Surround sound

[Anonymous No.1280600]

I've researched surround sound but run into dead ends. Every time.

I am a composer/musician and I want to get the live sound of many instruments playing in one crowded room instead of the many dubs of many empty rooms usual shit sound.

My end goal is to play individual audio files on individual speakers, but have them all synchronized. I can do 2 at a time with stereo. Surround sound systems can get me to 6 or 8 (5+1 or 7+1). I'm looking for at least 12 channels. How can I build such a system?

One avenue I thought of is to make a synchronizing trigger that can for example start multiple surround sound systems together to get me over the 10 channel threshold. Is that as simple just trying the play buttons together? Would I hit grounding issues in this case? My signal processing knowledge is still shit

Is there another way to build a unified system?

[Anonymous No.1280607]

>get 10 speakers
>get an audio interface with 10 outputs
>put every instrument on a mono channel in a DAW and route it to the relevant speaker

But it won't really give you the sound of a band playing in a room if that's what you want to achieve.

[Anonymous No.1280611]

>>1280607
Wew I really didn't realize you can get that many outputs on interfaces.

I'm mostly interested in simulating orchestral

What if the requirement changed to 50 ?

[Anonymous No.1280622]

>>1280611
>What if the requirement changed to 50 ?

It's possible, I haven't worked with that many channels of output, but I do know that there are many mixing guys that route back 100+ channels into their consoles through D/A converters. You might need to buy several receivers or something.

But tell me, do you record all the instruments yourself? in the same room? I don't understand what you mean by "many dubs of many empty rooms usual shit sound".

Also, orchestras don't usually play in living rooms, so you'd have to use reverb to create the sound that an orchestra gets during a concert, which would mean spreading the reverb return of instruments into the rest of the outputs to simulate the way the sound of each instrument would spread around a big concert space.

tl;dr the idea isn't very good and composers don't actually work like that.

[Anonymous No.1280654]

>>1280611
pc with gigabit ethernet and a copy of dante, two 32-channel dante/rednet dacs, four 16-channel distribution amplifiers.
it's complicated, expensive, stupid and masturbatory. i bet you're a progfag.

[Anonymous No.1280656]

>>1280600

Dumbest shit I read today on 4chan and I was on /g/ earlier.

[Anonymous No.1280671]

>>1280654
>rednet dacs
holy fuck, those things are expensive - they any good?
For this, assuming all in same room etc. Id stay analogue, maybe ebay old protools setup, or link a few multi-channel consumer cards together (M-Audio 10 channel Deltas, w/e). Add in distro amps / speakers etc, starts adding up as well tho. I got enough shit lying around to set 50 channels up if the need takes, most audio/equip freaks would have, just, theres literally no reason to. Dont think OPs project/idea whatever is actually all that dumb, be at least interesting, but 50 channels probably way overboard desu.

[Anonymous No.1280695]

>>1280671
Yes this is the kind of thing I had in mind. How do you link sound cards together? Disregard speakers and amps. What does the software/hardware setup look like for this kind of solution? I have a pile of old computers to dedicate to such a solution

>>1280622
Thanks for the info. For a clarification example say I want to have a 20 violins and piano. I own two very nice condensor mics, a mostly empty house with some sound treatment. I would record the 20 violin files (recording in a dead room or a not dead would need experimentation) rout those to 20 speakers (setup would also need testing) and play piano live. Digital reverb A SHIT. sound character does change between many sound sources in one or two mic's vs tons of single sound sources dubbed over each other.

[Anonymous No.1280697]

>>1280654
Thanks but I'm after a more diy and less buy this with a huge premium solution.

[Anonymous No.1280701]

>>1280695
>sound character does change between many sound sources in one or two mic's vs tons of single sound sources dubbed over each other.

Yeah it's called phase masking, and it will happen with the setup that you plan because playing them together side by side on different speakers is essentially the same as mixing them together (dubbing isn't practiced professionally ever since the days of multi track tape recorders).

