Steven Wilson Center Channel lead vocals question

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JonUrban

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Steven,

Firstly, thanks for coming to the forum and responding directly. That was very nice of you.

The "question" I was going to add if I was going to be sending you in the questions as we did last time centers around the center channel.

I personally LOVE the way you isolate many lead vocals solo in the center channel. This especially shines in the car, which is where I listen to a LOT of surround music. My first "knock me over" moment there was listening to "Lightbulb Sun - How is Your Life Today". Wow. Your positioning of the vocals in that song (and many many others) should be the definition of the word 'stunning' in dictionaries. The way the lead is solo in the center, and the other vocals float through the listening from the rears and seemingly above the listener, is pure demo material.

The same can be said for the "Close to the Edge" tracks, especially Track One, when we first here "I get up, I get down" coming from the front as the surrounds build with the backing vocals.

Why do you think other surround mixers seem to bleed the lead vocals into the FL and FR, and sometimes all 4 audio channels, trying, one would guess, to simulate a true soundfield center? To me, that does nothing to feature the vocal and is more of a 2 channel effect. I think maybe these mixers are afraid that the listener will not have a center speaker in their system, or maybe an inferior center speaker.

If so, IMHO, they are mixing for the lowest common denominator and doing a disservice to those with true 5.1 systems.

How did you come to your decision to treat the lead vocals this way? I, for one, am glad you did! :)
 
Steven,

Firstly, thanks for coming to the forum and responding directly. That was very nice of you.

The "question" I was going to add if I was going to be sending you in the questions as we did last time centers around the center channel.

I personally LOVE the way you isolate many lead vocals solo in the center channel. This especially shines in the car, which is where I listen to a LOT of surround music. My first "knock me over" moment there was listening to "Lightbulb Sun - How is Your Life Today". Wow. Your positioning of the vocals in that song (and many many others) should be the definition of the word 'stunning' in dictionaries. The way the lead is solo in the center, and the other vocals float through the listening from the rears and seemingly above the listener, is pure demo material.

The same can be said for the "Close to the Edge" tracks, especially Track One, when we first here "I get up, I get down" coming from the front as the surrounds build with the backing vocals.

Why do you think other surround mixers seem to bleed the lead vocals into the FL and FR, and sometimes all 4 audio channels, trying, one would guess, to simulate a true soundfield center? To me, that does nothing to feature the vocal and is more of a 2 channel effect. I think maybe these mixers are afraid that the listener will not have a center speaker in their system, or maybe an inferior center speaker.

If so, IMHO, they are mixing for the lowest common denominator and doing a disservice to those with true 5.1 systems.

How did you come to your decision to treat the lead vocals this way? I, for one, am glad you did! :)

Hi Jon

This is something that I very much took my lead from Elliot on - it sounded great to me when he did that, so that's the way I've done it on almost all my mixes ever since (with the exception of live mixes, you simply can't get that kind of separation in a live concert hall, so I tend more towards a quad mix for live recordings). I actually do bleed a little bit of the lead vocals into the front left and right speakers too, to "glue" the vocals a little more into the mix - but the overall impression is still that the lead vocal is coming from the centre speaker.

Taking this kind of approach can highlight one of the main issues with surround mixing, which is that (much more so than with stereo) you cannot account for the way people have their speakers setup, and the distance between them...etc... So what sounds beautiful and logical in my speaker with the vocals centre, could potentially sound detached on a setup where the speakers are located differently and/or further apart. There's no real answer to this, and as you point out, I think it's why a lot of surround mixes are relatively conservative, the mixing engineer starts worrying about people not having their speakers set up correctly. You only have to go on Amazon to see terrible reviews of some 5.1 mixes (not just mine) where clearly the fault is not with the mix but with the way the user has their system setup. I had one guy give my last live DVD one star because he said the sound was badly compressed. Once it was pointed out to him that he just needed to turn off the Dolby compression on his laptop, he changed his review to 5 stars! But I wonder how many other poor reviews based on disinformation are still out there and influence others to not buy the discs.

