The role of the Audio Engineer and Album Producer is to build a wall of tones. It extends from left to right in the horizontal axis. It can generally be extended that the height of the wall is the frequency range of each sound. In the stereo picture each item must be captured by a microphone or placed in a discreet location or brick in the wall. This ensures space for each sound int he stereo picture.

Once that is covered, then using effects and microphone techniques, bricks of the wall are removed to give depth to the picture and sound scape; creating cameos for sound to exist behind the wall in vignettes or peep shows.

The third stage is to bring features off the wall and reach towards the listener. There is another field of study in surround sound and immersive audio. These use multiple speakers and this wall theory is only concerned with pure two cabinet stereo. Most stereo recordings are able to be listened to with Headphones, but again the experience is very different as the psychoacoustic effect is translated very different to the free air stereo picture. The pseudo echoes used in virtual surround are also not included.

The final part of the puzzle to create a wonder wall is to extend the wall sideways beyond the speakers using effects to place sounds off of the great wall and around the listener with only two channel stereo reproduction.

Damon Craig

Artist, Engineer and Sound Designer.