Symbion Project - Misery in Soliloquy (quad surround + stereo cd)

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piotrus

Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
35
Location
Poland
Hi.

This is my latest discovery. I checked this forum but there is no word about this album already released in 2009 as a quad DVD (DTS 4.0 and stereo) + stereo CD.

SymbionProject_corrected.jpg

http://symbionproject.bandcamp.com/...m-misery-in-soliloquy-quad-surround-stereo-cd

I associate this project with a series of games on PS2 (Frequency, Amplitude) stands behind him Kasson Crooker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasson_Crooker

This is a very cool electronic music and very good quad mix.

Here you can listen to the whole album:

https://soundcloud.com/symbionproject/sets/misery-in-soliloquy
 
I thought I'd get it, not normally my kind of music, but it sounds interesting! and some thing of this musical style often works really well in surround.
 
Thanks piotrus :music

When I ordered my copy I added a message saying if you're into producing surround mixes why not join QQ. Kassan replied and said he'd hunted for such a forum in 2009 and hadn't found us, but he says he's now signed up to QQ, so hopefully he'll post soon.
 
Greetings all,
Kasson here from the band Symbion Project.

First off, big thanks to Piotrus for spreading the word of this album to this wonderful forum of surround audio aficionados!
When the album was released back in 2009 I did endeavor to locate some online surround sound communities and press but wasn't too successful.
I'm now really glad that I've found such a community. Thank you all for picking up the cd/dvd and supporting the music I make!

I wanted to share a few thoughts I had about the creation of this album and once you've had a chance to listen to it, I'm very much looking forward to hearing your feedback/critiques (positive and negative!).

Symbion Project has been making music now for over 20 years, although the first album was not officially released until 1997. Since then I've released 6 full length albums with the newest one "Semiotic" being released in just a few months. The pre-order for that album (digital, vinyl) is here: https://symbionproject.bandcamp.com/album/semiotic
Unfortunately, there won't be a surround version of this album, although I bet it would sound pretty amazing.
Symbion Project's music covers a diverse variety of electronic music styles ranging from dark, haunting downtempo to classical-inspired albums in the same vein as my hero Wendy Carlos and Vangelis.
the "Semiotic" album strays pretty far into IDM territory with instrumentals featuring dark complex drum patterns and edgy synths.
I'm also in the synthpop band Rocococo which has their debut album also coming out this summer: https://soundcloud.com/r0c0c0c0
I was the founding member of the synthpop trio Freezepop and my day job for many years had me leading the teams making RockBand and DanceCentral video games.

Misery in Soliloquy was the most complex album I've created thus far. It took me 5 years to compose, record, mix, master and produce the stereo CD and QUAD 4.0 DTS surround mixes.
Here are a few (blurry) pix of my studio at the time. As you can see I'm an avid collector of vintage analog synths from the late 60's through the mid 80's, as well as newer gear as well.
IMG_0149.jpg
IMG_0150.jpg
IMG_0626.jpg

The album was composed mostly in Reason 5/6, and then properly mixed with tons of additional production and DSP in Digital Performer.
The album was first mixed and completed in stereo, then I converted the stereo mixes over to Quad and mixed the Quad versions also in Digital Performer.
My front speakers were ADAM P22a and rear speakers Genelec 1030a - both are powered near-field monitors.
This was all mixed in a pretty small, sound treated room with the speakers roughly 5-6 feet from me. I mixed the album with the intention that the listen would be as centered as possible from the 4 speakers.
I chose Quad 4.0 as the setup since I don't trust the levels that subs and the center channel would be at. For me, the center channel is for movie dialog and not for music and can hurt the proper stereo field of the mix.
You also never know what volume some people have the center channel at. My intention for the quad mix is that all 4 speakers are calibrated to be the same volume with the listener in the center.

The album features programmed drums and synths, with vocals by myself and the wonderful chanteuse Melissa R Kaplan of the band Universal Hall Pass. Melissa and I have been creating music together for 15 years now and were in the 90's electronic rock band Splashdown for many years. The strings on the album are all real strings, recorded one take at a time in England. Some of the synthesizers used on the album are Alesis Andromeda, ARP Odyssey model 2810 (w/infringing Moog filter), Sequential Circuits Prophet10, Moog Voyager, Moog Sonic6, Roland Jupiter8.

I had been listening to some surround mixes leading up to working on Misery in Soliloquy and was very inspired by the challenge and opportunity that surround audio presents. One of my favorite surround albums was Beck's "Sea Change" mixed by Elliot Scheiner who I met years before when he taught a class I was in at Berklee college of music. First off, for me… come on.. 4 speakers! way better than 2, right?! And because I make experimental music, I knew I could take some interesting chances with the mixes and didn't have to conform to any rules about what should go where. Of course, immersion and fullness surrounding the listener was essential. The music I make is full of rich sounds and interesting effects so I knew I could play to those strengths for the surround mix as well. My aim was keep the listener interested and engaged with the songs, so using surround panning, motion and unexpected placement of sounds was both an important element. When you listen to the album, you could really face any direction. there is no front or rear with the mixes, just 4 channel immersion. I hope this translates to you all when you listen to the mixes on your setups.
The stereo and surround versions were mastered at WaltzAudio in Boston, MA.