I've strayed somewhat from your question here, but one other thing that might be worth noting: Occasionally I see people saying that one of my new stereo mixes is good but that the balance of instruments in the 5.1 mix is not as good / sympathetic. However, in my case the 5.1 mix is always the *same* as the stereo mix, with the only change being the position of the instruments moved out into the 5.1 field. Surround sound can change perspective of the mix (and you have the extra low end information that the sub provides), and things not noticed before may become noticeable, but little or nothing has altered other than positioning between completing the new stereo mix and creating the 5.1. For example I won't have suddenly decided to turn down or up the lead vocals in surround - so if it's sounds really different from the stereo mix, then it's either the different perspective that spreading the sounds out can give, or it's the level of your centre channel.

Hope that makes sense!

S
 
Hi Steven,

Thanks for the great response and for all the great mixing you have done. Your efforts truly bring joy to the surround world!

Any quick tips for the newbie who wishes to mix his own material to surround? Pitfalls? Hard won lessons? Particularly, how do you decide what goes in the LFE? Is it just all program content under a certain frequency? What frequency? Feel free to ignore the post if this is too broad a discussion.

Thanks!

Ken
 
My first "knock me over" moment there was listening to "Lightbulb Sun - How is Your Life Today".
that album has all tracks mixed into surround just brilliantly.
i loved it. perhaps best of all PT's from perspective 5.1
 
Hi Steven,

About a year ago I purchased 5 identical speakers (no 'center' model of the series) for my surround set up.

In fact all five serial numbers are consecutive.

It was a dramatic improvement to the sound field. Balanced, even all around.

Glad to hear that is how you plan your mixes.

I am looking forward to more of your work.
 
I think the main mistake people make with center channel speakers is having the center speaker physically too far forward in the room. Often people have their center speaker sitting in front of their TV or at the front of a shelf, which puts it ahead of the front left and right speakers, and when it's like that the sound it projects literally sticks out like a sore thumb. The center speaker should be in line with the front left & right at the very least, but ideally it should be slightly behind them; if your center speaker is too far forward, it still sounds out of place even if you turn the channel level down.

I never really saw the point in the center speaker until I heard a well calibrated setup with matched speakers. Now for me things like solo instruments and lead vocals the center channel is the only way to go.

kavr147spkrdia.jpg
 
I agree, when I upgraded my speakers a few years ago it made quite a difference, everything just sounded more controlled. The diagram is my set-up for music, I prefer the soundfield with rears at 110deg. I've matching 4x Monitor Audio Floorstanders, plus matching Centre, no sub. So although no very low Bass, I don't get some of the LFE anomalies some people report on assorted discs. I definitely don't like the speakers right behind me (plus not enough space!), which was a must with the simple SQ decoder/system I built as a student as I got poor Front-Back separation.
 
Good subject Jon. Personally I think SW does find more good use of the center channel than a lot of his colleagues. Not only lead vocal, which is more or less a given as the center originates from the movie "dialog" channel, but also many other (solo) parts.
I remember the Blackfield DVD which was essentially 4 channel, but by putting only the acoustic guitar in the center it became totally valid 5 channel (I forget about the Low Frequency channel here on purpose).

BTW I do not object bleeding some lead vocal to FL+FR (maybe with some reverb/effect), as long as it dominates in the center, that is still nice.
 
I think the main mistake people make with center channel speakers is having the center speaker physically too far forward in the room. Often people have their center speaker sitting in front of their TV or at the front of a shelf, which puts it ahead of the front left and right speakers, and when it's like that the sound it projects literally sticks out like a sore thumb. The center speaker should be in line with the front left & right at the very least, but ideally it should be slightly behind them; if your center speaker is too far forward, it still sounds out of place even if you turn the channel level down.


If that's the case then speaker distance compensation should ...compensate for it. Everyone should be using distance compensation unless they have the luxury of freely placing loudspeakers.
 
It might compensate to some degree, but there's no substitute (soundfield integration-wise) for having your center speaker recessed behind your two front speakers.

As far as I know, all that speaker distance compensation does is add individual delays to each speaker (ie closer distance = less delay) so the sound from each speaker is theoretically reaching the listener at the same time but it doesn't do any psycho-acoustic modelling or anything like that so it's not actually simulating the center speaker being further away. A center speaker that's recessed between the two front speakers won't just result in the audio getting to the listener later, it will also sound different and I don't think distance compensation does anything to affect that.
 
