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#i spent 2 days trying to rig this model just to make this image
sophbun · 1 year
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hes only 12 minutes old
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jimbo-capstone · 2 years
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WEEK 2, Sept 13 : 7 Days of Iteration
I kind of didn't really do iteration as much as just built up a more detailed scene in steps, I apologize for the fraud, but I wanted to try and develop an entire bg/ scene look.
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On the first day, I sketched out an idea I had for a scene and began blocking it out in 3D. Most of the work here was just thinking about potential chase scenes and lighting and procrastinating. On the second day, I journeyed to Sleepy Hollow and spent the day there taking photos and hiking, which although didn't directly iterate/progress the scene, was useful for understanding the foliage and setting of the legend, even though I had already sort of mapped it out for this particular scene.
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On the third day I found a model horse and imported my rigged drawing model guy to further detail the scene. The set up there was actually pretty quick, what I spent most of the time on was dialing in the lighting and enviroment volume as to get that sort of god ray look without blowing out the image.
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On the fourth day, I added a lot of leafy green shrubbery inspired by my Wednesday trip. Although it's subtle this actually took like 2 hours. The main issue here is how tedious it is to set up redshift proxies. Over the summer I got a small library of realistic north American forest foliage models, but I had never actually used it. So I spent some time converting about half of the items into redshift proxies which I then imported into the scene and scattered about the ground and sort of hill wall thing the horse is riding beside. It definitely can use some work but right off the bat, I was a fan of the detail it brought to the floor, with the foggy layers of plants and leaves.
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On day five I did an initial drawing based on the renders from the day before. Although I think it turned out pretty cool, it is not really feasible to animate and could use some further compositing.
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On day six I tried doing a more simple drawing, but it looked a bit bland. I decided I would focus on proper designs and colors next week and just try and get the compositing down
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On day seven I rendered out a few (I only stuck with the two shown here) versions of the isolated fog. I tried for a bit to understand redshift AOVs but after seeing most of the tutorial workflows going straight to real compositing software and not Clips Studio Paint or any other simple layered drawing software (which makes sense) I decided to just do what felt correct and isolate lighting elements and the environment to create the fog images. I then overlayed them with a few different blend modes and combinations to produce the above images, which make the character feel within the fog as opposed to on top of it, which I think helps the look a great deal. This week wasn't particularly rough or anything, but I am still settling into a finalized schedule for the semester, so I am hoping to be more productive next week now that I am aware of when I can work on this and when. I also won't be taking any full-day trips until the 27th when I plan to go up to the Hudson Valley/Highlands again.
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rushingheadlong · 3 years
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POP IN THE SUPERMARKET
Conveyer rock - is it all a hype? Colin Irwin looks at pre-packed pop and talks to the men behind new bands Queen (left) and Merlin
Hype. An ugly, unpleasant word frequently recurring in rock circles. 
Up in the boardroom of a vast record company the fat cigar brigade are scratching heads. Binn and Batman have come up with another surefire hit and they want somebody fresh to market it. They ponder a few names and finally decide on one with slight but clear sexual connotations - suggestively camp. 
Name settled, they work on the people who will be in this new band. They might be able to find a ready-made group to fit the bill but better to mould their own. There's a singer who has been around for a few years. 
He's not great but he knows how to throw himself around a stage, has a hairy chest and can hit the high notes. Give him a new name and he'll do. Somebody knows a lead guitarist who can play a bit and looks good. They can advertise for the others. 
They'll work out a sensational stage act, rig them up in some flash gear, buy them the best equipment and arrange a string of appearances in some influential venues. Plunge a few thousand quid in launching them with advertising and posters and "They'll be the biggest thing since sliced bread," chief fat cigar tells his underlings. 
Session musicians are employed to record the single and being a Binn and Batman special the radio stations label it "chart bound" and play it twenty five times a day. Seeing the glossy photos in the bop mags the kids gather up their pennies and buy it. 
VOILA, stars are born - or manufactured. An extreme form of hype. 
There's also a cliché commonly used in the business about people who have been around for many years and finally make it. It's called talent-will-out. An idealist phrase but there is still a popular belief that if a band is truly talented enough it will win through in the end. 
Yet even the greatest band in the world need a bit of pushing in the first place. When a record becomes a hit it's not always that easy to distinguish between hype and talent-will-out.
If a record company spends astronomical sums of money promoting a band, is it hype? Or is it a legitimate and necessary weapon in the music business? The argument is that the BBC's ever-tightening playlist and the effects on the industry of the three-day week have made it harder than ever for a new group to make it - talent or no. Without a big money machine behind it there isn't a hope. 
The situation is illustrated by two energetic new bands, who both look like breaking. 
Big money has been spent on Queen and Merlin, who have had new singles released during the last month. 
Queen's record, "Seven Seas Of Rhye," is already moving swiftly up the chart, while Merlin's "Let Me Put My Spell On You," is doing well enough to suggest it might follow suit. 
There is no suggestion that either band is a manufactured or manipulated product in the sense of the Monkees. They play the music on their own records entirely themselves and they are both hard at work on the road. 
Yet the question arises as to whether they would be doing quite so well without the resources of big companies behind them. 
In the case of Queen it's Trident Audio Productions and EMI and for Merlin it's Cookaway Productions and CBS.
The one common factor is that money and backing has been provided because the companies have a solid, unshakeable belief in the artists they are promoting. They are indignant about any suggestion of a put-on or that there has been any attempt to con the public. 
Listen to Merlin's producer Roger Greenaway for half-an-hour and there is no doubting his faith in their ability. "They are going to break, I know they are. I'm convinced the record will be a hit."
Nobody's saying exactly how much it has cost to launch either band. "Over a period of months between £5,000 and £10,000" has been spent on marketing Queen by EMI while the figure for Merlin is even vaguer. "A bit, but not a vast amount. Not a fortune by any means."
"Seven Seas Of Rhye" is Queen's second single and was recorded as part of the album "Queen 2" which has just been released. Things started to move for them about a year ago when they recorded their first album for Trident, who have a distribution contract with EMI. 
An advance was paid to them to help with the immediate costs of putting them on the road. 
Review copies of the album - about 400 of them - were sent out to everyone who might conceivably have any influence on the record buying public, from discos to the national press. Copies were personally distributed to radio and TV producers and extensive advertising space was bought in the trade papers. 
The launch for Queen was more concentrated than most artist are entitled to expect. 
Trident were completely behind them from the start and found them their American producer Jack Nelson. EMI promotions men Ronnie Fowler and John Bagnall decided they had a product with an exceptional chance of success and they went all out to exploit it to the full. 
Says Fowler: "Every record we release we work to a pattern of promotion. When I went round with the album it was normal procedure. It becomes un-normal when people start phoning you - that's when you put more effort into it."
Bagnall adds: "It became obvious after a week or so that it wasn't standard promotion that was necessary. We did a more complete promotion job than usual on Queen because we thought they were going to make it.
"They're all good-looking guys and I did a round of teeny papers and all the girls in the office swooned over them. Brian, the lead guitarist, had made his own guitar and a couple of the nationals picked up on that. It was good, gossipy stuff."
Queen's publicity machine was working from all angles because they were also getting external promotion from Tony Brainsby's promotion office. 
He had been involved with them from the time they had been trying to get record producers interested. The intensity of it all paid off when they were invited to do a spot on the Old Grey Whistle Test. Radio Luxembourg latched upon the single "Keep Yourself Alive" and played it regularly. 
Their first tour, supporting Mott the Hoople, got the full works. Local press was saturated with releases about this new band which was shortly coming to their town, elaborate displays were arranged at the front of the house on the night of the concert, local disc-jockeys were informed, and window displays were made in about 200 local record shops. 
"Trident and EMI committed themselves right from the start to this band, to make sure they had a PA which was better than other bands had and to make sure they had the right clothes. Some of their outfits cost £150 each," said Bagnall. "Spending money on a band isn't hype. It wasn't being flash or extravagant for the sake of building an image. It was making sure that everything else was as good as their music."
Not so far removed from the attitude towards Merlin, although it has been on a smaller scale in this case. 
The first Merlin tour, still underway, is rigorous. They are playing ballrooms and colleges all over the country on a lengthy round. 
An ambitious project for a new, unknown band, but it has already been successful in that it has launched them as a name people now know. A full-page advertisement was bought in the MM. That's the sort of treatment you might get if you're Bowie, or Ferry, or even Mick Ronson. But Merlin?
They have only been in existence in their present form since last May. 
They emerged as a result of discussions between Alan Love and Derek Chick about the possibility of forming a band with definite commercial appeal and a glamorous stage act. The idea reached fruition via a band called Madrigal, who had for some time been working the same circuit as Mud before "Crazy" broke for them. 
Madrigal disbanded but reformed with the same drummer and bass player, and Love as singer and Chick as manager. A couple more young musicians were found to join them and Chick started the usual hustling to get them going. 
In due course they came to the attention of Cookaway, and Roger Greenaway was hastily summoned to take a look at them. He had already seen Madrigal and when he saw the new model he immediately saw a big future for them. 
Greenaway says: "I'd been looking for a group of this type for three years - a young under-20s group who can present a good act. There's a lot more showmanship attached to bands now. I wanted an act with a slightly different approach. I was in New York producing the Drifters and I came back especially to hear them."
He quickly took them into a studio to see how they reacted there and among the tracks they recorded was "Let Me Put My Spell On You" which had been written by Greenaway in collaboration with Tony Macaulay. Like Queen, the best equipment and some fancy costumes were bought for them and the launching process was put into operation. 
My own experience of the Merlin project was a couple of weeks ago at Reading Top Rank - a bizarre mixture of precocious boppers, ageing teds, and stern-looking heavies. 
Posters and pictures of the group were plastered all over the place and by the time they eventually appeared late in the evening you had been informed quite thoroughly that Merlin had made a record called "Let Me Put My Spell On You."
Greenaway says of Love: "He's got star quality and he's a great charmer. The guitar player Jamie Moses has got a terrific potential too. I've worked with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones but for me this guy at 18 is a better player than Jimmy Page was at the same age. He's the sort of player guys can follow - like Jet Harris - he had an incredible following with the guys."
He likens the Merlin launch to a military operation. The career of the group has been minutely planned since October. Accepting that it is almost impossible to get airplay for a new band on the BBC they decided the best way to break them was through a solid mass of live dates. 
The dates were booked, once again the best equipment, including a light show, was bought for them, and distinctive stage costumes especially designed. 
"By the time the tour has ended they will be a really tight band. We are getting support in the regions and you can break a record if you can get regional radio stations and disco plays. I believe this record is a hit and the signs are there. This is a ten-year job as far as I'm concerned."
Not that big money backing is any guarantee of success. 
One of the biggest projects of this type was the launching of young Darren Burn as Britain's answer to Donny Osmond. To their eternal credit the record-buying public didn't apparently want an answer to Mr Osmond and the campaign failed. 
The pop supermarket is not a new trend. The attractively packaged mass-produced record has been a part of the industry for a long time. The early releases of Love Affair, White Plains and Edison Lighthouse for example spring to mind. 
The whole thing is justified for the makers by the fact that they still become hits, thus proving there is a demand for made-to-order records. If the public is willing - or gullible enough - to pay 50p for music created in the boardroom. Well it must be OK.
The Merlin single is blatantly, unashamedly aimed at being a big hit - that seems to have been the one criterion in making it. It has all the ingredients and as the whole thing has been done with concentrated professionalism it will probably be a hit. 
Back to Roger Greenaway: "I don't want to present this as a Monkees type of image. It's not a manufactured group in any way - these guys have all been in other bands. 
"What Merlin are about is success - reaching people. It's so wrong for opposing people to criticise. If Chinn and Chapman go out to reach a particular market at the thing they do best, and they reach them, then they're doing their job. They've filled a gap.
