SurroundByUs.com

The SurroundByUs Newsletter
Issue #3 Summer 2010

In this issue:


• SPEC and ZAG updates
• The ZPlayer
• Video guides
• Forum cleanup and Wiki harvesting


Welcome to our third SBU newsletter. We will be continuing to publish these newsletter and distribute them to registered forum members at least four times a year in order to summarize new developments in the world of stereo-to-surround, especially for those of you who are not regular visitors to our site. Our goal is to keep you interested and involved in the life of the forum, and for you not to miss out on forum developments.

Since our last newsletter, we are now approaching 1000 registered members, While some may have noticed a “quieter” forum, a look at our stats only shows a small drop in forum visits. We believe that our new video guides to Plogue and SPEC are helping to answer many of the questions you may have, and are glad they could be of help. With a new update to SPEC now posted, we want to thank you again for your support. It’s our membership base that keeps us going strong and makes us strive to get better.

SPEC 4.3 and ZAG 1.8

The latest updates to both SPEC and ZAG are both online. The most important change to both involves the ability to perform “per track automation,” which means the ability to adjust SPEC settings per track while processing an album as one long track. This eliminates one long-standing issue with upmixing as a whole, which was that settings that were ideal for one track did not work as well for another. You are now able to tweak every track to your desire, while maintaining fully gapless play and the ease of use which our ZAG automation technique provides.

The ZPlayer

Another new inclusion within SPEC 4.3 is the ZPlayer, which is an alternate file player which can be utilized when tweaking specific tracks. Please read the instructions carefully when using, as it is both resource-intensive at this time and has to deal with some flaws in Plogue’s “Basic File Player,” which it uses at its core. When used correctly, though, ZPlayer allows greater ease in creating short loops within songs in order to more closely monitor, as well as quickly starting, stopping, rewinding, and fast-forwarding a track. There will be much further development in this months ahead regarding ZPlayer. We are just getting started there.

Video Guides

If you haven’t watched Zeerround’s excellent video guides yet, you owe it to yourself to give the site another visit. He did an excellent job of walking the user through installing and use of the SPEC method. We hope this is helping clear up some of the more common installation and use errors. This has proven to be an effective media, which means we will be expanding our “Video Guides” section in the future as well. Zeerround has been trying to convince myself, River161, to overcome my shyness and produce a guide of my own.

Forum cleanup and Wiki harvesting

This never occurred since our last update, unfortunately due to simple time and logistical reasons. We look to revisit this in the future. Your posts are safe for now, as long as you are following our forum rules.

Thanks again for your support. See you in the coming months with whatever the next few months may bring in the surround world.

River161 @ SurroundByUs

The SurroundByUs Newsletter is published minimum once seasonably and distributed via forum post and email to all subscribed members at www.surroundbyus.com.