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Old 4th March 2005, 11:42   #1  |  Link
tlavell
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Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Hi All,

I have listended, read and trialed everything possible including all the bidule SRS circle surround etc etc and have come to an astounding conclusion " Its a Personal Taste Scenario". The contributions to this Forum help everyone make a decision and I have made mine and would like to share it.

As I said its a personal choice but the algorithm based number crunchers such as SRS and the Bidule methods left me slightly cold because YES they surrounded you but did not seperate the sounds in the Mix. I have bought pro DTS/ SACD/ DVDA where the multi channel sound has been made up of seperate instruments and this is what I prefer and have been searching for at a low cost so as to upgrade my CD library.

So I messed about with Adobe Audition and found its Centre Extractor can do many things. One is it can sepearte the stereo sound stage.

By capturing the wide right and left I get usually single instruments and Harmonies which I use as the surround channels

I then capture a more narrow sound stage without the Vocals for the front L&R channels , this usually gives percussion and rythm

Finally a very narrow capture gives the vocals.
I do not capture an LFE beacause I have a hefty sound system

I then encode the mono wavs using Surcode DTSCD onto a CDRW , listen to the result and fine tune the centre and surround levels before burning a CD. This is more labour intensive but for me more satisfactory as it is a hobby.

My settings for Adobe Audition will be posted on daphy's needfulthings . It is currently posted at http://s10.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3...A0KUURR7D640ZZ

I could not get any sound files on there because of a size limitation. but if any body wants to hear the results I will email 5 mono MP3s. I have been compiling a POCO greatest hits and EAGLES.

If you prefer a more seperated sound you will enjoy. Let me know

Terry

Last edited by tlavell; 10th March 2005 at 08:10.
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Old 8th March 2005, 15:15   #2  |  Link
daphy
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-> check your PM

please upload your settings/files on 'needfulthings' -> upload section
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Last edited by daphy; 8th March 2005 at 15:43.
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Old 8th March 2005, 15:36   #3  |  Link
echooff
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Can you post your settings here or e-mail/pm them to me. I can't log in there.
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Old 9th March 2005, 06:01   #4  |  Link
soundz
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Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by tlavell
Hi All,

I have listended, read and trialed everything possible including all the bidule SRS circle surround etc etc and have come to an astounding conclusion " Its a Personal Taste Scenario". The contributions to this Forum help everyone make a decision and I have made mine and would like to share it.

As I said its a personal choice but the algorithm based number crunchers such as SRS and the Bidule methods left me slightly cold because YES they surrounded you but did not seperate the sounds in the Mix. I have bought pro DTS/ SACD/ DVDA where the multi channel sound has been made up of seperate instruments and this is what I prefer and have been searching for at a low cost so as to upgrade my CD library.

So I messed about with Adobe Audition and found its Centre Extractor can do many things. One is it can sepearte the stereo sound stage.

Terry
Yes, I have been using Audition's CCE for quite a while and I'm getting excellent results; I haven't posted anything here about it because it seems that the discussion of upmixing is a bit dead here for a while; it basically ended with the V.I and II VST plugs (which I respect).

I've developed a method and I have a great number of samples (single songs); I also converted a few whole albums. The secret with Audition is "moderation", it is very easy to overdo things with the Center Channel Extractor, a tool that can produce horrible results if not used judiciously.

Best,

soundz
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Old 9th March 2005, 07:54   #5  |  Link
daphy
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Hi folks,

tlavellīs guide reached me yesterday evening, I will add it this afternoon

Edit: temp download

@soundz

please upload your methode, too.

THX

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Last edited by daphy; 9th March 2005 at 09:29.
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Old 9th March 2005, 14:26   #6  |  Link
ursamtl
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Re: Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by soundz
The secret with Audition is "moderation", it is very easy to overdo things with the Center Channel Extractor, a tool that can produce horrible results if not used judiciously.

Best,

soundz
I agree with you on this one. I didn't try the CCE a lot, but when I listened to isolated tracks produced using CCE, I noted a bit of "phasy" or "warbling" sounds. Could you post your settings? I'd like to try Audition again when I have some time as I'd like to develop a guide for using it with surrounds generated using II. If I could combine this with center extraction and not get the warbling, it might give some really good results. When I've tried other methods of center extraction, it removes the lower frequencies too much from the front left and right channels, which can be bad news for people who do not have a center speaker that's the same as the left and right ones.