"When this record happens it'll be called hype but we haven't hyped anybody. Not a vast amount of money has been spent on them. It would be silly to have a tour like this without some sort of advertising. All the money that has been spent on them so far has been towards getting them on the road. 
"It's expensive but it's minimal if you think of it as a along term thing."
It may be unfair to associate Queen with the pop supermarket. The group themselves were apprehensive about appearing on Top Of The Pops and the prospect of a hit record. 
They have always regarded themselves as an album band and were concerned about being connected with the chart groups. The fact remains that they have been on the receiving end of a giant campaign to create a best-selling single and album. 
The first album had sold far better than they had anticipated and there was great excitement around Trident and EMI as the second one was being made. Manager Jack Nelson came in virtually every day to play new tracks as they were completed and many discussions followed on which one should be released as a single. 
A special meeting was held between Bagnall, Fowler, marketing manager Paul Watts and a few others to discuss the approach to the release of "Queen 2."
"We talked about the possibility of boxing the album, and other various publicity and posters needed to produce an album we were convinced was going to be one of the biggest of the year. We set a high target for it. 'Seven Seas' isn't a housewives' record so with the daily shows like Edmonds, Blackburn and Hamilton, there's no chance of getting it played, we knew that from the start. But the weekend shows - Rosko, Henry, and D.L.T. - they all flipped over it. I took the records round personally because I felt so strongly about it."
The prime plug, however, is Top Of The Pops. If a record gets exposure on that there is a more than even chance that it will become a hit. He played it to the show's Robin Nash and a couple of days later Nash phoned him and asked him where Queen were. Later he rang back and invited Queen to do a session. 
The band weren't too sure whether they wanted to do it but eventually agreed although even then they didn't know until the last minute whether it would be used because they were half expecting a David Bowie film to arrive and take it's place. But in the end Queen were shown and "Seven Seas Of Rhye" moved dramatically from there. 
"A lot of people have invested an awful lot of time and money in this band but not as a hype," says Bagnall. "The only truth in the music business is that if a band isn't good, no amount of money will get them to make it."
Greenaway may be right that Merlin are one of the most exciting bands to merge since the Beatles. Fowler might be right that Queen are one of the best since the Who. But big business still remains one of the sadder aspects of the music industry today. 
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Huge thanks to the anon who brought this to my attention, since I’ve been looking for a copy of this article for ages now! 
Credit for the original scans goes to @Chrised90751298 over on twitter, though I stitched it back together into a single image for ease of posting over there. Open the image in a new tab to see the full-size version!
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chipistrate · 2 years
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Present Kid!
Since I didn’t manage to get her done and have, sadly, abandoned her. I decided to show the progress I did get done for my first 3D model, and my first ahit mod! I don’t normally say this, but I’d really appreciate if you took the time to read this post. This project means a lot to me, and I want her to be out there, even if she didn’t get finished.
This actually started out as a level mod I made spontaneously, but I wasn’t able to do that. I wrote out the entire script, and after realizing I couldn’t make the level mod, I started workshopping it into a comic. That also didn’t go anywhere, though aspects of it did get reworked into storybook pages that also never got made! But I do still have the thumbnails!
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The first was called A Merry Beginning, explaining HK and Presents past. The second was how I workshopped the entire plot of the mod into a storybook, it took the name of the mod; Hat Kids Christmas Celebration! She also was going to have an introduction piece in the style of the ones in the ahit manual
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That’s enough of that- let’s get into the actual process of Presents making! So, it started with the initial character design idea, which surprisingly didn’t go through any changes.
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She was digitalized and given color the same day! Then I had to make her model sheet, obviously.
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This was difficult, but really fun! It’s amazing to see how she translated into the Ahit style! Then I got started on modeling! This was my very first 3D model, so the process may be a bit messy.
Heads up: I was posting my progress on my Instagram stories, so sorry for the low quality images. I started this whole project on November 26th, and started modeling on November 28th
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I spent about 2 days on her first model, before scrapping it and starting over
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This was extremely difficult- her skirt was not wanting to cooperate. It went through three changes before I landed on one I liked. . Aaaaaaaaaaand then I might’ve stopped working on it until a week before Christmas- hahaaa..... That was probably the beginning of the end, but the progress I made within a weeks time is impressive! Disclaimer- DONT DO WHAT I DID! I’m still recovering from the crunch time, late nights, and extreme stress. Unless you’re a college student who’s used to such a thing, don’t do it. The aftermath is not fun.
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I made decent progress on day 1, almost finishing her body.
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Next day I started work on the hair, which was difficult since it’s a completely different modeling style I needed to learn, but I finished it within a few days after three re-models.
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I finally landed on this one that I was very satisfied with! And I moved on to finishing the body and adding a few details.
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By day 4 she was textured completely, but before I got to that stage, I had to stop working for a couple hours because I got so excited my heartrate elevated and my hands started shaking and I just couldn’t concentrate- lmao
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Also, very important detail; She has freckles! Now... Rigging... that was uh...
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An experience. This was a giant motivation killer, I spent 5 painstaking hours trying to figure it out by myself, which was a huge mistake. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had grey hairs because of this.
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BUT! Then I learned about weight painting! (Don’t ask how I didn’t know about it previously- I was severely confused and sleep deprived at that point). Though it took another 2-3 days to finish the weight painting, she was finally completed! I then moved onto;
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EXPRESSIONS!
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I actually managed to finish her entire expression sheet within a day! So, everything was ready to import! When,,
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I also learned that she wasn’t the right FBX file type. Every time I tried importing her, the editor would either crash or she would come out looking completely wrong. This seems like such a stupid reason to give up on such a project, but I had been drained of all my mental energy for this. I had put so much into it, and I was barely able to enjoy Christmas because of it. After a day of trying to figure it out, I sadly admitted defeat and decided she wasn’t worth it anymore. It really is a shame I didn’t finish her, but I’m glad I even got this far! She was completely ready to import- and I did most of it in a weeks time! I love Present, I have a lot of ideas for her and other characters like her, but it’s for the best that I stopped working on her. Again, don’t do what I did. Don’t crunch yourself like this. It was a fun ride, but I can barely even remember what happened in that time because I had sunken myself completely into my work. Anytime I got a text I’d get annoyed, anytime I had to stop working I couldn’t get my mind off her. As somebody with an already shitty sleep schedule, she fucked it up so much and I was constantly sleep deprived. I’m still recovering from all of it, and I’m not sure if I can say whether it was worth it or not. Maybe I can share more about her, her story, and my ideas for the mod. But that’s for another post, for now, I need some sleep. I’m grateful I got as far as I did, and I love how she turned out, but I don’t think I’ll go through with completing her unless I have some assistance. Will I ever mod again? Honestly, I’d love to give it a shot! I have a ton of ideas written down or sketched out for outfit mods. I just don’t think I’ll be working on Playables for a long while. If you got this far, thank you. Genuinely, I appreciate you taking the time to read this far! This project still means a lot to me, and all I ask is for you to reblog it. Obviously, it’s alright if not, but I’d appreciate it.
Have a Happy New Years! Cheers to 2022!
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sojournlist · 4 years
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If you’re a blogger or writer or aspiring writer and have low page views and a bit of flexibility in your time. Read this. It’s long but I also wanted to get my backstory in to describe why I’m doing this.
I started out adulthood pretty clueless. Like a lot of clueless 18 year olds, I figured I’d join the Army. I spent 5 years as a Photojournalist in the Army.
While in, I traveled the world, met famous journalists and celebrities, received a letter of commendation from the president. I was pretty confident things were going to turn out okay.
I got out and failed miserably at becoming a freelance writer, so miserably in fact, I lost my truck, my apartment, my girlfriend and became homeless for a short time.
A friends mom put me back on my feet, and I worked in a factory that produced pipelines for oil rigs making 6 dollars an hour. I was the only white guy and 6 months later I found out I outlasted the betting pool that all the immigrant workers had put together on how long I would last.
I never wanted to sleep on the streets again.
I eventually went to college, figuring if I couldn’t make a living in Journalism and English, I’d make a living in Math. I started out planning on majoring in finance, buying into the whole Gordon Gecko greed is good mentality. But wound up switching to accounting. There were ethics that appealed to me. We were protecting the investor and it paid good.
I had been diagnosed with ADHD years before and college was a struggle, not because I didn’t understand the material, but because I hated the length and work of it all. I graduated, became an auditor, I worked for large CPA firms and small ones, primarily in governmental accounting, but specializing in low income housing audits.
Bored yet? I was.
One day a recruiter came knocking and said that he had a CFO position at a small magazine publisher. I was excited. I took the job, and dove super deep into it. I learned as much as I could. I redesigned the books, I got involved in analytics projects regarding sales and projections and budgets, was introduced to how Advertising sales works, and all of that. I also learned I had high functioning autism. I kept that a secret. I also learned exactly why journalists get paid so low and who benefits.
I also had a pretty volatile boss. He would yell and scream and throw fits. We actually got along fine. But because I mostly towed the line.
Then he hired a new sales manager, felt he needed to impress her or something by flexing his power and in a meeting loudly demanded that I collect 50k in A/R or he would withhold my paycheck. He looked smug and asked “How do you feel about that.”
I replied, “I feel like that would be the last day I work here.”
He flipped the fuck out and disappeared for a few days. I usually let stuff fall of my back, but I was pretty angry. The next week, he had me talk to his consultant. It was a good meeting, It was supposed to be confidential. I told her about the autism diagnosis. She immediately told my boss.
The next day, we had a closed door meeting to go over our conversation. Then he got mad at something and the argument renewed and he brought up my diagnosis. I was a bit shocked that the consultant told him despite the promise of confidentiality.
He then told me, “I knew you had a low emotional intelligence when you brought donuts to work and didn’t clean up after everyone. When you bring stuff into the office, it’s your responsibility to clean up after yourself.”
I replied, “I didn’t eat any of the donuts. I brought them in for everyone else.”
“Yeah, and a person who has emotional intelligence would know that they need to clean up after them.”
I was also under the impression that at work you clean up after yourself. Plenty of signs at plenty of workplaces illuminated that for me.
He also got mad, that an IT project of setting up a better WiFi system that I was halfway through resulted in a box filled with half the stuff I hadn’t finished setting up the day prior on a table.
“I don’t need some fucking autistic guy fucking up my office,” he shouted. “You have two weeks to help me find your replacement.”
I told him I’m not helping find my replacement. Packed up my stuff and left. It was April 12, 2019.
Stewing over it for the next few days I devised a plan. I was going to mix the low income housing business model with publishing. A model where by separate entities sharing responsibilities risk is reduced, expenses are decreased and profit is maximized for everyone involved from the reader to the writer to the advertiser and to us.
Why? My boss had regularly mentioned that publishing has a low cost of entry. I also had shitty bosses at small firms in Public Accounting. I never understood why bosses in industries, where their employees could easily up and become competition would be cheap with their employees pay and treat them like shit. Especially since they could walk out the door and become competition.
My boss would often tell me that our magazine didn’t really have any competitors.
I wasn’t eager to go back to working for someone else and I really wasn’t eager to go back to accounting.
So I decided I would try and become a competitor. The business did have a low cost of entry, however, I had 18 dollars to my name on April 12th.
A few days later, I told my wife my plan, she was impressed and thought it was a good idea.
I told a buddy I was in the Army with my plan. He left Army Photojournalism and remained in communications. He thought it was genius. He’s now our editor.
I threw together a rough business plan, told a friend and he entered us into a University of Washington business plan competition.
We didn’t win, I had lots of positive feedback. A guy who informed me he was an angel investor and his wife was formerly a journalist loved the idea. A developer looked at me like I was an idiot and told me my idea was impossible.
I pushed ahead anyways. Another friend from high school who is a website developer offered to help, and the website started and went live on July 15th.
A month later, we had racked up 10k visits and 50 or so profiles, 15 writers submitted material.
