WAVES 360°
WAVES
WAVES SURROUND TOOLS
KK PROFFITT he new Waves 360°Surround Tools provide had been mixed with five channels of ‘treble material’
takes time to
explore this
T the missing links necessary to create a
sophisticated, accurate, and robust
environment for mixing multi-channel audio on the
and the sixth being overwhelmed by bass, bass drum,
and explosions. Some of us had built our own
hardware bass management systems and we
Pro Tools platform. While other options exist for operated in calibrated rooms, so playing back early
multi-channel panning, reverberation, dynamics efforts by some Pro Tools aficionados was often
enormous range processing, calibration, and bass management, none disconcerting, if not downright painful. Gradually,
of them is as well developed or tightly integrated after many assaults and flames by Internet surround
of surround tools for Pro Tools as the new toolkit from Waves. evangelists, rank and file audio engineers began to
for anybody who The Waves 360° toolkit comprises nine modules: acknowledge that mixing surround involved more
the M360° Surround Manager, M360° Surround than simply putting speakers in a circle.
wants to do it, Mixdown, the LFE360° Low-Pass Filter, the S360° While the debate amongst designers concerning
Panner, the S360° Imager, the R360° Surround ‘full-range’ versus ‘Sub/Sat’ (satellites plus sub-
and do it well. Reverb, the C360° SurroundComp, the L360° woofer) speaker systems continues to rage, it is
UltraMaximizer, and the IDR360° Bit Requantizer. appropriate to mention that most home theaters (the
While any of them may be used alone in a Pro Tools target of much surround audio product) as well as
session, several of them may be used together in many mid-sized studios employ a system with
order to properly align speaker angles among the satellites and subwoofers. This kind of system
relevant modules. demands bass management and proper calibration to
ensure good translation from audio source to audio
Setting Up For Surround... The M360° playback. The M360° Surround Manager comes to
When Pro Tools 5.1 was released, those of us who the rescue of studios that have no external bass
had been familiar with the constraints of building management for the Pro Tools environment and
studios for surround mixing sent up a collective groan provides a wealth of other features for surround
whenever we were faced with surround demos that audio production. ➤
46 AUDIO MEDIA MARCH 2003
➤ It has been stated many times (but it is Waves 360° Surround Tools require Pro from the listener.
worth repeating) that the LFE (low-frequency Tools TDM Mix version 5.1.3 and higher, The M360° Circle Display shows the final
effects) is a channel, while the Subwoofer is or Pro Tools TDM HD version 5.3.1 and imaging, rotation, and width as well as
a speaker. With the M360°, the LFE channel higher, Mix users should be aware that the speaker angles. The letters L,C, R, Ls, and Rs
audio (boosted by 10dB) is combined with pink noise that is suggested for calibration show the standard ITU speaker placement,
the subwoofer signal (a low-pass split from from the signal generator in version 5.1.3 is while four beams radiating from the center
the five full-range audio channels) into the not accurate. show the user-adjusted angles. When
subwoofer feed for playback only. When you According to Digidesign, the pink noise Rotation is selected, it varies from -180° to
layback (not playback) audio for encoding or is corrected in version 6.0 for Mix. If Mix +180° and the angle determines the
transfer, the LFE channel (sans offset) is users prefer to stay with version 5.1.3, they direction of the panned phantom image.
printed, while the Subwoofer feed created should consider an alternative test signal Rotation may be pair-wise (two speakers
by the Bass Management portion of the souurce with the proper bandwidth-limited at a time) or triple-wise (three at a time).
playback system should never be printed to pink noise necessary for accurate calibration The M360° Mixdown module enables the
the master. (another point not mentioned in the user to fold 5.1 channels into a variety of
M360°has two components: M360° manual). Bandwidth-limited pink noise is output formats. It’s also useful for previewing
Manager and M360° Mixdown. M360° especially important for calibrating satellite downmix scenarios resulting from decoding
Manager should be inserted on the master speakers in order to avoid low-frequency for smaller, or modestly priced surround
surround output (limited to 5.0 or 5.1 errors due to standing waves and high-end environments. The mixdown matrices do not
channels). It allows for calibration of the
studio monitoring system, setting up
monitoring with a Sub/Sat playback system,
and previewing standard 5.1 target
playback processing. M360° Mixdown
should be instantiated after M360°
Manager for previewing or applying
Mixdown options. Once again, in most
cases, you’ll need to bypass M360°
Manager when printing your final mix.
