From atomic@netcom.comThu Apr 6 10:40:50 1995 Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 10:11:46 -0700 (PDT) From: atomic city To: Analogue Heaven Mailing List Subject: Re: 3D sound & Roland RSS-10 Mutant Rhythmatist writes-- > >On Wed, 5 Apr 1995, lord of the low end wrote: > >> i've a few albums that claim to be mastered on the system.... yet there is >> absolutely NO 3d type of sound from the recordings... on monitors and >> headphones... and the system is supposed to be used without any type of >> decoder.... if the 30k system sucks then i'm sure that the 2.7k system >> sucks more... even if the rss logo is cool. > >Yeah, I've got a Klaus Schulze sample CD w/ selected cuts in RSS...damned >if I can hear any 3D...but the logo's cool. The only 3D sound I have ever heard anywhere that actually works is the Hughes SRS, which works like a dream for less than $200 (if you can find them). However, it's a very deceptive, dangerous box, and has to be part of the recording process from day one, and constantly A/B'ed in and out of the mix (via patchbay normalling, not via the front panel controls) to assure that it's not ruining your work. It tends to grab sounds and change their dynamics, overall levels, and EQing, as well as their stereo information, and munge them all over the place. Certain sounds can be completely squashed out of a mix and others lifted up to prominence, and it's difficult to predict which ahead of time. As for feeding it a finished mix as a final step, a la BBE or other exciter/NR stages? Forget it. Every now and then, listening to _Band of Fire_ as it was released, which has a bit more spaciousness than you'd expect from a normal stereo mix but nothing outrageous (we eased off on the Hughes in the mix process), I find myself pining for the original mixdown, which had insane amounts of SRS and had sounds crawling over your scalp, around behind you, under your chin...but kept distorting when it got fed too much bass. Not releasing that mix, which actually broke down into digital hash in one or two places, was a very tough decision for me, and I'm not entirely sure it was the right one. Would people accept three seconds of POP ka-POP KHHKHHKKKKHHK in the middle of 18 minutes of audio bliss? I guess I'll never know. :( I content myself with knowing that the single, as it did finally get released, was a perfect rendition of the original piece with just enough extra 'space' to add appeal.... and that my next record will probably experiment heavily with the Hughes, if I can borrow Eirikur's unit again. Bottom line: if you can find one, try it, but expect your tracking and mixdown times to be about doubled to get it to work right. mike -- "General MIDI is like the war on drugs. In both cases the ideologically fueled mechanism actually contributes to the problem it is supposed to remedy." (j. rossi iii) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- mike metlay * atomic city * p. o. box 81175 * pittsburgh, pa 15217-0675 usa atomic@netcom.com * atomic-city@netcom.com * http://pd.net/atomic-city