How to Record Surround Sound on a Home Computer

Surround sound is the sound of the future, and it's all around you. You can record surround sound on your home computer with home recording software, as long as you have the right equipment, knowledge and patience. Once you have mastered recording in stereo, you may be ready to move on to bigger things.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Home computer
• Surround Decoder
• Surround encoder
• 8 by 8 (or at the least 6 by 6) audio interface
• DVD-R recorder
• 5 speakers and a subwoofer
• DVD burning software
• Home recording software
• Sequencer

Set Up Your Equipment

1. Make sure you have all the equipment you will need. It's extremely equipment intensive to record surround sound on your home computer. In addition to a surround encoder, you will also need the following: a surround decoder for playback, 5 speakers and a subwoofer, a sequencer that creates surround audio files, an 8 x8 (or at the least 6 x6) audio interface, a DVD-R recorder and DVD burning software.

2. Ensure that your mixer has at least six discrete inputs and outputs.

3. Set up separate systems for creation and playback, so that you can assemble tracks in one room and decode them in another.

Set Up the Software and Hardware Mixers

4. Set up a bus for each surround stream in your software mixer. There will be six of them: left, right, center, subwoofer, rear left and rear right. You may want to check to see if your sequencer has an existing template. The buses will either send sound to the mixer, which will then pass it to the speakers, or they will send sound directly to the audio interface outputs.

5. Circuit your audio interface outputs through the hardware mixer, preferably using aux sends, because you can vary the signal of any channel to all six streams. However, you could also use sends, sub-outs and direct outs here.

6. Route audio interface inputs to the buses in your software mixer.

Record Surround Sound

7. Create tracks as you would if you were recording in stereo. You can monitor them via your software in order to play with the effects and plug-ins.

8. Use the sequencer to create buses that give you the output you are looking for. Recording in surround sounds allows for fewer restrictions than recording in stereo. You have more freedom to play with the sounds, delays and pitches, as well as to change the sound as you pass it from speaker to speaker.

9. Use a different surround panner for every track to optimize the position of each element. You should render them at the end of your song to create six separate mono audio files.

10. Choose an application that encodes the six .wav audio files into one .ac3 file.

Burn the DVD

11. Use a DVD burning program that lets you set up the menu like you would the menu of a DVD movie, so that you can select text with a remote.

12. Put together text and images, creating links which point to both the .ac3 files and accompanying MPEG videos (if you wish to add one). The links, when clicked on, will play the piece you have recorded.

13. Add as many songs as you would like the DVD to hold and burn the disc.

14. Use a DVD player and surround receiver to check your work.

Tips & Warnings

• Surround sound recording can be very difficult. Be sure that you throughly know your equipment and how it works, as well as feel comfortable recording in stereo, before attempting surround sound.