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Rory Kaplan’s initial experiences in the musicbusiness came as a keyboard player, program-mer, songwriter and engineer. He toured withluminaries such as Chick Corea, HerbieHancock, Stevie Wonder, Christopher Cross

and Michael Jackson, and played in the studio for Yes,Joe Cocker and Belinda Carlisle.

After producing an album for Edgar Winter, Kaplan wasintroduced to DTS by Winter’s A&R man and learnedthat the company intended to make its entry into theconsumer market for multichannel music in order to"pioneer and spearhead where quad hadn’t been able togo because of the medium delivery". Indeed, by the timeKaplan joined DTS in 1996, the relatively small setup hadalready enjoyed considerable success on the cinematicside courtesy of Jurassic Park and several other motionpictures, but it would be largely thanks to Kaplan’s ownrecord industry contacts that DTS would be able todiversify, commencing with Elliot Scheiner’s multichannelremix of The Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over album.Richard Buskin: Tell us a little about that seminalremix for The Eagles.Rory Kaplan: That was a real success story because itwent from a DTS CD – which did very well and gained usa lot of publicity – to being released as a laser disc whichgenerated even more sales, and then to DVD. In just alittle over a year that thing has sold more than 400,000units, and it’s wholly a DTS recording. Hell Freezes Overcomprised recordings from their reunion tour, and Elliot’sperspective on the remix was that he wanted theaudience to almost be in the orchestra pit, with TheEagles playing in front while the additional musicians

were on the sides and at the back. We did that without thebenefit of video footage, but when you locked it to pictureit somehow made sense. It was really phenomenal.RB: Since then, guys like Al Schmitt, Ed Cherney,David Tickle, Chuck Ainley, Rob Jacobs and GeorgeMassenburg have done DTS 5.1 remixes of recordingsby Bonnie Raitt, Sting, Roy Orbison, Steely Dan, OliviaNewton-John, Don Henley, The Mavericks, amongmany, many others. As more and more projects aremixed you must be learning more and more about thecapabilities of the format?RK: Sure. I’ve worked on about 80 of these projects now,and you really pick up on the details of how to usereverbs correctly, what delays to use and what newequipment is supporting this format. George Massenburgwas waiting for the proper ‘verbs to come out before hewould try it, and I know that Lexicon and TC Electronichave both released some great machines for working inthis format [the 960L and System 6000 respectively – seeAudioTechnology Issue 10 for more], where the reverbsare coherent, time-aligned and not out of phase witheach channel – in other words, they address all of theheadaches we had to go through in the beginning.

So, right now I’m getting excited watching all of theseengineers discover this new format, because it’s like awhole new canvas for them to paint on. It’s a chance forthem to revisit music in a format which they would haveliked to have heard it in from the beginning, and they’reproducing some stunning results.RB: What ground work needs to be done in terms ofpreparation for a multichannel remix?RK: Quite a few things. One is figuring out what studio

DTS guru and 5.1 old hand, RoryKaplan, imparts some salient surroundsound production and engineeringtechnique tips to Richard Buskin.

Remixing for 5.1

Remixing for 5.1

you’re going to work in, and that often relates to the tapesyou’ve got to work with. You see, if you’re dealing with aproject that’s 15, 20 years or older, the condition of thetapes is a big issue. These are your master multitracksand you don’t want to lose anything, so you have to takethe utmost precautions. For example we sent theanalogue tapes of Don Henley’s End Of The Innocencealbum to Capitol Recording Studios in Hollywood wherethey were transferred to a Sony 3348, which means thatthe label now has a backup.

Once the tapes have been secured in good conditionyou then have to make sure that the room you’ve chosenis set up for 5.1. If it’s not, you have to make sure that youhave enough busses, enough automation faders, andwhatever encode/decode box they want to use, tomonitor 5.1. After that, it comes down to what mediumyou store it on – originally it was generally 20-bit DA88DTRS tape, whereas during the past two and a half yearseverything with DTS has been done in 24-bit [althoughTascams DTRS recorders now support 24-bit – CH]. Thesize of the project will dictate how many tracks you need,but it’s good to have at least a 48-input board, becauseyou’re going to want effects returns and extra faders todo some of the surround panning if your board is notdesigned for surround mixing. Increasingly, there are lotsof smaller studios popping up that advertise for surroundwork, but you’ve got to make sure they have the rightoutboard gear and are prep’d correctly.RB: How do engineers generally arrive at their choiceof a monitoring system and configuration? What arethe common mistakes and misconceptions?RK: Well, it’s really interesting. For example, Don Smithengineers for Tom Petty and The Rolling Stones, and Iwent with him and Mike Campbell to do a 5.1 mix ofMike’s own material at Cherokee Studios. They havethese larger midfield-style monitors – not soffited, mainmonitors but free-standing Klipsch floor speakers – whilethe room is quite narrow, and I couldn’t tell what the heckwas going on in there. I encoded the mix, we played itback elsewhere, and the level was down on one side anda number of things were wrong. The encoding was aninput/throughput process and we hadn’t level-changedanything, so for Mike that room clearlyrepresented a false perception interms of what the speakers were com-municating. From there they went toanother room in North Hollywoodwhich had nearfield monitors and allof a sudden it made sense to him.

