Development of the Overall Project

Throughout this project there were many points in which the concept changed and deviated until it arrived at the point of a strong research investigation. This section of the portfolio will underpin the changes that happened throughout this project and problems that were encountered before the researcher arrived at the final project Aim.

The first concepts for this project were not about music reproduction but about how to reproduce a live event. The Live Music Industry is an ever-growing sector in the Music Industry:

“In 2008, consumer spending on live music is reported by several sources to overtake spending on recorded music in the UK”

Frith Simon. 2010.

Analysing Live Music in the UK: Findings One Year into a Three-Year Research Project

Edinburgh, UK

It was this statement that inspired an idea that a music event could be reproduced over and over again by the use of surround sound. The project was based around comparing different surround audio production techniques to find out which would produce the best reproduction of the original event. However, it became clear that this idea was unrealistic given the time frame when evaluating the process of gathering recordings from local live events. There were two versions of each extract from the events utilizing different techniques, one known as “Upmixing”, which is where the centre and rear channels of the 5.1 system are created from the original stereo mix with added delay and phase differences. The other technique was recording the event utilizing 5.1 microphone arrays. Two events were recorded one DJ set in a local venue called Dukes Corner and the other a live performance from acoustic artist Rhauri Campbell.

It was evident that the difference between the production techniques was minimal and other reasons are also covered in the following points:

1. The lack of a large audience made it difficult to create recordings that contained a good enough amount of audible crowd noise. This is one of the main aspects of live music recordings that create a sense of listener immersion; so that the listener feels like they are in the crowd of the original event. Lack of crowd equals lack of sound sources to create better sense of directionality and localization.

2. Compromised microphone placement in the Dukes Corner event had undesired effects on the mix. The microphone array was supposed to be placed as close to the crowd as possible (ideally in the middle), however this was not possible due to the lack of outputs on the venues mixing desk to record line outs from the DJ's mixing decks. In light of this, a decision was made to place the array behind the DJ to create the mix from his perspective. However, due to the lack of people at the event the array was no longer capturing enough crowd ambience but instead only captured room ambience and reverberation.

3. Time scale at this point became a huge factor and in order to gain mixes that would be suitable for testing, a new event would have to be organized and promoted well enough that a large crowd would attend. Neither knowledge nor the resources were available to do this successfully within the time frame.

4. The whole project concept was weak, as most live event recordings are not completely audio based but most of the time include visuals for DVD and Television broadcast purposes. A large part of reproducing live events is obviously in the recording of the audio, however visuals also play a huge part in event reproduction.

New Concept:

It is for those reasons that the project concept was changed to a more stronger/solid idea. Throughout the duration of semester one while researching surround sound there were many references to surround sounds uses in the Film and Games Industry, however not much in the way of its uses in the Music Industry:

"In modern times we see it (Surround sound) firmly established in applications accompanying a picture for movies and television, but in other areas such as purely for music reproduction broad success has been more elusive. However using history as a guide to the future there may well be a broader place for surround music in coming years"

Holman Tomlinson, 2008, 

Surround Sound - Up and Running, Second Edition

Oxford, UK

It is for this reason that the project concept was changed: to focus on how and why 5.1 surround sound has become a standard format for the Film Industry and is becoming more popular in the Games Industry, with different surround systems such as headphones dedicated for purely gaming purposes. However, stereo is still the standard format for the music industry and not much in the way of surround audio is available purely for music reproduction. Thus, the final project concept was created in order to test the listener’s preference and find out the main differences between stereo and 5.1 surround sound speaker systems and their uses in music reproduction.

Aim:

An investigation into the listener preference between stereo and 5.1 surround sound playback formats. This study is purely investigating the listener preference between the two playback formats' uses in music reproduction.

Objectives:

1. Define the main differences between stereo and 5.1 surround music production.

2. Produce 5.1 Surround Sound mixes of two pieces of music from contrasting genres.

3. Test the Listener Preference between the Surround Sound mix and the original Stereo mix of the two contrasting pieces of music.

4. Find out how people currently purchase, access and playback their music.

Evaluating Achievement of Developing Personal Skills

In a previous post i described three aims in which i have set myself for the duration of the project in order to develop my personal skills as a sound engineer producing 5.1 music material:

1. Broaden knowledge of the mixing and mastering stages of 5.1 music production. 
2. Learn how to exploit the 5.1 mediums attributes to their full potential in remixing source material.
3. Develop investigative skills into cultural aspects relating to music reproduction.

I have achieved my first aim by providing summaries of the key difference between stereo and 5.1 music production preciously in my blog and in the main body of my dissertation. Not only this but not just in terms of studio music production but also live music production in the first few months of the development of my project concept. 