The site was slow and it was bothering me. I had also been practicing building websites on the side.
So I hired a guy from Fiverr to optimize the site, he did, but he also destroyed our log in process, which is kind of necessary. I broke the site in an effort to fix it.
So I took it down. Spent a month rebuilding it by myself, and it returned live a month later.
I spent pretty much next to nothing on the site. Maybe a few thousand. But I wound up building a travel and tourism blog / social media site that does a 75 percent revenue share and profit share with content contributors. We have an ad server where advertisers can go in order, schedule, manage and track their ads.
We have close to thirty writers now, nearly 70 submissions from amateurs and professional writers, a unique bucket list feature, basically a system that is designed to help writers make a better living, keeps our costs low, allows us to charge less for advertising, and has the potential to get readers free stuff for simply being members and interacting and reading material.
The site is 95 percent complete. Just need to make a few more additions to the bucket list, update our achievement images and make them shareable and once again fix the speed issues. It’s an impressive piece of work and we’re proud of it.
This last month, we’ve cleared 12k page views and now have over 130 profiles.
I accomplished this with no website building experience, no marketing experience, no SEO, no backlinks, and I think our DA score is zero.
I did it by taking research on the effectiveness of micro influencers and reversing it and applying it to small Facebook groups and it’s been rather successful.
We’ve even gotten some interest in our first hosted ad sales. 3 1/2 months in.
So please, join the site. We are strictly geared and dedicated to helping writers.
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http://sojournlist.com
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AX2002 - University - Week 7 Friday Lesson Reflection
In today’s lesson, we had a very busy and for me productive day, as due to me catching up with my other projects over the past few weeks, I really wanted to focus on getting some aspects of my model making for my 2-minute film finished, as well as some other aspects of the project. But before I could do this, we had a tutorial, a message from our tutors and introduced to our next project during the morning half of today’s lesson.
We began with another “Adobe After Effects” tutorial, this week’s tutorial was focusing on creating a portal, this was also used as an option or alternative when making our portals for the Dimensions project. The tutorial covered how to create the portal with a variety of particle effects, such as smoke and sparks, as well as how useful and important the adjustment layers are and where they need to be placed within your timeline and how to integrate these effects on top of a scene that was already animated. A big eye opener for me was how easy it was to alter the lighting within the scene, experimenting with colours and intensity (or Opacity) of the lighting within the scene in After Effects, as if I were to create my lights within Maya, this would make fixing or adjusting the light more difficult once the scenes were already rendered. After our tutorial we were informed that the recent strike related actions from the past few weeks would not affect our overall grades. In all honesty I was not too worried about this as this was out of my control and I knew I had stuff to do so I wasn’t really affected by this, but I felt reassured knowing that even with these actions happening, it would not affect me in anyway.
We were then introduced to our next project beginning on this upcoming Monday, this project is the HBU project where we will be working with the Chinese students on a short 3 second animated piece based on Idioms. We will be sending an Idiom to Chinese students, and they will be sending us one of theirs, we will then need to animate this idiom over a three-week period which will include a short storyboard and designs before creating the final piece. At the moment I am unsure how this project is going to unfold, but at the same time I feel that this project will be one of the most important one’s I experience as working with people across the globe will test my communication and teamwork skills on a whole new level.
For the afternoon half of today, we had to give a short presentation about our progression on our 2-minute films, admittedly I was feeling a little uneasy when presenting mine as most people had art and animatics as well as short clips to present, whereas for me I only had images. But I was happy with knowing that I at least had something to show and received some feedback from my tutor, such as making my character’s hands look like mittens as this was still learning how to use Maya which was useful, and I will try to research how to do this between now and next lesson. I then focused on getting parts of my 2-minute film done that I have been meaning to for a while. First, I coloured in the remainder of the sets I had created for the short film, which include both the interior and exterior of the building the Pentagon is trying to enter, as well as the city street. This took up most of the afternoon, but the remainder of my time was spent tweaking my character models, this included adding pupils to the characters eyes, adding noses and making other small tweaks and adjustments.
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Between now and next week’s lesson my goals that I will be trying to achieve include, creating the mitten hands and adding control rings to the character rigs. If I can achieve this, then I should be near enough done with the modelling phase of development with only few remaining aspects left to create and fix. My goal is to be near or starting to animate before mid-March and I feel like I am just about on track of meeting this goal, but if I fall behind or struggle anymore, I will need to ask my tutor for any advice, but hopefully everything should work out in the long run.
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melissagt · 6 years
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Hi! I absolutely love all your creations and I was wondering what program you used to make your models? You've really inspired me to try my own hand at this type of stuff, but it's alllll new to me, so help would be appreciated!!
Hi there, and I’m so glad you like them! I use a program called Daz3D. It is a free piece of software that can be used to render rigged models, most often Daz proprietary models, props, and clothing. The software itself is free, but unfortunately, pretty much nothing to use with it is.
I would never try to caution someone against getting into rendering because it is fun once you get the hang of it and have a decent library of resources to play with, but there are a few things that folks often don’t realize (and I didn’t at first either). So, here’s the skinny…
1 - Cost. CostCostCost. As I said above, the software itself is free. However, the models and clothing and props and lights to go with it are not. I have a library of…maybe about ten different Daz-Branded models (a mix of male and female). Each model can range from about $30 on sale, to over $100. And if you want the model to be anatomically correct, you have to buy the ‘Pro’ version, which is over $100. Sometimes you can snag them on sale - I just bought two new ones (one male and one female) for 60% off, but it still adds up. Then there are the various characters you can buy for those models…each one ranging from about $10 or more depending on level of complexity (the most expensive I’ve seen was I think like $45, but she came with hair and an outfit). These base characters, along with purchasable ‘morphs’ are what allow you to create your own special faces and customized body shapes. Clothes. Shoes. Props. Lights. Backgrounds. Poses. You -do not- want to know how much money I’ve invested in this stuff. Too much. So much so that I won’t even tell my bf how much I’ve spent because I know he’d blow a gasket (we’re supposed to be saving up for a house). It’s an addiction, one that can be hard to stop. At this point, I really only try to buy stuff when it’s on sale for a deep discount. 
2 - Hardware. Daz3D utilizes two different rendering engines, 3Delight, which is old and less resource-hungry (but also results in less-than-realistic images), and NVIDIA IRAY. As you might suspect, because I included the word ‘NVIDIA’, IRAY is a NVIDIA resource. Which means that if you have an AMD graphics card, too bad, so sad….you’re s.o.l. However, even you do have a NVIDIA card, rendering with the IRAY system is hardcore. Like…ultra hardcore. You need the horsepower to back it. Here are my system specs -           AMD RYZEN 7 1800X Octa-Core w/ NZXT X62 AIO Cooler     MSI Gaming Pro-Carbon Mobo     32GB 3200 Corsair Vengeance RAM     EVGA GTX 1080TI FTW3 11GB GPU     EVGA SuperNOVA 850 P2 Platinum PSU     Corsair Crystal 570X Tempered Glass Case (all fans upgraded)     Samsung 960 EVO 250GB M.2 (operating system)     Samsung 960 EVO 1TB M.2 (games and rendering which is almost full)     Samsung 850 EVO 500GB (games)     Western Digital Black 3TB (storage)     Western Digital Black 4TB (backup)     Western Digital 3TB External (backup)     Carbonite (online backup)     Acronis True Image 2018 (local backup software)
Don’t ask how much all that cost (like srsly…don’t, lol). And with all that…some renders have still taken several hours to finish. And sometimes, I have to do several passes to blend them all together in Photoshop.
3 - Learning Curve. Yes, you can render out of the box. But, as with any art,  you want to make things your own. That leads to customization. Make your own lights. Make your own backdrops. Customize those textures. I’m playing constantly with stuff in Photoshop. That leads to other things, like learning what a bump map is…what a normal map does…what subsurface scattering is for. Learning the basics of photography and composition is also a ginormous help. 
4 - Additional Software. Just like above, you -can- make renders with only using DAZ3D. But, if you want to take it to that next level, that means learning things like Photoshop, which adds to the cost. There are free options, such as GIMP, but I never could get a handle on its rat’s nest of a UI…probably because I learned with Photoshop from Day 1 (I have a background of photography and modding other video games). There’s also 3D modeling software. A free option is Blender, but I just couldn’t get a grip on it (seriously, I tried, lol). I ended up dropping entirely too much money on Zbrush. I also use Mudbox to paint the tattoos I make directly onto the model. The tattoos are designed in Photoshop, but arranged in Mudbox. 
All this adds up to time and money and patience and practice. Practice.Practice.Practice. I’d imagine it’s like that with any type of art. 
Again, I’m not trying to chase anybody away. It really is fun. And I love being able to show people how I’ve always envisioned these characters in my head. Folks especially seem to like my version of Theron, lol. But, it’s also a cautionary tale…because I got in over my head with the money. Thankfully, it’s the one hobby I’ve been spending money on at the moment, so I’ll be okay, lol. But, when I started this journey, I had no idea. None. You see this advertisement for FREE software and then you find out that it’s really not free, lol. Like, at all. It’s also why I’d love for there to be interest in adopting some of my peeps...because it would be hella-nice to make back some of my crazy investment, if only a drop in the giant-ass bucket, lol.
Anyways, I hope that helps!
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midz13 · 4 years
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Sorry for being abscent tumblr, I’ve been super busy with the work! I’ll make a mega update here to get us caught up, and ill upload more photos after.
Since unwrapping the environment I have taken it to substance, got all the maps generated, made some optimisations on render time (Still some noise but render time is at 18minutes at some points so wont push it any more - waiting to hear back from Sang on how good the render time is/optimised the scene is before i send render farm requests) and done my animating!! Phew!
The substance painter stuff was good fun - I learend some lessons with the character, and knew the best way to approach this was to put everything under one material that I wanted on one map. To that end I put the entire room (walls floor etc) as one material (due to its physical size and wanting to put text on the floor) and the objects within the room - computers, piping, platform etc - on another atlas. Both atlas’ were 4k, and the only exceptions to that was a few individual maps - one for the robotic arms holding her, as I made them seperate and couldnt/dont know how to combine maps, and one for the pistol (ill show in next post) as I did that after (I decided a couple days before starting animation to test myself to model, wrap and texture a pistol in one day - I did it!! :D
I messed around with colour palette a bit with the room. I wanted a dark ominous room, but felt that showing the room with grey or dark surfaces lost the clean room/labratory feel. I think its vitally important in a sci-fi environment to try to keep real world links as close as possibly as they act like markers for the viewer to follow. I.e. by maintaing an aesthetic in this room or a labratory or hospital with the clean shiney surfaces, and the screen terminals using words like testing etc, the viewer will hopefully understand that its a lab/test facility of some description for the robot - That’s the plan anyway. By making the room darker, it might all into question the use or purpose of building. For example. is she there to be interogated? Has she been captured? As opposed to thinking oh this is a new technology...
I’ve not done any animation before, so was both excited and concerned to start, although it was a nice change of pace and helped keep me interested with a change of the usual workflow.
Luckily, as my story focuses on her being restrained for a large majority of the film, I didn’t have any massively challenging animation to do. However this didn’t mean I would coast the work and get it done as soon as possible. I wanted to make sure her acting and performance read as clearly as possible, as I need her movements to be one of the key indicators of her “state” i.e. human, or robot. I also quickly created blendshapes for her - I planned on her being unable to emote, but I felt this was a bit of a cop out. I didn’t want her to open her mouth, sure, as I felt that was a one way trip to uncanny that I coulnd’t use within the story, and would make her impossible to empathise with (if I had time, sure it would be a fun experiment to see what worked better, but time isnt on my side). This did mean that her emotions were slightly limited , BUT, because i wanted her to see trapped in her own body, and like her faculties were limited (due to the fact her head has been removed and put on a robot!!) I think it worked well. I created blendshapes for fear, sadness, anger, a blink, and a frown (to augment the other emotions). I’m so glad I did these, as the became key in a few of the shots, and really make them pop, and make her “come to life”, so I’m pleased I took the time to do them.
