muyorbir.com

It has been forever since people have been “pimping” out their car sound systems going all the way back when people added AM/FM radios to their automotives – changing over to cassettes and now CD’s, DVD’s and MP3’s.

It must have been mind-blowing when stereo started to take over from the flat monophonic standard of the day. I can only imagine that it must have been scary and exciting at the same time – giving you tingles down the spine. All of a sudden you could close your eyes and imagine your favourite band jamming in front of you over a stereo soundfield with the bass on the left, guitars on the right and the singer in the middle. Stereo does seem realistic – almost as you were right at the concert – the only difference being the lack of ambient information that surrounds you at the real thing. Thats where additional speakers will help you out. I think I felt the same tingles when first in a cinema with THX touching me in more ways than simple audio should Audio pornography!

Come to think about it – a car is nearly the perfect place for surround sound. You are constantly on the same spot – the sweetspot if you will. Its hard to find a car nowadays that doesn’t have a CD/DVD player – most having a processing engine and 4 amps with 4 speakers already situated in the corners of your listening area. Plus – since being relatively thin construction – you don’t have to think about basstraps – the bass travels safely through, limiting standing waves and extending bass response. So you have most components right there and to demonstrate that we are by far not the first people to think so – way back in the 8-track era, several manufacturers produced in-car Quad-8 players. Might just be time for a quad revival?!

First you’d need to figure out if you’d like to stay with the quad setup or go all out for the 5.1 setup (highly recommended as you would hear everything as the artist intended) and add the centre plus the point 1 – LFE channel. Those would need 2 extra amps and a player that supports sending out 6 different channels of information. With these extra channels you’d need to figure out their placement. Would you go for the sub in the trunk/boot option or will you put it somewhere inside the salon. If you put it in the boot – you can fit a far larger sub than anywhere else in the car, however lose some precious real-estate for your tents, sleeping bags or the dog. The other area could be the top panel of the rear window – but a sub there couldnt really be any bigger than 8 inces as it would be in the way of your vision – therefore illegal.

www.inquisitr.com

It is a compromise either way. And then there is the centre channel which should have its own enclosure and placed somewhere in the middle of your dashboard. Yeah – not the easiest of challenges…you can get a bit of help from the following link…or you could get a surround system ready made with your next car – if your next car is a BMW, Mercedes Benz or a Porsche make sure to ask for a surround sound system as an extra.

So what can you listen?

SQ and QS are simple matrixed encodings, which were used on many quadraphonic LPs in the 1970s. In some cases, the CD releases of these recordings kept the surround information intact ready to play back on your surround enabled system

Compresed surround sound using either DTS, AC3 has been available in various consumer products for years so are the the more obvious choice. It works exactly the same as it would in your living room watching a film, playing games or listening to high fidelity surround music.

There are also a number of schemes for simulating surround sound from a two-channel recording. The Hafler circuit (feeding the back speakers with the difference between the front speakers) or “passive pseudo quad” as its also known as can be quite realistic. Many surround amps also use delays or reverbs to synthesise a rear channel.

Lately theres a new player in the car surround game in the face of DTS Neural Surround. They are taking original 5.1 recording and digitally encoding it till it becomes watermarked 2 channel stereo. Being perfect for playback on ipods, or your car stereo. If it is then played through a Neural decoder – you’ll end up with the same 5.1 mix. They are currently only available in the US where around 70 stations already broadcast in DTS Neural Surround. I’ve not had a chance to experience it to give my verdict but I think 70 stations cant be wrong!

PS! If you have DTS Neural Surround or any other surround system in your car – feel free to give us your thoughts.

One minute you can listen how your music would sound in The Royal Albert Hall, the next – in Taj Mahal. Then jumping to the yet to be built olympic Stadium in London. And it’s all produced in a back room in Glasgow.

wired.com

The lab is a box inside a box, mounted on strings and anechoic. Its 12 ambisonic (high-precision surround sound) speakers sitting 3 m apart recreating any acoustic environment within a 1.5 m-diameter sweet spot (pictured above). The user can move around a virtual hall with a joystick to hear how it will sound in different parts of the stadium or a concert hall.

The creators of this project believe that 3D sound will find its way to our homes. To quote Seb Jouan (Arup associate and the founding manager of iXDLab) “It will become a must-have for music lovers.”

