So what am I doing at the moment in StudioLock? Well I have been experimenting with 5.1 surround sound mixing. I know it sounds like something only a proper studio could do, but it is surprisingly easy to achieve surround sound mixes. Firstly, you’ll need to have a sound card in your PC that has multiple outputs. I purchased a USB external soundcard for my laptop for £10 to achieve this. Of course, you will need a surround sound speaker system to connect the soundcard to. I’ve had a such a speaker setup in the living room for nearly a decade now, so it was just a matter of connecting thiings up.
I use Cakewalk Sonar 7 to do my recording. I’ve been using Sonar since 2000 and the latest version give you surround sound mixing out of the box. The tricky thing is configuring your speakers. To do this, open an audio project you are working on and go to Projects > Surround and then assign an audio channel to each speaker channel on the list. When you are happy with this, save the configuration for future use. Now you’ll need to right click and create a new Surround Bus and then click on each audio channel in your project and change the audio output from the stereo bus to the new surround bus. Following me?
Now a surround panner panel will appear in each channel that’s been designated to the surround bus. You can use your mouse to position the audio channel in the surround sound field. You can even automate panning to make the sounds whizz around, etc.
Once your mix is complete, export the audio as a multichannel RIFF audio WAV file. This can be encoded to a DVD disc for playback on a home entertainment system through a multichannel audio system. Alternatively, you can encode the audio as a multichannel Windows Media Audio file, which means you an easily distribute it via the net, but it is aimed at those who have surround speakers connected to their PC or an Xbox 360 connected to multichannel audio system.
This has been your lesson for the day…
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So it was my very first Father’s Day this year and it was an honour to receive a gift (Genesis biography) and a card from my baby daughter – even though she had help with the purchase. You really do see the world differently through a father’s eyes. Before I was just ordinary, but now I feel special and take my duties very seriously. Even when I have no strength left, I’ll always have time for little Verity. You and your mum make me feel very special indeed.
Look, here’s a smart little player for my new set of recordings:
OK – so it took a little longer than I planned (thanks to the disassembly, relocation and reinstallation of StudioLock), but we got there in the end. Yes, it is that time again to pounce on the unsuspecting public with my files of audio terror. “Here Comes the Future” is now completed (or abandoned, whichever way you want to look at it) – so download and enjoy.
Track Listing
1. Here Comes the Future
2. The Chorus
Harmonic
3. Out of the
Shadows
4. Singularity
5.
The Gates of
Hysteria
6.
The Complex
7.
The Falls
at Niagara
8. Dry Season
9. Dark Nacre
10. Polar Bear (walking on freshly
laid snow)
11. The Sun Even Shines
12. Ballad for Laika
13.
Stand Up
14. 1-2-3-4
With a change of personal
circumstances, this album reflects a change in my life. With a young daughter
to raise and now a business to run, time for recording
is a premium and so a more direct route to composition was taken for this
project – and that sense of urgency pervades this collection. The twelve
instrumentals are typical of my output but they have more space in terms of
production and are more direct. The two vocal tracks that act as bookends are more
than worthy.
You can download the album by
right-clicking each song title. Alternatively, you can download a zip file of
the entire album by clicking this link. If you have BitTorrent installed and like to use P2P file
transfer, the torrent is available from here.
…when copy you wrote nearly eight years ago is sold onto another content provider and then rebadged as being “new”. This article was written ages ago when I worked for IPC but they must have sold some content to Virgin Media. How embarrassing that my name is associated with such a woe-fully out-of-date piece of work. This was written in 2001, people.
Meanwhile, my attention has been drawn to this little video blog that uses one of my tracks as its backing, which is nice.