Joel,
There's a good principle with sound recording - suck it and see. I
presume you are feeding four discrete channels into the 5.1 which will
increase the amount of compression needed. It's the higher frequency
background sounds which will eat the bandwidth.
With stereo I can hear artifacts in the background sound at 96kbps and
64kbps is unacceptable. You may be stuck with 128kbps but listen to
the "gravel". With four discrete channels at 128kbps, you would need
the same compression as two at 64kbps, but if the background is
acceptable, separate foreground sounds may well compress efficiently.
Most birdsong for instance has a very limited bandwidth and so
compresses well.
Forget the bass - if you can use a bass roll-off at 200 or 300Hz it
will help prevent bass modulating the rest. I think you may have fun
setting the sound levels. Try to avoid using an audio compressor (as
opposed to digital compression) as they cause "pumping" and kill
natural sounds but you can get away with a 10:1 audio limiter to catch
occasional overloads. One is probably built in.
Can we see some pix of the setup? And remember not to swear outdoors
when you're streaming. :-)
David
David Brinicombe
North Devon, UK
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - Ambrose Bierce
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