[Anonymous No.1280707]

>>1280695
>Digital reverb A SHIT

Digital Reverb is used by the top producers in the industry for orchestral stuff. Unless you have a dedicated reverb chamber in your home (which I doubt), your music just won't have the same impact - especially if you record in a dead room.

[Anonymous No.1280710]

>>1280701
>Essentially the same
I have heard and used the digital solution. It will not be the same as what I am proposing. The more channels there are the more divergence will be apparant. So yes, virtually the same for 2 violins. I think 20 will be very different quality. Not to mention the sound floor from 20 tracks vs 1 in a pianissimo section

[Anonymous No.1280713]

>>1280707
I do have, and I mean recording the sample tracks in a dead room to so that I can isolate the track. Then all room character occures during the multichannel playback to be recorded by one or two mics

[Anonymous No.1280714]

>>1280710
>Not to mention the sound floor from 20 tracks vs 1 in a pianissimo section

How is that in anyway related? and have you heard of fucking noise gates?

[Anonymous No.1280716]

>>1280713
>Then all room character occures during the multichannel playback to be recorded by one or two mics

Which will give you the sound of a room, not a concert hall or chamber, and thus not the sound of an orchestra.

You're trying to reinvent the wheel without even knowing what you're doing. Forget technology, read some books about sound and sound production.

[Anonymous No.1280718]

>>1280714
Noise gates are destructive.

[Anonymous No.1280720]

>>1280718
Only if you're too stupid to set them up correctly.

[Anonymous No.1280721]

>>1280718
>>1280720
Also, I still don't get why would you have 20 channels of piano noise floor if you're recording it separately, WITH ONE MIC. This has nothing to do with the amount of speakers you use.

[Anonymous No.1280724]

>>1280716
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class at juliard, and I’ve been involved in numerous professional sound productions, and I have over 300 confirmed platinum records. I am trained in signal engineering and I’m the top sound designer in the entire american music industry. You are nothing to me but just another amateur guitar pedal modder. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of mixtape collabs across the USA and your vocal pattern is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your soundcloud. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can record in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my portable rig. Not only am I extensively trained in aucostics, but I have access to the entire line of Neumann products and I will use them to their full extent to capture your miserable "timbre" and delete it from the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking deaf, kiddo.

[Anonymous No.1280726]

>>1280724
kek, pretty good for a noob.

[Anonymous No.1280732]

>>1280697

I have the poorfag option

buy 1 USB hub, 5 of the usb sound cards, and 2 of the 5.1 surround sound speaker sets. mix every 2 files together into 1 making the left and right channels. then assign your player(s) of choice to your individual usb sound cards.

enjoy

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IFCKGHG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_ZMjeAbX54WCNH

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008KGL2L2/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1511037471&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=usb+sound+card&dpPl=1&dpID=41wDzhJZ9TL&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0084ZYH4I/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1511037535&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=5.1+computer+speakers&dpPl=1&dpID=41WL3G3OftL&ref=plSrch

[Anonymous No.1280733]

>>1280732
>5 of the usb sound cards

Might cause problems, and would be more expensive than buying a cheap 10 output interface like the Behringer one.

[Anonymous No.1280734]

>>1280732
Nice, what software are you using for playback?

[Anonymous No.1280735]

>>1280724
>You’re fucking deaf, kiddo.

[Anonymous No.1280794]

>>1280600
Do you know who William Onyeabor is?

He made his own music start to finish, including pressing his own vinyl. He did things like record his vocal tracks onto 6 tracks and the drums on 8...

[Anonymous No.1280805]

>>1280794
This mic placement is absolutely retarded and useless.

[Anonymous No.1280817]

>>1280794
Seems legit, I code on seven keyboards.

[Anonymous No.1280830]

>>1280805
Go listen to his music. He did everything himself and followed his results. Along the lines of OP is thinking about, each microphone will pickup or miss certain aspects of the voice, by using several and combining them, he developed a sound for his studio. You may think it's stupid, you siting in front of a computer, making your own music, but he built his studio, played the instruments, recorde, mixed, and he himself pressed the albums, all in a little Bumfuck town in Nigeria. At least he did something other than provide criticism.

