Anyone tried QCreator?

farss wrote on 2/28/2004, 4:27 AM
Seeing as how Sony are 'featuring' it on the Acid Planet site I guess it must have some merit and for the price it's pretty well throw away if you don't like it stuff.
I don't sxpect it to perform miracles but strangley enough I can see a use for it in some corporate stuff I'm working on, just wondering if anyone else has tried it and how successful you've been creating the illusion of surrond sound in different environments.

If you're interested it's here:

http://ad.qcommerce.com/asp/click_banner.asp?AffiliateBannerID=714

I have SF7, wonder if it's possible to do the same trick with it?

Comments

epirb wrote on 2/28/2004, 4:02 PM
saw it too, and wondered...thought i would give this post a bump.
Jsnkc wrote on 2/28/2004, 4:16 PM
Looks like it's just a tool for panning audio which you can already do in Vegas.
farss wrote on 2/28/2004, 4:28 PM
That's what I thought at first but it's much cleverer than that, it can process the audio to move it outside the normal stereo sound field, it can sometimes get it to sound like the sound is coming from behind you.
Obviously results are dependant on a whole lot of factors, not least of all being speaker placement and type of audio.
epirb wrote on 2/28/2004, 5:11 PM
farss, have you tried it? I noticed there is no demo
if its<<<<<<<>>>>>>>just a
glorifed <<<<>>>>>>>panner
Its not realy anything we cant do in Vegas, as we all know.
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/28/2004, 5:24 PM
I have QSound, which is the forerunner of this product. Bob Clearmountain suggested it several years ago for a sample library, and so we used it. It's a nice little gimmick, using EQ points to place sound in the field. There are many variants of it, and it's definitely useful for some sorts of things. It's not an illusion of surround, but rather the illusion of placement in the mix. It's fairly pointed, and can be quite narrowly beamed though, which might be a tremendous benefit to otherwise washed out dialog.
starixiom wrote on 2/28/2004, 5:44 PM
So can Vegas achieve similar results?
farss wrote on 2/28/2004, 6:10 PM
There's no demo version to try out but the demo material is quite impressive. It sure does more than just 'pan'. As SPOT said it sounds like it's doing tricks with the Eq as you move the sound past hard right or left, it may also do something with the phase as well.

Heck for $20 I'll buy it later tonight and see how it goes!

I'd buy it now but the sun is shining after a few days of rain and the damn grass is about window height.
Spot|DSE wrote on 2/28/2004, 6:13 PM
With a Qsound plug in, yes.
Otherwise, no.
It's a combination of EQ, panning, and phase treatment.
epirb wrote on 3/2/2004, 3:12 PM
farss,
you try this yet? or you still mowing the lawn?:)
was it a download on a disc?
Erk wrote on 3/2/2004, 7:14 PM
I bought Qsound as well some time ago (as Spot mentioned, the forerunner).
I didn't experiment with it all that much, but it can definetely be useful for jazzing up certain sounds or instruments. One thing I seem to remember is that if I used it on say a mono electric rythmn part, and solo'd that track, it had a bit of an artificial sound, but if its in the mix, it sounded pretty cool.

Like a lot of things, probably takes a bit of learning to really know how and when to use it.

Greg
farss wrote on 3/2/2004, 8:00 PM
Sorry guys,
been flat our organising my overseas wedding!

Anyway yes I bought it, not the plugin version the standalone one, must admit I didn't know you could get it as a plug-in.

Anyway seems to be useful. It seems the closer together the speaker are the better the illusion works which is just fine for what I bought it for. I'm making these DVDs that play in a kiosk in a display stand, the sound comes out of the tinny speakers in the LCD screen.

I figured creating a bit of an audio oddity makes it more likely to grab peoples attention.

Only annoyance I've noticed is you have to start with a mono wav file, the program has no facility to convert either stereo wav or single channel only wv to mono, not a big drama to do in Vegas. Also monitor the audio in QCreator it sounds terrible but once rendered out and played back in Vegas it's fine.

For the money it's worth it, would you use it a lot, no way. But in some circumstances it can add an extra dimension, would probably work OK through the typical TV with stereo speakers. Also how well it works depends on the source material and I think adding visual cues as well helps, things like a helicopter flying towards you on the screen will prepare the brain to expect a sound that move behind you. Having the extreme panned sound mixed with something normal helps too.