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5.1 Surround in Blender - Stereo to 5.1 in Audacity
November 26, 2018Hey all!
This is a bit of an oddball tutorial as it contains two tutorials in one. Blender does an amazing job of surround sound, but in addition I get to share with you guys another solution that just really helps you deal with the problem of working with stereo when you really want surround - conversion!
So without ado, here is the tutorial itself:
GOD is so awesome!! (^^,)
GOD is so awesome!! (^^,)
- So how good is Blender at 5.1?
Well, surprisingly, really really good! The only downside, as mentioned in the tutorial a few times, is that Blender does not render or generate or give you the option to control any form of the LFE. You can make a generated center/bass from the three front channels' full range.
- Why a conversion and not the real thing?
Another great point and as bad as it may seem to say, I really like the conversion result. If I am happy with it and the LORD is satisfied with it, I am certainly not going to fight HIM on it. I have enough on my plate as it is, hahaha.
Besides, for Exodus, I would like to add a mix as well, containing additional SFX for the back speakers. Can't promise this, but it is something that is rolling around.
- There is no 5.1 on the video!
No, and that is because YouTube doesn't support 5.1 playback on most devices. Some people claim to be getting true 5.1 (personally I think it is simply them having speaker fill on). I can't argue per-say, since I haven't been able to test it on so many devices (just not enough data or devices). What I did do was to upload a short file and see what happens with that and while high quality, it did not switch to 5.1...
In the product forums people have talked about the issue. They say that YouTube does receive 5.1 and takes all the channels into account when creating a stereo downmix for output. The only problem is that the recommended upload settings suggest that YouTube supports 5.1 playback as well, not just encoding.
Spatial audio is different since it is headphone based. You get a stereo signal output, not 5.1. It only takes your position into account for the appropriate sounds, but the signal you get is still stereo.
Some suggest that the reason YouTube doesn't support it yet, is because HTML 5 doesn't support it. Which isn't true. There are websites where you can test it and it works (when you test it make sure speaker fill and bass management is turned off). So saying that the browser or HTML 5 doesn't support it doesn't hold water.
I think it may come down to data usage. 5.1 means that you are getting audio that is 3x larger than before - even if you limit 5.1 to 480p and up, its still a huge ask and there is currently very little audio playback options for YouTube.
In the meantime, you're simply going to have to take what I say with a grain of salt, stick with stereo on YouTube and simply try what I showed.
- Is it worth using Blender for 5.1 as-is?
Not as a solo tool for surround sound. Because of the LFE issue, I have added a proposal to right-click select so that it can be generated, so you can go give that an upvote! It'll really help a lot!
https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/qlcbbc/lfe-in-the-vse
- So, conversion?
I luv this set of plug-ins. They are VST and technically designed to work with software that enables you to connect plugin's in a way similar to nodes in Blender. They use harmonics and various things to help build a surround ambiance for your audio (much more and much better than reverb). It is truly a blessing!
There are different plugins for each set of channels, so you don't need to have a digital audio workstation that can work with 5.1. If you do, please use that, because you would have an advantage doing it that way.
- Where did the idea come from to seek conversion?
Well, this is something of a mixed bag. The primary reason for seeking conversion is a sound system we had. I shared this before, but you're hearing it again today, hahaha. A few years ago, we had an LG surround sound system with Dolby Surround built-in. It was the coolest piece of audio equipment we ever had as far as I was concerned.
It only had a stereo input, but could take that stereo input and make it 5.1 and it worked. I was stunned - and promptly devastated when lightning struck it... The replacement couldn't live up, seriously!
Since then I knew that you can get 5.1 from stereo and it sound truly epic! The LORD kept that in the front of my mind and when this came up, it was the logical choice.
Beyond that, it was also the practical choice. Blender *cough* *cough* LFE *cough*... haha.
This was truly a fun tutorial to do and I know it's been a huge blessing to you too! I enjoyed making it, learning through it, struggling through youtube's 5.1 issues and so on. It was an adventure through sound, hehe!
I know you learned a lot from it!!
Biggest thanx to GOD for helping me with this. Without HIM, none of this would be possible! :D
Know JESUS yet?
Have a great one!!!
Thank YOU!!!!!!
Posted by Marius Oberholster. Posted In : Tutorials
