Month: April 2024

While stereo utilises two sound sources most often on the left and the right, surround sound refers to sound arrays more expansive than this. An example is 5.1 Surround which contains 5 Speakers and an LFE. LFE stands for Low Frequency Effects and works similarly to a subwoofer. ‘The difference between the LFE channel and the subwoofer output is that the LFE channel is used to carry additional bass information while the subwoofer output represents how some or all of the bass information will be reproduced’ (Mig, 2022)

Below is a diagram of a 5.1 speaker setup. Traditionally, there are three foreward speakers -one in the centre and one to either side- and two rear speakers. Sometimes the centre speaker won’t be used as it is possible to create a ‘phantom centre’ by sending the same amount of signal to the left and right speaker. This is often done in surround mixes of music as it makes it harder for people to isolate the vocal and export it as it will not be on a single centre track but instead on both the left and right.

Another example of a surround setup is a 7.2 setup which consists of 2 extra rear speakers and 1 more LFE. It is pictured below.

“The first commercially successful multichannel formats were developed in the early 1950s for the cinema. At the time, stereophonic sound, a concept new to the public, was heavily promoted along with new wide-screen formats by a film industry feeling threatened by the rapid growth of television. Unlike the two-channel format later developed for home stereo, film stereo sound started out with, and continues to use, a minimum of four channels.” (Hilton, 2008)

One of the earliest examples of surround sound being used in film is with disney’s ‘Fantasia’ in 1940. Disney patented the technology ‘Fantasound’. The first step came when producers were asked to make a sound move back and forth across the screen. They discovered that by fading between two speakers, located about 20 feet apart, they could simulate a moving sound-source, provided that the total level in the room remained constant. It quickly became apparent that two loud speaker circuits were not capable of producing the desired effect. The Fantasound system went through multiple prototypes until they finally settled on the mark 10 system which consisted of an 8-horn, 3-track arrangement. (Garity & Hawkins, 1941)

Tibbs, R. (2023) The first-ever film to use surround-sound, Far Out Magazine. Available at: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/fantasia-the-first-film-to-use-surround-sound/ (Accessed: 30 April 2024).

Garity, W.M.E. and Hawkins, J.N.A. (1941) Fantasound. Available at: https://3dvar.com/Garity1941Fantasound.pdf (Accessed: 30 April 2024).

Mig, O. (2022) Manual Onkyo HT R380 Review, Manual onkyo ht r380 review. Available at: https://wheold.blogg.se/2022/november/manual-onkyo-ht-r380-review.html (Accessed: 30 April 2024).

Hilton, K. (2008) ‘Surround sound’, Broadcast Engineering (World Edition), 50(1), pp. 38–43. Available at: https://search-ebscohost-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=30007715&site=ehost-live&scope=site (Accessed: 30 April 2024).

Mastering is the final stage of audio production and involves putting the finishing touches on the final mix of a song by enhancing the overall sound, creating consistency across the album, and preparing it for distribution. (Izotope)

This involves a number of processes and techniques but a way of thinking about it is: If the mixing stage is mixing the individual tracks to make the song, then mastering is treating the song as a single track and working on it in context of the album. An example is if one song on the album had a very prominent bass while the rest were all quite similar, then you would adjust the bass through the use of equalisation in order for it to fit more in the context of the other tracks.

Mastering is also used in increasing the volume of your track so that it will work on streaming platforms. In general you should look for your track to be around -14 LUFS with -1dBTP. A useful tool to check if your master is optimal for streaming platforms is https://www.loudnesspenalty.com. This website will tell you how streaming platforms will change your track in order for it to reach their desired volume. I talked in my previous blog about the loudness wars and the negative impacts that can come through increasing the volume of a track but finding a mix between too quiet and too flat in dynamic range is an art in itself.

