My band/project Eliphas My Master is going quadraphonic.

[Zeit]

Hey people. I'm back for a while. So.... My main musical project, and 2/3 of a band so far, Eliphas My Master plays heavy psychedelic rock/metal. Me and the bassist are from the Black Country, near Birmingham city centre. We are looking for a drummer, I might aswell throw that in there, in case any of you are young musicians.
Anyway, I figured out how to get near true (?) quadraphonic playback from my PC last night. I have an Alesis iO 26 configured for quad, then my media player, foobar2000 configured to convert stereo to 4 channel sound, and then I have 4 outputs on my Alesis iO 26 going to my Rotel RX-154A to the discrete (?) auxillary inputs. I tell ya, it really does sound amazing. And of course, I played the 2011 CD remaster of DSOTM last night to test it out, haha.
So I am intending, today, of configuring Cubase to start creating a seperate quadraphonic mix of the album I am working on currently. I already have a bunch of songs, mixed in stereo, of course, but I really want to create an alternate quadraphonic also. I feel super inspired and it seems I am becoming very ambitious now, the music is already tbh since it is very different, and unique IMO to anything in the rock/metal music scenes currently.
I am program all the drums on the recordings so far. If we manage to find a drummer, and go into a studio some day, then less work for me, but I really enjoy working at home at my own pace, without a producer I don't know interferring with my songs.
Does anyone have any tips and advice for me in regards to producing this quadraphonic mix of my album "Hymns to the New Dawn", please? I'm not expecting my music to be of many people's tastes on here, but I could be surprised. My music is all over the internet on various websites. If you search Eliphas My Master in Google, all my uploads will come up and my blog also where I am posting updates on the album's writing and record process.
What I'd especially like to know, is how to create quad files like wavs and mp3s and eventually, how to burn these to some sort of audio disc. I will mostly just distribute the quad files, to whoever has a suitable configuration to play them back.
I'm expecting all this to be at least a bit more complicated than I currently realise, so please, any help would be appreciated. Thanks a lot.



Jon

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Hi Jon, audiomuxer will do the trick. With this, you can join several mono wavs into one multi chanell wav. http://www.surroundbyus.com/pub/audiomuxer/AudioMuxer_User_Guide_Public.pdf

I do not think mp3 will do your music (or any music) any justice, I am listening now to some songs on reverbnation, and this needs room to breathe. Hi rez all the way

And burning discs (dvd-a or BD) is very easy with Cirlinca software.

 

[Zeit]

Thanks for the help Robert. Btw, what does BD stand for? And I will check out this Cirlinca software. Cheers!
So, I made a quad mix of one of my songs that will be on the album, earlier, and when I tried to export a mixdown, Cubase crashed, first time! I've got no idea what's wrong here. This will take some investigating. Does anyone have any experience with Cubase and this kind of error?

 

[kap'n krunch]

Good luck , Zelt...and remember MCH mixing is a VERY delicate art!!!! No matter what type of music you are doing...
I have mixed my last CD(I'm half the group) and it has taken me a LOT OF TIME...and love...

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Thanks for the help Robert. Btw, what does BD stand for? And I will check out this Cirlinca software. Cheers!
So, I made a quad mix of one of my songs that will be on the album, earlier, and when I tried to export a mixdown, Cubase crashed, first time! I've got no idea what's wrong here. This will take some investigating. Does anyone have any experience with Cubase and this kind of error?

You are welcome. BD is blu ray disk.

 

[grill]

Hello Zeit,

I'm pretty sure that there are members here, at SurroundSound google group and at SurroundByUs who have been into surround mixing for quite long time. Afaik they are mixing from stereo and multi-track sources as well. For stereo and multi-tracks some of them use SPEC and Reaper, respectively. I'm not a specialist so that's all I know about this topic.

 

[0tto]

i'm been listening some on youtube and catched myself on thinking that could be hard task to produce aggressive surround on those tracks.

 

[Zeit]

I managed to make a real time quad mixdown within the Cubase project by sending the quad output to a track and pressing record. It took two attempts to get a mix I thought was good enough, it's not perfect, but I am enjoying the challenge already, it sounds excellent. I have to get 2 more speakers to replace the rear ones I'm using because I want them all to be identical. That will step things up a few gears, it'll all sound even better. And you are surely right 0tt0. I am gonna do my best with recording the album and the mixes. Oh btw, I need some quad headphones now also, so I can mix early hours of the morning when I can't use my speakers. It seems like these headphones are pretty rare, is anyone selling a pair? Thanks.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

Hi Zeit and welcome to QQ.

This is what we have been wanting bands to do, remix their material into Multi-channel with the "Multi-Channel Musicians Studio" section we created here.

I've played around with the NIN Multi-channel tracks and RockBand .moogs using the surround mixer in Adobe Audition. From there one can create a DTS-CD or DVD-Audio disc.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

Do you have your stuff in mutli-track form or are you upmixing stereo into Multi-Channel?

BTW, I'm not sure how great Quad headphones would work for mixing, but you could try.

Edit: Feel free to ask us any questions if we could be of help. Also, if upmixing stereo into MC, the surroundbyus.com folks are very helpful as others have mentioned.

