found a name that had meaning to us—Blue Coast Records (fortunately, just before his article came out in Mix). We completed the mixes in May 2004 at Skywalker Studios and mastered with David Glasser at Airshow Mastering.

For anyone who is a musician, engineer, or producer, after the finished product is when you really start the work. Jean Claude had made the decision to return to France and work with his father in the speaker business. I continued developing the Blue Coast brand with logos, establishing art, writing content, and searching for investors. If you think you’ve spend a lot of money producing the disc, figure it will cost four times more to do a bare-minimum job promoting your project.

By 2005, my limitless budget hit the limit—no investors in sight, but incredible response about the quality of the recording. I made the decision to return to work as a producer at my studio, OTR Studios, after a three-year absence. The music business was beginning to dissolve, recording studios were dropping by the wayside, and I had an unbelievable high-end product on my hands with no money left to manufacture SACDs or promote the label. Life was pretty dismal right then.

I made a thousand five-song promotional CDs in white paper sleeves and gave them away free at the AES show. One disc got into the hands of John Johnsen of NHT, who used the disc to demonstrate their speakers at the CES show. Without knowing that the disc was being used for that purpose, John called me to say that they had won the Ultimate Audio Award at CES using the disc and wanted to co-brand a release for giveaway with all their speaker sales. It gave me hope that a quality product still meant something to somebody. I didn’t know John until then, except from a business card I had stashed away, but that event led to a lifelong friendship with him and NHT.

NHT ordered 2,000 units of the disc directly from Blue Coast Records. I now had the money to manufacture the SACDs—or so I thought. Mastering the SACD proved to be another ordeal to face. The test pressing proved to have problems that couldn’t be traced without spending huge sums and delaying the project for months. We made the decision to release a CD to get it done sooner.

Keep in mind this was now 2006; CD sales were in strong decline, and MP3s were taking over the world. All music discs were reduced to $9.95 at Walmart. Even audiophile labels were offering artist deals at $1 per record and not selling through 700 units. At that rate, I would never have a chance to recoup costs, so I posted the CD for sale at the Blue Coast website for $30 per unit, figuring it wasn’t going to sell anyway, so I might as well keep the price high!

Meanwhile, in France, Jean Claude sent the disc to a renowned magazine called La Nouvelle Revue du Son—the premier audiophile magazine in France. I had no idea about this, and in fact conventional wisdom would have me ask him not to do that without the chance to get it into stores. This was a happy accident. In July 2006, a most stunning five-star review came out about the CD, hailing it as the new standard for acoustic recording. I might never have known about the review except that we suddenly were making sales by the hundreds in France. So I called Jean Claude to find out if he knew anything. He sent me a copy of the review. I was overwhelmed.

I would have given up on the SACD and surround release, except that Jean Claude convinced me that the recording was too spectacular to not make at least 1,000 units. Also, the premier online audiophile store would not sell a CD, only SACD. Armed with the wonderful Mix article that Rick wrote, the review from France, hundreds of supporters, and Patrick O’Connor (my new GM, webmaster, and graphic artist), one year after the failure of the first SACD manufacturing, we tried again. The problem proved to be a glitch that was discovered, and the master was re-cut. Although the music was now four to five years old, it was still timeless in its quality. The work on the logos, branding, and promotional materials was all starting to make sense.

By 2007, the music industry was in a shambles, but we were feeling pretty confident. Despite our distributor’s reluctance to put such a high price tag on the disk, we decided to release the disc at $40 per unit and go against logic of the times. We now had the disc on Amazon, but most of our sales were word of mouth at our website. We collected the PayPal names and began our fan base. Our first thousand SACDs sold in the first six months online. We decided not to sell the CD any longer.

