Surround sound in theatre?

[alan1180]

Working on a production of Miss Saigon very soon and I've been asked if its possible to have surround sound for a helicopter sound effect that needs to travel from behind the audience around their right side and onto stage!

 

The sound system already installed in the theatre is typical left and right, how can get it to be surround sound?

 

Alan

[DrummerJonny]

2 Stereo Tracks played simultaneously (Or a surround sound track and suitable player) With one pair fed through the main Left / Right and the other fed through a couple of auxes to additional speakers positioned at the rear of the theatre.

 

On the first show I worked as a sound tech, back at school, I achieved a workable effect with a stereo track by simply turning up / down the channel faders and auxes, however this was with a number of short sounds. (screeches that needed to come from different points in the room)

 

EDIT: Assuming you have your aux feeds on faders (or can accurately turn pots well enough, the following may work:

 

Stereo track fed to Left/Right and 2 Auxes:

Aux 1 is a single speaker / pair at the back of the room.

Aux 2 is a speaker to the right of the room.

 

Start the track, L/R faders down, Aux 1 up.

Bring Aux 1 down, Aux 2 Up,

Then bring Aux 2 Down, L/R up.

 

Some messing with timings / multi-finger fader skills may be needed to make this sound good.

 

Alternatively, Stereo track that pans Left to Right going into 2 channels on the desk, both set to centre pan. Same Aux / speaker setup as above.

 

Left Channel Feeds Auxes 1 and 2

Right Channel feeds Auxes 2 and Left/Right.

 

assuming the tracks sum correctly into aux 2, and the level increases correctly, that would work.

[markt_20]

You can't with just L&R

 

Alot of engineers go with quadrophonic, however, getting this to sound right is a nightmare because of the rate sound travels and at the delays that need to be put on the signal.

 

However, if your space isn't that big I would put 2 speakers front L&R and 2 speakers Back L&R, you will need to record the sound using a program able to do that though, normally high end recording software

 

Also you have to think about the CD players, industry standard CD players are L&R, you would need to find an old DVD player that had separate outs for each channel, assuming you aren't using a digital console.

 

Good luck!

 

Mark

[paulears]

Multi-channel sound really isn't much of a problem for effects? Run the sound effect off a laptop with a multichannel interface - loads around now that do 4 or more, and some extra speakers (active or with external amps). Your helicopter can be pretty impressive - just automate the sound in some software - a sequencer would be simplest, and away you go, a helicopter that can take off, then fly over the audience's heads! You can ignore delays, because you're talking about a complex sound effect, not a coherent single voice - where the delays would create intelligibility issues. The sound of a helicopter won't be a problem at all - and the time differences will probably enhance the effect, not spoil it. Back in the 70s they did it without clever electronics, and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds in the stadium tours did quad for the effects very successfully - for everyone's seating position.

 

If you have a tiny budget, then free software like audacity will be able to do the multi channel playback for you.

[andy_s]

Like Paul says, you don't need fancy electronics, just speakers in the right place and a pan control on your mixing desk.

 

at one of my first jobs in the early nineteen eighties, the theatre had a mixing desk made by Electrosonic with a "quad pot", a little joystick which you could use to pan around four outputs. much quicker to plot than to programme in Qlab.

 

It also had a built-in spring reverb, if I remember rightly. Long before onboard effects engines, when yamaha (as far as I knew anyway) only made mopeds with high-pitched engines...

[J Pearce]

If you want to dig into it you could look at ambisonics, rather easy to implement now thanks to research work at Derby Uni which has made plugins and tools.

 

Whilst at Derby a group of us used ambisonics to record, synthesise, and play back a helicopter ride. From memory we used 18 speakers (with height up to 5m), but the beauty of an ambisonic system is that the same source files could be played back on any system from mono to ridiculous setups like ours.

 

This flexibility is useful as one can define where the speakers are and the maths then works out what should be sent from the 4 ch encoded system to accurately and believably generate that 'corner' or point source in the sound field.

 

Dead easy to playback now with multichannel sound cards and digital boards being easily accessible.

[Simon Lewis]

For those who are interested in ambisonics, here's the work that Jon mentioned...

[DrV]

Long before onboard effects engines, when yamaha (as far as I knew anyway) only made mopeds with high-pitched engines...

