“The octophonic is the new stereo,” proclaims electroacoustic composer Barry Truax (pronounced “TRUE axe”) from his Sonic Research Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. We’re about 5 minutes into his inaugural Zoom class on Soundscape Composition, of which 8-channel sound composition is to play a major part. It’s January 2022, and a month earlier my friend Julie Caine forwarded me an email announcing the offering of this class. Its synchronicity with the work Sam and I have been doing the last few years here at The World According to Sound was too much to ignore, so I signed up and Barry graciously let me audit. Thus began my formal foray into multichannel soundscape composition.
I write “formal” because Sam and I have been muddling through octophonic audio since 2016, when we did our first live event at The Lab in San Francisco. We came to it as utter neophytes: the thought, after making our 90-second podcast for a year and a half, was simply, “We have so many great sounds now, wouldn’t it be cool to move them all around a room?” And when we learned that most hardware (in our price range) capable of supporting multi-channel audio offered a maximum of 8 audio outputs, the choice was made for us: we would be diving into the world of octophonic sound composition. (That show at The Lab remains one of the most exciting and gratifying things I have done in my life.)
But back to this Soundscape Composition class. For Barry Truax, making audio works in stereo belongs to a bygone era. Technological advances have made more complex composition accessible, to the point that audio makers ought to start using the octophonic as the baseline. Of course, the playback of such pieces remains elitist: Jane Q. Listener doesn’t exactly have an octophonic speaker rig set up in her home.
But for the occasion of this class, I did set up an 8-channel array. This is not elementary: you need the gear (eight identical loudspeakers, ideally; a DAW, or digital audio workstation, or audio software capable of 8-track playback; a computer; an audio interface with at least 8 outputs; 8 XLR cables, etc.), the know-how, and the space (a studio or a spare room in your living quarters––a large ask indeed in overpriced San Francisco). I fortunately and luxuriously do have a free room in my apartment, and set up the octophonic array as follows:
[Chris’ apartment in San Francisco and 8-channel home studio setup]
The idea here is that the auditor sits or stands or lies in the middle of this (in this case) box of speakers. It could also be a ring, a sort of octagonal array. The effect is one of intense sonic immersion in both recreated and imaginary environments, at least compared to anything stereo can offer. With the ability to send out eight completely unique signals of sound––one to each speaker––as opposed to just two under stereo, I am able to create a much more complex field of sound. Which leads us into a bit of a paradox, on the first week of Listening Club no less! After all, we are attempting to listen to octophonic compositions on our pedestrian stereophonic headphones. And although we do have this stereo mix of “The Shaman Ascending,” it is important to remember that this work was not intended to be listened to in this way.
It would be helpful at this point to have a firmer grasp of a few terms. I should also admit right away my belief in the power of etymology to uncover some otherwise hidden wisdom.
octophonic = ὀκτώ + φωνή = oktō + phōnē = eight + sound/tone (especially of the human voice). In other words, octophonic compositions make use of eight discrete channels, which means you need eight loudspeakers to listen to them; and which also means that I can listen to eight different sounds coming from eight different directions at once––one unique sound per speaker; and which finally means that headphones and their mere duality just won’t cut it.
Interestingly, stereo (στερέος) doesn’t mean “two” or anything like that. It means “solid, firm, fixed” which feels slippery at first. Modern stereo recordings, i.e. recordings using two channels, came about in the 1930s. Their invention is usually credited to British engineer Alan Blumlein (cf. “Blumlein pair,” a term still used today by sound recordists to describe the placement of two microphones with their axes at right angles to each other. This is often considered the ideal mic setup for a faithful stereo recording). Stereo recordings were a major technological jump from mono recordings, in which only one channel is used. The practical result of a mono recording, for example, is that you get the exact same sound coming out of your left and right headphone speakers upon playback; and so a complex environment in a mono recording appears flat and one-dimensional. But with stereo (solid and firm, mind you), you can have two entirely different sounds coming into your ears at the same time. The result is a much more spatialized, three-dimensional sound, and this, to me, gets at the “solid” aspect of stereo. Stereo is full, strong, solid––at least in comparison to the thin, flat mono.
Still, I find this a tenuous etymology. I would have gone with “duo” or “amphi” or some such thing as a counterpart to “mono” (μόνος = alone, solitary; ἀμφί = both, around). Perhaps “amphisonic”, or “amphi” for short––for example, “I am glad nobody has ever stolen my car amphi, as it has excellent sound and is worth a lot.” Neologisms are hard to catch on.
Another major stereo: stereotype, which is a largely held (whence the “fixed” aspect––it’s hard to dispel a stereotype once it’s taken hold) but often oversimplified view or classification of a thing. This makes more sense, fixedly-speaking.
So much for terms.
Finally, after much prologue, a few words about this week’s piece of audio. “The Shaman Ascending” (Truax 2004-2005) is one of about 15 octophonic pieces we listened to in the class. This one really hit me as I lay on the ground, in the dark, in the middle of my box of speakers: the diffused, highly processed chanting voices swirled around my head immediately. Although at first I was jarred by the processed, disembodied sound of this human voice, after a few minutes I really started to settle in. It had a significant calming effect on me after a while. I found it quite beautiful, really.
The liner notes, as it were, from Truax himself: “The Shaman Ascending evokes the imagery of a traditional shaman figure chanting in the quest for spiritual ecstasy. However, in this case, the listener is placed inside of a circle of loudspeakers with the vocal utterances swirling around at high rates of speed and timbral development. The work proceeds in increasing stages of complexity as the shaman ascends towards a higher spiritual state.
“The work and its title are inspired by a pair of Canadian Inuit sculptures by John Terriak with collectively the same name, as well as Inuit throat singing. All of the vocal material heard in the piece is derived from recording of the Vancouver bass singer Derrick Christian.”
Finally, a technical note from Truax: “The 8-channel version of this work was created with Richmond Sound Design's AudioBox computer-controlled diffusion system.” Diffusion––a term and concept for a future session of The Listening Club.
Notes and Resources:
Barry Truax teaches at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. The school remains a hub for soundscape composition, and is responsible for innumerable developments in the field since the early 1970s. We will be revisiting the work of others who have come out of this school in the weeks to come (Hildegard Westerkamp, for example).
Well of course I'm blown away that you would choose to intelligently tie in your Greek background with the etymology section of your comments!