It might compensate to some degree, but there's no substitute (soundfield integration-wise) for having your center speaker recessed behind your two front speakers.

As far as I know, all that speaker distance compensation does is add individual delays to each speaker (ie closer distance = less delay) so the sound from each speaker is theoretically reaching the listener at the same time but it doesn't do any psycho-acoustic modelling or anything like that so it's not actually simulating the center speaker being further away. A center speaker that's recessed between the two front speakers won't just result in the audio getting to the listener later, it will also sound different and I don't think distance compensation does anything to affect that.

Have you got any psychoacoustic research to point to support this? What else is required, other than having the sound from the speakers reach the listener at the same time as it would if the loudspeaker were physically recessed?
 
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Have you got any psychoacoustic research to point to support this? What else is required, other than having the sound from the speakers reach the listener at the same time as it would if the loudspeaker were physically recessed?
I don't think it's a matter of psychoacoustics but one of genuine acoustics: a listener who is close to the center speaker will mainly hear the sound coming directly from it, and any reflections and reverbertions that occur inside the room will be heard at a substantially lower volume. In contrast, for the front speakers the volume of these secondary sources is comparable to the primary ones, and this difference causes that 'sticking out' sound on the center speaker, delays aside.
 
Further to what's already been said about center speaker placement...

Rather than saying the Center speaker should be "behind" the L & R, I'd say that the L, C, and R should all be the same distance from the listening position - which of course situates the Center "behind" the other 2. The other thing, and others here have pointed this out, is that all 3 front speakers should be identical and, if the room allows it, 5 identical speakers should be used. I have 3 towers in front but use surrounds in the rear because towers back there are too close to me and become too localized which destroys the overall surround experience.

I wish I had the luxury of separate music-listening and Home Theater rooms but that may have to wait until my next life. With wall-mounting the TV, identical speakers across the front is achievable. If this is the case then I also believe that all 3 speakers should be square to the listening position. The reason being because if the Center is square (which it will be) then the L & R need to be square also so that all 3 speakers have the same Presence.

SW makes the very valid point about poor system setup. The thing that went unsaid is how complicated setting up a 5.1 system is in a room that was likely built with no fore-thought about surround music at all.
 
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I don't think it's a matter of psychoacoustics but one of genuine acoustics: a listener who is close to the center speaker will mainly hear the sound coming directly from it, and any reflections and reverbertions that occur inside the room will be heard at a substantially lower volume. In contrast, for the front speakers the volume of these secondary sources is comparable to the primary ones, and this difference causes that 'sticking out' sound on the center speaker, delays aside.

I don't see how this addresses the question. We're talking about a matter of inches, between the primary sound a loudspeaker that is physically recessed by X inches, versus an X inches closer one that has *digital delay* added to make it sound as if it were X inches recessed.

As user 'wavelength' notes, the goal is to have the primary audio sources the same distance from the listener -- whether that is achieved physically or by digital delay.

I have 5 identical loudspeakers and I where I can't achieve equal distance physically, I let digital distance compensation do the job.
 
I don't see how this addresses the question. We're talking about a matter of inches, between the primary sound a loudspeaker that is physically recessed by X inches, versus an X inches closer one that has *digital delay* added to make it sound as if it were X inches recessed.

As user 'wavelength' notes, the goal is to have the primary audio sources the same distance from the listener -- whether that is achieved physically or by digital delay.

I have 5 identical loudspeakers and I where I can't achieve equal distance physically, I let digital distance compensation do the job.
It's not as simple as adjusting the delays, and I would say that their effect would be most substantial only in a properly isolated room. Compare the sound coming from a headphone sounding directly into your ear with the same coming from a loudspeaker at the same angle and matched volume but placed some meters apart in a non acoustically isolated room. The added volume used to compensate for the distance will make you hear a big difference in localization and definition of the sound caused by the room, which makes it come from all directions with different delays and colorations due to reverberation. This (to a lesser extent of course) is what occurs when setting up the center channel too close, I know it because I have this issue myself.
 
