The DMS2Five plug-in is made with SonicBirth, an object-oriented programming environment for the creation of Audio Unit and VST plug-ins for Mac OS X. The Windows OS equivalent of SonicBirth would be SynthMaker.
The DMS2Five plug-in, and the information on this page, are provided as is,
without any guarantee regarding performance or end result. Ambisonic Studio and Daniel Courville are not associated with Scheops Mikrofone GmbH, its distributors or vendors.
X Lossless Decoder (XLD): utility for converting files between the following formats: Wave, AIFF, raw PCM, Wave64 (.w64), MPEG-4 AAC (.m4a), Apple Lossless (.m4a), FLAC (.flac/.ogg), MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack (.wv). Can also read Monkey's Audio (.ape) and True Audio (.tta). Files can be multichannel if supported by file format.
The DMS2Five has six inputs, M-Front, S and M-Back (plus three dummy inputs for compatibility purposes), and three different 5.1 output modes.
Input Trim Controls
To adjust the individual input levels of the three microphones. The DMS2Five is adjusted to the different sensitivities of the CCM 4V and CCM 8, but if level discrepancies occured in the recording, they can be compensated by up to 6 dB. A good practice with a Double MS assembly is to globally adjust the recording levels (not individually per channel) to maintain the level relationship between channels.
Front/LR Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. Directivity: to control the directivity of the virtual microphones feeding the speakers between omnidirectional and figure-8/bidirectional (default to 0.5, cardioid/unidirectional). Width: to vary the width of the speaker feeds from 0 to 180°, with default to 60°, referenced to Center. Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Center Channel Controls
Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. Directivity: to control the directivity of the virtual microphone feeding the speaker between omnidirectional and figure-8/bidirectional (default to 0.5, cardioid/unidirectional). Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Sub/Lfe Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. EQ: to control the lowpass filter between 20 and 160 Hz with the default at 120 Hz. Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Surround/LsRs Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. Directivity: to control the directivity of the virtual microphones feeding the speakers between omnidirectional and figure-8/bidirectional (default to 0.5, cardioid/unidirectional). Width: to vary the width of the speaker feeds from 180 to 360°, with default to 240°, referenced to Center. Delay: to delay by up to 35 milliseconds with a default of 0 ms or no delay. Used for augmenting Front-Back separation. EQ: to control the lowpass filter between 1 kHz and 20 kHz with the default at 20 kHz. Used for augmenting Front-Back separation. Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Soundfield Controls Axis Flip: to flip the soundfield on the Front/Back axis (front becomes back) and on the Left/Right axis (left becomes right), both default to Off, no flip. Rotation: to rotate the soundfield, in degrees, from -180 to + 180. Default to 0°, no rotation.
Interpolation Control
Affects the sound quality of the Surround Ls/Rs delay. The Linear interpolation setting will yield better sound quality, but will use more CPU. Default to No interpolation.
Outout Channel Order Control
Configures the output channel order. This can be useful in preparing the audio stream for applications that expect the audio channels in a specific arrangement. Apple Logic users should select the third option: L R Ls Rs C Lfe.
Mute unused channels to optimize CPU performance.
Note on the Sub/Lfe: activate the Sub/Lfe when monitoring without bass management. Deactivate (Mute) it when generating the actual stream for the 5.1 media: the DMS2Five will then output a 5.0 stream, but the media player/surround processor will likely feature bass management if the 5.0 stream is delivered on DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, DTS-CD, SACD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray disc or HDTV broadcast. More details on the use of the Lfe channel available here.