M360° allows you to set the speaker
angles of the plug equal to those in your
studio (L/R and Ls/Rs). Even if your
monitoring setup does not conform to the
standard ±30° for Left and Right speakers,
and ±110° for Ls/Rs, matching the speaker
angles of the plug to those in your studio
will provide better translation for your mix
and will allow you to work more accurately
with the S360° Panner/Imager.
A useful function, send angles, pokes
the M360° angle values into those of the
Panners and Imagers. Before you print a
mix, if you have customized these angle
values, it’s important to reset angles to
the default and to send angles again in
order to zero angle values in the Panners
and Imagers.
Like any good bass manager, M360°
provides gain, delay, crossover, sub send Monitor calibration, set-up and target preview
and polarity controls on every full-range
channel. Crossover frequency is selectable,
as are low-pass and high-pass filter slopes. miscalibration due to slight movements of fold the LFE into the downmix, so there’s a
If you want to mix the LFE channel back the test microphone. Mix LFE control to redirect the LFE to the
into the full-range channels for future Finally, the large room level suggested is mixdown channels.
downmixes (where the LFE will be 85 dB SPL. Many would argue, however, The Waves LFE360° module should be
eliminated), you can use the ‘Get LFE’ that using -20 dBFS bandwidth-limited pink instantiated above the M360° plug. It’s a
controls. There are separate gains for LFE noise should properly yield 83dB SPL. For steep low-pass filter that will affect only
and subwoofer levels. LFE gain adjusts the more detailed information, check out the LFE channel. You can, for instance, set
level of the LFE input after the overall input www.digido.com and read the second part the cutoff for the LFE at the Dolby-
gain. LFE adjust provides ±10dB gain offset of the Level Practices article. recommended 120Hz while leaving M360°
for the LFE channel. After the system has been calibrated, to emulate a THX set-up for the sub-woofer
The Waves 360° toolkit manual includes M360° can be used to set target adjustments with an 80Hz split.
a brief section on calibration that gives a to mimic consumer playback systems and M360° provides an extraordinary
simplified calibration routine. It leaves out evaluate possible conflicts. Surround offsets flexibility for setting up surround
some important information, however, and may be varied from -6dB to +6dB in 3dB environments. While neither the concepts
the user would benefit from outside reading increments. Center level can be ±3dB, ±4.5dB nor the features are simple, it’s worthwhile
of more thorough texts, such as Thomlinson or ±6dB. You can also select +Aligned to for the user to experiment with various
Holman’s excellent book, 5.1 Surround simulate a situation where the front speakers setups to become familiar with possible
Sound, Up and Running. Although the are in a straight line, rather than equidistant effects in target situations.
48 AUDIO MEDIA MARCH 2003
The S360° Panner|Imager...
The Waves S360° Panner is a surround
panning and imaging tool for 5 or 5.1
channels. It’s an alternative to X/Y panners,
offering better control of Phantom images,
better localization, and an enhanced sweet
spot. You can set Rotation and Width for
mono, stereo, 5.0-channel or 5.1-channel
sources. The S360° Imager, enhances the
Panner by adding Room Model Early
Reflections for distance panning, and
Shuffling for low-frequency width. It’s a
good idea to start with the Panner and
swap it for an Imager if you need it later
because the Panner uses less DSP. All
Panner components support 192kHz, but Tailor LFE cut-off for your target
some of the Imager components are limited
to 96kHz.