The animation was fun, a few issues came up however, but for the most part it was pretty straight forward. I took some videos of myself doing some of the movements as reference for the animations. I tried to do it in a week or less, which I managed, to make sure that I stay on target time wise, and as I opted to use After Effects to show the screens, I wanted extra time to learn - I want the screens to flash and change, and thought it would also be a good oppotunity to learn how to use After Effects as I’ve not used it at all.
I’ve spent a bit of time too working on camera movement and set up. I’ve weant for a 25mm focal length for most shots to show as much of the set as possible, situating the camera more. I try to frame each shot as well as possible to make it look good, draw the viewers eye to key information, and on a few shots, frame screens so that they can get plot information as to what is going on. It’s been difficult to make sure the camera looks as natural as possible, and not like a maya camera, which is tough. Camera work itself is an entire artform in itself...
So, I want to discuss a few of the issues I’ve had and how I got around them or solved them.
So, as I mentioned I had some issues with the animatiom. These came from the rig, and the blendshape.
First of all the blendshapes for her face - as I think I mentioned before, I did blenshapes for her bicepts so that when she moves her arm, her biceps will tense and relax to show that movement. It’s very subtle and probably never be noticed, but it looks cool when you look for it, and it was a great learning experience. I had to move its order in the channel editor to make sure it moved at the right time within the rig, and it worked totally fine, and easier than I thought! I did the same with the shoulder muscles, but more as corrective blendshapes as the rig/deformations isnt perfect. However, the face blendshapes wouldn’t play ball... I tried adjusting their order, I tried every combination, I tried deleting their history and their transforms, nothing worked - everytime I applied them, her head would shoot off into the distance. I spoke with both Sang and Michael and Patrick Sloan, eventually the 2 Sloans worked out that by deleting the meshes post, and applying them all as one blendshape (originally I did them one by one) it worked. I tried doing them as one BS without deleting them and for some reason it didnt work. I took it as it was and even asked Sang if he knew why (he didnt). As long as it worked though, I didnt care...
The next issue with the rig was something that totally slipped by somehow; When I rotate her global control her chest and abdomen wouldnt deform right AT ALL. I had no idea how it happened and started freaking out. The 2 Sloans couldn’t work it out either. If I grabbed her chest and her global, she would rotate better, but her stomach would twist up strangely. Eventualy Sang diagnosed that the issue was the IK Spine not twisting right, and that I must have done something wrong during the rigging stage. This was super frustrating as I took my time with the rig and followed Sang’s video perfectly. It must have been one little step, a constrain or a parent, that i missed, omited, or applied incorrectly, and more than a month later, it came to the surface. I was especially confused/frustrated as I tested the rig post completion and binding to check, but obviously hadnt used the global control to twist her. Sang found a work around, but it did mean that one of her spine controls was lost. I then realised towards the end of the animating that a few of her poses caused strange deformations, like verts jutting our, or generally not following the rest of her body too well. I would go into weight paints and smooth out the issue as best I could even though I couldnt see anything glaringly obvious, like an arm joint effecting her lower stomach, but now that I’m processing this, I wonder if perhaps losing a handle reassigne weights and didnt do it right??
Another issue I had was her armor and torso/muscles being SUPER Shiny. I couldn’t work this out especially as she looked totally fine within substance. Initially I assumed it was an arnold render setting and that I hadn’t turned samples high enough, but after optimising the samples using Sang’s tutorla (which made the render time too high unfortunately) I realised the issue remained. One day I eventually decided it wasn’t right and that it wasn’t just me - it was too much. I worked my way through Arnold’s material settings, turning this up, down, off, every which way, to see if it effected the shine. I eventually found the culprit was Diffuse Roughness and nothing more, and that by simple adjusting the exposure/alpha in the settings, it reduced this shine completely. The way I set up my materials meant that it effected her whole texture (even though muscle/skin and armor are in different graphs) so I lost a tiny bit of shine to her skin, but I think it still looks fine - if anything before hand her lips looked too shiney, as if she had on lip gloss.
I also had some issues creating the cabling for her helmet. I needed the cabes to flex and bend with her as they moved. In my head the best way would be and IK set up. Initially I tried this, and I use a cube to measure the start and end points, and used an arc to create a perfect bend over the 90 degrees. This was a good idea, and the cable could go from a 90 degree bend to perfectly straight, but any additional bend didnt work and just turned the cable. I then started thinking about IK Splines, and watched a few tutorials online but couldnt get it to work. It made sense though, a spline would allow the perfect movement! Evnetually me and Sang spoke a few times and he was able to find a solution. An spline set up that didnt work like an IK and meant I had to do lots of manual adjustments, but for the most part it looks great. So for the small cables on the sides of her helmet, i kept the simple but effective “fire and forget” IK cables, and for the rear of her head I used the spline, as this area would move and twist much more. It took a while to create and solve, but meant that it looked good and only took a small amount of additional work to animate.
I will upload some more images, such as test shots, the pistol (which barely gets any screen time, but only took a day to work on so not a massive loss.
Only a few weeks to go! Waiting for Sang to get back to me on scene set up and optimisation, once that gets the green light I’ll start sending render farm requests!
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How to Choose the Perfect Mouse and Keyboard
Are you still using the mouse and keyboard that came with your computer? Or maybe you’ve tried something new, but you’ve got some nagging RSI strain, cords tangled everywhere, or a lagging mouse that’s left you unjustly fragged into oblivion? If your mouse and keyboard aren’t working for you, it’s time to buy new ones. Here are the things you’ll want to keep in mind as you shop. [jump]
Mice
There are some great cheap, simple, 2-button mice out there, but you’d be surprised how much easier a nicer mouse can make your day. Sure, a nice mouse can be a bit pricier than the $10 two-buttoner you bought at Staples, but whether it’s getting rid of wrist pain or just saving you endless clicks on the scroll wheel, they’re well worth the money. In fact, the $75 I spent on my mouse is some of the best money I’ve spent on my entire rig—and since you use these items every time you sit down at your machine, you should make sure they’re of good quality. If you’re ready to trade in the old beater for a new model, here are some things you’ll want to consider.
Size and Ergonomics
Undoubtedly the most important factor in choosing a mouse is how it feels. While you can prevent a lot of strain by merely rearranging your workspace, having a good mouse that works with you can still make a huge difference. For the most part, this involves two things: size and grip. Size is mostly personal preference (plus how portable you want your mouse to be), but certain mice are better for certain types of grips. The three main grips are:
Palm Grip: With this style of a grip, you lay your entire hand on the mouse, using your palm to move the mouse around. You’ll feel this most in your wrist and forearm. It’s faster than the other grips, albeit less precise, so not always the best for gamers that require very precise movements. It’s also the more comfortable of the two, so if you have RSI problems, you’re probably better off with a mouse that encourages this type of grip. Usually these mice have a bigger bump on the back end for your palm to rest. Examples include the Razer Lachesis and the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer.
Claw Grip: The claw grip gets its name from the way your hand looks when you hold the mouse—your palm may still rest on the back, but your top fingers are arched in a claw-like fashion, and you may use your thumb, ring finger, and pinky to give you a bit more control over the mouse. It’s more precise than the palm grip, but can be a bit more straining too. These mice are usually longer and have lipped edges, so you can pick the mouse up and move it. This is kind of in between the palm and fingertip grip, though, so you can use a ton of different mice with it, depending on where you fall in the spectrum. The Razer DeathAdder and Logitech G9x are popular gaming mice for this grip, while the Logitech Performance Mouse MX (my personal mouse of choice) is great for regular PC users.
Fingertip Grip: This is the complete opposite end of the spectrum of the palm grip. With this, your palm doesn’t rest on the end at all, you control the mouse entirely with your fingertips. This is the most precise of all the grips, but can also be the most taxing. Many people find it also has the steepest learning curve (since the palm grip is what most people use naturally), so if you have issues with RSI, you might want to avoid this grip. These mice tend to be smaller and flatter, like the Razer Abyssus or the Logitech Marathon Mouse M705.
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The above images are from Razer’s mouse ergonomics guide, which I recommend checking out. It’s mainly written for gamers, but can apply to anyone. I also recommend checking out NCIX Tech Tips’ guide to mouse ergonomics if you want more information on figuring out your grip and what mice are good for it. Note also that the mice listed above are just guidelines. Everyone’s hands are different, and you probably use a combination of the above grips, or lie somewhere in between. The size of your hands can also influence which types of mice work with which types of grips. If you have smaller than average hands, for example, don’t be afraid to venture outside the above recommendations to see if your claw grip works with a mouse designed for a palm grip. The best advice I can give is go to the store and try them out—these aren’t the kinds of things you can tell when ordering a mouse online.
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The Value Proposition in Computer Audio: Entering Multichannel at the Ground Floor
THE VALUE PROPOSITION IN COMPUTER AUDIO
Entering Multichannel at the Ground Floor
“Mommy, where does stereo come from?”
Every audiophile should start each day with a thank-you to Harvey Fletcher and his dummy (whose name was Oscar and who had a microphone in each ear).  Fletcher is widely known as the father of stereophonic sound.  He first described what he called “auditory perspective” in sound in the early 1930s, later coining the term “stereo”.  He won a posthumous Grammy in 2016 for his technical contributions to the recording arts.  It was Fletcher, along with his collaborator Wilden Munson, who published the 1933 paper Loudness, its definition, measurement and calculation in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America that established and quantified the concept of frequency-dependent hearing sensitivity in humans (and spawned the “loudness” button, but don’t blame Fletcher for that).
As Director of Research at Bell Labs, he opened the eyes and ears of the world to the potential of recorded music to unfold before the listener, by using multiple sound sources in separate channels to create sonic images with spatial location and directionality. He partnered with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra to prove his concepts and demonstrate their value.  As part of this effort, he was responsible for the first direct stereo transmission (by phone lines from Philly to DC) in 1933 and the first stereo recording in 1940.  His Bell Labs research team installed recording equipment of their own design in the basement of Philly’s Academy of Music.  Fletcher oversaw over 100 stereo recordings and developed groundbreaking equipment to “enhance” recorded sound during playback.
IS MORE ALWAYS BETTER?
We audiophiles all enjoy Fletcher’s genius every time we drop the needle, put a disc in the tray, click the icon, or ask Alexa to tell our favorite streaming service to play a tune.  And for most of us (including me, until I decided to write this article), two channels is enough.  Given what many of us have traditionally spent on our stereo rigs, the idea of a 3 to 4 fold increase in spend and space requirements was simply not a consideration.
The only multichannel audio experience most audiophiles have had until recently has been through home theater, and most HT systems have historically not been well respected for serious audio.  Twenty years ago in Stereophile, Chip Stern expressed the question that many of us were already asking:
“In a rollout of new technologies more or less driven by the expectations of the home-theater crowd, what's in it for us music-lovers?”
And in his review of the Toshiba SD9200 DVD player, he summed it up clearly:
“The Toshiba SD-9200 performed admirably, and offered a good level of audiophile two-channel performance for the price [emphasis added by me]; I trust that what it offers in the way of multichannel panache might put it over the top for some viewer-listeners, but I'll have to leave that conclusion to those colleagues of mine blessed with true surround-sound setups.”
His laissez faire attitude notwithstanding, he damned the audio performance of home theater equipment with the faint praise of “for the price” but did not describe the performance sacrifices made to have more channels for the money.  I’ll try to be more specific in this work.
[ENTER THOSE EXPERTS, SOUNDSTAGE LEFT REAR]
It was only through the ears and pen of early devotees like @Kal Rubinson that we were exposed to the potential of multichannel audio for audiophiles.  He wrote this about Willie Nelson’s instrumental version of Night and Day in his own review of the same Toshiba SD9200:
“I'll spare you the stereo/surround comparison...Right from the first notes, the multichannel version sounds incredibly live...I sense the ambiance instantly, and every sound is realistic and credible”.
