SIR ROUND a tale of 5.1.

Other Voices is a TV Live Music Show, which is recorded live in Dingle, Ireland, close to the western edge of Europe. The venue is a tiny 200-year-old church with space for only 85 souls. The extraordinary feature of this series is that major international stars come to play there. The town, the venue, the entire Other Voices crew, have woven a web of charm, which it would appear no star is big enough to resist. The show has been Amy WineHouse, Steve Earle, Ray Davies, The Charlatans, The Alabama Three, Super Furry Animals, Cowboy Junkies, David Gray, and literally hundreds of others over the last six years. All these shows are archived and can be viewed anytime at http://www.rte.ie/tv/othervoices/
Despite the physical and logistical restrictions, Visual and Audio equipment of the highest standard is squeezed in.
TVM, provide the location truck for a multiple camera shoot with 24 track audio recording by SoundSound.
2007 brought a major change. RAVE HD, an international Sat/Cable channel, specialising only in premiere broadcasts of Music shows with HD visuals, and 5.1 sound, carried the sixth series around the globe.
Sound Supervisor ‘DanDan’ FitzGerald embraced this opportunity warmly.
“ This is a very small country, with very rare calls for 5.1 mixing. The setup you see here is a temporary installation, with thanks due to Kerstin at ADAM for helping make it happen. I tend to prefer and use older speakers. My Celestion Ditton 66’s and Spendor BC1’s are both legendary. The 66, covers from 18Hz to 25kHz, with a dome midrange driver. I have mixed on, or referred to these for decades. They are ageing, so I have been searching for a replacement. Mastering Engineer Ruairi O Flaherty loaned me his S3A’s. Both of us were stunned with the similarity, and even mistook the speakers in A/B switching. The S3A’s are a great tool for me. Subtle tweaks on their Eq put me in a familiar tonal territory. The bonus is that they reveal far more than the old 66’s. They have great clarity without harshness. They also have firmer, more even, Bass. I am now mixing quicker and more accurately. I don’t feel as much need to check the mixes on a secondary system, and when I do there are no surprises. These speakers, I believe, have shifted my activities up a gear.
Gentle use of the eq’s on the ADAMs also made it possible to use them for LCR with 66’s for surround, while maintaining great coherence.
The final setup up you see here has the BC1 for rear with the Celestions’ considerable Bass prowess in use for the point one.
Many music pros chose the 4.0 subformat for very valid reasons. I have been down this road before and chose 4.0 for the Planxty DVD release. RAVE HD however are cutting edge. They encouraged me to explore and fully use whatever 5.1 might have to offer. I opted for the bolder choices by default, e.g. when the drums are visually left, they are firmly panned there. A striking contrast can be created between a hard image of a solo singer coming starkly from the centre, while the listener is surrounded by a bloom of ambience. Conversely, a phantom centre image can sometimes be more palatable, and thicker sounding, coming from two or more speakers.
Electonica bands with backing tracks and sound effects, give great scope to use the full 360. With these edgy panning choices I needed to spread the sweet spot, to wrap the listener in a cocoon of coherent sound. Without entirely revealing my little secret, my thanks to Peter at AudioEase.