Lets hope so!

indiamart.com

Multichannel broadcasting is not very common in the internet and one should have patience to find anything at all. It is mainly because it requires wider bandwidth and most systems nowadays are optimised for 2 channel stereo with some exceptions on HDTV. At this point it is still regarded as technically challenging. The movie theatres and home cinema rely on mainly 2 systems – Dolby Digital and DTS. Or at least on one of their versions. Technology is constantly developing and there are multiple similar file types used in different fields of audio playback.Multichannel webcasting can be done with formats supporting multichannel audio, such as Ogg Vorbis, MPEG AAC, AAC Plus, Neural Surround or Windows Media. All these formats are lossy.

So how does it work?

We can divide the stream into 4 parts:

1. Input signal – DVD Player, Software player
2. Encoder – encoding the input signal
3. Streaming Server – takes encoded signal and distributes to clients
4. Output signal – Software player or hardware outputs

The chain is the same for a regular stereo broadcast.

Let’s see who, where and how have used the internet to broadcast spatial heaven.

Success story 1

As part of CESNET research program Miloš Wimmer experimented with surround sound broadcasting using Ogg Vorbis- compressed audio using VLC as a server. So lets go through what they did and how it works.

They have previously designed and implemented 2-channel internet streams using Ogg Vorbis compressed audio for Chech Radio stations to provide for high quality Internet broadcasting. With home cinema systems becoming more and more popular + more and more multichannel recordings become available – their study dwelled into the unknown world of multichannel audio streaming. Like said before – the whole process is divided into 4 parts. So lets brake it down below.

The Input Source – None of regular input signal sources can be used for multichannel streaming as they only support stereo. One would need to use a dedicated audio interface if they require to get the data into the computer. As they didn’t need to acquire the input from an external source they used an audio file on the computer as you would on a regular stereo playlist-based internet radio station. As they prefer open formats they converted the originally dts encoded file into an Ogg Vorbis.

The Producer’s part is taken over by the VLC application reading the input file in an infinite loop and forwarding the data as a stream to VLC’s output module used for actual broadcasting, ie. delivering the stream to individual Clients. It is important to note that they had to use a playlist and not just a single file to stream the file as otherwise an internal command would cause the server to stop and restart between playbacks. Basically disconnecting anyone trying to listen to the stream. The streaming servers part was taken by VLC’s streaming module. A streaming server could be used if it ran the same instance of VLC receiving the stream and distributing it among the clients. Because theirs was just a simple test – the need for that wasn’t there so they didn’t have to have a dedicated server and used just the VLC app itself.

Not a lot of clients or in plain english – audio players support multichannel audio. Among the audio players available to them at the time it was only VLC that supported Ogg Vorbis encoded multichannel audio. The whole project worked as they planned! They achieved – high quality and the stability of the production system!

Success story 2

Prix Europa opening concert in 2006 This is the first time an event was broadcast live in 5.1 over the internet. Prix Europa has a number of technical firsts in the 5.1 field and in time they will get to our pages.

They turned to P2P solutions, as it has a proven to work over and over again. Peer-to-Peer is being used to download music, films, video clips and our own beloved youtube is a good example of success story. It has also been used for live streaming. Eurovision Song Contest was webcast over the internet in May 2006 with some 70’000 unique users. They’ve used Octoshape – an instance of P2P technology. The system is reliable and flexible for their purpose. The other component in use is the AAC Plus codec thats is promoted by Coding Technologies. Being part of standardised MPEG-4 system – it is used in both radio and television sound. As covered in previous articles – it is in use in XM Satellite Radio, HD Radio in the USA, in DRM and DMB in Korea and being considered for mobile communications applications.

Their Input signal originated at Radio-Berlin Brandenburg. It was encoded into APTX format ( it is a WorldNet Oslo encoder/decoder. Being modular, multiple channel audioplexer it was designed to transport high-quality content over various networks. It is used by many EBU broadcasters to provide an audio link between the studio and transmitting sites). The signal was then sent via E1 and Eurovision Fibre Optic Network to the Eurovison premises in Geneva. Decoded from APTX and encoded to AAC Plus at 160 kbps.