[Anonymous No.1280835]

>>1280830
>fuckin a
OP here is Phil Spector, go look up how the Wall of Sound was invented, and stop breakin his balls already.

[Anonymous No.1280836]

>>1280830
I don't need to listen to his music to know that it's a dumb idea. I've mic'd up plenty of instruments and singers, that's not how you mic up a singer, the mics will NOT pick up different aspects of his voice (they're the same type of mics), and what's more, they'll actually cancel each other because of phase differences and make it all sound like shit. Don't expect a reward for doing useless shit just because it's special.

I also built my own studio, write my own songs, play instruments, record them and mix them in bumfuck nowhere. There are thousands of people doing the same thing, with the slight difference that most of them actually bothered learning and understanding sound theory instead of just jumbling a bunch of mics of the same model on a narrow sound source.

[Anonymous No.1280854]

>>1280836
Oh cool, where can I purchase your albums?

[Anonymous No.1280855]

>>1280854
On bandcamp and cdbaby.

[Anonymous No.1280857]

>>1280855
No on vinyl.

[Anonymous No.1280859]

>>1280857
Yeah, because only hipsters listen to new music on vinyl, which is a destructive and limited format.

[Anonymous No.1280861]

>>1280836
>I don't need to listen to his music to know

Wow, close minded much?

[Anonymous No.1280862]

>>1280859
Lol, OK, it just sounds good on my system.

[Anonymous No.1280863]

>>1280861
kek, should've expected /diy/ to defend doing things in the most retarded, unprofessional way

[Anonymous No.1280868]

>>1280863
Yet he was a huge success... and you sit here arguing about how professional you are.

>kek

[Anonymous No.1281014]

Audio pro's correct me if I'm wrong but If you want a crisper sound with more depth I'd assume it would be better to have lots of different sized drivers hooked to non-overlapping band-pass filters tuned for each specific one so you'd get better audio definition.

[Anonymous No.1281020]

>>1281014
My plan is to have a variety of speaker / amp combos to achieve something like this

[Anonymous No.1281030]

>>1281020
Then first thing you need to do is get a decent microphone so you can measure each driver's crossover frequency and map its response curve. Then you can figure out which speakers will handle what ranges and solder together your band-pass filters.

[Anonymous No.1281032]

>>1281014
Theoretically yes, but that's for constructing a single full range speaker.

If OP had 20 band passed speakers each playing a different track, it'd sound like turbo trash.

If the goal is to emulate an orchestra, the closest and cheapest way is to get 5 or 6 speakers, and slap some reverb and chorus on it.

It's futile to replicate 20 uniquely acoustic instruments with speakers from a spectrum perspective but also a sound direction standpoint.

[Anonymous No.1281037]

Just buy one of those Bose wave speakers I hear they're pretty good

[Anonymous No.1281041]

>>1281014
no, you take whatever gear you have, get it in phase as much as possible, EQ it to cancel out room resonances, adjust the compressor to squelch inputs that are clipping, and then slap a big fucking padlock on the rack.
when some fuckhead customer asks for more "crisp" or "deep" you nudge the programme volume up very slightly. then later on you bring it back down, because this shit is unending and after a couple hours you'd be against the stops. nobody ever asks for less. deaf cunts

[Anonymous No.1281050]

>>1281041
Or, you hide the active rack in another room and have a secondary rack filled with cheap but expensive looking shit in the demo room for clients to 'tune'.

[Anonymous No.1281085]

>>1281030
I have an excellent microphone, S-87 from microphone parts dot com. It's a kit, well worth it, I can only image how their higher teir ones with a transformer or tube sound. It's not bad having a sterile circuit tho instead of that kind of coloration, or so I tell myself

FYI this is home studio so no customer bullshit

[Anonymous No.1281093]

>>1281085
IDK, it just seems like you only have experienced low end gear...

Not bragging but I have a $50,000 stereo, put together based on sound and how well the components play together. Tube preamp, 24 tweeters in semicircles that really make a relistic soundstage.