Well, I hope you've all found this behind the scenes info interesting, and feel free to post questions and thoughts. I would really love to hear from you all about the album when you've had a chance to listen to them.
This is the only surround album I've ever mixed so it was definitely a learning experience. I've contemplated doing another in the future, but haven't yet found the right album to do it with. Also, the making of the DVD itself (menus, etc) was not super fun and I'd have to find someone else to do that part of the process.

Ok, thanks again for the support! I make my living off creating and producing music and your support helps me do that and not be a complete starving artist! :)

cheers,

Kasson

ps- feel free to join the other online symbion project communities:
https://www.facebook.com/symbionproject
https://twitter.com/symbionproject
https://instagram.com/symbnprjct/
 
Thanks for the heads up piotrus & Kasson for the behind the scenes info...very interesting!

I'll report back once I've got the DVD...

:51banana:
 
welcome Kasson.
i want to share my thought in regard of center channel.
you're right saying "never know what volume some people have the center channel at" and as a mixer it's your call how to mix.
downside of avoidance of the center channel - if your mix include voice, you're forced to mix it with everything else and get
inevitable degradation of the tonal/harmonic coloration and liveness of vocal.
well it's not as bad when anyway everything is finalized into lossy format, because format by itself degrade everything, not
just voice. but when it's comes to high definition recording, the vox is last thing to something mess up with.
and when you said, in movies center channel used to keep dialogue in center of viewers attention, in music it's has very similar
purpose but on top of this (and that's very important) to isolate lead voice from negative impact of identical frequencies of
other components in mix.
 
Greetings all,
Kasson here... the making of the DVD itself (menus, etc) was not super fun and I'd have to find someone else to do that part of the process.

Hi Kasson, Welcome to QQ!

Many thanks for dropping by and giving us the neat background info to your Symbion Project in Quad 4.0!

I noticed you saying the DVD side of it was a bit of a chore and you'd need to delegate it in future.. QQ member Neil Wilkes may be able to help you with any future DVD authoring..

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/member.php?777-neil-wilkes

Maybe some day you can do a Q+A here after a few of us have heard your 4.0 Quad mix (I also ordered your disc the other day thanks to Piotrus' heads up here)..

Really looking forward to hearing your Quad mixes - even more so now you've mentioned the Elliot Scheiner connection, he's my surround hero (sadly he hasn't discovered this place yet)..

Hopefully you will be encouraged by this community to produce more surround music someday, there's thousands of us clamouring for new surround sounds!

All the best, Adam :)
 
Hi Kasson, thank you for becoming a member and great first post :) This is the right forum for all things surround.

As Adam said, Neil Wilkes is the man for dvd audio/video. Another help is Giancarlo Erra, member nosound, who does all mixing, mastering and authoring of the Nosound releases on dvd-a/v.
 
I have another quick question that I thought I'd first pose this group. Perhaps there is a thread about it already or info you all might have.
If I had my way, there would be no multichannel codecs, lossy or otherwise. My preference would be to create Quad 4.0 mixes (24bit, 44.1KHz is adequate) that are delivered as 4 discrete wav or aif files.
The listener would have a computer with a multichannel D/A and app that can playback these 4 files synchronously.
The music could easily be distributed online without the need for dvd's, region codes, barriers.

Does such a thing exist? If not, will it ever?
Going this route would make things much easier as a surround creator and also get away from having to use codecs and encoders (which are quite expensive).
I'm assuming one barrier here is that your surround systems are not like my studio, and that it's not powered amps that can be driven by a multichannel D/A as I have.
You use a surround receiver of some sort to decode and then the receiver either contains the amps that drive the passive speakers or the receiver sends the discrete channels to each amp that drives their speaker.
Is that correct? For me to have a single volume control over a multichannel stream of audio I have to use this:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1087475-REG/spl_splvolu8_volume8_multi_channel_volume.html

I can send the 4 channels of audio from a multichannel D/A and use this as volume control that goes to 4 powered speakers.

interested to hear what this group has to say on the matter...

cheers

Kasson
 
Welcome to QQ Kasson. Glad to have you here.

Many of us are moving away from disc based surround to file based surround. There are quite a few members here that are using devices like the Oppo 103 BluRay Universal player to play back 4 channel and 6 channel .wav and .flac files. The Oppo handles the playback, so if the user rips his DVD-A, SACD, quad conversion, or self-created multichannel file, it can be saved to a thumb drive or USB large drive and accessed using the remote control on the Oppo.

Home audio servers are also another way to play these back.