Producers part was in this instance taken by a software encoder by Orban. Because it was still a beta when they tried it out it proved to be a little problematic. In the end however – it worked fine although limited to 160 kbps (which by certain Golden Ears might condemn to be insufficient).From there it was uploaded to shoutcast server and Octoshape in Copenhagen.

Finally the signal was distributed across the Internet using P2P system making it available for people to listen with WinAmp or VLC.

Overall the purpose was to integrate a multichannel HE AAC- encoded sound programme with P2P streaming server and then webcast across the internet. It was a success.

Hopefully we’ll be publishing some further success stories here shortly.

www.norcalblogs.com

It’s a radio that receives the stations over the internet. Most of them are built with a Wi-Fi (It actually came from a word play Hi-Fi, Wi-Fi and was originally marketed as Wireless Fidelity – although it does not mean anything and Wi-Fi Alliance now discourages the use of that term) connection to the internet and are commonly also referred to as Wi-Fi radios, web radios ,net radios or e-radios.

The first internet radio to start webcasting was WXYC on the 7th of November 1994 in North Carolina USA. The first European Internet radio to follow suit was Virgin Radio in London in March 1996. Nowadays there are over 50000 stations all over the world and most current AM and FM radios are broadcasting (webcasting would be technically more correct as it is not transmitted broadly through wireless means + it sounds way cooler) their radios on line as well. Some of the biggest sites include Shoutcast, Live365, AOL radio and iTunes.

How it works?

The data is streamed over the net and then played back. The audio is not controlled by the user, so it’s like traditional radio in a way that it’s not “on-demand” service like Spotify. Nor is it like podcasts which have to be downloaded. The difference with terrestrial radios is that Internet Radio doesn’t have any geographic limitations. It allows a Japanese student to listen to the latest Drum and Bass played by a DJ in London or a media company having a conference with their clients all over the world. It is also not only limited to audio – it can be accompanied by graphics, photos, links, chat rooms and you can have interactivity with your listeners.

A broadcast or a stream works through 3 software packages – an encoder, a server and a player. Audio feed runs through the sound card of a computer running the encoder software at the broadcast location and the stream is streamed to the server. You connect to the URL of the server and the radio begins playing the music/news that is being webcasted.

That’s not at all as expensive as regular radio and finding a niche style can pay off with having thousands of listeners form around the world. If you want to open your own internet radio – please click the link here that transfers you to a how-to website. It’s also worth getting acquainted with popular streaming audio formats such as Ogg Vorbis, WMA, RealAudio, aacPlus and MP3. Different players play different files and you’d like to maximise your coverage and not sacrifice the quality of the stream.

Bridge ratings

As you can see from the graph – it is a growing business and as far as radios are concerned – the one to watch. There’s also the added benefit that we’ve not reached the peak of broadband speed. The prices keep going down and speeds keep going up. Meaning radios can start opting higher bitrates for broadcasting higher quality and/or multichannel audio. If you’re interested in where this might lead – please follow us to the next part – Multichannel Internet Radio.

To review this compilation I arranged couple of listening sessions with my co-blogger Heigo. None of us have listened to dance music in surround before, so we were quite unaware of what to expect from the “first ever 5.1 DJ-mix”.

First track (Argenis Brito) sounded great, not quite impressive, but great. Since we were sitting in the sweet spot, we could enjoy the music from a point of view of its mixing engineer. Surround image (not sure that this term exists, but “stereo image” would sound inappropriate) was a bit muddy in the low end (usual cost of production for clubs I suppose), but other than that – really big and transparent, leaving a lot of space for individual sound movements.

15-20 minutes into the CD I became much more excited, and, frankly speaking, music was also getting more intense (and panning – harder). When Marc Romboy’s Karambolage kicked in I was already on my feet, moving around the room, trying to imagine how this would sound in a larger space. And then I made a great discovery (which may seem obvious for some): you actually don’t have to be in a sweet spot! The nature of electronic music itself allows your brain to relax and not try to decode it. It doesn’t even matter where the center is! It doesn’t matter if I am facing the rear speakers! We are not familiar with physical characteristics of those sounds, so we don’t expect them to come from an explicit direction (i.e. voice – center).

