Edirol R-44 manual Converting to 5.1 Channel Surround Sound, Practical Technique2

Deleting Unnecessary Parts

There are many cases when you’ll want to edit the sound after recording, for example to erase the first five seconds that aren’t needed.

In these cases, you can use the Windows version of the Cakewalk SONAR7 series (sold separately) to edit sound recorded with the R-44.

Unnecessary sounds can be easily deleted by selecting them and erasing them as shown below. (For details on operations, see the owner’s manual or help for the software that you are using.)

Deleting Unnecessary Parts

Situation 1 Use

Cakewalk SONAR7 Producer Edition Screen

Cakewalk SONAR7 Producer Edition

Practical Technique2

Although this software is music creation software, it has plenty of editing features for sound files, too. For example, you can easily create a non-stop melody by connecting several edited passages.

Creating 5.1 Channels

If you use the 4-channel recording as described in “Recording with Surround Sound” on p. 15, you can convert the sound to the 5.1 channel surround sound used by DVD software.

And if you then synch it to video, you will have a piece with the impact and realism of a movie.

We introduce the procedure to convert 4 channels to 5.1 channels below. We use the Windows-compatible “Cakewalk SONAR7 Producer Edition” (sold separately) for conversion. (For details on operations, see the owner’s manual or help for the software that you are using.)

Applied Technique 3 Appendix

5.1 Channel Surround Sound

The 5.1 channel surround sound system creates a realistic sound environment using 6 channels in a rectangle configuration. The six channels are in front of the listener (Center), to the right in front (Front R), to the left in front (Front L), to the right in back (Rear R), to the left in back (Rear L), and the low frequency channel. The low frequency channel is counted as 0.1 channel because it has a limited sound range.

Recording Settings

Set Rec Mode to STEREO X 2. If this setting is used to convert to 5.1 channel surround sound, you can manipulate two bits of data in two-channel units to make the conversion operation easier. Also, set the microphones so that channel 1 is the front left, channel 2 is the front right, channel 3 is the rear left, and channel 4 is the rear right. See the illustration at right for how the area recorded by four channels corresponds to the area for 5.1 channels.

1CH	Center	Low	2CH
		frequency
Front L			Front R
	Listener
3CH	Rear L	Rear R	4CH

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Converting to 5.1 Channel Surround Sound

Load the data for the two projects (sound data recorded in stereo) to the PC, and convert to 5.1 surround sound using the surround pan feature of “Cakewalk SONAR 7 Producer Edition.” First, display the screen shown in the illustration. Set the direction of sound for Front L, Center, and Front R with the project that recorded with channels 1 and 2. Determine the direction of sound for Rear L and Rear R with the project that recorded channels 3 and 4. (For details on operations, see the owner’s manual or help for the software that you are using.)

After making these settings, the exported sound data is the 5.1 channel surround sound data.