Recording in Surround Sound requires much skill.
As surround sound becomes more widespread, record producers and sound recording engineers for movies and television must become more aware of how they arrange microphones during recording. As a sound technician, your mastery of this skill will determine the quality of the sound you receive on playback. The main idea of surround sound is to create the illusion that the viewer is in the same room as the action taking place on screen.
Microphone Positioning Techniques
According to the Broadcast Engineering website, you can reduce comb filtering by the way you arrange your microphones while recording surround sound. Comb filtering is the effect you may experience when you are attempting to speak to your favorite radio or TV talk show host. You speak a sentence, or take a really deep breath, and the sounds you've made echo back to you in a matter of seconds.
To avoid this delayed effect, the Broadcast Engineering website suggests that you keep the mics far apart enough to avoid feedback or echo, but keep them in the same general area of the studio to make sure that the signals you are producing are similar enough to retain a smooth sound field production.
Group Recording
When positioning microphones during ensemble recording, in order to obtain the correct surround sound, you must know arrange the microphones in the studio. For a larger group, a wider spacing between microphones is appropriate. The Broadcast Engineering website recommends about 1.8 meters of space between the mikes. For smaller groups, you can record them more closely together, with about 1.2 meters of space between the microphones.
Dolby
According to the Soundings website, to use the Dolby surround technique of recording, you would use a special decoder. You need to use three mics, a decoder, an acoustic level controller and a mixing console. Strict guidelines for recording do exist, and accurate adherence to these guidelines must take place for it to work. According to the website, you will reproduce the signals in the left and right channels with the same amplitude and polarity through the center channels. The surround channel is responsible for producing channels with the same amplitude but are out of polarity. The signals in the center and surround channels with the same polarity and equal polarity will come through all the channels at almost the same volume. Unless you adjust these levels accordingly on your sound system, your recording in Dolby sound will not work.
MPEG II
Unlike the Dolby technique, the MPEG II recording style will allow for more creativity. As the Soundings website points out, all you need is five real channels with full bandwidth. To record surround sound in MPEG II, arrange two mics one above the other. The website suggests a color coding pattern: front left, yellow; front right, red. On the rear left and rear right, you place green and blue, respectively.
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