Small theoretical sweet spot is a very common argument among the opponents of music in surround (especially in large spaces like night clubs). They say that it won’t work because listeners won’t get the same experience, that they will have to stand in the center of a room etc etc. But no, trust me, it does work, and it is even more impressive than I thought before. The thing is, even if you are standing close to the rear speakers (even if you are behind them – I tried this!) you will still experience a completely different and unfamiliar music reality, something that blows away any stereo club setup (even though a lot of them are still mono).

While moving around the room, I could definitely feel, that music was never the same, it was constantly changing. The relationship between different speakers created an unlimited number of mixes! Some listeners could argue that one can experience something similar with any conventional rock album mixed in surround, but I would definitely disagree with that! Rock albums are always mixed from a point of view of a listener in a sweet spot: the band is in the front, vocals – in the center, some surround noises/effects in the back + LFE. In electronic music you are not limited by listener expectations, you have much more options meaning you can really make use of this great technology.

It feels like we are getting to the point, when music will become magic again (as it used to be some decades ago), not a predictable series of parts/instruments/sounds.

If you want to hear how the future sounds like – go and buy Dimension One DVD, or visit one of Gerres’ live shows.

This is a first entry in a series of posts dedicated to such sounds: Classic and New Film Intros!

1. Original Dolby Digital Train trailer . There is also a longer version of this trailer, but sound FXs are less impressive there.

2. This is a longer version of the classic Dolby Digital Train theatrical trailer. I prefer the original short version though. It’s simpler but sound effects work much better.

3. Beautiful Dolby Digital intro featuring Aurora Borealis effect. A pleasure to watch.

4. Great mystical intro. Sand, ancient ruins of Egyptian temple, and light made this Dolby Digital intro one of the most atmospheric.

5. Fantastic Dolby Digital film intro featuring night city landscape and a flying helicopter. Classic!

FOR MORE DOLBY INTROS Go TO PAGE 2

]]> http://surround.fm/dolby-classic-and-new-film-intros/feed/ 1 http://surround.fm/first-surround-sound-dj-mix-compilation/ http://surround.fm/first-surround-sound-dj-mix-compilation/#comments Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:13:38 +0000 Pete http://surround.fm/?p=314 Dimension One

The 30th of October was a very important day. Don’t remember? Well, me neither. But it comes out that on this day Berlin surround sound label (!) 5thDime Music released its first 5.1 surround sound DJ-mix compilation. More than that, this was the first surround sound compilation of this sort to be released ever. EVER!

This does sound ridiculous, I totally agree. We are fed up with thousands of movies in surround, games are adopting this format with great success, but what about music? No. Nothing. The industry ignores surround sound. But do they actually understand what they are missing? We all remember what cinemas used to be before surround sound! The change that happened in this entertainment industry is worth billions…

So back to our business. 5thDime Music are great, even if minimal or tech-house is not your cup of tea. Without any support from hardware producers they are trying to change our old and not-so-brave world. It is still a secret to me how they are going to mix this live (Manuel Gerres does have live shows), as neither surround sound DJ mixers, nor surround sound DJ software exists on a mass market…

Anyway, our copy of Dimension One is on its way so the review to follow shortly.

What’s on DVD:

1. Argenis Brito – Mind Body Soul Cadenza Records
2. Gorge – Garuna 8bit Records
3. Manuel Gerres & Henning Flintholm – El Mariachi (Helly Larson Remix) 5thDime Music
4. David Durango – Striptease Dessous Recordings
5. Arno Gonzalez – My link to the past ( Droïdo Remix) Missive Music
6. Marc Romboy – Karambolage Systematic Recordings
7. Kollektiv Turmstrasse – Blutsbrüder Musik Gewinnt Freunde
8. Tiefschwarz – Deininger Souvenir Music
9. Manuel Gerres – Good Time (Dub Version) 5thDime Music
10. Miss Jools – La Luna Mobilee Records
11. Nick Curly – Kalimba murmur Records
12. Penner & Muder – Are you Lost (Dub Version) Mood Music