And here’s his summary of the MC Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/Nonesuch 79478-9) from the same review:
“Listening to the DVD-A's stereo track... was...satisfying, but when I switched over to the Surround track (not a simple task, under the circumstances), I wanted never to go back.”
His reviews of the day also documented the rigors of MC audio, e.g. “The user interfaces (read: controls and menus) of multichannel components are complex and, um, idiosyncratic”.  Worse, source material was not common and came in multiple formats each of which was more expensive than the last.  I’ll spare you a complete history of multichannel audio and leave these links for your use if you want to learn a bit more:  MC history , mp3 5.1 (!) , MC history according to Dolby , and Surround Sound: the Audio Side of Home Theater.
I’ll also spare you the history of MC equipment for audio.  To date, the good stuff has come dear.  Almost all of the affordable home theater systems from major electronics producers have been classic, mass market, consumer-level products designed and best suited for watching football games and movies.  There are a few HT gems worth the effort it will take to find them, and there are now some excellent and affordable HT receivers that do audio very well.  HT is one source of value in MC audio, and if you’re careful and selective in your choices of equipment you can get some fine MC sound for very little money.  More about that in a bit.
THE WINDS OF CHANGE
What’s gone is gone and what’s done is done.  MC audio just ain’t your father’s home theater any more.  I’ve had a HT setup for almost 20 years, with a ceiling mounted projector and a series of receivers and speakers in the house.  I started with one of those $200 loss leader HT systems that included a receiver and a small 5.1 speaker setup, just to see what it was all about.  We loved the 8’-plus image, but the audio was just not suitable for serious listening. I upgraded each time my projector bulb died, because it was almost as cheap to buy a new projector as it was to replace the bulb back then. And, of course, what’s a better projector without better sound?  So I ended up with a pretty nice Pioneer Elite 7.1 receiver with decent DACs (24/192, Burr Brown as I recall) that sound quite fine.
While researching my next pieces on Raspberry Pi and other SBCs, I discovered a 6 in / 8 out DAC HAT for the Pi for $58 that screamed “BUY ME!”.  So I thought I’d get one for inclusion in an article on advanced stuff that audiophiles can make and do with a Pi, and I put it in the queue.  After getting the article on modifying the Pi for higher performance to Chris, I started working on the next piece. After building a DAW on a rodded 4 gig Pi 4, a few Pi based NASes with different software, a freestanding wireless hub, and an active crossover, I started working with the Octo and had such a great time with MC on the cheap that I decided it deserved its own article.  So you’ll read about the other projects in a future article.
FOR ME, MORE IS BETTER ONLY IF WELL AND PROPERLY DONE
When I fired up the first track on the first MC system I set up as part of my research and testing for this article, I had the same experience Kal described:  right from the first notes, the multichannel version sounds incredibly live.  It was truly eye opening to hear a Mozart Violin Concerto (24/96 flac) played by Marianne Thorsen in 6 channels on decent equipment.  I don’t wanna go back to stereo, Mom!
Good MC really is that good.  I don’t think I’d have gone for it when it meant doubling or trebling my investment in hardware, even if I’d had the same epiphany 20 years ago. The really good news is that you no longer have to spend your retirement fund to achieve it.  There’s now a value based approach to multichannel that converted me in a fraction of a second, once I got it up and running – and that’s what this article is about.  The heart of my value-based MC system is a Raspberry Pi, but there are options.
It should be obvious that a truly top quality 4 channel system will be close to twice the cost of a stereo rig of equal quality.  For MC, you need as many speakers as you have channels plus enough amplification to power them all and cabling to connect everything.  You also need either a MC DAC or a MC digital “splitter” (e.g. the MiniDSP U-DIO8) plus a pair of 2 channel DACs.  If you like your current speakers, you’ll need at least 2 more just like them, along with an equal number of amplification channels as good as your stereo rig.  And if you’re using a planned upgrade of your current stereo system to expensive stuff as a reason to look at MC, you really want to be sure you love it enough to double or triple up.
So here’s an entry level approach to multichannel audio for the cautious, the curious, the impecunious, the miserly, the skeptical, and/or the value minded audiophile.  We’re not talking about state of the art MC audio here.  We’re talking about decent sound quality from good basic components that most of us could enjoy in a second or third system, and that more than a few might even use as their only one. This approach will give you a good idea of the capability of MC and whether or not it’s for you.  If you decide it’s not, you’ll have a few good and inexpensive little components to resell or repurpose. You can also add a MC interface (e.g. MiniDSP UDIO-8), another DAC and some good inexpensive powered speakers to your current 2 channel system to experience the power and beauty of MC before committing to more expense.  Ideas for all of these components will be discussed in a little while.
Instead of a splitter and multiple DACs or a MC DAC, you can use a 4+ out digital audio interface sold for musicians and recording.  Earlier DAIs with USB connectivity had duplex USB audio, too – but the current generation is different.  On most current models, USB connectivity is limited to power and data exchange with the host computer, and digital I/O is limited to S/PDIF, AES and ADAT. This makes a DAI a less desirable option for many and unusable with a Raspberry Pi unless you add a HAT or other device to provide usable output to the DAI.  The other practical limitation on value-based MC is resolution – I haven’t found an entry level MC DAC or DAI that would let you go above 24/192.   Many of us listen at or below 24/192 anyway, and it’s certainly good enough to demo the MC concept for you. Doing high res MC requires equipment far more costly than a Pi and an Octo HAT, although improvements in basic SQ of the equipment (independent of source material and format) are often not as dramatic as the associated increase in cost might suggest they should be.
You can get MC sound quality fine enough to please most of us, and certainly fine enough to give skeptics an idea of the potential of MC in a 4 or 5.1 system, for under $1000 complete.  Those who love the concept but want better stuff after hearing what you can do for under $1k can easily go as far upscale as desired.  Having spent less on a “demo” system than they did for a connecting or power cable, they can use the mule as an extra system, sell it, or give it to a friend or relative with less money and/or less critical taste.  So let’s get into the alternatives for what to play, what to play it with, and what to play it through.
SOURCE MATERIAL
MC audio most often used to mean synthesized ambience, because there simply wasn’t much well recorded, high quality program material in native MC formats.  But high quality source material from most genres is readily available now in formats we all use daily.  You can buy MC from half a dozen fine online vendors as 24/48 and 24/96 flacs, DSD, SACD etc.  The gimmicky “surround sound” formats of the past no longer plague us, and MC is just a vehicle to more realistic presentation.  Past formats either manipulated 2 channel recordings or used multiple recorded channels to dazzle the listener with sounds that bounced around the room.  Audiophiles had no use for these gimmicks.
Today’s synthesized MC is done in your player software and is much much better than the old approaches.  Good players like JRiver Media Center and Roon offer multiple output formats for 2 channel sources, and they sound pretty fine.  You can get similar flexibility from some of the open source players too, although many require a bit more work to set the output format if you’re running Linux, by making you edit one or more configuration files.  Still, instructions and guides are readily available on the web.  As with any anonymous advice and (especially) code or command lines, make sure that any advice you take from the web has an authoritative source.  I play it safe by first trying things on a canary in the mine – a development computer with no network or internet connection at all.
There are also many fairly high quality videos of great live performances in all genres, available in a number of proprietary formats (some of which require decoders).  The most readily available video sound evolved from early Dolby 4 channel in ‘82 to 5.1 in ‘83, Pro Logic in ‘87, DTS in ‘93, 7.1 in ‘07, then Atmos with speakers in the ceiling and finally to 9.1 and beyond.  How many channels you “need” is up to you, and MC experts may disagree -  but I think that 4 (plus a sub if your main systems don’t sufficiently shiver your timbers) is enough to understand what MC can do for your music.  You can also extract audio from videos with a variety of software, e.g. VLC (easy and excellent).
Good music management software like JRiver, Roon etc lets you select your output format from many alternatives.  It lets you do a decent job of converting input formats to your desired output format, including 2 channel sources to 4, 5, 6 or more.  And several of the open source players rival this flexibility in much simpler packages.  If used on an SBC like a Pi, there are functional limits set by processing power, bus speeds, available I/O routes, limited RAM etc.  But you can tweak your resource allocation to play MC flacs as long as you don’t also add heavy demands with DSP, GUI, and system tasks & processes that are not associated with audio.  We’ll discuss optimizing your SBC for this in a while. I’m listening to an excellent 6 channel 24/96 file right now from a Pi 3B+ with full JRiver Media Center GUI up and running, and the little bugger’s not even breaking a sweat.  Below and to the right is the real time performance readout.  As you can see, the CPU’s just breezin’ along with the breeze at a very comfortable 41.9C and the music is playing without a pop, crackle, stutter or audible anomaly of any kind.  Even the JRiver GUI is working smoothly, if a bit slower than ideal, when browsing the library while listening.  This is pretty impressive performance from a $50 device!
THE MUSIC PLAYER
Players that do MC are readily available.  Almost all of us already use at least one player that will do it if asked politely.  As this series focuses on value in audio (like the crusty old retired audiophile writing it), I’m only discussing open source software and inexpensive proprietary products that deliver the most bang for the buck.  
For those of you who already have Roon & / or JRiver Media Center, they both do MC very well out of the box - either is a great choice.   I’ve had some trouble with Roon through the OctoPi, which is the renderer / player / DAC I built for $100 around a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and an Octo ADC/DAC HAT. It’s the featured project in this article, to be discussed in a bit.  With Roon driving the Octo, I can’t get sound from channels 3-8, no matter what I’ve tried so far.  As my Roon plays MC fine from other players on multiple platforms and by HDMI to my 7.1 receiver, I must have set something wrong to cause the problem. JRiver plays MC perfectly through the same OctoPi, and all output formats are correctly enabled and played.
If you don’t want to spend $ for a music management system like Roon or JRiver, you have many excellent choices of open source software that will play MC music for you.  On Linux, you can’t go wrong with DeaDBeeF – it plays MC in many formats, sounds great on properly set up machines, and does a decent job of tagging, library management, and display.  
THE HARDWARE
THE SoC APPROACH
I’ve been looking for a path to MC for music playback with acceptable SQ at a reasonable cost for many years.  For most of us, the biggest barrier to entry into the world of many channels has been the cost of the equipment, which (for a “component” digital system) is roughly proportional to the number of channels.  But finally, in addition to a few HT-based approaches that let you experience MC audio with HT hardware you may already have, there’s a pretty good value-based approach using a 6 in-8 out Pi HAT DAC  (called the Octo) of which most - including me, until a few months ago- have never heard.   When I started this project, the Pi 4 was not ready for plug and play use with an Octo, so this article is based on use of a Pi3B+.  I finally got full function with the Octo on a 4, and it does more, better and faster than the 3B+.  It doesn’t sound any better until processing demands exceed the limits of a 3B+.  The SQ of the 3B+ degrades at performance levels far below the 4’s limit.
Both the Zero and the 3B+ support 5.1 / 7.1 PCM to 96kHz, and 4.0 PCM to 192kHz.  I wouldn’t expect too much from a Zero beyond stereo 24/192 flacs.  And if you want the best SQ from a Zero, especially at greater than Redbook resolution, it can’t be doing anything except playing your sound files to a DAC via OTG USB while on your WLAN to access them from NAS.  I suppose you could also get on your network with a USB adapter and use Wifi to stream, but this seems a bit excessive when the object of your affection and interest is a $10 SBC with finite limits on its performance.  It’s possible to boot a Zero from USB / OTG using any of a number of tricks you can find on the web.  But the USB bus has a limited bandwidth and SQ will suffer if you try to run everything through it in both directions at the same time. You can use a Zero for MC via HDMI – Roon bridge does MC well this way (more on this a bit further down the page).