So, every engineer has his own par-ticular monitor preference. Forinstance, I’ve noticed that the Genelec1031s or 1032s are beautiful-soundingspeakers for playback, yet whenpeople mix on them the results cansound so ‘glorified’ that they misssome of the smaller detail becausethey didn’t work that area. Some guysare still using NS10s because they like

the sub-woofer crossing over at 85Hz or 100Hz, thenthere are other guys who are using KRK Exposé 8s, whileAl Schmitt is using his Master Lab Tannoys. So, what I’vefound is that the speakers that these engineers are accus-tomed to using in stereo suit them best in 5.1 with adecent subwoofer. That’s really the trick – I still thinkthere’s no substitute for nearfield monitoring in thisformat. You can’t use the big soffited speakers. If youwant to occasionally switch over to them to get a biggerfeel, that’s one thing, but to me there’s a real danger intrying to mix everything on big speakers. You lose muchof the perception of depth.RB: Is it best to have a preconceived idea of soundplacement and sound field, or does experimentationyield the best results?RK: The straightest answer to that is: every song dictateswhat’s going to happen. Like when I listened to SherylCrow’s album [The Globe Sessions], at the beginning of thesong Something More Than Nothing there are these greatambient tracks going on, then a little drum rhythmcomes in, the piano trickles in a bit and her voice isreally light. Well, in my head I can hear all of theambient stuff floating around the back sidefields in themix. With most of these songs I can hear where they’dgo in a surround mix.

Another good example is The Police’s Greatest Hitsalbum remix. That proved to be difficult because some ofthe tracks from the early days were really sparse – youknow, six channels of drums, bass, guitar and vocal – itwasn’t a complicated production. The engineer, DavidTickle, did a great job figuring things out. He had to figureout how to take the voices and delays and reverbs andrhythm guitars, and where to space them so that therewas some ambient cohesion to it.

So, each song dictates what you do, but the flipside isyou still want to maintain the integrity of the intention ofthe song. You don’t want to take some artistic stance andsay, "Oh, it’ll be hip to have her vocal come out of therear-left speaker, detached from everything else," – unlessit’s intentionally theatrical like a Pink Floyd project.RB: We were talking before about how there’s no presetformula, because every record has different require-

ments. However, what considerationsmust be made in the multichannelremixing of an established andmuch-loved ‘classic’ album?RK: Well, for example, Steely Dan’sGaucho album is accepted as one ofthe classic CDs, and so when we wentto remix it we had to bear in mind thatthe original board it was mixed on wasa Neve 8078. We therefore remixed iton an 8078 at Donald Fagen’s studio[River Sound, in New York], andDonald and Walter [Becker] were inthe room, making the calls with Elliot.I mean, aside from the equipment, theother thing which DTS has established– and this is largely because of my

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own music background – is that, wherever possible, youshould try really hard to keep the original people involvedand thus keep that integrity.RB: In line with the need for consistency, howimportant is this with regard to the formats being usedbetween the stereo and the surround mixes?RK: That’s a good point. For example, with Don Henley,originally they used a Yamaha REV1 on three of thetracks for his lead vocal, and I happen to have one. So, Ibrought my rack with me to the studio and we did usesome of the original reverbs of that time. Basically, youtry to match the original audio chain – I mean, if theoriginal audio chain off of tape went: LA-2A compressor,Neve 1073 and then to a Lexicon 480L, then in mostcases the guys will recall that chain as far as possible.There again, it’s not always possible, or cost-effective, torent certain vintage gear, and in some cases theequipment now is better, so it depends. After all, you’vegot to watch your expense, and therefore if I have achoice between a Fairchild and an Avalon, and the Avalonsounds just as good and the engineer says, "Hey, look,that’s all I need", then I’m going to go with the Avalon.That’s where the production value of experience comesin, because you don’t want to compromise the music butyou’ve also got to know what gear does what best. It’s atough call.RB: What are the common mistakes that engineersmake with their first remixes? There must be somecommon pitfalls.RK: One common mistake is either overloading thecentre channel with too much or too little information, oroverloading the subwoofer with everything just becauseit’s there – in other words, kick drum, low end of thepiano and occasionally bass should be enough. I mean,people now have home systems with bass managementthat is going to drive everything below 100Hz from thefive speakers down to the sub, so you want to make sureyou’re not going too far, and to ensure you don’t, there arebass management monitoring systems.

Trying to use stereo reverbs at the front and back isalso a real no-no. It’s much better to use mono verbs forthe rears. You should also try to isolate as much as youcan and create your own soundstage, while make sureyour rear speakers are full-range – don’t go down the oldDolby Pro Logic road where the rears are just producing alittle bit of effect from the out-of-phase material. Thank-fully, DTS has somehow created the standard for full per-ceptual audio all of the way around, and the extra scopeprovided from that is considerable.RB: Is there a best plan of approach when it comes tobuilding a multichannel mix from scratch which will

reveal placement opportunities and ideas?RK: I’ll tell you what most guys are saying... and it tookme a while to agree with them, but I have to now. Whatthey’re doing is taking the original stereo mix andrecalling or mixing their stereos first. They recall every-thing as close as they can to the original stereo mix sothat they’ll get a perceptual idea of the track – how thevocals sit with the track, etc. – and then they’ll go aheadand pan out from there.

