For the last 1 1/2 year I have tried to establish a work flow for surround sound beyond the standard 5.1 and 7.1 formats in DAW programs. It has been a mostly frustrating journey, where I repeatedly bang my head against all kinds of walls. The presentation by Thorolf Thuestad at the BEK Sound and space seminar last fall convinced me that Reaper is the way to go.
This weekend I have set up a track template for decoding of B-format signals, supporting all the decoded channel configurations that I tend to need on an ongoing basis: Binaural, stereo, 5 and 7 channel setups for the idiosyncratic loudspeaker setup at my studio, and standard ITU 5.1. Most parts of it work, although I’m still patting to understand how routing of signals to and plugins work, using the “Plugin Pin Connector” section of the FX Track window. On paper/screen it seems dead easy, but still I don’t manage to get myself, the program, plugins and the sound card to agree on what to do.
In addition it seems like Reaper is currently not able to import markers from AIF files on Mac in the same way as for Wav files. It would be nice to have that working, as the B-format sound files tend to be larger than the WAV file format permits.
Once all of this is fully functional, I hope that it will be much faster to work on field recordings for the Madstun project. And of course, this is an investment in improved workflow in the future when using ambionic recordings.