Regards,
Steve.
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Old 9th March 2005, 17:33   #7  |  Link
tlavell
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adobe surround CCE settings

Hi all,

The settings I have provided are not extreme and have been arrived at through careful listening. The phasing and warbling noises are heard when the incorrect settings are used.

i suggest you try settings , everthing in this game is suck it and see.
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Old 9th March 2005, 23:21   #8  |  Link
soundz
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Re: adobe surround CCE settings

Quote:
Originally posted by tlavell
Hi all,

The settings I have provided are not extreme and have been arrived at through careful listening. The phasing and warbling noises are heard when the incorrect settings are used.

i suggest you try settings , everthing in this game is suck it and see.
Hi!

Please don't get me wrong, I never said that your settings were extreme, I just stated that it is easy to overdo the Center Channel Extractor!

Best,

soundz
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Old 10th March 2005, 00:04   #9  |  Link
soundz
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Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by ursamtl
I agree with you on this one. I didn't try the CCE a lot, but when I listened to isolated tracks produced using CCE, I noted a bit of "phasy" or "warbling" sounds. Could you post your settings? I'd like to try Audition again when I have some time as I'd like to develop a guide for using it with surrounds generated using II. If I could combine this with center extraction and not get the warbling, it might give some really good results. When I've tried other methods of center extraction, it removes the lower frequencies too much from the front left and right channels, which can be bad news for people who do not have a center speaker that's the same as the left and right ones.

Regards,
Steve.
Hi Steve,

I like you V.I, I think it is a good implementation of Ambisonics for surround audio.

I have a few comments about it that will be sent privately to avoid cluttering the forum with personal chatting.

There are no "one size fits all" settings for the Center Channel Extractor, however there are a few guidelines that if followed can produce quite good results for a large variety of source material.

First, I use the original stereo as the main L/R pair, and my "center" is actually stereo, but 3-channel stereo (more on that later).

The surrounds are obtained with CCE, and the settings are chosen based on the width of the original stereo and the content of the extreme left and right portions of that stereo file; the idea is to isolate only what is panned full left and full right.

The stereo center is obtained by the reverse: reducing the level of the extreme-panned instruments, having as a result a stereo file that has dominant center material but still with a stereo perspective of the "not extremely panned" instruments.

This stereo center is later on panned in the multichannel encoder as follows: drag the panning ball to the bottom of the center pocket, do not put it inside the pocket; this will create a stereo field made of left front, center and right front.

You then pan the original stereo to "hard" left and right speakers, and the surround file to the surround speakers.

The end effect is that you will have a very controllable 5-channel mix with the minimum amount of CCE filtering, compared with what you get when you use CCE to proccess center, surround and fronts.

If the CCE and surround encoder settings are right, when you do the math you will end up, level-wise, with 2x center, 2x "between center and extreme sides" and 2x extreme sides.

Not a big secret after all.

Example settings for a recent album, Lacuna Coil's "Comalies":

For the surrounds:

audio at center
full spectrum
center level: -36
crossover 90
phase discr 6
spect decay 12
amplitude disc 9
amplitude bw 12
FFT size 24000
overlays 12
interval 45

for the "stereo center":

audio at center
full spectrum
center level +20
crossover 85
phase disc 8
spect decay 100
amplitude disc 6
amplitude bw 6
FFT size 24000
overlays 12
interval 45

Use this on 32-bit files, set a multitrack session and pan as described above.

No, I'm not a fan of heavy metal but this album has audio all over the stereo field, spectrum-wise it is very full and with the lead vocals a bit buried, so it seemed to be a good challenge to an upmix method.

Best,

soundz
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Old 10th March 2005, 00:36   #10  |  Link
ursamtl
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Hi soundz,

No problem, I welcome your feedback about V.I. Once I get through the next couple of months of moving, establishing a new residence, etc., I hope to get back to work on surround methods. You're right, there are no "one size fits all" for CCE, and it's the same for surround sound. Even true 5.1 mixes differ depending on the artistic decisions made by the engineer, producer, etc. The direction the Adobe Audition work seems to be taking is more one of spreading different instruments and sounds around the listener, whereas the goal I've been working on is more one of keep the sound focused across the front sound stage but with sufficient ambience and "air" to make the sounds three-dimensional. It's not about just adding some reverb to the rears, although that's important. V.I does a nice job of extracting the reverb that's already in the mix. Then if combined with some good impulse reverb, the results I get really thrill me.

