#spatialized sound

it’s such a welcome addition, the surround panner that ships with the new ableton live 10 suite! it’s a simple fact that most of theodor wilhelm zanetti’s pieces keep within 8 tracks, simple as the fact that there are often eight speakers sitting around zanetti’s at work.

might seem like a contradiction in terms, at first glance, such a high degree of aural sophistication within a production tool that caters to such a huge community of “what’s wrong with mp3? i can’t hear no difference” well-trained listeners.

luckily, ableton live serves not only the prone-to-deaf, mix-it-just-louder squad of (often self-proclaimed) producers, but caters to a most honest community of composers, researchers, theatre sound designers, musicologists, music therapists and, yes, makers of electronic music, too.

all of whom had, until now, not a built-in, ready-made tool to spread their sonic produce in space, or around space, using more than the proverbial (stereo) pair of speakers, other than in form of external hardware or software.

sure, four-, six- and eight-channel setups are nowhere close to the hottest trends of spatialization in the pro audio (premium) industry, like d&b soundscape, to name but the most recent and powerful one, with 64-channel strong innovative algorithms for both positioning sources in space and creating a (spatialized) ambience based on real or just invented reverberant field profiles... 

but the ability to place sound in space, and right inside the production tools that generates sound itself, is such a powerful tool for all electronic music students who will now stand a(n easy) chance to try at home what every conservatory’s electronic music lecture room already allowed them, with more specific and specialized hardware solutions, six- and eight-channel setups being the de-facto standards for a huge body of work of illustrious electronic music composers from both past and current century.

and, if the surround panner didn’t strike you as the most daring addition to the upgrade from live 9 to live 10 suite package, just to try to look at it this way: in terms of simple file size, the surround panner tool within ableton live 10 is the smallest of all its packs, but in terms of how it can affect your own music or aural experience, is way more powerful than any of the built-in virtual instruments.

because, no matter how simple or complex your sound palette or music composition is, spread across multiple speakers placed across the acoustic environment, what sounds like sheer banality on a stereo pair of nearfield monitors, gets to plunge to the bottom of the ocean, and to reach beyond the sky, in a sonic depth that easily zeroes out any resistance of the human brain to keep your self from getting lost within the aural texture.