Mastering is becoming easier than ever to do at home through the wider accessibility of the tools required but also with the introduction of AI. There are now services online where you can submit a track and artificial intelligence will automatically master it and return it to you. Currently, it is quite easy to tell the difference between a human mastered and AI mastered track as the technology is relatively new and not entirely effective but over time through machine learning there is a worry that there will no longer be a need for a mastering engineer in the creation of music. While I don’t believe this to be true as AI will never be able to know exactly what the creator of the tracks vision is, it is definitely a concern for mastering engineers as it is now cheaper and quicker for artists to master their tracks with AI.

“AI-powered mastering systems allow endless tweaking (mastering engineers generally offer a specific number of revisions). They return results within a minute (mastering engineers might need up to a week). They are comparatively cheap (mastering engineers might charge anywhere from $30 up to a few hundred bucks a track, depending on their experience).” (Anderson, 2024)

The technology is widely used among ‘bedroom producers’ and anyone producing a track on a budget. It is easily accessible and is even being implemented into DAWs such as Logic Pro in the form of ‘mastering assistant’. It will analyse your track for you and create a mastering chain that you can then adjust. Here is a demonstration of how to use it.

Learning the basics of mastering is incredibly useful and I will be attempting to master all of my music from now on. The first track that I will be attempting to master is the group track for this module and I plan to spend quite a lot of time experimenting with mastering techniques such as dynamic equalisation and frequency selective compression. Projects I have made in the past have always suffered from very jarring shifts between songs and through mastering I can mitigate this and am excited to do so.

Anderson, N. (2024) AI can now master your music-and it does shockingly well, Ars Technica. Available at: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/02/mastering-music-is-hard-can-one-click-ai-make-it-easy/ (Accessed: 23 April 2024). 

Izotope (no date) What is mastering?, What Is Mastering? Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-is-mastering.html (Accessed: 23 April 2024). 

‘The Loudness War’ refers to an ever growing trend of mastering tracks louder and louder. While this may at first glance appear as a positive, mastering in this way leads to a decreased dynamic range. Almost all streaming platforms require -1 dBTP. When increasing the volume of track through compression and limiters, you keep this true peak at the same level and in doing so decrease the contrast between the quietest and loudest points of the track. This means that a track mastered to -10LUFS for example will be much less punchy and expressive than one mastered quieter. There is a fine line between a track being too quiet and too flat and it is a delicate measure to maintain.

An example of this flattening of dynamics is the track ‘Bring Me to Life’ by Evanescence -Produced by Dave Fortman. In an attempt to make the track louder it was mastered to around -6 LUFS (8 LUFS louder than the standard) and in doing so, has become louder but at the cost of its dynamic range. The snares are unable to punch through the mix and because of this are less prominent than they could be if mastered to a lower LUFS

“Chris Walla, who produces albums for indie rock groups in addition to his own, doesn’t want to follow the trend of recording albums as loud as possible simply because other bands are doing so. The music loses something when pushed to extreme volumes, Walla said, sacrificing its nuances and emotion for attention-grabbing sound.”(Para 3, Masterson, 2008)

If we compare the waveform of Bring Me to Life to the song ‘I will follow you into the dark’ by Walla’s band ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ we can see that there is much more expression and nuance in the waveform

Researching the loudness wars has been useful to me in learning about this desired balance between volume and clarity. When trying to master my work I will definitely keep this in mind. With the track for this module, I would definitely like to keep the dynamic range in tact as the guitar is expressive through certain harsh notes and phrases and I wouldn’t want to compromise this in an attempt to make the track louder. I will definitely need to experiment and find a balance.

MASTERSON, K., 2008, Jan 01. Loudness war stirs quiet revolution: Bands have turned up volume to get noticed; audio engineers lead battle to crank it down. Chicago Tribune, 4. ISSN 10856706.