More information @

www.5thDime.com

www.myspace.com/manuelgerres

www.myspace.com/5thdimemusic

freshome.com

First time that anyone thought about broadcasting HDTV (including surround sound) was in 1968 in Japan. Their primary national television group NHK developed an HDTV prototype in the year of 1970 which was called MUSE. That was nearly 40 years ago. They went on to demonstrate the systems to U.S and Europe in 1982. It took 8 years till General Instrument Corporation (now Motorola) in America submitted their first proposal for fully Digital HDTV system to FCC (Federal Communications Commission). They finally set current completely digital standard in 1995. In 1996 – CBS with the help of Panasonic broadcasted the first signal to the only HDTV set in Raleigh as a test. It was successful and they haven’t looked back since. 1998 started the HDTV revolution with first sets available commercially. In the same year US broadcasts their first HDTV signal at the launch of Discovery space shuttle on 29th of October. ABC broadcasted their first movie in HD including surround sound on the 1st of November. Slowly but surely HD programming with the use of surround was added to network programming to most of US’s national TV. The sale of HDTV sets as “home-theatres-in-a-box” has been the fastest-growing segment of home audio industry. It’s not only TV where surround sound and high-definition is taking over the consumer market.

As of evidence I’ve posted multiple articles that  have been written about different radios which can and have broadcasted in surround sound on this website. I’d say that since it took only 2 years between the first test of HDTV and first commercial broadcast – we could safely assume that surround sound radio stations will hit the commercial airwaves in the next couple of years.

SDDS stands for Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, which is a cinema sound system developed by Sony. Digital sound information is recorded on both outer edges of the 35 mm film release print. The system supports up to 8 independent channels of sound: 5 front channels, 2 surround channels and a sub-bass channel. Only Cinerama and Cinemiracle have used as many sound tracks. This arrangement is similar to 70 mm magnetic sound formats – and is useful mainly for very large cinema screens. Most cinemas are capable of four to six-track stereophonic sound, and it may sometimes be downmixed.

Although SDDS is technically supported by the DVD spec, no current home theatre systems support it and therefore no known DVD titles have been released with an SDDS track.

History

SDDS was developed for Sony under contract with Semetex Corp., located in Torrance, California. Although originally slated to premier with Hook, the SDDS project was delayed and instead premiered on June 17, 1993 with the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero. Since then, over 1,400 movies have been mixed in Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, and as of early 1999 over 6,750 movie theaters were equipped with SDDS.

The Code name for the SDDS project was “Green Lantern”, taken from a comic book hero and the old term of “magic lantern” used to describe the original projected pictures in the late 19th century. Green came to mind because the key to imprinting the 8 micrometre data bits was to use a green laser.

Initial development efforts were conducted for the Columbia Pictures Sound Department under contract with Semetex Corp., located in Torrance, California. At Semetex, the SDDS Chief Architect was Jaye Waas and the Chief Optical Engineer was Mark Waring.

The Semetex prototype design actually had the 8 channels of uncompressed data placed into 3 locations. Data bordering both sides of the analog sound track and additional data tracks bordering the opposite edge of the picture frame. These locations were chosen to insure the data was not placed into the sprocket perforation area of the film to prevent the known wear and degradation that occurs in the perforation area (due to the mechanical film sprockets) from degrading the data. After Sony received the prototype they enlarged the data bits and moved the data locations and the eight digital audio channels are now recorded on (and recovered from) the edges of the film. As Sony engineers became more actively involved in the project, the design of the SDDS format evolved toward a more robust implementation, including the use of 5:1 ATRAC data compression, extensive error detection and correction, and most critically the redundancy. The redundancy allows data to be recovered substantially intact even in the presence of a ‘Film Splice’ ( general repairs of broken film ). The data bit size on film was enlarged from 8 to 24 microns square, and Semetex’s Green laser system for the sound camera was replaced with simpler LED/fiber optic assemblies, which the change to 24 micron square then allowed.

The SDDS development took just 11 months from concept to working sound camera.

When it came time for deployment, since Sony also owned the Sony Theatres chain (later sold to Loews), it was able use SDDS in its own theatres. And via its highly successful Columbia/Tristar Studios arm, it was able to use SDDS as the exclusive digital soundtrack on its titles. In addition, in the early days of the “megaplex explosion”, Sony struck a deal with AMC Theatres in 1994 to include SDDS in all of their new auditoriums. This gave SDDS a much needed, albeit artificial, kick-start. More than likely it would have garnered far less penetration had Sony not controlled both a theatre chain and a film studio.