One point I might make is that V.I is not strictly speaking an "Ambisonic" implementation. The original formulas were based on Ambisonic ones I found on the net, but then I toyed around with them quite a bit, trying different delay settings based on the speed of sound applied to virtual speaker positions in a theoretical speaker layout superimposed over a typical 5.1 layout (geez, that sentence is way too long! . Last autumn, I wrote a question to some of the the world's leading surround sound experts on the sursound mailing list. I asked them their opinion on the old Ambisonic method that used to be on here, and they all agreed it was never meant to be applied to regular stereo music and that better results could be gotten from a simple Hafler circuit such as the original Dolby surround (this is not hearsay; their comments are a matter of public record that can be viewed in the sursound archives).

Finally, I don't think you need to give me V.I feedback privately. As someone else pointed out, the surround discussions here haven't been very active lately. I get regular feedback from people who try V.I and I always refer them to the forum here. These discussions help advance the experimentation and lead to some cool results.

Regards,
Steve.
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Old 10th March 2005, 09:45   #11  |  Link
tlavell
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Re: Re: Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by ursamtl
I agree with you on this one. I didn't try the CCE a lot, but when I listened to isolated tracks produced using CCE, I noted a bit of "phasy" or "warbling" sounds. Could you post your settings? I'd like to try Audition again when I have some time as I'd like to develop a guide for using it with surrounds generated using II. If I could combine this with center extraction and not get the warbling, it might give some really good results. When I've tried other methods of center extraction, it removes the lower frequencies too much from the front left and right channels, which can be bad news for people who do not have a center speaker that's the same as the left and right ones.

Regards,
Steve.
Hi steve,

Just thought I would come back on the loss of lower frequencies in the front speakers. Obviously the frequency response of your speakers is a pre-requisite to good sound. But with respect to the settings I have used there is morethan enough lower frequency response in L & R to offset any potential loss you may see if the centre speaker is not matched.

terry
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Old 10th March 2005, 09:55   #12  |  Link
tlavell
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by tlavell
Hi steve,

Just thought I would come back on the loss of lower frequencies in the front speakers. Obviously the frequency response of your speakers is a pre-requisite to good sound. But with respect to the settings I have used there is morethan enough lower frequency response in L & R to offset any potential loss you may see if the centre speaker is not matched.

terry
Forgot to add with respect to the phasing and warbling. What I have found is that the source material as with everthing is the important factor is getting a good result. I have am trying to update my Beatles CD catalogue but due to the fact that they have not been remastered the majority being recorded on either 2 or 4 track tape machines the results are not totally inspiring. But if you use re-mastered source material that has obviously been mixed from a multitude of tracks the definitions are much clearer and precise.

regards

terry
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Old 10th March 2005, 14:56   #13  |  Link
ursamtl
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by tlavell
Forgot to add with respect to the phasing and warbling. What I have found is that the source material as with everthing is the important factor is getting a good result. I have am trying to update my Beatles CD catalogue but due to the fact that they have not been remastered the majority being recorded on either 2 or 4 track tape machines the results are not totally inspiring. But if you use re-mastered source material that has obviously been mixed from a multitude of tracks the definitions are much clearer and precise.

regards

terry
Hi Terry.

No, I got the phasing and warbling when working with much newer material. I believe it had more to do with the filtering and phase settings used by CCE to determine what sonic information gets used and what doesn't. The effect is similar with nois removal software. If you play arround with some of those settings, and especially if you listen to the reverse (noise that's being removed), you can often get similar phasy, warbling effects.

As for those old Beatles recordings, they don't work well because they weren't always recorded in true stereo. CCE as well as any of the methods using ambience extraction via M/S processing (V.I, Dolby surround, Hafler, etc.) all depend on ambience stored in the S channel. For old recordings with basically mono tracks hard panned to positions across the stereo field, all these methods extract is different sound levels. If somewhere along the line an attempt was made to create "electronically simulated stereo" then God knows what kind of info gets introduced into the recording.

