naturerecordists
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: for all you high end surround heads out there

Subject: Re: for all you high end surround heads out there
From: Walter Knapp <>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 15:33:33 -0400
From: "Rich Peet" <>
> 
> I really feel that many of the movie production people have missed 
> the boat on surround sound and with their camera based thinking 
> always want the recorded sound in front of the source. 

The movie folks are just going along with human design. Humans are 
primarily visual, with hearing secondary. So sound as support of the 
visual is the way it's going to be, particularly with movies. And 
without movies it's hard to keep people focused on the sound.

Remember, most people watch movies on TV. With crude stereo at best. 
Putting a lot of money into the sound is not practical.

And stand alone sound is now mixed for car audio, as near as I can tell.

> The concept that you have to mic surround from the "outside in" is an 
> error and not just yours.  It is a widely believed error.

Probably more correctly applied to playback. I mic from a spot, don't 
use widely separated mics. I guess that makes me a "inside out" thinker?

> Even though I work with and like wide spaced mics, that does not mean 
> that I am trying to mic from the outside in.  In fact, what I am 
> doing is to simply enlarge the size of the inside and I still think 
> in terms of micing a space from the "inside out".

I'm still working on visualizing your system. Would it be like a super 
large Decca Tree, but with the point mic a stereo one? That's the 
visualization I'm getting.

> On another note. From vehicle to recording in four channel I am under 
> 5 mins setup and have three hours battery life. It would still be 
> under 5 mins in eight channel but I currently don't have the mic 
> preamps for the other four.  This is good by todays standards but 
> remember most anyone can do this with two minidisc recorders. My door 
> is open to anyone that wants to sync and hear playback for things 
> that they captured by any method.

You must be running to set up that many widely separated mics and run 
cables. And the record location must be easy to traverse. Takes me 5 
minutes or so to set up one tall tripod and cables ready to go from 
their traveling storage. And that if it's next to where I'm parked. In 
that case I run a long line into the cab and set in relative comfort to 
record. And have extremely long battery life available.

Walt




________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the naturerecordists mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU