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  • Gigapulse in Surround?

    Hi everyone!

    I'm trying to figure out the best way of using Gigapulse with my surround setup. And until now, I'm not really sure if I'm doing the right thing...

    This is basically the setup:

    Gigastudio 3 (orch) in Rewire with Nuendo.
    Nuendo with Motu 828 > 5,1 speaker setup connected (active speakers, so no amplifier let alone encoder/decoder in between)

    That's no too complex until now I guess.
    But then:
    1. I load a vsl instrument, let's say Violin.
    2. In Gigastudio mixer (inputs 1,2) I open the Gigapulse, load file Medium
    Hall.
    3. In the "Mic to Mixer" routing, I notice 7 possible output channels for the microphones.

    But what now? Must I send the front L&R mics to rewire 1,2, and set it to a Stereo childbus in the 5,1 bus of nuendo?
    And then (for ex) the Center mic to rewire 3 set to Center in the 5,1 bus?

    And... is this the right way? Or is there an easier/better way to route Gigapulse to an active 5,1 setup?

    Also: how about the LFE-channel? If for ex I want to place VSL's cool Taiko drum in a 5,1 gigapulse environment, how should I best route the awesome low frequencies to my subwoofer?

    Last but not least: since I'm doing a lot of post production stuff where sounds and music often have to sound as if there in, let's say a bathroom, a barn, a tunnel etc... I'm wondering if perhaps Altiverb would be an interesting alternative. Anyone has any experience with the windows version already?

    A big big thanks in advance!

    Alex

  • Hey Tanuj, thanks for your reply!

    Indeed you are right about Altiverb. I checked out their movies and their impressive collection of IR's is just what I was dreaming off!
    Especially the postproduction sets (stairways, tunnels,forest, caves, in a car, a Boeing 747) are precisely the things I often missed in Gigapulse and SIR. Although both are great reverbs, and SIR offers a lot free IR's.

    And like you said: they keep creating & providing new IR's, many of them in surround.

    I guess it will be out soon though, they stated they were still Beta-testing, but on schedule, apart from the earlier delay.

    Now the only thing I still need to examine is how to mix with a surround reverb... Probably most will be clear to me once I can get my hands on a demo-version of the Windows-altiverb, if they'll provide one.

    But I'm still wondering... is Gigapulse designed for surround output as well, or only to create more depth in stereo mixes..???

    Time, or perhaps another kind person on this forum, will tell.

    Thanks for your time!

    Alex

  • Hi Alex,
    I'm now using GigaPulse in Surround Setup. And I think I can say something about it. But there may be more to learn for me [[:)]]
    I don't use Rewire. So for me, I insert an instance of GigaPulse on every instrument. But because of the processing limitations, I can only insert about 5-6 gigapulse instance with 5.1 setup on.
    According to the manual, the output points(L,R,Lw,Rw,Ls,Rs and C) are separately sampled, in the place where they should be. So, after inserting it, just use multi placement mode(Pressing Ctrl to link different placement with different mic placement). For example, 2-L, 9-R, 12-Ls, 16-Lr, 5-C. When a stereo signal is input to the GigaPulse, it will be processed using IRs of different placements and different mic. And this will get you the 5.1 surround mix of your original stereo signal. And using the channel routing in GigaPulse, you can route different channel to your own output channel.
    But for me, when I want to create the final mix of that surround signal, I have to record different channel's output. I mean, because of the channel routing in GigaPulse can only be the next 5 + the 2 channels you inserted it on, so it is meanless for me. So I get 3 wav files, 2 stereo and 1 mono. Then I will mix them in Samplitude to get the final 5.1 mix.
    I don't know anything about rewire. I disabled it because of some of its problems earlier. So may be you can use 6 of rewire channels to route the channels of the 5.1 setup from GigaPulse to your DAW and mix it.

    By the way, Altiverb 5 for Windows XP will not support surround at first. But I think we can still use the quad set of IRs to create surround setups.(I'm also an Altiverb for XP needing person :wink[[:)]]

    All the best!
    And sorry for my poor english..

  • Hi YWT!

    Thank you very much for your helpful reply!
    Your information made me realize what I was doing wrong.
    I was sending Giga's rewired signal through the main 5,1 output of Nuendo, while I should have
    sent them through childbusses in that same 5,1 Out!
    The difference being that I can't use the Surroundpanner in Nuendo, but trying to do that was also my misstake. For the "moving around the room" happens in Gigapulse of course...

    So the L,R mics are sent to Rewire 1,2, which in turn go to Nuendo's stereo childbus in 5,1.
    The center mic now goes to Rewire 3,4, which leads to a childbus connected to the Center Speaker as well as the Subwoofer (now the Taiko sound right-[:)]
    And the SL & SR mics are sent to Rewire 5,6, routed to childbus Stereo Ls,RS in Nuendo.

    Phew! Not sure if that's the best, or most logical way, but at least it worked, and sounds quite right to my ears.

    And indeed, if I export my 5,1 output in nuendo, I get a 5,1 downmix.

    Thanks again!!

    As for Altiverb, meantime the people from Audio Ease confirmed that there wil be no direct surround support in Altiverb Windows.
    Pity. However, they do indeed have a series of Quad setups, which require
    you to do the following (quote):

    "Use two instances of Altiverb, and you load a front set in one (stereo-to-stereo) and the rear set in two (also stereo-to-stereo) and then with some routing you'll have quad reverb. More on this when the windows XP version is released (we expect it to be soon). "

    Well, at least they have 4 mic setups; with some creativity I guess it won't be too hard to fix the rest. The center speaker is not always necessary, and the LFE is omni anyway. I guess all that will become more clear as I get some hands-on experience with Altiverb.

    Nevertheless, direct 5,1 support in these convolution reverbs would be a great comfort. I hope this is coming soon.

    All the best from Belgium,

    Alex

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