You can set Width Ratio to change the several parameters specific to surround quadraphonic phantom images), and
width of the image. Since divergence is related audio production. Rear offset creates an Center|Front LR|Rear with LFE bypassed.
to rotation, widening an image will spread it offset between the pre-delay for front and
sideways from its centre or collapse it toward back channels, so that the rear channels The L360° UltraMaximizer...
a mono image. have a slightly longer pre-delay. There’s a The L360° is a surround peak limiter and level
There’s an LFE send that sends a sum of control for the level of input from the LFE maximizer for five or 5.1 channels. Using
the input audio to the LFE channel. Center to the reverb and a low-pass for the LFE technology inherited from the L1 and L2
can vary from 0 to 100 percent, depending output. You can lower the reverb output UltraMaximizers, it provides look-ahead brickwall
on whether a phantom or discrete image, from the center channel or remove it peak limiting with 48-bit double precision
or something in between, is desired. A completely. Front/Rear balances the reverb processing and it incorporates Waves ARC.
splined-circle energy scope gives a graphic between the front and back sound stages. Like the C360°, the L360° has five link
panning display of the information modes with up to three sidechains. The two
indicated by the meters. The C360° SurroundComp... main controls are threshold and ceiling, with
The Front Stage control (available for stereo The Waves C360° is a soft-knee compressor a range from 0 to -48dB. C360° and L360°
and multi-channel components) widens the front for 5 or 5.1 channels. While the controls both support sample rates up to 96kHz.
stage by multiplying the directional image width and functions of the C360° are similar to
by a specified ratio. Front/Rear Stage the L360° (the companion limiter), the The IDR360° Bit Requantizer...
(multichannel components only) widens both sound of the C360° is different. It starts to IDR (Increased Digital Resolution) provides
front and rear stages in the same manner. dither and noise shaping used primarily when
The Focus control (stereo and multi- the wordlength of the source needs to be
channel components) is useful for light reduced. If you choose noise shaping without
ambience extraction. It takes each speaker dither, quantization error noise will be shifted
pair and extracts the MS component, with to a less audible range. When both dither
a value of 0 being only M and a value of and noise shaping are de-selected, the IDR
4 being only S. plug rounds (instead of truncating) the audio
The S360° coexists peacefully with other to the desired bit depth.
panners in a session, so if you want to vary
panning effects track by track, it’s easy to Conclusion
mix and match panners from different I wish I could have had these plug-ins a
manufacturers. few years ago. They make comparing
Surround dynamics
various target environments nearly
The R360° instantaneous. Although my studio has a
Surround Reverb... attenuate the signal before it reaches hardware bass management system, I find
The R360° generates reverb tails only. This threshold and increases attenuation as the myself using various features in the toolkit
makes it the perfect companion for the level reaches and overshoots threshold. It on a daily basis. The Waves 360° Surround
S360° Imager’s early reflections. Based on can also function as a limiter with a Tools enhance Pro Tools so that serious
the same technology used in Waves’ well- specified ceiling. It’s a look-ahead audio engineers may now do real work in
known Renaissance Reverb, the R360° compressor with 64 samples of delay. Like surround. ❏
generates reverb tails that are pitch- other similar Waves plugs, the C360° uses
preserving and fully decorrelated among Waves ARC (Auto Release Control) and ..................................
all channels. R360° has a compact peak reference compression with automatic
component for running in true 96kHz gain make-up. INFORMATION
mode, while saving DSP when working in The C360° preserves cross-channel
44.1kHz or 48kHz mode. The full balance and phantom imaging with linked ❍
$ Waves 360° Surround Tools $2400
component is required for MIX systems and dynamics processing. It has five link modes ❍
A Waves, 306 West Depot Avenue
the compact component will not work on with up to three separate sidechains. Modes Suite 100, Knoxville, TN 37917
MIX systems. include All Linked, 5 Linked|Sub, ❍
T 865 546 6115
In addition to common reverb controls Front|Rear|Sub (useful for film with ❍
F 865 546 8445
such as pre-delay, reverb time, wet/dry ambience and effects in the rear sound ❍
E sales@waves.com
mix, damping and filters, R360° adds stage), Center|Quad|Sub (fully preserves ❍
w www.waves.com
AUDIO MEDIA MARCH 2003 49