So, the building block is to get your stereo imaging first,or get as close as you can to the original. Doing that getsyou back to the integrity of the song, it gives you a feelfor what was intended for that song, and then, when youstart placing things around, you also have something torefer back to so you don’t get too far off-base.

That has been the easiest way to build. From there, getyour rhythm tracks up first – your percussion, your drums– because that gives you a great soundfield to go from.Your bass should usually be diversed a little off to thecentre left and right, with a little bit of a point of it in thecentre speaker and in the sub. As for lead vocals, on theremix of Gaucho Donald Fagen, for instance, loved havinghis voice in the centre speaker, and Elliot [Scheiner] gotsome criticism for that – by people outside the industry –and he thought, "Oh-oh, I can’t do that anymore".However, that’s one of the greatest mixes around, so wehad a long talk about it and I said, "You can’t worry aboutpublic opinion… you’re creating the standard." It’s likesaying, "That’s a horrible song because I don’t like it." It’sa personal opinion.

Why I think the issue of the centre speaker was such aproblem in the beginning is that four years ago most hometheatres were of the old thrown-together Radio Shackvariety, where the centre speaker was less than Auratonequality. So, if you loaded it up with too much information, itwould misbehave and you wouldn’t hear what the engineerhad done. I think it’s much better to not mix to the lowestcommon denominator, but mix to the highest and make theguy at home buy a better centre speaker. We’re alreadyseeing the speaker companies jumping on the bandwagonand they’re selling decent-quality complete 5.1 systems forunder a thousand bucks US.RB: In terms of where you place the speakers, does thisvary between film and music work?RK: The ITU standard specifies a 60 degree width at thefront and 110 degree for the rears. While that’s fine for thefilm industry it doesn’t work quite the same for the music.In fact, I went over this with Elliot Scheiner, David Tickleand Al Schmitt. They initially tried going by ‘the book’,putting the monitors out wide on the rears, but the troubleis that you’re not only putting effects back there, you’re

1) Do find a speaker that you are comfortablewith.2) Do use the centre speaker, but always becareful to diverse what is in there.3) Do try to use the original audio chain that

was employed on the stereo mix.4) Do try to use bass management for monitor-ing back and forth with and without.5) Do use your subwoofer when applicable.6) Do keep the music intact and don’t worry

about the gimmicks.

Rory’s half-dozen essential dos of multichannel remixing:

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actually using them as full-range speakers – and the 110 degree separation doesn’twork so well in our case. So as far placement goes, we drew more of a rectangle,putting the surround more behind us. As a result, you get better depth of perceptionfrom reverbs and delays, especially from front to back but also from back to front.When you go too far wide with your monitors I think you lose that perception, andit’s turned out that a lot of other engineers feel the same way.

I did Don Henley’s End Of The Innocence with his engineer Rob Jacobs at theRecord Plant using an SSL 9000J, and the software of the board wasn’t set up for a5.1 mix, so we had to figure out how we were going to use the panpots and smallfaders to derive what we needed out of it. Once we did, we tried the wide 110degree speaker separation at the back to see if the ITU standard would work inthat room, but we soon put the speakers back to where I normally set them up.Regardless of exactly where you place those monitors they need to be at an equaldistance from the engineering position. What I do is put a mic stand where theengineer would sit, take a tape measure, go out to the centre speaker and take anequal distance to the left and right speakers. Then what I’ll do is move the micstand about a foot closer to the board and do the measurement again, so there’slike a convergence zone. As a result, if you sit forward eight or ten inches, or sitback eight or ten inches, at least you have a converging area, as opposed to havingto keep your head in the exact same place. I set up the rear speakers in preciselythe same way, and it really works out well. I mean, so far I’ve followed this methodfor 99 percent of the projects I’ve been on and it’s been fail-safe.RB: Is it realistic to expect a whole lot from the surround speakers when youconsider the average domestic listening environment?RK: Well, you know, there’s this great thing called the WAF – the Wife AcceptanceFactor...RB: That applies to a lot of things!RK: Yeah, and evidently some people have their rear speakers up on a bookshelf,ten feet back to the side. Their ears are not even at the speaker level. But you can’twork on the basis of the worst case scenario. You can only really mix on the basisthat Joe Public has his speakers all in phase and in the right place.

Actually, DTS has a test disc that it sends out, which will check out yourspeakers – your level settings and everything. But no-one is foolish enough tobelieve that educating the public is going to be an easy thing.

Rory’s half-dozen cardinal don’ts of multichannel remixing:

1) Don’t overload the centre speaker with toomuch information.2) Don’t overload your subwoofer with too much bass information.3) Don’t set up your speakers without aligningthem properly.

4) Don’t go over budget on the original equipment... that creeps up on you.5) Don’t ignore the original intention of thesong.6) Don’t approach the mix with a pre conceivedidea.

A younger Rory Kaplan with a normally shy and retiring Michael Jackson.

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