Surround Sound?

red_bairn

For a project that I will be continuing after my easter holidays I wanna create a sound piece that is created for an installation piece. I wanna have people walking into a darkroom where they will "become" blind and they will have the sense of walking through a forest and hear voices in the distant or walking by them ( like a friend with you-guiding you in the forest ). Obviously I will be limited with the space for ppl to walk around but thats apart from the point. I would like to know how to manipulate the sound to create this sense of distant with peoples voices, animals, nature etc

Note. Using SoundtrackPro. On the mac. Unfortuantely. But maybe you can still help me even if you are a pc head!

cornbb

Mmm, interesting. I know a few people in college who did stuff similar to this for various masters projects. It might be a bit ambitious but could be hugely fun nonetheless.

Here are a few of my thoughts -

- You will need to figure out how many audio channels (5, 5.1, 6, 8 or whatever) you want to use and then get enough hardware to match. Consisting of speakers, amps and a soundcard capable of playing back multiple channels.
- You will need to consider how to spatialise the sound, i.e. how to give the perception of depth, distance and direction to the listener.
- You will need to gather sound sources for this. You could compose/record music, you could make field recordings or real sounds, or you could take sounds from sample libraries.
- You will need to mix the whole thing. Now I've no idea what Soundtrack Pro is like. Does it support multiple channels? Does it offer surround panning? A good option for the Mac would be Logic Pro - it definitely supports these things.
- The spatialisation thing will probably be achieved by dynamic panning (moving individual sounds from speaker to speaker). You can get very creative while doing this - you can make the room seem like its spinning round, like everything is zooming past, etc, etc. Your speaker configuration will also affect how these tricks work.

Sounds like a fun project! If you are interested in more reading check out "On Sonic Art" by Trevor Wishart. Let us know how it goes.

Lump

You could do it using phasing and delay and stuff, my flat mate did the same thing a few years ago for college.... he got a first I think.

John