SPOTLIGHT QQ forum members collaboration on new 5.1 and Atmos mix

[stoopid]

By sheer luck after I posted in Mr Afternoon's new album thread early July about my last two albums being possible surround mix candidates, forum member Jared (Methuselah’s Grandpa) reached out privately offering his services. Not even two months later the 5.1 and Atmos mixes went live today on IAA and Bandcamp. Jared did an amazing job having only the stems from when I archived the project files to work with.

Our band's musical style is best described as alternative rock, not a genre well represented in the surround landscape. I joke that our music is kinda like "a guilty pleasure for prog fans", since I don't try to weave super elaborate or note flooded passages, but there's often wide stylistic diversity within and between tracks. My personal interests as a fan of music vary a lot, but I am admittedly not a classically trained musician or someone who spends hours everyday honing mastery at their instrument(s). It's the varied musical interest that comes through in unique ways as you'll hear by the third track on this latest album, "Middle Ages".

I [Kevin] play and produce the music, and my long time friend Scott writes most of the lyrics and does all the vocals. Scott also got more involved in compositional decisions through the use of remote sessions, streaming the DAW audio over the internet so he could make suggestions and fine tune things with me in realtime. It worked out quite well, several interesting ideas he had were only possible because we could work on them over the course of an hour what would previously have taken us many many hours of frustration composing over the phone with only adequate results.

Lyrically this is a dark album. Scott delves into self reflection and societal critique with an unforgiving sharp tongue. There's a beauty in exploring the darkness, and I feel like there's tremendous value in his level of sincerity.

Jared is trying to generate some clients from this (and the next) surround release, so please share (maybe purchase?) and hopefully we can help him gain some traction in the mixing space. Without further ado, here's the links to the album with various low cost price points and format options.

Ummm "Middle Ages" available here:

IAA 5.1 and Atmos ($5.99 / $7.99): https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/product/middle-ages-umm-5-1-flac-atmos-mkv-mp4/

Bandcamp 5.1 and DTS-CD ( ) ($6.99)

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

After over 1000 unofficial "bootleg" mixes under my alias of "Methuselah's Grandpa", I am so happy to have my first "official" surround mixing credits (Jared Good)!

I found myself really growing to love this album as I mixed it, ...for an "alternative rock" album, I was pleasantly surprised with how diverse the album is; ...not just rock songs, but acoustic, experimental, & progressive songs with synths, strings, etc. The last track "Yes, You" starts out like a modern interpretation of an 80s synth-based song and by the time the song (& album) reaches the climax, ...there's a fiddle, banjo & even an accordion joining in and it all just fits! What I also found impressive about the album is despite the differences in certain styles or genres from one song to another, the album has a nice flow to it with a cohesive theme (middle age), something that is increasingly rare these days.

From a surround-sound mixing perspective, I definitely lean towards more discrete & maybe even what some would call "aggressive" panning more-so than an ambient-driven style of surround mixing. My introduction into multi-channel music was quadraphonic, & while my mixes may not be that extreme, in a round-about way they are inspired by those old quads.

As far as this album's surround mixes, I tried to offer a more exciting way to experience the music but still trying to stay true to the artists' intent and to not add wild panning or "gimmicks" just anywhere or just for the sake of doing that sort of thing. That being said, if I think that a certain sound or section of a particular song called for something special or different, I looked forward to adding some active panning there; because in my opinion, that's part of what makes surround sound music so cool and enjoyable.
The album, 'Middle Ages' is a cohesive & thematic album, & despite the different styles of songs on the album, I tried as best as I could to allow those songs to share a somewhat similar surround space or atmosphere. It's impressive to me that the band "Ummm" is just two people; Kevin, who is a very talented musician and producer and Scott, who is an equally talented singer & songwriter. Now, I am proud of my own contribution, to allow the listener to experience the music in a new and perhaps more enjoyable way than is possible in stereo.

I encourage you all to give the album a listen, it's not expensive & it's well worth it IMO. The stereo release seemed to get lost in the vast endless sea of new stereo releases last year so I am hoping that these new surround mixes will offer up a sort-of 2nd chance for 'Middle Ages' to be heard by more people and I also hope that I am able to continue on my surround sound mixing path by being part of projects like this.

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

The previews on IAA only stream as stereo so I figured I could share the same song samples as what's on IAA but offer them as 5.1 flac here:



I can't vouch for other web browsers, but I am able to stream 5.1 mixes directly from my Chrome browser so you might not even need to download the file in order to play it in surround sound.

 

[beerking]

Ooh I missed this thread!!
Will check out the tunes .

 

[AYanguas]

These rock songs sound appealing to my "prog" taste.
I'm interested in Jared's Atmos mix. I just bought it at IAA.

 

[woody]

Having heard some of Jared’s mixes I can vouch that he’s star quality in the making. No doubt these are high quality and engaging.