Apples to oranges again. The issue is not trying to compensate for differences measured in meters, nor trying to duplicate an *extreme near field* sound (which headphones would be) using delay. Typically it's compensating for having the center in-line with front L/R when it should be recessed a little in comparison to them, so that all front-line speakers are equidistant to the listener.
 
Apples to oranges again. The issue is not trying to compensate for differences measured in meters, nor trying to duplicate an *extreme near field* sound (which headphones would be) using delay. Typically it's compensating for having the center in-line with front L/R when it should be recessed a little in comparison to them, so that all front-line speakers are equidistant to the listener.

I previously had my three front speakers aligned across the front. Then sometime last year, I changed the location of the left and right fronts to match those in the diagram shown in the earlier post in this thread. I did it just as an experiment and have not gone back to the earlier configuration. The improvement in overall sound was very significant; (and my wife hasn't tripped over the left front speaker cable which would surely put an end to it! LOL)
 
I agree, when I upgraded my speakers a few years ago it made quite a difference, everything just sounded more controlled. The diagram is my set-up for music, I prefer the soundfield with rears at 110deg. I've matching 4x Monitor Audio Floorstanders, plus matching Centre, no sub. So although no very low Bass, I don't get some of the LFE anomalies some people report on assorted discs. I definitely don't like the speakers right behind me (plus not enough space!), which was a must with the simple SQ decoder/system I built as a student as I got poor Front-Back separation.
I know this topic is getting stale, but I have to chime in anyway. :smoking

I have spent the last year Ebay-ing, Craigs List-ing, and Audiogon-ing to get "perfect" matches (sonically and aesthetically) for my long-discontinued-but-wonderful Cherry Monitor Audio Silver 9i fronts. To me, this meant exactly the same 2 speakers for the surrounds and the Silver 12i for the center. (and either 7i or 4i for the rears - but I don't use those for music). I have had everything but the center for a while, but I finally got a 12i in cherry in December. It is pretty much a
"horizontal 9i". I had previously had a silver 10i center (smaller mid and mid-bass drivers) and prior to that had borrowed a Logan Motion 8 center.

The difference in overall balance is astounding. I too am a huge fan of focusing at least some voices in specific speakers - and having leads in the center has been vastly improved with my new setup. Mind you, I really don't believe that the speaker itself is all that much better than the others I had used. It is just a better match.

I also hear the benefits of a great match in several of Steven's excellently-arranged counterpoint vocals, where voices are placed all around the surround field. "Drown with Me" and "Mellotron Scratch" come immediately to mind, as I tend to use these pieces as "conversion" material when I am visited by surround music "non-believers." (Conversions have been rapid of late, and several friends' spouses are rather irritated with me about it.:cool:)

Anyway, I can see where a surround mix optimized for a well-matched system might be disappointing to someone who purchased a system thinking that surrounds are for sound FX and the center is for dialog. The frequency response in the centers and surrounds in such systems is ok for movies, but can be anything from an at-best ok to a total abomination for music. And that mindset encourages people to piece out their speakers, with completely different models (and often different manufacturers) for fronts, surrounds, and center, which makes things worse from a musical perspective. At which point, most of them forget that the only decent speakers they have in their systems are their fronts and then they wonder why they prefer 2-channel audio. :mad:@:

Anyway - add one to the group who likes to have leads focused in the center channel from time to time.
 
My layout is similar to previously shown, but my surrounds are probaly at a 95 - 100 degree angle but much closer to being the same distance as the fronts now, before they were much closer. However I have my sub outside my right front speaker, not between it and the tv. I have seen more layouts this way, so curious why the dfference here? I would think equidistant fronts from center was better. Mine sub is front firing, facing towards me, but adjusted to blend not just thump in my face. I know sub placement can vary tons based upon every variable in the room, so wasn't sure if that was the reason here or there is another. Also, how far away from the center should the fronts be? I have very limited space but they are about 18" away each side currently, with maybe another 6" possible, if that makes any difference. I can move the right speaker 4' away and match the layout shown, but it doesn't keep my listening position centered then, nor will my ocd like that asymmetrical layout :howl
 
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