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.