

This article describes the final part of the surround-production process.


The process is not really that complicated, and it's thrilling to hear something you mixed in surround play back properly on a home system. You need to encode your six discrete tracks into a format that will play on a consumer home-theater system. Now, how do you get anyone else to hear your surround opus? You can't play a DA-88 tape on a consumer system, and dragging a multitrack deck around isn't practical. (See Introduction to Surround Sound and Setting Up Your Studio for Surround Sound). So you've bitten the proverbial bullet and installed a mixer or workstation software application with surround panners, set up a 5.1 monitoring system, and actually recorded some surround music mixes on a Tascam DA-88 or ADAT.