SDDS was consistently the least popular of the three competing digital sound formats (the other two being Dolby Digital (aka SRD), and DTS). Along with being the most expensive to install (and the last to arrive), there were major reliability issues with SDDS. Due to their placement on the very edges of the film stock, SDDS tracks are more prone to damage than the other digital formats. As with other digital sound formats, any failure of the digital track will result in a “drop-out” to either another digital format if available, or (most likely) to analog sound. These drop-outs are audible to audiences as a change in volume level and a slight loss of fidelity and extreme high and low-end, similar to a “CD skipping”, although it is more difficult to tell in a properly calibrated auditorium.

SDDS’s much-touted eight track playback capability never quite caught on, as it required that a separate eight channel sound mix be created in addition to the six channel mix that is needed for SRD and DTS, an additional expense for the studios. Out of the 1,400 plus films mixed in SDDS, only 97 of them to date have been mixed to support the full 8 channels, most of them Sony (Via Sony Pictures/Columbia/Tristar) releases. Because of the added installation expense, the majority of SDDS installations are 6 channel (5.1) installations, as opposed to 8 channel (7.1) installations.

SDDS 8-Channels, this logo is used when all 8 channels are used as opposed to the usual six.

While most major studios eventually began putting SDDS tracks on their releases (Universal exclusively supported DTS until 1998, and Paramount and Fox placed SDDS tracks on only their biggest releases until 2001-2002), most independent films only came with Dolby Digital tracks, leaving many SDDS-equipped theaters playing analog sound in otherwise state-of-the-art auditoriums. As Dolby Digital (and to a lesser degree, DTS) began to emerge as the clear winner in the digital sound battle, Sony Cinema Products eventually threw in the towel, closing up shop in 2002, and Sony stopped officially supporting the SDDS system.

Today, a majority of release prints for major studio films still are created with all three digital tracks — Dolby Digital, DTS and Sony’s SDDS (each digital track uses different film geography so all three, as well as the analog track, can coexist on one print) — but most professionals in the industry now consider SDDS a dying system. AMC, for example, has begun to replace their SDDS equipment with Dolby Digital processors.

Technical

SDDS channel arrangement with 5 front channels, 2 surround channels and a subwoofer channel or “5/2.1″.

Original format used: 8 micrometre square data bits. Final format used: 24 micrometre square data bits.

The format carries up to 8 channels of discrete digital sound encoded using Sony’s ATRAC codec with a compression ratio of about 5:1 and a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. The channels are:

• 5 screen channels
  • Left
  • Left center
  • Center
  • Right center
  • Right
• 2 surround channels
  • Left surround
  • Right surround
• Subwoofer channel

Additionally there are 4 backup channels encoded – in case of damage to one side of the film or the other. These are:

• Center
• Subwoofer
• Left + left center
• Right + right center

This gives a total of 12 channels, for which the total bitrate of 2.2 megabits per second. This is obviously more than the maximum 1.536 megabits per second DTS format bitrate, and far greater than the cinema Dolby Digital bitrate of 0.37 megabits per second.

For additional data reliability the two sides of the film are separated by 17 frames – so a single splice or series of missing frames will not result in a total loss of data.

Reader

The SDDS reader is mounted on top of a 35mm projector. The film is threaded through the reader before it passes through the picture aperture. As the film runs, red LEDs are used to illuminate the SDDS soundtrack. CCDs (Charge-Coupled Devices) read the SDDS data and convert the stream of dots on the film into digital information. This information is pre-processed in the reader and passed on to the SDDS decoder.

Decoder

The SDDS decoder is installed in the sound equipment rack. The decoder receives the information from the reader and translates it into audio signals routed to the cinema’s power amplifiers. The decoder is responsible for a series of processes that must be performed before the audio is recovered. Next, errors caused by scratches or damage to the film are corrected using redundant error recovery data. Since SDDS is read at the top of the projector, the data is delayed slightly to restore synchronization with the picture. And finally, adjustments in tonal balance and playback level are made to match the specific auditorium’s sound system and acoustics. SDDS is designed to process sound entirely in the digital domain, bypassing any existing analog processor, preserving clarity and providing full dynamic range.

This post is a repackaged article from Wikipedia. Our web-bot (FMbot) copied it here to enable fast access and interlinking of surround sound related materials.