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Multichannel Audio and Recording: The Names Behind the Sounds/Hank Waring
by Glen O'hara Reprinted from Pro Audio Review, June, 2000. An artist came to me last year requesting a 5.1 master made from stereo master tapes. I asked for the multitrack masters the tapes were mixed from, explaining that you can't make 5.1 out of stereo. After some checking, it was determined that the 24-track masters had been lost. Had I known Hank Waring and FDS Labs at the time, I could have at least told the artist that we could maybe do something for him. Waring has been developing his Full Dimensional Sound (FDS) mastering system for 12 years. He began moving into the digital domain back in 1973. The FDS system uses many proprietary and custom-designed chips. Waring says, "Phase correction is a major part of the FDS process in bringing out the clarity and detail of instruments and voices that are sometimes deeply layered in the mix. "Our processors can take standing waves out of the audio, revealing hidden clarity and ambience, even from monophonic recordings." Waring should know about phase. He has developed his expertise concerning all aspect of phase correction and problems over decades. He was the only mastering engineer able to cut records (like Buffalo Springfield) back in the '60s and '70s with the bass guitar mixed to the left or right without the stylus jumping out of the groove! Waring played an example of fireworks that were recorded on a boat, using a shotgun microphone. I found it extremely hard to believe my ears listening to the FDS 5.1 channel version. Ambient reflections and reverberance were presented spatially throughout the 5.1 soundstage! Waring switched back and forth from the original mono recording to the post FDS 5.1 channel version. He said, "The boat we were on was in a long waterway channel, about 500 yards from the fireworks." I could hear the acoustic reflections from this channel only after the FDS process. Waring explained, "This is one of the dramatic examples of what FDS can extract from a recording. Those reflections and natural reverberation were in the recording. "But," Waring cautioned, "it all depends on the recording. Sometimes the FDS system doesn't do much, if anything at all. FDS cannnot extract something that is not there. In both the demo material reviewed in our 5.1 suite and the material I heard on-site, come of the most dramatic results were from monophonic recordings: like Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock." It is no wonder more and more film industry people are using Hank Waring's facility. The results are totally compatible from discrete 5.1 to Pro Logic (Dolby Stereo) to stereo to mono. The FDS process can even be used in final movie mixes with combined dialog, music and effects (DME). When Waring's engineers can work with dub masters with seperate DME, the results are even more dramatic. I heard comparisons of the final dubs on the recent release of The King and I (animated), which was mastered at FDS Labs. When William Kidd, the conductor for The King and I, heard the FDS results on the music, he commented, "I was never happy with the way the music score was sounding during mixdown, and now [post FDS] the music sounds exactly like what I heard on the soundstage. FDS Labs will send its demo CD or DVD to industry professionals on request via its website, www.fdslabs.com, or contact Quad Teck Digital/FDS Labs at 213-383-2155. (Quad Teck Digital, 4007 West Sixth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90020; 213/383-2155; Fax 213/383-2158; info@fdslabs.com.) |