Ahem, I think you'll find that Yamaha started in the music business - is their logo not three entwined tuning forks...?;)

Dave

[dbuckley]

Have a look at the video below, done by sound designer (and, I suspect, and perhaps hope, fully fledged nutter) Brian MacQueen. He doesn't tell you how to do surround in a theatre, put illustrates the importance of more than just panning, and gives a little insight into what sound design really is.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJFGQud_-xc

 

Edited for spelling.

[andy_s]

Long before onboard effects engines, when yamaha (as far as I knew anyway) only made mopeds with high-pitched engines...

Ahem, I think you'll find that Yamaha started in the music business - is their logo not three entwined tuning forks...?;)

Dave

I dare say you are right, you will note the bracketed qualification in my remarks. In 1984 I had certainly never seen or heard of any yamaha-branded sound equipment...

[paulears]

I still have the very first Yamaha digital audio processor - sampled reverb from buildings around the world and what we would now see as a digital reverb. I still use it for one programme - Munich Cathedral. It has front and two rear L+R and dates to about 85.

 

From wiki - their history is interesting.

 

Yamaha expanded into many diverse businesses. The first venture into each major category is listed below.

1897 Keyboard Instruments (reed organ, pianos in 1900)

1903 Furniture

1914 Harmonicas

1922 Audio Equipment (crank phonograph first)

1942 Guitars

1954 Small engines and vehicles/watercraft (YA-1 motorcycle first)

1959 Sporting Goods (starting with archery)

1959 Music Schools

1961 Metal alloys

1965 Band Instruments (trumpet first)

1971 Semiconductors

1984 Industrial Robots

2000 Recorded Music (record company YMC)

[Bobbsy]

My first adventure with using surround in a live setting was also a helicopter swinging over the audience back to front with a slight circle in the middle (but not Miss Saigon...it was a rather unusual production of Oliver set in modern day dress. Don't ask.).

 

I did it a bit different than suggested above. My DAW is Adobe Audition which can do surround on discrete tracks (and I have a multi track interface between my laptop and my mixer as well. I actually pre-made all the moves (but did them in the theatre over a break during the bump in so I could hear it there). Then, since I don't have a multi channel capability on my playback software, I actually used Audition to play back that effect (and a couple around it to avoid a rush changing programmes). Worked a treat. I know that such effects aren't perfect since every audience member gets a slightly different perspective--but just the suggestion was enough for people to hear a chopper flying over their heads.

 

FYI, if your DAW can't handle surround (and it's time to think about getting one that can as you'll be asked for such things more and more often) Audition has a 28 day free trial (full featured) you can download.

[kitlane]

For those who are interested in ambisonics, here's the work that Jon mentioned...

 

If you are really, REALLY, interested in spatial sound then come to our conference.

 

Sounds in Space 2013

[DrewWhite]

I did this production myself last September. I looked at lots of options for the surround sound, from moving the sound round the room using auxes as DrummerJonny suggested (too fiddly in my opinion) to trying to automate the desk (a Yamaha LS9-32, which would have taken an age to program!). In the end I used my old favourite, QLab.

 

The show was being performed in a 150 seat studio theatre. My set up was as follows:

Main house left and right (plus a house sub),

4 powered monitors (Mackie SRM450s) - two positioned mid-way down the seating rake (left and right) and one in each of the rear corners.

I then had a laptop running QLab connected to an interface with mulitple outputs.

 

It was then a case of finding a number of helicopter sound effects (one that entered left and exited right, one that could be looped etc) and simply used QLab and fade cues to move the audio around the room.

 

For the main helicopter escape during the nightmare sequence we used this sound rig combined with 6 Martin AF1 DMX fans to create a downdraft on the audience that moved with the sound effect and just off upstage left we had a VPP with a stagehand carrying a bar with two pinspots on it. At the right moment (when the sound effect reached that corner) the lights came on and the VPP descended, giving the illusion that the helicopter was landing just offstage. It then "took off" again and the sound effect traveled back around the room before fading off.

 

It was a bit 'Heath Robinson' but very effective once the orchestra were going full blast and the actors really helped sell it!

 

Depending on budget (and how many outputs you have on your audio interface) the number of 'surround' speakers could easily be increased.

 

Hope it all goes ok for you, it's a great show and a lot of fun to mix, especially if you've got the full 20 piece orchestra!

[Ynot]

On a similar vein, I've just acquired a 4-channel output soundcard for use in our house sound PC - question is, are there any actual SFX software packages out there that can address and play them (as well as standard stereo FX) quad channel effects as part of the standard cue list type?

I have a couple of projects coming up later in the year that would definitely benefit from quad SFX, as well as quad video clips...