 

[stoopid]

We would appreciate reviews on the IAA site for those who have purchased it, could help convince the weary into a purchase.

[at the bottom of the page is a place for entering a review]
https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/product/middle-ages-umm-5-1-flac-atmos-mkv-mp4/

 

[kfbkfb]

My super old school request (I only have Dolby Pro-Logic 2 music mode decoding, which will do a fairly good job of decoding the Sansui QS quadraphonic matrix):

Please consider encoding this 5.1 content into stereo using the all-software QS matrix encoder:
https://quark.cykik.com/
and making the resulting encoded stereo available as a stereo MP3 purchase/download.


Kirk Bayne

 

[stoopid]

My super old school request (I only have Dolby Pro-Logic 2 music mode decoding, which will do a fairly good job of decoding the Sansui QS quadraphonic matrix):

Please consider encoding this 5.1 content into stereo using the all-software QS matrix encoder:
https://quark.cykik.com/
and making the resulting encoded stereo available as a stereo MP3 purchase/download.


Kirk Bayne

If you buy the 5.1 (with bonus DTS-CD) from Bandcamp linked above/first post, it comes with the original stereo mix. I have my own private stereo downmix of Jared's 5.1 mix, and it's very similar to my original but with a few things slightly out of balance since stereo wasn't Jared's intent. You can also buy the original stereo mix through bandcamp, apple itunes, amazon, etc as it was widely distributed. Spotify also has it for streaming.

If someone buys the Bandcamp version [we have had a couple sales recently] and it doesn't allow you to also download the stereo mix from Bandcamp, let me know.

 

[kfbkfb]

If you buy the 5.1 (with bonus DTS-CD) from Bandcamp linked above/first post, it comes with the original stereo mix. I have my own private stereo downmix of Jared's 5.1 mix, and it's very similar to my original but with a few things slightly out of balance since stereo wasn't Jared's intent. You can also buy the original stereo mix through bandcamp, apple itunes, amazon, etc as it was widely distributed. Spotify also has it for streaming.

A QS quadraphonic matrix encoded 5.1 -> encoded stereo version would be useful to me due to my older surround sound receiver decoding options.


Kirk Bayne

 

[stoopid]

A QS quadraphonic matrix encoded 5.1 -> encoded stereo version would be useful to me due to my older surround sound receiver decoding options.


Kirk Bayne

Oh I missed the intent of the request (the encoding part). I might even be able to do that for you. Let me check how 'complicated' that might be, as I likely still have the 6 channel dts stems and if it's not time consuming I'll give it a whirl.

 

[kfbkfb]

My suggestion is to use the already mixed 5.1 mix, add the .1 audio equally to the (quadraphonic) LF and RF and also add the 5.1 Center Front equally to LF and RF, creating a 4.0 quadraphonic mix which could be fed to a QS matrix quadraphonic encoder to produce an encoded stereo output.

This encoded stereo could be provided to the various streaming services and sold/given away as a stereo MP3.

One advantage of this method is that a separate stereo mix doesn't need to be made.


Kirk Bayne

 

[stoopid]

My suggestion is to use the already mixed 5.1 mix, add the .1 audio equally to the (quadraphonic) LF and RF and also add the 5.1 Center Front equally to LF and RF, creating a 4.0 quadraphonic mix which could be fed to a QS matrix quadraphonic encoder to produce an encoded stereo output.

This encoded stereo could be provided to the various streaming services and sold/given away as a stereo MP3.

One advantage of this method is that a separate stereo mix doesn't need to be made.


Kirk Bayne

Do you happen to know if the plugin will work in PC based DAWs? (intel processor) It specifically mentions Mac OS on the download page, I assume this is developed only for operation in that OS. Not sure what Jared uses, he would need to chime in/express interest.

 

[kfbkfb]

I don't use a DAW, I don't know if the QUARK QS encoder will work with the Windows OS.

Maybe ask a friend with a Mac to do the QS encoding (provide them with the 4.0 quadraphonic mix as 4 .wav files and they would give back 2 .wav files containing the encoded stereo).


Kirk Bayne

 

[stoopid]

I don't use a DAW, I don't know if the QUARK QS encoder will work with the Windows OS.

Maybe ask a friend with a Mac to do the QS encoding (provide them with the 4.0 quadraphonic mix as 4 .wav files and they would give back 2 .wav files containing the encoded stereo).


Kirk Bayne

That would be Jared, if he uses a Mac. I don't know any musicians well enough to think they would volunteer their time to do this for me, and I don't expect enough revenue to be generated to pay someone to do it. There might be other (windows compatible) options available that accomplish the same thing, but researching that quickly runs out of runway in my time/interest. We'll know at some point if Jared can/cares. Appreciate the suggestion either way, was definitely not a format we had ever discussed for release.