The second of my aims was achieved by applying the knowledge i had gained in researching the main differences in how each reproduction system is used in the separate stages of music production: How 5.1 music differs in the listening experience compared to stereo and the way in which studio effects are exploited through the reproduction system. I applied this knowledge practically in producing 5.1 mixes for two songs from contrasting genres. The reason for using contrasting genres was to again broaden my skills in mixing different instrumentation in 5.1, however it also served the purposes of the listening test as different genres are mixed differently and create different listening experiences.  

In trying to develop my investigative skills in terms of cultural aspects i produced a questionnaire to try and find out how people currently access and playback their music. This was in order to gain and understanding of what kind of impact does the way people access there music have on the reproduction system they use. In order to develop my skills in understanding the cultural side of things i also carried out research on different peoples states of involvement while listening or watching media. For instance a person with little knowledge 5.1 music and the way that it's produced will have an emotional response to the audio rather than someone with a lot of knowledge of the subject they will have a more analytical response according to (Media psychology  "is not yet there"- Introducing theories on the media entertainment to the presence debate by Christof Klimmt, Presence. Vol. 12 No. 4, August 2003, pg. 346-359).

Questionnaire Results

This questionnaire was created to achieve objective four of this project. Sixty-nine participants took part from the ages of 18-60 and from a variety of backgrounds such as audio and games development students, restaurant staff, music retailers, accountants and film industry professionals. The participants were accessed through Abertay University and online questionnaire tool Surveymonkey (2013), which allows surveys to be posted on social networking websites such as Facebook (2013).

The results show some interesting figures:

Figure - Question 1

Figure - Question 2

Figure - Question 6

The Figure for question one shows that only a third of the participants own a 5.1 surround sound system. This is interesting to see seen as this system has been around in the mass market for almost two decades and yet such a high percentage of the participants do not yet own one.

The following two questions were for the two thirds of the participants that do not own a 5.1 surround system. The aim of these questions was to find out if they would consider purchasing one and if not the reasons for this. The Figure for question two shows that just under 60% would consider buying a 5.1 system. The other 41.3% said that they would not consider purchase the system, this is a relatively high number and upon further investigation into the participants comments on question three and results for question six the reasons for this are clear. 

Participants comments on question three stated that they thought 5.1 systems were "too expensive" and even that "stereo is good enough for listening to music". The figure for question six again confirms that a high percentage of the participants still prefer stereo for music reproduction. 40.58% said that even given the choice they would still prefer to listen to their music in stereo format. 

Figure - Question 4

Figure - Question 5(A)

Figure - Question 5(B)

Questions four and five look further into the third of the participants that own a 5.1 system and what type of media they use their system for. It is shown is the figure for question four that the majority of the subjects that own a 5.1 system use it for films, games and television, however, almost 20% do use it for listening to music. These results confirm that the majority of surround sound owners do use their system for media with a visual basis. 

Question five's aim was to find out wether the participants knew if they had music in a surround sound format. This question has been split in to two different figures, one for only subjects that own a 5.1 system 5(A) and the other for all subjects 5(B). 

Question 5(A) shows that a high percentage of the subjects that own a 5.1 system either do not own or do not know if they own any music in a 5.1 format. 34.78% said that they don't own any music in 5.1 surround and the same percentage said that they do not know, this is almost 70% of the subjects that own a 5.1 system. It is very interesting that such a high percentage of system owners do not know if they own music in a surround format and is leading towards the notion that this is a gap in the consumer's knowledge about the difference between stereo and surround file formats. 

Looking at the figure for question 5(B) for all participants, it further confirms that there is a gap in the consumer's knowledge about music file formats. 56.52% of all the subjects said that they did not know if they owned music in a surround sound format. This gap in the consumer's knowledge could possibly be one of the reasons for the lack of the 5.1 systems use for purely music reproduction. 

Figure - Question 7

Questions seven and eight's aim was to find out how the subjects currently purchase/access and playback their music. The majority of the comments on question eight stated that they use headphones, computer speakers and car speakers for playing back their music. Headphones are not an ideal listening environment for stereo listening as they direct sound straight into the ear canal, this diminishes the cues for direction and localisation in human hearing (see glossary of terms human hearing section). 

Questions seven's figure shows that the majority of the subjects download or stream their music files. This means that they are most likely to be small compressed audio files such as MP3, which is a "lossy" format, this means that when the file is converted to an MP3 some of the music's detail is lost unlike Wave files used on CD's. Surround sound music files are likely to be very large compared to stereo MP3 files, this makes the probability of fast downloading or streaming less likely.