I made a call to the online audiophile store, Acoustic Sounds, in 2007, about one month before the Stereophile Show in New York, and spoke to Chad Kassem, the owner. He thought I was out of my mind when I offered the discs at twice the normal wholesale price, in quantities by the hundreds and paid in advance before shipping. Unheard of in the music business! Chad did know who I was and didn’t care, but he was kind enough to give a listen, and it happened that the package was on his desk. We had the disc packed with reviews, coordinated brochures, postcards in a wonderful folder. He called back within a day and ordered the first hundred. The quality spoke for itself, and I wouldn’t give in to pressures of what the rest of the industry was experiencing.

Let me say that starting a new brand is not only hard work, but it’s humbling. At this point in my career, I had known just about everyone I wanted to know in the professional recording world, but the audiophiles couldn’t care less who I was. Patrick and I first attended an audiophile show in France with Jean Claude and began to meet many of the manufacturers and others in that world. Within a few months, we tackled the Stereophile Show in mid-2007 giving away hundreds of discs to manufacturers for them to use as demos. Our disc made their equipment sound good! They had to have it. Meanwhile, we’d leave brochures for fans to take and purchase the disc.

Perhaps most amazing in this is that our sales grew at Amazon, and orders began to come in from traditional retail with no effort on our part. We had given up on traditional sales with our high prices, so it was a bonus. While we continued to nurture sales and take on distribution outside of the USA, we managed to attract a very crucial distribution partner in China. Reviews continued to pour in worldwide, and I learned to use the Google translator.

By 2008, the recession in the USA had really taken its toll. Blue Coast Records was still far from being able to support itself. The fans and distributors were asking for another recording. Fortunately, Jean Claude and I had a beautiful recording of solo piano we had made with Art Lande. We wanted to keep with our tradition of releasing the SACD, an expensive adventure. Being short on cash during the recession meant refinancing or loans were not options, so Patrick and I pursued high-resolution downloads of at least 44.1/16 or CD quality to avoid manufacturing costs. We found no company that would support us on this, so we developed a proprietary system of electronic delivery that we now call Downloads NOW!

With the American economy in a mess, we saw no value in releasing any of our recordings in iTunes or MP3 format. Instead, we chose to stream entire songs at 192 Kbps and offered the digital download at the same price as the CD, more than twice the price of an MP3. We announced to our fan base that we would sell the downloads of the new disc, and through sales of downloads, we made enough money to pay for several thousand SACDs of the new recording.

Now in the habit of thanking each fan who purchases online, I noticed a sudden flurry of activity back in March 2008. I asked the fan from France how he heard about us, and he responded, “From a forum in France.” He sent a thankyou note on my behalf, and suddenly hundreds of sales were made that day. I saw the power of the Internet and used the translator to get onto the forum and thank them directly. With each new entry came sales. To this day, that is our one of our top referral sites, and analytics are my friend. (If you don’t know Google analytics, you need to learn.)

In April 2009, we brought in Keith Greeninger (vocals and guitar), Brain (drummer Primus/Guns N’ Roses), and Chris Kee (bassist Houston Jones) to the studio for a quick recording and special event—record and upload to the Internet 96-kHz files within three hours. We recorded two songs, uploaded 96-kHz files to our site, went to dinner, and when we returned, we had hundreds of sales at $3 per single. Since that time, our 96-kHz downloads have exploded, outselling the 44.1 downloads nearly 20 to 1. Our eyes were opened. Regardless of what the media was telling us, we saw that people around the world came to our website for high-resolution downloads.

Our next project is a 24-Karat Gold Collector’s Edition of the Blue Coast Collection as requested by our Chinese distributor. We will probably release vinyl and 1/4-inch tape formats as well. Coming soon will be DSD files and more SACD titles, along with Blue Coast World, a new distribution company specializing in high-quality recordings and high-resolution downloads.

It’s been nearly eight years since the first chance meeting with myself and Jean Claude. Not only has the music business changed, but the world economy has shifted. I’ve got a long way to go to recouping my costs, but I’m here to encourage any of you to follow your dreams wholeheartedly. If you can’t give 200 percent to make it happen, get a job somewhere else. Quality and commitment still have a place in this world. I’ve got thousands of fans around the world to prove it. You can, too. Don’t give up or give in.