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September 5, 2006
An addendum...
So a few people have reacted quite negatively to the quote from my previous post. I guess my choice of words wasn't that great...
I think the thing to note is that: no matter how awesome an engineer is at the mixing board or how quickly a person can fly around the console view of a PC sequencer, he mixes through a method of controllying multiple one dimensional values. With his given hands he can only shift one of these values at a time. If he's GOOD, he can shift two of those values at a time.
Spatiality, however, cannot be defined by a single one dimensional pot or fader.
Sure, the old paradigm of the stereo line worked fine with the pot and fader combo: a quick twist to put it somewhere between full left and full right, a quick push to place the volume.
But in the surround sound world that just doesn't fly. Things like how focused or wide the sound is, or distribution of rear channels, or ratio of front to rear mix. And there are other things like reverb and EQ that also affect the perceived directionality of the sound.
I did recently buy a high end audio sequencer; I upgraded my old Sonar 3 to the hip and cool Sonar 5 Producer Edition. Among the things that it has is an "intuitive surround panner" that "appears on any surround channel or bus, with no need for patching." It's not bad, and it allows for automation too... but for a top-of-the-line professional tool, it feels remarkably amateurish...how about being able to visualize sounds on top of each other? If you want to see sounds relative to others in surround space, your only option is to look at the respective surround panner circles side by side. Geez!
There must be a better way... a way that is not only faster and more intuitive, but also perfectly complementary to existing workflows as well as inspiring to manipulate and behold.
I think I've got an idea.
Posted by diamante at 9:48 AM | Comments (0)