QuadG and I were able to attend this years 7th Annual International Surround Conference and the Surround Music Awards at the Beverly Hilton.
We gained a valuable insight into both the people and the state of the Surround Sound Music industry as of December '05! There is so much to cover I'm going to end up breaking this into a number of posts and will start it off with this as an "overall" feel of what we experienced.
First off, it was a fantastic experience for a couple of "old" quaddies! While the actual conference might be considered "small" with somewhere around 100 attendees.......those attending are enormous in the world of Surround music today! Elliot Scheiner, Greg Penny, Ed Cherney, Nate Kunkel, Gary Lux, George Massenburg, Al Schmitt........if you don't know who these people are, check your SACDs and DVDAs and look under 5.1 or Surround mixers/engineers! It was a small enough setting that we were able to really have some great discussions with many of them, and they didn't throw us out when we mentioned "quadraphonic"!!
What I would say overall from the "Surround Mixing" professionals viewpoint is that they are as dedicated and committed as we could ever hope for! THEY get it, they hate the format wars as much as the rest of us.....and for their own (deservedly) interest want to see as much surround music in the marketplace as they can get.....and are even willing to sacrifice to see it succeed! In the Surround Music Mixers Forum they even talked about doing 5.1 mixes ON THEIR OWN without a contract or compensation just to promote it to both the Artists and labels.......basically admitting that if they didn't, it wouldn't happen in many cases!
A demonstrative discussion occurred during the forum for "Surround Evolution: The Label View" the panel for which included: Paul Bishow of Universal Music/eLabs, Ted Cohen of EMI, and the President of Silverline Records........when Paul Bishow commented that at this moment the driving force for new releases is the artists themselves, to which Elliot Scheiner responded "I've got 4 titles in the can, AND the artists approval....so where do I drop them off?" But, it isn't really as adversarial as that sounds......the Labels DO care, there was a little finger-pointing going on as to both the state of "SACD/DVDA" and the current dearth of new releases. But all were hopeful and enthusiastic about the possibilities with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD....of course if it happens, they come out smelling like roses, and WE have to buy the new players and discs! There did seem to be agreement from all sides that in order to maintain any kind of disc media distribution model that they are used to, that media will have to offer "more" than you can get through downloads, streaming, etc. And, one of the best ways to do that is through the "deluxe" packaging, special releases AND surround sound options to bring more value to the customer. A notable absentee from this discussion was any representation from Sony/BMG.............'nuff said!
Another interesting forum was the "Lowdown on Upmixing" forum featuring representatives of software based "decoding/synthesizing" (to use our ancient quad terms) technology to create 5.1 mixes from stereo or even MONO masters/material. They started off by demonstrating their abilities over a very impressive 5.1 system setup around all of us attending.....sidenote, the speakers used were top of the line Genelec's which at $7K EACH certainly DID sound great.......especially if you've got an extra $35K laying around! Anyway, the demo's from an old quaddies viewpoint was really less than awe-inspiring........leaving no doubt as to why most of us have learned to avoid those "stunning 5.1" releases! They sure made me feel good about my Vario-matrix efforts though! Elliot Scheiner and Nate Kunkel took the lead from the audience........first blasting the producer/labels that couldn't find the time/$$/commitment to tracking down the multitrack masters and "doing it right"! Then, calling for at a minimum labeling to inform the consumer that the title was reprocessed from a stereo/mono or other than discrete multitrack sources. I almost had the feeling that if this had been a meeting of the Crips and Bloods.......there would have been bodies all over the place!
I'll touch on specifics and other events in further posts.......
QB
We gained a valuable insight into both the people and the state of the Surround Sound Music industry as of December '05! There is so much to cover I'm going to end up breaking this into a number of posts and will start it off with this as an "overall" feel of what we experienced.
First off, it was a fantastic experience for a couple of "old" quaddies! While the actual conference might be considered "small" with somewhere around 100 attendees.......those attending are enormous in the world of Surround music today! Elliot Scheiner, Greg Penny, Ed Cherney, Nate Kunkel, Gary Lux, George Massenburg, Al Schmitt........if you don't know who these people are, check your SACDs and DVDAs and look under 5.1 or Surround mixers/engineers! It was a small enough setting that we were able to really have some great discussions with many of them, and they didn't throw us out when we mentioned "quadraphonic"!!
What I would say overall from the "Surround Mixing" professionals viewpoint is that they are as dedicated and committed as we could ever hope for! THEY get it, they hate the format wars as much as the rest of us.....and for their own (deservedly) interest want to see as much surround music in the marketplace as they can get.....and are even willing to sacrifice to see it succeed! In the Surround Music Mixers Forum they even talked about doing 5.1 mixes ON THEIR OWN without a contract or compensation just to promote it to both the Artists and labels.......basically admitting that if they didn't, it wouldn't happen in many cases!
A demonstrative discussion occurred during the forum for "Surround Evolution: The Label View" the panel for which included: Paul Bishow of Universal Music/eLabs, Ted Cohen of EMI, and the President of Silverline Records........when Paul Bishow commented that at this moment the driving force for new releases is the artists themselves, to which Elliot Scheiner responded "I've got 4 titles in the can, AND the artists approval....so where do I drop them off?" But, it isn't really as adversarial as that sounds......the Labels DO care, there was a little finger-pointing going on as to both the state of "SACD/DVDA" and the current dearth of new releases. But all were hopeful and enthusiastic about the possibilities with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD....of course if it happens, they come out smelling like roses, and WE have to buy the new players and discs! There did seem to be agreement from all sides that in order to maintain any kind of disc media distribution model that they are used to, that media will have to offer "more" than you can get through downloads, streaming, etc. And, one of the best ways to do that is through the "deluxe" packaging, special releases AND surround sound options to bring more value to the customer. A notable absentee from this discussion was any representation from Sony/BMG.............'nuff said!
Another interesting forum was the "Lowdown on Upmixing" forum featuring representatives of software based "decoding/synthesizing" (to use our ancient quad terms) technology to create 5.1 mixes from stereo or even MONO masters/material. They started off by demonstrating their abilities over a very impressive 5.1 system setup around all of us attending.....sidenote, the speakers used were top of the line Genelec's which at $7K EACH certainly DID sound great.......especially if you've got an extra $35K laying around! Anyway, the demo's from an old quaddies viewpoint was really less than awe-inspiring........leaving no doubt as to why most of us have learned to avoid those "stunning 5.1" releases! They sure made me feel good about my Vario-matrix efforts though! Elliot Scheiner and Nate Kunkel took the lead from the audience........first blasting the producer/labels that couldn't find the time/$$/commitment to tracking down the multitrack masters and "doing it right"! Then, calling for at a minimum labeling to inform the consumer that the title was reprocessed from a stereo/mono or other than discrete multitrack sources. I almost had the feeling that if this had been a meeting of the Crips and Bloods.......there would have been bodies all over the place!
I'll touch on specifics and other events in further posts.......
QB