Equalisation, a signal processing technique commonly used to shape the sound of music, is defined as the adjustment of the energy in specific frequency components of a signal. (Beveridge et al., 2021). While originally introduced to restore inadvertent changes to frequency response, (Nisbett, 2003) its versatility today is vastly wider than it once was, through both a greater understanding of its function and through an ever growing selection of software and hardware that is readily accessible to the public.

Equalisation has become just as much of a creative tool as it is fixative, as have a lot of techniques in the mixing process. An example of creative equalisation is on the track ‘Gets Colder’ by FINLAND. The track is intentionally mixed to be quite narrow, with a lot of low end removed. This allows for the phased guitar which would usually dominate the upper mid range to completely fill the track. The creative use of eq allows the track to sound warmer and creates a unique sound that is found throughout the whole album ‘still life’.

Equalisation can now be done in many ways, an example is dynamic equalisation. While equalisation normally works with fixed values that can be cut or boosted depending on how you want to shape the incoming signal, dynamic eq automates the intensity of those boosts and cuts depending on the characteristics of the incoming signal, including frequency content distribution and loudness. (Connaghan, 2023)

It works similarly to a compressor wherein you apply thresholds to certain frequency ranges and the dynamic compressor will only cut these signals one the threshold is breached. Dynamic eq can be utilised well in mastering in uses such as cutting the frequencies of harsh snare hits but leaving the frequencies uncut when these do not play. This allows for a more subtle change in the mix than using a standard EQ and permanently cutting these frequencies.

I would like to incorporate the use of dynamic eq in my mixes more from now on as I enjoy the subtlety compared to a regular EQ. I do feel that regular equalisation is just as important and both have a unique place in the mixing process. A balance of the two and knowing when each will be more appropriate is a skill that I would like to work on moving forwards.

Beveridge, S., Cano, E. and Herff, S.A. (2021) The effect of low-frequency equalisation on preference and …, Sage Journals. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/17470218211037145 (Accessed: 19 April 2024). 

Connaghan, T. (2023) What is dynamic EQ, Online Audio Mastering by Grammy Winning Engineers. Available at: https://emastered.com/blog/what-is-dynamic-eq (Accessed: 19 April 2024). 

Stewart, I. (2021) How to use dynamic EQ in mastering, iZotope. Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/how-to-use-dynamic-eq-in-mastering.html (Accessed: 19 April 2024). 

Nisbett, Alec. Sound Studio : Audio Techniques for Radio, Television, Film and Recording, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=296689.

Stereo was first invented by Alan Dower Blumlein in 1931 in response to “experience in local cinemas when watching the first movies with spoken dialogues. Early sound systems normally only had a single set of speakers and could yield counterintuitive effects, e.g., with a character appearing on one side of the screen while his voice originated from the other.” Blumlein wanted sound to originate from the position of the actor on screen. (Davies, 2015)

Stereo was seldom utilised for many years due to hardware such as gramophones and radios being designed for mono playback.

Twenty years later, stereo was becoming much more viable but was still put after mono when recording music. It wasn’t until the late ‘60s when stereo mixing became the exclusive format of choice for most artists and labels. With the introduction of stereo tape machines, came more complicated mixing consoles and hence more complicated recording sessions. In the early days of recording at Abbey Road, one or two microphones would be used to capture a performance. By the mid ‘50s it would not be unusual for a session to have eight or more microphones out on the studio floor. This scenario was even more exaggerated with the introduction of 4-track tape machines and larger recording consoles in the early ‘60s.

The growing use of stereo recording has lead to other experimental recording styles such as binaural recording. Binaural sound can best be described as recorded sound that you feel as a presence rather than just hear. A magnetic tape-recorder, equipped for binaural sound, uses two microphones and makes simultaneous dual recordings on separate tracks, which, when played back simultaneously through dual speakers, gives dimension and presence to sound.(Grentzer, 1953)

Here is an example of binaural recording.

I think that binaural audio could be useful in crafting soundscapes and more ambient styles of music and would like to experiment with it when I get a chance.

