Multi-track audio production The various items of software, and systems made up of software and hardware, that we have described in previous chapters, represent today real 'advanced working environments' for sound engineers and musicians all over the world. From the progenitors Digital Performer and Sonar (ex Cakewalk Pro) to the modern Cubase, Logic and ProTools, all these splendid items of software provide, in varying degrees, everything that is necessary to carry out multi-track panning. Often panning is sufficient for applications required by multi-track audio production for video, or for supports like Audio DVD and video games. But X-Spat is the ideal product if sufficiency is not enough. While it maintains the necessary compatibility with traditional panning and with the various necessary encoding algorithms, X-Spat provides more demanding engineers with the most effective psycho-acoustic algorithms to simulate the positioning or the movement of audio sources in any point of a given space. In addition, using the Spatialisation 3D provided by the two DSP of X-Spat as a support or in place of the normal 2D 'panning' of the above items of software, the latter will dispose of increased power of calculation for other effects that must use the host computer or the hardware assigned to them. The X-Spat system's capacity to recalculate all that is necessary to reproduce the same Spatialisation, each time there is a change in the position and the number of speakers used, also creates new possibilities in terms of production if you want to use live multi-track and preserve the original sensations as much as possible, when transferring to a mass-circulation multi-track system, i.e. DVD. Let°òs look at some examples of system configuration, also included in the X-Spat Library file of the installation CD-ROM. The file 51ITU_AD_plusExtStereo.xcont2, if loaded in X-Spat Controller and correctly sent to the card, allows you to use inputs 1 to 6 as channels to be spatialized and the couple of inputs 7 and 8 as stereo inputs not spatialized, but directly added to channels L and R of the 5.1. Therefore our output will be a 5.1 ITU made up of a stereo mix and of 5 channels in Spatialisation plus a Subwoofer, always controllable both during the mixing and during the mastering, the ideal solution for the typical recording of music. File Ext51ITUplus7-8Spat.xcont2 instead, if loaded in X-Spat Controller and correctly sent to the card, will allow you to use inputs 1 to 6 as input channels for an external 5.1 premix in 2D panning, and the couple of inputs 7 and 8 as mono channels to be spatialized or as a single stereo channel to be spatialized. Our output this time will be a 5.1 ITU made up of the sum of the signals mixed by an external workstation in panning and by Spatialisation 5.1 ITU of X-Spat. These two examples represent two ideal extremes in a wide range of settings that you will be able to create and memorize in your hard disk at your own pleasure, and will allow you to deal with almost any requirement in multi-track audio production.
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