Offering a surround download for a price might be an easy way for an artist to market a surround presentation without having to go through the entire process of creating a DVD-V, DVD-A or SACD. This would make it so much easier as you can go right from the workstation to market.
 
Hello symbionproject, the Multi-Channel Musicians Studio section will try to help organize and answer questions for the musician. There is though throughout this site information about how to create a DVD-Audio disc, for instance. I also play music as well. Feel free to ask any questions about anything. Thanks.

Jim
 
Wow, what a great detailed post from you, symbionproject! Glad to have you here, it's always exciting when people involved in the music post here about their work. You've found a hungry and excited audience! :)

I can't wait to listen to that 4.0 mix. In the meantime, congratulations for the upcoming new album!
 
Kasson, thanks for all your information that you gave, great post and really looking forward to hearing your album in quad.
As others have said here Neil Wilkes has helped many artists get their music into lossless surround and his services can be found here: http://www.opusproductions.com/
Neil is helping another bandcamp artist to be heard in lossless surround and that is this one new one coming out from Ian Cooke coming out in August.
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...lbum-quot-Antiquasauria-quot-released-Aug-7th

Kasson have you listened to any of the fantastic surround recordings that Steven Wilson has done as Steven had 2 of his albums(Porcupine Tree) done by Elliot
Scheiner and Steven Wilson mixes(Yes,Xtc,Jethro Tull,King Crimson,Tears for Fears and many more) and they are fantastic. Steven like Elliot S. uses all 5.1 speakers. Steven's own latest album(Hand. Cannot. Erase.) needs to be heard in surround as it is absolutely amazing as he totally gets using the whole surround field to spread out all the music.
Glad you dropped by here.

peter
 
Any help on making it easier to produce and distribute DVD-based surround audio is much appreciated!
DVD based audio in general has two major formats:
unofficial Audio only DVD (ADVD)
official DVD Audio (DVD-A)
first one contains all data in VIDEO_TS folder, which is accessible to all existent hardware and software video players but limited to lossless
96kHz/24bit stereo and lossy 96kHz/24bit surround sound if DTS encoding used.


DVD Audio may contain same VIDEO_TS directory but additionally also has data in AUDIO_TS directory as a lossless stereo from 44.1kHz up
to 192kHz/24bit stereo and lossless 44.1kHz up to 96kHz/24bit surround sound. if 96/24 resolution is used for surround stream, MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing)
technology need to be used to encode audio data.
playback of content DVD-A possible only on hardware/software players, designed to recognize and read from AUDIO_TS directory, thus majority DVD-A produced
over the years, in fact an universal DVD-A, which duplicate similar material in both directories but in different quality/formats.

unfortunately there never been offered wide selection of software for creation DVD-A disc. the lone app Sonic DVD Audio Creator which can
create DVD-A on professional level and now is discontinued. next to Sonic is DiscWelder. it's not as advanced as Sonic in regards of building of
DVD-A architecture and navigation, but retains all necessary tools to work with audio streams, including MLP encoded.
there are bunch of other appz but to my knowledge they lack ability to work with MLP format, thus for surround are limited to 48kHz/24bit lossless PCM at best.


to be honest, i personally don't see necessity for you to move in such direction. albeit DVD-A continues to be manufactured and distributed,
in fact it is become obsolete format, which slowly but surely being replaced by Blu Ray audio only, which is accessible for playback to more
wider audience, as a blu ray player today can be found at nearly every household.
there are still question of the cost of blank medium and blu ray writers, but if the distribution isn't channeled through official retail, there are
small funny trick - blu ray format and disc architecture, been recorded on regular blank DVD, plays on all modern blu ray players exactly same
way as an official standard Blu Ray Disc. just the amount of data must not exit storage capacity of DVD disc.


convenient way of internet distribution was mentioned above by Jon.
single obstacle is an advancement of every particular end user in utilization of flac encoded surround format. thus most logical way to distribute
over internet non disc based audio would be to offer the same material as a flac file and ready to be burn onto disc image file either ADVD,
DVD-A or BD-A. in that way consumer have ability to choose what he or she found more comfortable to mess with.
 
Hi Kassan,
Welcome to QQ. Hopefully we'll get more surround releases from you :music
Cheers
Duncan
 
Guys... I think this is a great album. Very brooding and introspective, with deep dark droning bass that shakes the floor without being overwhelming. Quality musicianship, great arrangements (the strings!!) and strong music. You owe it to yourself to check out the Soundcloud link for the album, immerse yourself in the mood and hell yeah get the DVD.

I had a chance to listen to the Surround mix and it is highly active and immersive. I'd like to buy my own copy of this album in a manner that gives the artist the highest margin of revenue.

Symbionproject / Kasson: could you point me to the best place to do this? I couldn't find a shop link on your website, which I would have presumed would be the best way. I guess it's Bandcamp?
 
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