
Other approaches to surround recording include the so-called M-S-M array. Surround reverbs will do better than stereo ones in this context, but even so, it is more difficult to replace a 'real' space than in a stereo recording. Obviously, if the recording space doesn't lend itself to adding loads of ambient mics - maybe because the background noise level is too high - then you can use a good reverb plug-in instead. As you track other instruments you can build on this concept: for an electric guitar, for example, as well as using the traditional SM57 on the cabinet, you could try recording a 'space' mic six feet back into the room, maybe quite high up, to use in surround channels. These extra mics can then be routed to the left, right, left surround and right surround channels and mixed to suit, so enabling you to place the listener in with the performers - or, by using more of the 'rear' mics, to place the listener in the 'front row'. For a surround recording, you might add to that four 'surround' mics, spaced perhaps four feet in front of and behind the drum kit and around six feet apart. Normally you would have a conventional mic setup of kick, snare, hi-hat, toms and overhead mics. To illustrate this, let's look at recording a drum kit as an example. This makes the quality of the acoustics of the room very important, and may mean you have to choose a more expensive studio to record in - one that has a good room sound because they spent the money on a good room design!

With conventional stereo recordings, we can choose mic placements that can reject some of the room sound, but in a surround recording that room sound is an integral part of the overall sound. In order to do this you must first 'listen to your room'. Waves' M360 Manager helps the process of calibrating a surround monitor setup.In essence, you will want to capture the normal sound as you have always done, but also to capture more ambience or room sounds to enable you to place the listener in a 3D soundfield. You will also find that the stereo version won't be compromised, and you may even be pleasantly surprised to find that it has more 'space' in it.
#Michael pro tools tv
When recording material, whether it be for radio, film, TV or music, you will get a much better, more believable finished product if you consider how best to record it for surround.
#Michael pro tools series
If you haven't done so already you might like to refer to the excellent series of articles called 'You Are Surrounded' published in Sound On Sound from August 2001 to April 2002, which is an excellent guide to all the theory and systems in use in surround production. Be aware that to get the best results working in surround you will need a TDM system, but there are ways to work in surround on LE systems (see separate box). In this month's Pro Tools workshop we are going to concentrate on recording and mixing audio in surround for music, broadcast and film.

#Michael pro tools how to
We explain how to set up your Pro Tools system to do that work, and give some guidelines on recording and mixing in surround. More and more post-production work is ending up in surround-compatible formats such as DVD.

B-Format signals from the Soundfield mic can now be decoded directly within Pro Tools thanks to Soundfield's plug-in.
