AA3 - Week 2 - Multi Micing (2)

Working with surround sound is something that has interested me for a while, and considering Gricey can only listen to our results in stereo I attempted to mix the recording in 'Virtual Surround'.

I teamed up with Luke this week, first to record in the Space using the infamous Decca Tree setup. For the recording, I entered the room from 'behind the tree', walked past it on the left and sat down at the piano directly in front. After playing a bit, I get up and walk past the tree on the right, and exit the room out the back right. The left, centre and right channels were panned respectively. For the rear left channel, I duplicated the track, inverted one and panned them left and right. The phase effect is somewhat analogous to hearing a sound behind you, so I simply eased off the pan on one of the tracks which moved the sound to the rear left. I then repeated this for the rear right channel.

The second mic setup was a Digance endeavour, in which we placed the microphones evenly around the room facing into the centre. I then proceeded to run in circles around the space, playing Aphex Twin on my mobile phone.

Over all I think the concept of recording in surround is flawed, however my virtual surround experiments seemed to work alright. If the recordings were made normally (close micing) and then mixed in virtual surround I believe the effect would be a lot more... effective.

AA Week 2 .ZIP 1.0MB

[1] David Grice. "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 2. Overview of 5.1 microphone configurations." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 11/03/2008.