Neither a Zero nor a 3B+ will bitstream or pass-through Dolby HD or DTS HD.  A 4B will play 192k 7.1 PCM.  You can decode Dolby HD and DTS HD to these limits.  Other MC formats are also supported but most require downsampling. The Pis do support lossy DD/DTS bitstreaming, but DD+ needs to be decoded to PCM or transcoded to DD.  Asking any Pi but a 4B to play HD video with a high res multichannel HD soundtrack is pushing your luck.
So the bulk of this project centers around a fan cooled Pi 3B+ with heat sinks and zram, set to its maximum CPU rate and minimum GPU RAM usage (set memory split to minimum under advanced options / memory split in raspi-config).  It boots and runs from a USB SSD (240 gig Inland Pro in a Savent housing), which I recommend for most audiophiles.  Boot and general response are much faster than from an SD card, and it really helps the JRiver GUI behave like it does on a “real” computer (but don’t tell your Pi I said that – they’re tired of being picked on because of their size!).
Inland is the “house brand” at Microcenter and readily available from others like Amazon. I’ve avoided their prior products because they had measurable performance handicaps when compared to the slightly more expensive brand name alternatives.  But the Pro series of SSDs was both cheap enough and well enough reviewed to justify a deeper look.  These are apparently made by Phison, a 20 year old Taiwanese company that makes the innards of more than a few well respected brands (which are actually rebrands).  Tucked into a $10 USB3 adapter case, this is a great way to get your feet wet with a serious Pi project (or anything else that requires a small SSD). I’m running one on the USB port of my ASUSTOR NAS for the ROON database, & it’s been excellent in continuous use for several months.
THE DAC
Enter the Octo, a 6 in / 8 out Pi HAT ADC/DAC that plays up to 24/96, and costs $58.  That’s not a typo and you read it right - FIFTY EIGHT DOLLARS for a 6 in / 8 out 24/96 ADC/DAC complete with separate RCA breakout boards for ins and outs.  It’s a Raspberry Pi HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) that connects via the large (40 pin) GPIO on top.    
A WORD TO THE TECHNICALLY TIMID: At first glance, it looks as though there is zero support for this device when you buy it.  There is absolutely nothing in the package except the board, the standoffs, the breakout boards, and the small ribbon cables that connect them to the main board.  There is no contact information.  There are no markings on the boxes.  Multiple Amazon reviews complain about a lack of support and being on your own if you have a problem.  THIS IS SIMPLY NOT THE CASE – you just have to do a little web searching to find both community support and the person behind Octo.  
The creator of the Octo is a very nice, knowledgeable and responsive guy named Matt Flax (screen name Flatmax), who lives in Sydney.  He’s interested in, supportive of, and responsive to input from users of his creations (Octo’s not his only product). This is his github page and this is his DIYAudio forum. It seems clear that he’s either not trying to build a business around his inventions or he’s woefully inept at marketing and branding…..or both.  But he’s definitely there for you if you reach out to him – he just hasn’t provided any channels for customer relationship management.
But support it he does – in spades.  For example, it wasn’t obvious to me in what order he had the RCA jacks set up, and there are a few “standards” around the world for channel order (e.g. SMPTE 5.1 is L-R-C-SUB-LR-RR and FILM 5.1 is L-C-R-SUB-LR-RR).  So I contacted him with a PM through DIYAudio, and he got back to me within hours.  He explained that even though installation seems to configure ALSA for you, it still leaves all options to configure the I/O order as you wish.
SO – ON TO MAKING A MULTICHANNEL MUSIC MACHINE FROM A Pi AND AN OCTO
The first decision is how to house the thing.  If you choose not to use a cooled case for the Pi, you can just insert the Octo directly into the GPIO receptacle and use the provided standoffs to support the free end of the board.  You can use this assembly exactly as pictured below, if you’re willing to live with a pile of pieces held together by wires.   I’d put some insulating feet at the bottom corners if you do this.  And with all the conductive spots exposed, an errant wire or metal object could fry everything.
I was unable to find any commercial case that would hold the Pi with its HAT on, except for flimsy Pi bottoms that don’t really protect any part of it from any practical dangers.  If you want a case, you’ll have to make one like I did.  You can build a single container from scratch to hold the Pi, the Octo, and the connector boards.  Or you can build a separate case for the Octo and breakouts, connecting it to the Pi in a cooled case with a ribbon extender.  If you go this route, you can power the case fan(s) from the appropriate pins on the GPIO (second and third from the left in the outer row seen in the picture above) by extending the fan wires to be as long as the GPIO ribbon jumper.
Unless you plan to leave the OctoPi in a protected area and never fiddle with it, you should at least cobble up some kind of case or mounting system for the breakout boards if you want to be able to use this like any other audio component.  I strongly doubt that there will ever be a commercially available case for the thing because demand can’t possibly be strong enough.
A WORD TO THE WISE: do not assume that the GPIO ribbon cable will automatically connect pin 1 to pin 1.  It is not keyed to the header on the Pi and it is not keyed to the pins on the Octo, so you can connect it backwards at either end.  Doing so puts a voltage drop across pins that connect to parts unable to handle it, resulting in smoke, smell, and shame – and ya’ gotta buy another Octo  :(
If you use it as pictured above,  it’s physically supported by the GPIO header plus a pair of nylon standoffs that come with it.  I was unable to find a fan cooled case that would hold it this way, and I wanted to be able to use it on multiple SBCs without having to disassemble everything each time.  I also wanted a permanent mounting place for the 14 RCA jacks through which it passes analog audio in and out, to facilitate experimenting with DACs, Bluetooth, analytical tools etc. And a case looks right.
So I “borrowed” my wife’s old acrylic recipe box, made a few modifications, and connected the two boards with a 40 pin ribbon cable long enough to let me keep the Pi on top of the breakout box.
  Again, I did this project first with a 3B+ because when I began it there were several web reports of failure when used with a 4. I felt obligated to duplicate this out of a sense of duty to the AS community, and my first attempts were indeed met with failure.  I also used the 32 bit version of Raspberry Pi OS, because the earliest versions of the 64 bit version were not completely & properly configured for audio and were not easily updated and completed.  Updates have been made since the first version, but it’s still not fully functional and ready for audiophiles.  So this project is built on the 32 bit Raspberry Pi OS on both 3 and 4.  I’ll have a go at the 64 bit version again in a few months.
Although assembly is easy, it takes a little effort to get this up and running.  It’s not difficult if you follow the clear instructions found HERE (https://github.com/Audio-Injector/Octo).  The procedure is simple:
Download this package to your Pi:
Install the Octo card from the command line with this:
Remove PulseAudio because it can interfere with Octo function; enter this into the terminal:
Reboot and the Octo should show up with all 6 in and all 8 out available to any audio program
You can configure channel lineup at the RCA outs in ALSA, but the defaults work fine for me with JRiver Media Center.
https://github.com/Audio-Injector/Octo/raw/master/audioinjector.octo.setup_0.4_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i Downloads/audioinjector.octo.setup_0.4_all.deb
sudo apt remove pulseaudio
I’ve used every output format option from 2 channel to 7.1 with success
Once it’s installed, just connect the appropriate RCA outputs to your DAC, powered monitors etc and listen away.  I’ve had great success with JRiver Media Center, VLC, and a few other such players. Interestingly, I can only get Roon Bridge to work on this with 2 channel output into RCAs 1 and 2. When I go to any MC output format in Roon, there’s either silence or electrical noise from all the RCAs except 1 and 2.  I’ve tried everything from editing asoundrc or asound.conf to using card-specific configuration in /usr/share/alsa/cards/<card_name>.conf – and I’ve failed each time.  If I figure this out, I’ll post the solution.  Searching the Roon database and the community forum finds nothing.  This and this are two web pages on configuring ALSA for multichannel use. Neither helped with this.
SO HOW DOES IT SOUND???
All the following observations were made running JRiver Media Center on the Pi, further verified with VLC and Kodi on the same Pi.  Remember that the Octo will only go to 24/96, does not do DSD etc, and is a primitive device compared to the current state of the art.  
In two words, it sounds very good.  It’s a better DAC than almost any I’ve encountered on a consumer mobo or SoC.  As I’ll detail below, it’s not quite up to my iFi Nano DSD or my Emotiva Stealth in head to head SQ comparison.  But it sounds good enough to serve most of us in a second system or system in a second location.  I’ve been using it for a few days at a time over the last 2 months or so for daily 2 channel listening, and I’d have few serious regrets if I had to use it as my only system.  
Brian Bronmberg’s bass on Wood is tight enough, although it’s not quite as rich and punchy as it is from a Pi 4 into my iFi.  Marianne Thorsen’s Mozart Violin Concerto #4 (5.1 24/96 FLAC) sounds excellent, with only a bit of “haze” flattening its impact a tiny bit compared to my better DACs.  Her violin is properly left of center fronting classically positioned and spatially (as well as tonally) accurate sections in a surprisingly intimate playback.  This is an outstanding recording that I highly recommend – and I‘m not alone.  Kal Rubinson named this an album to die for in the February 2008 Stereophile.
Christian Grøvlen’s piano version of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor is a fine example of what 5.1 does for solo piano.  The Octopi presents a well sized piano image with balanced tone and a realistically unfocused distribution of highs and lows.  When you listen to a real piano in person, you don’t get the left hand from the left speaker and the right hand from the right.  Whether open, partially open, or closed, there’s little frequency specific directionality and the piano doesn’t sound like it’s exactly as wide as the space between your speakers.  This is even true when you face the pianist’s back, which is almost never done in real life regardless of the genre or venue.
The Octopi puts Grøvlen’s piano in front of and normal to you, as it would be in concert.  You’re surrounded by the sonic ambience of a real Steinway grand in a small church.  Mixing it down to 2 channels and comparing it to my reference system, I find the sound quality to be a bit behind my SMSL SU-8 v2 driven by Roon Bridge on a Pi 4 playing through my Prima Luna power amp and Focal towers.  As I found with Bromberg’s bass, the bottom’s not quite as big and moving as it is on better 2 channel DACs.  The sound stage lacks a little depth in comparison, and subtleties like delicate cymbal and brush work are a bit less clear and distinct (especially with the volume way down). But this is a wonderful recording that’s offered up intact by the OctoPi – it’s a joy to hear.
I’ve listened to many 2 channel files as well, to see how comfortable I am with the OctoPi as an everyday player.  I like Joni Mitchell’s Hissing of Summer Lawns both as music and as a test of audio fidelity.   Critics have panned it as unimaginative, bland, formulaic, etc – but I disagree.  Listen to Robben Ford’s dobro playing on Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow and you have to appreciate how sweet the little Octo can play.  
Joni’s voice is equal parts rich, inspiring, and depressing….as it’s supposed to be.  The background singers are right there as well, even though I’m not convinced I could identify them all from blind listening with any DAC.  For the record, you’re hearing James Taylor, David Crosby and Graham Nash!  The Octo lets you hear the amazing close harmonies in Joni’s unorthodox, personal guitar tuning alterations.  And Max Bennett’s beautifully tight, barky bass is clean and punchy on In France They Kiss on Main Street.
String sections have a bit of grain compared to better DACs.  Reeds are closer to excellent, with only a little more reedy roughness than was there live in players like Paul Desmond and Art Pepper. Percussion is clean and solid, with lifelike fading of sizzle and crash cymbals, a palpable chunk chunk from the hi hat, and excellent delineation of different components of the set, e.g. 9x13 mounted toms from 16x16 floor toms.  Snares have the right snap and brushes are not lost in the mix, especially the wiping shhhh of a good left hand during a ballad.  You’ll also be bowled over by the combo of Joni playing Moog along withThe Warrior Drums of Burundi on The Jungle Line.  With Jriver’s upmix to 5.1, this track is so big and alive it’s almost intimidating.
