Sound outputs music & voice to different speakersI

[Christmas_time_karl_UK]

Hi everyone!

 

Been a while since I posted, I hope everyone is well. In 2011 & 2012 I was displaying my custom animatronics (Claus & the Paws) 

 

I am quite keen to revisit them this year with major improvements, however I want to make the sound better.... as in any audio coming from the characters I want the sound to come from near that area and not from a speaker the other side of the yard... and vice versa when they do jokes/chit chat during a sequenced song I want that to not be everywhere else....

 

How could I achieve better sound direction outputs/splitting?

Is it possible to run two LOR show PCs that are in sync but one can play a modified audio track that does the audio for the animatronics with a dedicated speaker?

 

Your input is kindly appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Karl

[rwertz]

Would it be acceptable to combine the stereo tracks for your music into a mono track on one channel and use the other channel for your vocals? Or maybe there's a way to use the Windows Command in the sequence to shell an audio player that could use a different sound card or surround channels.

 

Edit: If the vocals occur at distinctly different times from the music you could use a channel to flip a relay to send the audio to a different set of speakers.

Edited August 4, 2015 by rwertz

[LOR Staff]

You can encode your audio using any one of the various Surround Sound schemes.  

 

Use an Audio editor that allows you to control distinct channels.  Put the band on one or two of the channels, your audio/whatever on the others.

 

Use an amplifier that can decode Surround Sound.  Put the speakers for the 1 or 2 channels near the band, scatter other speakers as you see fit.

[caniac]

wouldn't have a cheap/inexpensive mixer work, have seen some on Amazon going for under $50 (Behringer comes to mind).  you would come out of the audio port from you pc/laptop and then adjust the frequency going out (like an equalizer).  just need to find one with two or more outputs.

 

When audio is recorded they use more than one mike/input and it gets combined to stereo so splitting it back out is doable.

Edited August 7, 2015 by caniac

[Christmas_time_karl_UK]

You can encode your audio using any one of the various Surround Sound schemes.  

 

Use an Audio editor that allows you to control distinct channels.  Put the band on one or two of the channels, your audio/whatever on the others.

 

Use an amplifier that can decode Surround Sound.  Put the speakers for the 1 or 2 channels near the band, scatter other speakers as you see fit.

 

I quite like this! Now need to find an audio editor

[mixnight]

LOR only plays MP3 audio files which they are stereo (L + R), the suggested idea of use a surround system playing 5.1 won't work because there is not MP3 files that uses 5.1.

Best solution is to edit your songs for your show using an audio editor and let's say: use L for the music and R for the voice overs then save it

[EmmienLightFan]

You could have another audio track that plays in VLC or something, that starts when your show starts, and then you would get two extra channels for voices.

 

Separating singing from song music is tricky though. You need to remove certain frequency bands at a time.

Of course there is software such as Vocal Remover that does that.

Edited August 10, 2015 by EmmienLightFan

[Greg Young]

LOR plays wav files just fine. You can encode them.

[Box on Rails]

LOR plays wav files just fine. You can encode them.

Do you mean make it surround sound.  If that is the case it can be done. You would need to use a mixing program like Pro Tools or Sonar that can render surround sound and the process would be pretty easy. I use Sonar Pro in my recording Studio and the process would be to assign the stereo music track to the left front and right front channels, those are the regular stereo out put channels.. then you can assign the vocal/speaking tracks to the Center front, left rear, right rear and even the sub channel could be used for vocals. This means you could have 4 vocal channels assigned to separate speakers each placed near the prop that is associated with that speaking or singing part. If you record your own vocal parts that makes things real easy. just assign them to one of the 4 channels. Mixing to remove the vocals from the original wave file is a bit more tricky. but once you do that then no problem. I've never checked on Youtube but I bet there is a million tutorial videos on this process. The question I have is with the Media Player(MP), which I never use, I believe LOR uses MP for sound play back. Does Media player support surround sound. Also does you sound card support surround sound. if the answer is yes to these question then the answer to the original questions:

 

How could I achieve better sound direction outputs/splitting: Answered above

 

 Is it possible to run two LOR show PCs that are in sync but one can play a modified audio track that does the audio for the animatronics with a dedicated speaker? I think the answer to two sync PC's is no.

[Bad Brad]

Back in 2012 there was a thread on multi-channel audio that works. It uses Audacity to make multichannel .wav files and a usb 7.1 audio box to use with laptops. Very informative and it sounds like what you need.

[EmmienLightFan]

Does LOR do multi channel? (Other than L&R)

[MphsGal]

On 8/25/2015 at 8:33 PM, Bad Brad said:

Back in 2012 there was a thread on multi-channel audio that works. It uses Audacity to make multichannel .wav files and a usb 7.1 audio box to use with laptops. Very informative and it sounds like what you need.

Can anybody give me the link to this? I can’t find it. It sounds like it will answer my question regarding how to split and sequence vocals & instrumental separately...

Thanks!

[a31ford]

Anything that can be converted to digital (mp3's for example) can be converted to multi-channel. With that said, you will need a preamp (or integrated) that will do true Dolby Digital 5.1 (6.1 is  a bit harder). 5.1 the center speaker is encoded by phasing the left vocal and right vocal to each channel out of phase with each other, (both go to each channel but create a null IN the null envelope there is a trigger frequency around 25khz that tells the decoder to throw one channels input to the decoder out of phase ), the decode process this re-phased left and right as the vocal track and outputs it to the centre channel, causing the vocals to "pop out"  at the center.

rear left and rear right are done with the same idea, however the processing uses summed phase angle with small inversions of phase to create them from the original source.

You can do a simple center speaker by attaching a 3rd speaker to ONLY the POSITIVE outputs of the Left and Right  channels... THEN using a stereo mixing console use the voice source into TWO MIXER INPUTS, BUT ONE OF THEM IS OUT OF PHASE WITH THE OTHER... (reverse the + & - of ONE CHANNEL ONLY, THIS IS THE INPUT TO THE MIXER...). pan ONE channel to the left, the OTHER  to the right. the volume of the voice source, is SLIGHTLY QUIETER THAN THE REST OF THE PROGRAM. once heard in the final mix, the two channels ( L & R ) WILL CAUSE A BRIDGED output effect on the speaker outputs, the voice track will "pop out" of the centre speaker at a louder volume (since it is perceiving that it has 2x the power (bridged) from the amp, it will be 3db louder than the original recording into the left and right channels.. you will still hear the voice in the original left and right however, it will be buried in the song mix, only the center speaker will have a louder voice... simple 3 speaker systems where used back in the 70's for "rear speakers" on many home stereos of the time period, the zenith "allegro" console is a good example of this  the switch above the "bass" fader "2 on 2 Matrix" is what Zenith called it........

 

 

Edited December 31, 2017 by a31ford
3rd channel update

[MphsGal]

Thanks a31ford. It’s gibberish to me right now. I’ll be studying this subject for sure!