S.
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Old 10th March 2005, 22:23   #14  |  Link
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by ursamtl
Hi Terry.

If somewhere along the line an attempt was made to create "electronically simulated stereo" then God knows what kind of info gets introduced into the recording.

S.
Do not a lot of programs like Audition already do that? Also would not a simulated stereo source created from a mono source work better for 5.1 conversions than just a mono source anyway regardless what might get introduced?
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Old 11th March 2005, 01:08   #15  |  Link
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by Socio
Do not a lot of programs like Audition already do that? Also would not a simulated stereo source created from a mono source work better for 5.1 conversions than just a mono source anyway regardless what might get introduced?
I'm talking more about those early 60s attempt at fake stereo using techniques such as cheap comb filters, etc. These can introduce lots of phasiness, etc. Good, modern reverb applied to mono can produce fine results when extracting ambience for surround or using CCE.
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Old 11th March 2005, 01:24   #16  |  Link
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Re: Adobe Audition My Chosen Method

Quote:
Originally posted by Socio
Do not a lot of programs like Audition already do that? Also would not a simulated stereo source created from a mono source work better for 5.1 conversions than just a mono source anyway regardless what might get introduced?
I found out that for mono sources it is better to use either convolution or some subtle reverb, with different settings for the front and rears.

The main problem with simulated stereo from mono is that most of the methods only spread the sound over the two speakers, with no real imaging, so to post-proccess this with anything like CCE is a waste of time: much better if you:

Pan the mono original to center;
use the stereo simulator to generate front L and R;
Use different settings of the stereo simulator or a subtle reverb for the surrounds.

Audition's CCE when used judiciously can produce results that rival "pro" discrete multichannel mixes.

I recall a shareware proggy from the early 1990's called "3Daudio" that created very realistic acoustic spaces (at least that was my impression when I first tried it in 1993 in my all-powerful 386SX25), does anyone knows if it is still available and if it works with Windows XP?

Best,

soundz
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Old 13th March 2005, 16:34   #17  |  Link
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I have never heard of 3Daudio but it might be similar to QTools/AX which is a DirectX app that might work in Audition and can convert a mono track into 3D stereo.
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Old 13th March 2005, 19:48   #18  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally posted by Socio
I have never heard of 3Daudio but it might be similar to QTools/AX which is a DirectX app that might work in Audition and can convert a mono track into 3D stereo.
Thanks for the reply; in 3Daudio you can design the acoustic space in which the audio events will take place and define the positions and trajectories of such events; pretty sophisticated for 1993.

best,

soundz
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Old 16th March 2006, 19:07   #19  |  Link
fat0n3s
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Thanks for the tips.

Anyone know of a good tutorial on what exactly each setting in CCE is doing?

I looked at the help file that came with audition. I was acualy less confused before I read the file.

Any help would be great. Thanks.
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Old 17th March 2006, 06:15   #20  |  Link
raquete
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following ursamtl's guides i'm trying to find "center channel only.

the "normal" center channel have(everything): left,center and right channels(i don't like this way for music) and i am trying to get only the center without left/right (like conversations in movies)

can someone test this script in audition to have only the center channel? (run the script 2 times for better result)
copy and save as: Center Channel Only.scp

Collection: Center Channel Only

Title: Center Channel Only
Description:
Mode: 4
Undo: 1

Selected: 0 to 10766278 scaled 10766278 SR 44100
Freq: Off
cmd: Channel Both

Selected: 0 to 10766278 scaled 10766278 SR 44100
Freq: Off
Comment: Filters\Center Channel Extractor
cmd: {2A0B716A-4C11-4871-8C81-36BAB58A47B6}
1: 0.75
2: 10240
3: 1
4: 5
5: 6
6: 2
7: 12
8: 0
9: 0
10: 15000
11: 0
12: 904
13: 7
14: 4
15: 64
16: 0
17: 0
18: 0

Freq: Off
End:

in my tests i got "not so bad" results.(Beatles-hello good bye and others with voice in the center)

adjusts,comments and hints about this script are welcome!


Last edited by raquete; 17th March 2006 at 06:33.
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