Further, although I never thought I’d go to the trouble of setting up a second system just for MC, the OctoPi now lives in my living room, sharing a shelf with my “good stuff”.  It’s my dedicated MC front end, driving my Prima Luna power amp and Focal towers as front L&R (thanks to DACs with good remote control and multiple inputs).  But more importantly, it’s good enough to bring you multichannel audio that lets you appreciate its charms.  The first time I fired it up, I remembered Kal Rubinson’s statement from his Toshiba SD9200 review (quoted above): “Right from the first notes, the multichannel version sounds incredibly live... I sense the ambiance instantly, and every sound is realistic and credible”.  Yes indeed!
LIMITATIONS
The Octo was designed and created to work with the 32 bit Raspberry Pi OS on a 3B+ or earlier Pi.  It was not written for, tested on, or intended for use on a 4.  With only a little work, I was able to eliminate the SD card and get it to boot and play on a 3B+ from a USB SSD (which I highly recommend).  I have it working well on a 4 running from a 64G microSD card, but I still haven’t successfully moved the entire file system to an SSD and booted up a fully functional Octo4 without a card.
Once you install the Octo card on a Pi, most other functions are inaccessible. HDMI audio output cannot be used because the Octo configuration files limit any and all audio output to the Octo.  Even if you disconnect the Octo card and want to use the Pi for anything else, you’ll have to reboot it with an OS and file system on a card or drive that’s not configured for the Octo.  This is a simple matter of unplugging a USB SDD or removing the Octo-configured SD card and substituting the Pi OS image you want to run instead.  But it’s one more step that many nontinkering audiophiles will find annoying.
I suspect it’s possible to make the Octo work with some of the audio software that comes with embedded JEOSs, eg Volumio, piCorePlayer (Tiny Core Linux), etc.   I did not take the time to try to figure out how to make that happen, because I’d have to learn in detail what’s in each of those distros, how to load the Octo drivers, which conf files to edit and how, etc.  If I find the time, I’ll try to get it to work with piCorePlayer and Volumio.  But for now, I can only confirm how well it works on the latest 32 bit Raspberry Pi OS as of September 2, 2020.
Interestingly, it emits a mild click/pop when starting play from idle if directly wired to the output stage. At least in my setup, this is not loud enough to damage anything or be a major annoyance.  But I suggest keeping your volume down the first time you start a track, as it may be sensitive to equipment. Interestingly, when I hooked it up to a pair of low latency BT transmitters for wireless 4 channel, that transient disappeared!  And speaking of wireless MC……...
DIP YOUR TOES INTO WIRELESS MC WITH OCTOPI & THE LATEST BLUETOOTH
This is another topic on which I’m preparing a full review and discussion.  But I can’t resist throwing it into this piece because it’s ideal for the OctoPi and it’s truly cool!
BT has a bad name among audiophiles, and historic experience suggests that it’s justified for most listening more critical than plain vanilla background music.  But Bluetooth has come a long way, and the latest Qualcomm AptX codecs in the latest chips work really well within their design parameters. The limit on resolution in currently available devices is “only” 24/48, but the basic specs are impressive: THDN = -80dB, SNR=129 dB, and PEAQ =  -0.05.  If you’re unfamiliar with PEAQ, I’m working on a review of value-based audio quality measurement and assessment tools & methods, of which PEAQ is starting to appear in promotional material like Qualcomm’s AptX website.  For now, I’ll just describe the 4 channel system I set up with the OctoPi and two pairs of adaptive low latency / HD BT transceivers.  The HD codec does make a readily audible difference in clarity, definition, background silence, and dynamics – it’s clearly better and well worth buying new stuff to get it.
The critical piece of info here is that you have to be running the same codecs in both the transmitter and receiver to get the desired functions, e.g. low latency, HD.  If they don’t match, you get the same old SBC Bluetooth codec that connects your phone to your earbuds.  As I found out the hard way because the info was not provided by the manufacturer of the first pair I bought, very few of even the latest BT speakers use the most up to date codecs.  You can’t split MC into stereo BT pairs with the latency of a standard BT system because it’s not consistent enough to avoid a subtle random “reverb” effect.  Even the latency of the standard HD codec (lower than a standard BT at about 80 ms) is definitely audible if you hard wire the fronts and use BT for the rears, but the latency is sufficiently consistent from device to device in the same room with no barriers between transmitters and receivers to do fully BT MC from an Octo card into multiple DACs.  This works OK with my iFi, Emotiva, SMSL, and M-Audio, although I cans ee how different DAC technology might affect synch in playback.
Here are the RainyB long range transceivers I bought to use as transmitters.
All of these units look pretty much alike regardless of manufacturer, and they may all come out of the same factory for all I know.  I picked these because the specs are all the same, the Amazon reviews were very good, and they were only $42 compared to some that get close to $100.   For the receiving end, I got a pair of $20 HD / LL transceivers that are much smaller because they have internal antennae (pictured below).   Again, there are several similar products in that price range with the same specs. All the latest generation BT transceivers have optical I/O as well as line level analog via 1/8” TRS jacks.  Most include a hair thin optical cable along with a pair of male RCA-to-male TRS 1/8” cables and a 1’ USB-C to USB-A cable for charging.
Pairing is no different from any other BT you’ve used, except that there’s no GUI to guide you – so it’s possible that you’ll pair one with another BT device within range if it’s also in pairing mode.  To prevent this, I sat the two next to each other and activated pairing for both of them simultaneously.  Because they have internal batteries, you can do this before moving one or both to the locations in which you want them to live.  They also work with the charging cable plugged in, which is good because I hate having to remember to recharge audio device batteries.
Once paired, I used analog lines into the transmitters and optical out of the receivers to Edifier 1280s (which do have integral BT, but it’s not low latency).  I was pleasantly surprised at the SQ, which is good enough to demonstrate the endearing qualities of MC and more than fine for casual listening in 2 channels or more.  The analog link between DAC and BT transmitter is the weak one here – it’s not going to win Product of the Year in anybody’s book.  Using low latency, with line of sight between BT device pairs, there’s no audible time shift between front and rear channels.  I also set it up with optical into my SMSL SU-8 DAC driving a Prima Luna power amp and Focal towers in front and the Edifiers in the rear.  With LL, there’s no audible delay and the sound is good enough to listen to (and maybe even to write home about).
I find a consistent flattening or slight dulling of the music through BT compared to directly connecting the DAC(s) to the analog inputs.  It’s just not as alive, e.g. transients seem a bit slow.  The latest AptX low latency and HD codecs both seem to reduce this effect a lot, making it tolerable for extended listening (which I don’t like to do on my old fashioned SBC BT headphones or with a Rocketfish BT receiver I bought years ago).  I like the 4 channel setup enough to leave it assembled and ready for use, so I can listen to MC if I’m in the mood.  
I haven’t tried using both long range transceivers to send and receive 2 channels to my best rig (Prima Luna / Focal) because I don’t have a computer or even a good DAC with an optical output, and using analog into the BT transmitter limits SQ enough to make it a nonstarter in my main systems.
THE BOTTOM LINE ON THE OCTO
It’s not going to become a Stereophile Class A pick.  But mounted on a good Raspberry Pi, the Octo sound card will let you listen to pretty fine multichannel reproduction for a total outlay of about $100 for the entire front end.  You’ll have 8 RCA line outputs to drive your amplifiers or powered speakers, so it’s easy to assemble your entry level MC system at very low cost.  
You can even start with analog endpoints you may already have, although matched channels are obviously better.  I put a series of patchwork systems together to see how they sounded.  I mixed and matched Edifier R1280DBs, JBL LSR305s, and passive speakers (Rogers LS3/5a and Focal 726 Towers) powered by various electronics, to see how much the mismatch affected SQ.  When upmixing 2 channel to MC formats, mismatched front and rear systems really doesn’t detract much from SQ if both are of high quality.  On the best program material recorded as MC (e.g. the Marianne Thorsen Mozart Violin Concerti), better rears do make a difference in image stability, detail, and coherence of transients.  But only with MC programs that were created for dramatic surround presentation does it really make a huge difference if the rears are identical or closely matched to the fronts.  As most MC music is not intended to dazzle artificially, I’m living happily with my towers up front and the Edifiers bringing up the rear.
The Octo is a great way to get into MC for peanuts.  I recommend this project highly for those to whom it appeals.  But if the results I describe for this do not seem worth the effort and the Rube Goldberg nature of the equipment, read on – there are other paths to value in MC audio.
CONSIDER THE HOME THEATER RECEIVER FOR MULTICHANNEL AUDIO
I’m a big boy, so I’ll provoke a few flames and take the heat:  
DISCLAIMER: I did not buy any new receivers for this project.  I spent a fair amount of time listening to them, mostly at Best Buy.  The BB we usually use has a big Magnolia “boutique” plus their standard stock.   In addition to files on a USB drive, I brought my NuForce iCanDo so I could stream my own files over the web and have a digital source to drive the receivers.
BEGINNING WITH YOUR OLD HOME THEATER RECEIVER
If you’re sitting on a HT receiver that you no longer use, the path to MC begins in the closet where you store it.  My trusty 10 year old Pioneer Elite VSX-30 receiver has been out of service for the almost 5 years since we retired and moved from our house to an apartment.  We put a big, smart Samsung on the living room wall because I can’t mount our projector in the stressed concrete ceiling of our condo.  I forgot all about the Elite until I was beginning my quest for MC knowledge and realized I had a decent receiver with which to experiment.
The down side of older and lower end current HT receivers is that I haven’t found one that would decode anything but wavs, mp3s, and wma files from its USB port.  My Elite simply ignores FLACs, dsf, and other “good” files on a USB stick or drive, as does every other older model I could find in friends’ closets and other out of the way places.  Another drawback is that many have marginal analog electronics.  Their power amps have grossly inflated ratings and are simply nowhere near as powerful or clean as they’d like you to believe.  And none that I could find has line level outputs for MC use.  Even my Elite, which is far from a bargain basement piece, only has 2 channel line outs (“DVR” and 2nd zone), both of which are fixed level.
The up side is that the better ones actually sound very good.  Many (like mine) have decent DAC chips in them and will play up to 24/192 very nicely when fed by a capable source through HDMI, coax, or optical inputs.  This makes them ideally suited for use with a SBC (for which I prefer a Raspberry Pi to any other) or any streamer with optical or coax RCA outputs.  And you can do MC audio nicely with any of these.  You can also play DSD files if you convert to a format the internal DAC will play. Having a full feature remote is icing on the cake, and most of them do.  Here’s my Elite playing a dsf file from JRMC on my Pi, downsampled to 32/192 (which I didn’t think the receiver would decode!):
You can buy a decent used VSX30 or similar model from Marantz, Denon, Sony, Yamaha etc for about $100-150.  This is great value for a starter MC audio system – you can add a Raspberry Pi for $75, use an open source player like VLC, and have yourself a really nice system with the addition of as many passive speakers as you want and a sub.  Start with something like Edifier P12s for $80 / pair (list price) and add a 100W Yamaha 8” sub for another $150.  This totals under $500 for a 4 channel + sub system and about $660 for a full 7.1 that will make most of us pretty happy as an entrée into MC – and you can set it up for HT as well, if you’re so inclined.  There are a lot of excellent HD music videos.
SQ is really good, especially for the price.  And the magic of MC really does what Kal describes – it  sounds incredibly live and lets you sense the ambiance instantly.  Every sound is a bit more realistic and credible.  By the time you get over the joy enough to listen for flaws in SQ, you’ll either love it as a second system used only for MC or be motivated to get good stuff and upgrade your main system to MC.