A great example of stereo enhancing a track is on Für die Katz’ by Cluster. The track portrays a sort of spacey psychedelic ambience featuring many bouncy echoey sounds that pan around the stereo field. If the track was recorded in mono, the experience of listening would be far less immersive and the rises and falls of the track would be much less expressive. The track creates a lot of tension through flowing dynamics in certain sounds as they get closer and farther away in the stereo field. The introduction of stereo to music has allowed experiences such as Cluster II to exist and without it I wonder what pieces of music would not exist today.

Davies, A.C. (2015) ‘EEE Signal Processing Magazine’, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. 

Abbey Road (2024) The history of recorded music has its roots firmly planted at no. 3 abbey road, Abbey Road. Available at: https://www.abbeyroad.com/news/the-history-of-recorded-music-has-its-roots-firmly-planted-at-no-3-abbey-road-2596#:~:text=years%20to%20follow.-,Introduction%20of%20Stereo,-By%20the%20mid (Accessed: 19 April 2024). 

Grentzer, R. M. (1953). Binaural Sound. Music Educators Journal, 39(5), 46–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/3387737

The process of visually representing the spacial imaging of a mix is a good exercise for critical listening as it forces you to pick out individual tracks and parts in a mix and place them physically on a stereo field. It allows you to see what works well in the centre of a mix and what works well on either side. It also allows you to gain a greater understanding of which frequency ranges are appropriate for which instruments. I think it would be useful to make this a common practice as over time it will become easier and easier to place each part. I will definitely be doing this more in the future with tracks that I enjoy as not only will it give me a greater understanding of how to arrange a mix but also give me a greater appreciation for the music I am analysing and let me know why it sounds as good as it does.

I used one of my reference tracks -Bleujen an Howl- for this and it was difficult to differentiate some of the string parts but I do think that through repeated use of this exercise it will become easier. I found that the guitar was mainly in the centre of the mix but at times some higher notes would pan to the left and some lower would pan to the right, sort of like a call and response. The guitar was sandwiched between a rich string section to the left and right of it with the vocals sitting just above.

This week in class we talked about the concept of mixing being just as much of a creative ordeal as it is fixative and how certain creative decisions in the mixing stage of producing a record can result in a vastly different final product.

For example, on the track ‘The Bath Of Stars’ by Art Bears, Dagmar Krause’s already eerie vocals are doubled by a haunting whisper that is mixed to be intentionally ‘too close for comfort’. Additionally, “odd, reversed vocals are driven by dissonant guitar and eventually overtaken by the sludgy, downcast pound of drums and piano.”(Para 8, Leone, 2004)

Without this creative decision within the mixing process, the track would be much less successful in presenting this vision of discomfort and tension.

The idea of making creative decisions in the mixing process in order to better present the artists idea and message is crucial when it comes to mixing and the role of a mixing engineer.

We also looked at the importance of using reference tracks when mixing.

“A reference track is a professionally recorded song from another artist representative of how you want your music to sound.” (isotope, 2023)

It is useful to have a backlog of songs that showcase certain things that you would like to achieve in your own production. I had a think about what songs I would choose to reference and I decided on:

Bleujen an Howl – Daisy Rickman for bowed string drones

Jockey full of Bourbon – Tom Waits for a twangy guitar

Marian – Sisters of Mercy for mixing deep vocals

Sunflower River Blues – John Fahey for solo acoustic guitar

I would like to incorporate reference tracks when working on my own music more in the future as I believe that having something to compare certain aspects of your work to can be helpful in deciding which changes to make.

isotope (2023) What is a reference track and how to use it, iZotope. Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/what-is-a-reference-track.html#:~:text=A%20reference%20track%20is%20a,your%20own%20music%20to%20sound. (Accessed: 18 April 2024). 

Leone, D. (2004) Art bears: Art box, Pitchfork. Available at: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/429-art-box/ (Accessed: 18 April 2024).