 

[Zeit]

I have one song so far in a quadraphonic wav file. The song project is completely multi channel. It still needs a bit of mixing, but it sounds pretty good already IMO.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

I have one song so far in a quadraphonic wav file. The song project is completely multi channel. It still needs a bit of mixing, but it sounds pretty good already IMO.

Absolutely great!

I too play music and what is fun is using one's creativity to remix the music in another form. One is able to hear sounds that tend to get buried in a stereo mix. It has also made me re-think how I record the music to begin with. What added sounds can do to the mix. Also, having more channels allows the music to breathe a bit more.

When recording new tracks, try to record at least 24 bit / 96 kHz if your system can handle it. You can if the tracks were recorded at CD quality (16/44.1), output to 24/44.1 for better sound for creating a DTS-CD or DVD-A. If you do DTS-CD or DVD-A, you'll want to have each track separate; LF, RF, LR and RR for disc authoring.

 

[timbre4]

Just in case, I record & mix 5.1 in Sony Acid and Vegas. These are either current digital projects or archived reels from TEAC 4 ch & Fostex 8 ch days.

Typically drum loops with guitars, basses, keyboards and the stray mandolin.

 

[0tto]

Oh btw, I need some quad headphones now also, so I can mix early hours of the morning when I can't use my speakers. It seems like these headphones are pretty rare, is anyone selling a pair? Thanks.

i would say, try to avoid to work with sound in headphones. even best ones. what do you need is at least 4 identical boxes.
if you can afford near field pro. monitors, it could be the best solution. if they too expensive at the moment, 4 usual will do
the job, just look ones with maximum sensitivity celling as this quite crucial when you work with HiRez sound. as OQG said,
96/24 is way to go. during the work in DAW even better to have those tracks as 32bit and then final mix convert to 24bit.

 

[Zeit]

Hello again everyone. Some news for you. I now have four identical speakers and I have started work on the quadraphonic mix of my first album Hymns to the New Dawn, even though I recently uploaded a 2nd album in standard stereo. The difficult thing with creating a quad mix of my music is gonna be finding people who both appreciate my music and who also have the right equipment to play my quadraphonic mixes back. I do not yet have a big fanbase for my music, so it's incredibly "niche". Here is a direct link to my music, if you want to check it out in stereo on SoundCloud... http://soundcloud.com/eliphas-my-master

There will be more updates in the future for those that are interested, thank you.


jM

 

[Zeit]

Hey people. I am back for a while. I had lost interest in my mixing my first album in quad for a while... It came back last week while sitting in my beanbag in the middle of my living room admiring... of course, DSOTM in SQ. I got up and hooked up the cables immediately, and here I am now, listening to a quad mixdown of track 3 from the album. I now have 4 tracks roughly mixed in quadraphonic sound. There are 10 on the album, so, a long way to go yet.
The project will surely be having its name changed very soon, and all my latest work is going up on my real name SoundCloud as of a few weeks ago. This is the link... http://soundcloud.com/jonathyn-morgan
Crawl Through the Iris is possibly the most progressive song I have composed to date. It would benefit highly from a quad mix also, since there are many, many guitar tracks. Hope you all dig it. Thanks for reading.

jM

 

[kap'n krunch]

Sounds great, Zeit!
Glad you got back into track...my group's CD/DVD is now being mastered and authored in MLP 4.0 , DTS 96/24 and PCM Stereo, and I'l be more than glad to get yours when it's out!!!
QUAD RULES, once you go Quad , you'll NEVER go back!!!!

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Hey people. I am back for a while. I had lost interest in my mixing my first album in quad for a while... It came back last week while sitting in my beanbag in the middle of my living room admiring... of course, DSOTM in SQ. I got up and hooked up the cables immediately, and here I am now, listening to a quad mixdown of track 3 from the album. I now have 4 tracks roughly mixed in quadraphonic sound. There are 10 on the album, so, a long way to go yet.
The project will surely be having its name changed very soon, and all my latest work is going up on my real name SoundCloud as of a few weeks ago. This is the link... http://soundcloud.com/jonathyn-morgan
Crawl Through the Iris is possibly the most progressive song I have composed to date. It would benefit highly from a quad mix also, since there are many, many guitar tracks. Hope you all dig it. Thanks for reading.

jM

Hi Jonathyn, thanks for the update. Crawl Through the Iris sounds as a great song, although I am only listening on my pc speakers.

A quad mix might be a niche. On the other hand, it can open up the fanbase of quad/5.1 mixes in general to your music.

Success with the mixing process and looking forward to hear the finished album.

 

[Zeit]

So, I now have 5 tracks from Hymns to the New Dawn in 4 channel wav files, early quadraphonic mixes. Listening to them all back now. I've made some mixing notes which I will refer to when I go back to individual songs. I think I'm gonna create rough mixes for the next 5 songs also, and then go through them all in album running order to finalize, and go back to whichever songs need adjustment when it is apparent during playback.
It's proving to be a slow, fragmented process, since I have recorded a large amount of music since 2010, so I am kind of in a cooled off period lately, haha.
Hymns to the New Dawn (Quadraphonic Edition) will probably be completed some time within next month. Then I will attempt to burn the album to DVD-A discs for the first time ever and whoever is curious to hear my work shall receive a copy in the mail no problems. I've sent my CDR demos Worldwide many times since 2011, and I enjoy doing so!

 

[Robert van Diggele]

Definitely interested to hear the quad mix!