Surround

[DustWolf]

Hello,

It's been a while and all... Must admit I'm having a hard time finding the time to check in with the scene, find inspiration for any music I was going to make, etc etc etc.

To the point. I'm looking for ways to do controlled panning of samples (or instruments) in OpenMPT in sorround (so panning back and forth also, beside left and right).

Considering there's a new version of OpenMPT around (which as I see doesn't have a new help file), in which it is possible to select Quad output, is there any functionality built into it which would also allow for panning in surround?

If not, I suppose there are VST plugins and such. I've looked for this before but I must say I was unable to find anything freeish in that general direction, besides a few toys that claimed to spin sounds uncontroledly in sourround, but I could not observe (or hear) anything to such effect. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person in the universe to try something like this, so... where can I find free VST plugins that will do that for me (pan sounds back and forth in a controlled manner)?

Thanks for the help. If I get anything I can use, I prommise a new track soon hehe.  

[Snu]

mpt really only has basic surround abilities currently, but its possible, and pretty simple.
first, you need to set the mixing quality to quad channel in the setup, then you enable surround on a channel, and it will be panned to the back speakers (you can use S90 and S91 to switch between them).
also, i believe S9B will set it to play both front and back, but i could be wrong (i dont have a surround setup right now to test it out).
unfortunately, this pan is only 0% or 100% tho, to make a sound play in both front and back, you will have to play it in two seperate channels.

[DustWolf]

mpt really only has basic surround abilities currently, but its possible, and pretty simple.
first, you need to set the mixing quality to quad channel in the setup, then you enable surround on a channel, and it will be panned to the back speakers (you can use S90 and S91 to switch between them).
also, i believe S9B will set it to play both front and back, but i could be wrong (i dont have a surround setup right now to test it out).
unfortunately, this pan is only 0% or 100% tho, to make a sound play in both front and back, you will have to play it in two seperate channels.

I'm having some trouble turning this into reality here...

I have OpenMPT1.17RC2_P3 (on a Celeron D, 5.1 SBLive! with 5.1 speaker setup, Quad 16-bit selected in tracker setup), here's my code:

Code Select Expand

ModPlug Tracker  IT
|C-501p64S90
|...........
|C-501p00S90
|........S9B
|C-501p64S91
|...........
|C-501p00S91


The help file says...

S90: Disable surround for the current channel

S91: Enable surround for the current channel. Note that a panning effect will automatically desactive the surround, unless the 4-way (Quad) surround mode has been activated with the S9B effect.

S9A: Select mono surround mode (center channel). This is the default

S9B: Select quad surround mode: this allows you to pan in the rear channels, especially useful for 4-speakers playback. Note that S9A and S9B do not activate the surround for the current channel, it is a global setting that will affect the behavior of the surround for all channels. You can enable or disable the surround for individual channels by using the S90 and S91 effects. In quad surround mode, the channel surround will stay active until explicitely disabled by a S90 effect

What I hear is asif I had never set S9B, the first two lines come off as left and right panned sounds, on both front and rear speakers, the center speaker is silent. The second two lines sound like (and look like, according to the channel VU-meters) center paning, a little quieter and on all speakers, except of course the center one.

Is this a bug or is there something I'm doing wrong?

Thanks.  

[Snu]

oh, hmm, oh yah, forgot something... its been a while since i did this, and like i mentioned, i dont currently have a surround setup.
so you have to use S9B first, after that the S90 and S91 will switch the sound between front and rear speakers.... or should anyway.

[Sam_Zen]

So far, I haven't found any application that properly can reproduce a quad-wav-file saved by (O)MPT.
If I want to make a multi-channel output of a tracker, I select the proper channels and export them to the wav-files for front channels and select other channels of the song for other position-wavs.
I can put them together in an accepted multi-channel format with "MultiWave". (stereo-wavs should be first splitted into L- and R-mono-wavs)

[Randilyn]

[deleted]

[DustWolf]

That's it.  Hope to see some interesting surround sound tracks from you guys.  My brand new 5.1 system is just sittin' here wasting away. =P

Haha, you betcha if I can get this to work... Some of my tracks featured swishing winds going stereo, which honestly sounded awesome.

I'm setting my sights on improoving the code of old game music from a PC game called "Radix" (got the .mod sources!)... it's techno / metal (my favorite crossbreed), two nice cooperating guitars as usual. I thought if I could rework the code into higher sound quality and make those guitars dance around the listener it would be AWESOMEee..      

Anyway, gotta get this to work first... I can't work this out without giving it quick trys while I work, that's just the way I track. I can't do that without getting correct quad output from OMPT directly.

Didn't quite understand it here, but is there any way to modify the input wave files to make them sound on rear speakers? If yes, where can I find free (or nonfree) software that can do that for me? If no alternatives are to be, where can I find the books on this to make the program myself?

Any solution, I'd like a working prototype or a way to make one quick.

Thanks.