STARTING FROM SCRATCH WITH A HOME THEATER RECEIVER
A good, inexpensive new HT receiver is another path to multichannel value.  Most entry level MC receivers are mass market fodder not well suited for audiophile use.  The least expensive (~$300 & under) current models from Yamaha, Denon, Sony, Onkyo, Pioneer etc are marginal performers for pure audio, both in SQ and utility.  So they have little appeal for us, e.g. many don’t play FLACs and they don’t do DSD.  The nicest thing you can say about some of them is that they come with a polishing cloth.  The entry level models also “only” play up to 6 channel (5.1) and do not decode theater MC schema like Atmos.  This is irrelevant to most audiophiles, except that JRiver Media Center (and some other programs) will upmix your output to as many as 32 channels if you really want to do that.  I don’t.
Because these devices are designed and sold for home theater use, the low hanging fruit on the feature tree is most attractive to video users.  As the price goes above true entry level, the first things added are video enhancement (e.g. more HDMI inputs) and HT related features (e.g. more output power plus Atmos and other audio processing).  For example, the entry level Sony MC receiver (STRDH590) features 145WPC in “5.2” format (2 RCA sub outs), decodes Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS 96/24, and Dolby Digital, and has 6 DSP modes with auto room correction.   It does audiophile formats including DSD (although I couldn’t get a spec for the highest resolution and didn’t bring a DSD4 file with me). The one-step-above Sony (STRDH790)  is a 145WPC 5.1.2 receiver with the same inputs.  But this one processes DTS, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS:X, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital, and Dolby TrueHD.  It has one optical and one coax audio input, and will play from USB storage or your network.  But the 2 added audio channels are in the ceiling and are only for Dolby Atmos – it’s still a 5.1 for audio.
If you go a wee bit upscale from the bottom tier, you can find a few fine sounding units for another $100-150.  The Yamaha RXV-485 is an example of a decent $400 performer that will play 24/192 flacs and DSD4.  It sounds very good, has some DSP, and is easy to use.  With network connectivity, USB, BT, and a host of analog & digital I/O ports, it’ll digest whatever you can throw into it from a Rapsberry Pi to a serious network streamer.  But you don’t even have to use a front end device with most HT receivers over $400 – you can stream to them from your NAS or plug in a USB drive and play your own files (once you’ve confirmed that the model of interest to you will recognize and play the formats of your choice).  
You can also stream internet radio and streaming services on most HT receivers sold today above the $400 price point.  You may have to spend $500 depending on the brand and model you like – but you can stream internet radio and streaming services and play MC along with all your usual 2 channel listening very nicely for the price of the receiver plus however many passive speakers yo need for your desired format.  Be aware that you won’t find MC preamp outs at this level – that feature requires a bit more outlay, e.g. the $1000 Denon AVR-X3600H.  And to be honest, it’s probably not an approach most of us would consider for a value driven MC audio system because you can get a decent 8 channel DAC for far less than that if you’re not satisfied with SQ from an OctoPi or need more flexibility than it can provide.  I wouldn’t spend more than $500 on a new HT receiver for MC audio unless you also plan to use it for video or will use other functions.  Some of the I/O and switching schema are quite impressive on the better receivers, with at least 4 HDMI inputs plus multiple coax, optical, and USB ports.
Another feature of value in a surprising number of HT receivers from cheap to costly is automatic room correction DSP.  Many of these come with a calibrated mic and do an excellent job of normalizing in-room frequency response and phasing if you activate it.  I haven’t seen any in which it was automatic or even default – you have to activate it if you want it.  Even my 10 year old Elite has this feature, and it works pretty well.
OTHER ALTERNATIVES FOR VALUE BASED MC AUDIO
MC DACs
A MC DAC is no longer a dream and no longer priced out of reach for most of us.  As you’ve now learned, the OctoPi is a true 6-in/8-out ADC/DAC with good SQ that brings the total cost of a MC front end to a whopping $100 with a 4 gig Pi 4.  If you spring for an 8 gig Pi 4 because you’ll need that much RAM and don’t want to run from a USB SSD with ZRAM, you’re talking about $125.  If you run from a small USB SSD, add another $30-$50.  But, as I’ve already described, this is not highly flexible for playback – it does what it does, can only be used with a Pi, and limits other functions on that Pi while configured for the Octo.   Fortunately, there are value based alternatives besides HT receivers if you don’t like or want to be bothered with an Octo and a Pi.
If you don’t want an HT receiver, the next step up from a Pi with an Octo card would have been a MiniDSP UDAC-8, a device well reviewed by many.  Sadly, it was recently discontinued before I (or you) could buy one.  However, the slack is being picked up rapidly.  Consider the ESI Gigaport EX, a 24/192 8-out USB DAC for $125 that sounds so fine that I’m adding one to my own systems.  It’s a really cool little piece about which I can learn nothing beyond its specs.  I don’t know what’s inside, e.g. DAC chips, I haven’t bought one yet, and my wife says I should stop disassembling friends’ stuff without their permission.  Soon I’ll have my own, but not soon enough to get a more thorough evaluation into this article.  The ESI looks good and feels pretty solid even though it’s not metal.  The case is made of what feels like pretty solid plastic material, and the connectors are typical board-mounted generic jacks with the same feel as a million other low to mid level electronic devices.  Its use is growing rapidly both for live performance and in recording studios by many musicians and small studio owners who only need a few channels and can’t afford or don’t see the need for high dollar stuff. With a USB-C input, it’ll do up to 7.1 and is great for JRiver Media Center, Roon, and every other MC player I’ve tried.  Just keep its 24/192 limitations in mind and you’ll be fine with it if it fits your plans.
Many of you know how much I love Emotiva products.  With excellent quality, sound, and customer relations, they’ve always been one of my go-tos for anything they offer in my price range that I need.  Their MC700 is an 8 channel DAC and control center for $700 list (and they have great sales from time to time). It offers 6 in / 2 out HDMI, plus coax, optical, and analog inputs.  There is a USB3 port, but it’s only for their BT dongle (required for BT audio input).  I haven’t heard this product, but after owning 2 prior Emotiva DACs and having a Stealth DC-1 now, I can confidently say that I really like the quality and neutrality of the Emotiva sonic signature in DACs.  As I have no need for one, I won’t be buying an MC700 – but I encourage any of you to whom its feature set appeals to try one.  Emotiva has a 30 day return policy that I’ve never had to use.  But if their service is as good on that as it’s been when I needed them for other things, they’ll handle it promptly and gracefully.
There are other MC DACs and front ends at various price points, both internal and external with multiple connection options.  You can choose from several designed for musicians, recording, gamers, and/or computer-based HT sound.  For example, the $120 Creative Sound Baster X3 is a USB 7.1 DAC that goes to 32/192 & sounds very fine.  It has unbalanced TRS 1/8” line out jacks, but it’s quiet (if you practice sound cable hygiene) and it acquits itself very well in a value-driven MC system.  I personally think it’s a wee bit clearer, more alive, and more articulate than the Octo card when driven by the same Raspberry Pi.  I do not find the 1/8” jacks to be a problem and could happily live with them – YMMV.
RECYCLING OTHER MULTICHANNEL AUDIO PROCESSORS
Devices like the Oppo 105 can be excellent MC DACs or complete front ends.  The 105 and similar products contain network streamers and do internet radio & streaming very well.  They’re no longer state of the art, but they’re still pretty good for dipping your toes into MC – and many of us could live happily with one of these as a front end in a second system dedicated to MC & HT.  If your 105’s been gathering dust since you set up that new streamer, dig it out and try MC with it. With discrete line level outputs for 7.1, I think it sounds better than the OctoPi – it’s very clear, clean, articulate, and accurate.
Be careful about planned repurposing.  Not all devices allow access to functions you’d think would be integral.  For example, the Oppo BDP-95 (a predecessor to the 105 and a very nice device) does not provide direct access to the DAC.  So you can’t use it as a stand-alone processor.  But if your legacy device is usable as a MC DAC, you can use it to start exploring the joys of MC on the cheap.
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST….MAKING MC RECORDINGS WITH THE OCTOPI
I’m preparing another article on Pi projects, featuring my mini-DAW.   It’s based on a fully rodded and fan cooled Pi 3B+ because the Octo card wouldn’t work with the 4 when I first got it.  And it’s amazingly capable, both with Audacity and with Ardour.  Because real time monitoring requires the CPU to process the existing tracks for playback while processing the track(s) being added for recording, the 3B+ is not up to simultaneous monitoring and recording.  The degradation in SQ is grossly apparent, with dropouts, crackling, and assorted pseudo-biologic noises on playback that suggest serious indigestion of the processing tract.  As long as mic levels are set properly and you’ve done a thorough sound check before the program starts, real time monitoring (although the best way to assure the quality of the recording) is not strictly necessary. You do need to monitor the meters closely to be sure you’re not overloading any inputs when recording live music.
Sadly, the club in which we play is (like most other southeastern Pennsylvania clubs) still closed. So I couldn’t make any full length recordings to demo for you how well the little rig performs live.  But I’ve made many MC recordings on it by laying down one track at a time in my home studio, using a click track to keep me on time because of the described inability to play recorded tracks in real time while adding more.  
As I’ve posted on AS many times, I love ART equipment.  They make wonderful products at great prices, and they represent true value for the audiophile as well as the musician and the recording engineer with a tight budget.  That little tube preamp has XLR balanced I/O and sounds most excellent! Although crude, the bench version of my OctoPi DAW is fully functional and will do its job faithfully.  Here’s the uncased DAW sitting on the iPad with inputs on the left and outputs on the right:
Here’s a shot of an Ardour MC session with 2 tracks recorded and #3 going in.  You can see that the CPU is working fairly hard at 62% (the red usage widget in the lower right corner).  But the temp is only 66 degrees and everything’s going perfectly well.
You can set Ardour preferences to route monitoring internally through the computer or through external hardware.  Using internal processing is what makes the Pi choke.  But using the latter setting and monitoring the track being recorded from its input, there’s no problem with SQ and latency is compensated by the recording program.  Ardour and Audacity both do this very well, although it takes a bit of work to set Audacity up for this.  Here are the instructions for latency correction in Audacity, to give you an idea of how easy or difficult you might find working with this program.  Once it’s set for a given computer, it’s done and does not need to be changed unless you change hardware or software.
RIPPING WITH THE DAW
Remember that the Octo is an ADC as well as a DAC.  So you can record directly into the RCA jacks from preamp out or any other line level analog sources.  Although you could use any recording program you like, I prefer Audacity for ripping vinyl and CDs.  It runs extremely well on a Pi 3B+ or 4. It’s an excellent program that rips to wav files.  It lets you export and work with your recordings in any format and resolution you prefer (as long as the processor can handle it), which is not at all a problem for saving as Redbook files, even for MC rips.  It won’t export to DSD or other serious formats, but you can capture the wav file at up to 384k.  When exporting, you can convert to about 20 lossless formats, set FLAC bit depth and compression level, etc.  
Here’s a minute of my rip of Dave Grusin’s Discovered Again (Sheffield Direct to Disc original vinyl, 1976, typical review HERE). This was ripped from my Thorens TD125 with fixed shell SME 3009, Audioquest cartridge, and Parasound Zphono USB directly to the OctoPi.
WAV File
FLAC File
If you’re interested in serious recording with a Pi, there’s also a balanced Octo card that’s either about to come out or already available (it was still beta when I last looked).
SUMMARY
Multichannel audio is cool, fun, and well worth exploring even if you have no desire or intent to adopt it.  Many of you think you don’t want it but will change your minds within seconds of a first listen. The really great news is that you can apply what I’ve written here to set up an inexpensive MC system with sufficient SQ to amuse, amaze, and attract you into its lair.  You can probably use some or all of what you have now.  You can mix and match old and new components, and you can probably use the player(s) you love for MC formats.
I can’t believe how exciting good MC audio can be, and I urge you all to at least give it a whirl.  The education alone is worth the effort – and I’ll bet that at least half of you get hooked firmly enough to keep a MC setup in use.
Stay safe and enjoy!!
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