All this Made in China crap today just doesn't cut it.

I would have you go visit high end equipment stores and take some music to listen to there.

[Anonymous No.1281096]

>>1281093
Did you spring for the Monster cables?

[Anonymous No.1281098]

>>1281096
No. Just, no.

[Anonymous No.1281099]

>>1281093
How much of that $50,000 was in equipment and how much in install/labor?

[Anonymous No.1281102]

>>1281096
>>1281098
Oh. I guess I just don't understand why you'd put all that time, effort and money in and stop a little short.

[Anonymous No.1281103]

>>1280600
>I want hundreds of speakers and channels.
Do me a favour, go count how many eats you have then report back. Fucking audiofags man. Why do so many EE dropouts end up doing sound 'engineering'?

[Anonymous No.1281104]

>>1281099
I did everything myself, except I had some custom work done by the manufacturers.

[Anonymous No.1281107]

>>1281104
So 50k in just equipment for home audio? Damn. That's impressive in both good and bad ways.

[Anonymous No.1281113]

>>1281093
2/10 I was compelled to reply

[Anonymous No.1281116]

>>1281103
This thread is growing too fast for being on /diy/ and not being samefagged to death

So what are some more solutions. The problem is: how to send infinite tracks simultaneously, don't even consider the speaker end. Just how can I send tons of tracks independently and exactly at the same time

[Anonymous No.1281118]

>>1281103
Not too complex honestly. You will have to write custom software and make the circuitry, but it's just paralleling out tons of DACs. You could get away with the digital side of the circuitry with a computer compiling multiple digital sounds into a single high bitrate digital stream which would then be passed either via USB or other suitable interface to a microcontroller. The microcontroller would then have to have multiple DACs attached to it to which it would split the data and stream digital sounds at a regular data rate. Pretty sure any semi modern 32 bit microcontroller would be up for the task and your biggest spend would be the DACs and the time you'd have to put into it

[Anonymous No.1281119]

>>1281102
I like my Siltech XLR's in my digital path, and the VampireWire Pure silver RCA's for the analog path are good -- not sure that Monster would be an upgrade, DESU I didn't push this system together at Walmart, OK?

[Anonymous No.1281125]

>>1281118
I think you may run he risk of developing that horrible jumping sound that most home theater systems produce, which is why I don't have a surround sound system. Too complex.

So OP wants 20 channels, that's ten Class t amps to drive, off of ten sources, not that difficult to do, he could just run ten sound cards on expansion slots of a server maybe.

[Anonymous No.1281136]

>>1281119
Well, as long as you're handling everything else like three-stage power filtration and harmonically resonant ceiling paint, to each their own I guess.

[Anonymous No.1281139]

>>1281125
>10 soundcard
I like this solution but have yet to really build a PC. What would the software end look like? I'm a Linux user and would prefer that if possible

[Anonymous No.1281140]

>>1281136
>Not repainting your ceiling every key change with an appropriately resonant paint

Not very patrician desu

[Anonymous No.1281154]

>>1281103
>Fucking audiofags man

OP isn't an audiofag, he can't even figure out how to play several tracks synchronized. He's some retarded schizophrenic """""musician""""" with crack pot ideas.

[Anonymous No.1281158]

>>1281154
13 posters in here m8, not sure why you are so mad

[Anonymous No.1281159]

>>1281158
I tried to help and all I got back is "lol no dude when I smoke enough crack my retarded ideas do make sense".

[Anonymous No.1281161]

>>1281159
Link posts

[Anonymous No.1281162]

>>1281161
Why bother?

[Anonymous No.1281163]

>>1281162
Because you will keep posting anyways, you are a last word fag

[Anonymous No.1281164]

>>1281163
Doesn't make sense.

[Anonymous No.1281166]

>>1281158
Joke's on you, I'm posting from 13 phones.

[Anonymous No.1281237]

>>1280600
What is a noise cancelling headphone?

Stop over complicating things.

[Anonymous No.1281290]

>>1280835