The sixth record of the argentine musician will be released on November 14. However, a pre-release will be streamed on October 30 at 22 p.m (Buenos Aires time zone) on La Resistencia Progresiva Argentina’s Youtube Channel.

Rodrigo San Martín (Buenos Aires, 1988) is an argentine multi-instrumental Progressive Rock musician. His first encounter with surround sound was with “1”, his debut record in 2010. It’s the first Latin-American album mixed in 5.1 surround.
His five solo albums has been greatly recognized by the international specialised press, as well as his involvement with the bands: Vanished from Earth and Souls Ignite. Nowadays, he is the leader of The Astral Platypus, an audiovisual project that is a parody of Progressive Rock. The project includes a comedy web series that narrates the story of a fictional band between the 60´s and 80´s, and the complete discography of said band.
Rodrigo is considered one of the main figures Argentina’s progressive rock’s revival, since he is the founding member and leader of La Resistencia Progresiva Argentina: a group of progressive bands, with whom he works with in different projects to promote the genre. One of these initiatives is the Baires Prog Fest, a music festival in Buenos Aires, which has already had fifteen editions.

Bandcamp (free discography):
https://rodrigosanmartin.bandcamp.com/

Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/SanMartinPhase7

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/sanmartinphase7/

^The key word to the above statement...'gimmick'.

But, enjoy.

Hi!

Rodrigo San Martín here, thanks for your interest.

8D Audio is a new kind of mix that applies an algorithm that's usually used in the development of videogames, ir order to be able to locate sound in a tridimensional space. That means not only left right, and center, but also front, back, up and down.

There are many examples of 8D Audio on Youtube that are just as Grumpyprogfan described a few comments above: they use this new technology to "move" a stereo track  around the listeners head (plus the add a ton of reverb just because).

I used this technology in a different way: I applied this effect to every single instrument on the mix (unlike the examples I just described that only apply it to the master track) in order to simulate a tridimensional space and have a Surround mix (like the famous Steven Wilson ones, for example) just for headphones (instead of a bunch of speakers)

For example: electric guitar on the left, acoustic guitar on the right, vocals on the center and the keyboards and mellotron come sounding from the back. Meanwhile there's a pulsating synth riff that's circling around your head in opposite direction of the percussion.

Sorry if I'm not being clear. English is not my native tongue and this is something quite difficult to describe.

I invite you on friday to listen to the album (with headphones) and make up your own mind.

Oh, and yes. 8D is just the name someone gave this particular mixing style. I didn't name it that way. Of course there aren't 8 dimensions.

tl;dr: 8d used on the stereo track = gimmick

8d used on every single track to create a tridimensional space and have a surround mix for headphones = my new album ;)

I'd have to say that 8D is in a different realm than any #.1 mix given that the .1 is the designation for a Sub-Woofer channel.

Plus, if you need headphone to fully realize the effect my bet would be 3 channels across the front (LCR), 2 at the sides (LR) and 3 channels across the back (LCR). That would equate to a pretty smooth surround environment for cans.

Hi,

The hardest part to explain this is something that can be found in a lot of music in the highest fidelity possible ... if you geta super pair of speakers, have a 500w+ receiver and such, a lot of this is much more visible than it would be in a mp3 or through you computer speakers when you listen to the tube, or even try to put on the headset off the tube.

In the early days, my example was Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze and in those early days there was an attempt at putting together a Quadraphonic sound on LP's and I think that for the most part it worked, but, again, it would require a much more expensive system than what most people (in the average) have, which is not half as good.

Not surprised to see this, and expect more as time comes by, the most incredible part of it, is it not being used for an orchestra, which would make the recording very lively and more exciting ... and instead it is used within a rock format, which kinda tells you who is driving the technology ... in the early days of the LP it was classical music perfecting the recording (RCA's Red Seal for example), and later, probably starting with Pink Floyd, the quality got even better, but I think that quality was overdue, and had not been done as well since George Martin and a few of the Beatles albums.

Hopefully it works well and it sounds really good ... having been through a lot of "variations" on the sound quality of things (particularly the remixes and remasters), for the most part they have been massively disappointing and my speakers on my system shows them as inadequate (specially KC's first album) as compared to my system on a LP. It simply feels like someone simply played with the recording levels, and made a mess of the togetherness of the piece.

Hearing this on NEW MUSIC is probably the right thing to do so we stop comparing it to the original, and kudos for having taken the time and effort for doing something like that.

My imagination comes off "classical music" and how some things are identified, and some conductors were known (a few years back) to even change the sitting positions of the instruments to get a better effect of what they wanted. This is about all that a lot of the remixes and remasters are sounding like to me, with the best known one, honestly in my ears, not half as good as it could be ... and he did not learn from Klaus Schulze and his engineers when he was there during the live recordings with Lisa Gerrard. In one segment on the DVD, you can see an engineer request to make a change in one bit in the middle of it all that you and I will never find ... and it does make it better and it used different effects to create a very different feeling, which was very nice ... but don't ask me to identify it when listening to the whole thing ... I doubt I can find it!

Nice job ... best of luck

Thanks for the good vibes!

It would sound amazing in the context of orchestral music but I think they usually have a different way of recording: popular music is normally recorded in multitrack form, having one (or several) track per instrument. The mix usually pans those instruments to get the desired effect.

I believe orchestras usually record playing all together in the same room with "room microphones", and maybe sections of the orchestra have their own special microphone and solo players as well.

So you don't get a track (or several) per instrument where get to the mix.

(even if you did use a microphone on every single instrument on the orchestra, which I believed Nightwish tried on one of their albums, the "bleeding" from the other instruments next to them would still appear on the tracks)

To use this 8D placement on every instrument you'd need a track per instrument, which is easy to do in a rock context, but next to impossible on an orchestra. It could be tried with the different sections of the orchestra, though.

That sounds neat. I can see something like this being done with the Ambeo Orbit VST automated by an LFO with parametric modulation.

We're going live in 20 minutes!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7dM-8CCrP4

The video will only be online for two hours until the official release on the 14th.

Hope you can check it out!

Let me make the link more easily available then:

yeah Ian...  i'd rather have my 8D effects in sex woo hooo!!!

typical proggers.. sheesh...

As announced the link with the full album was only online for two hours, the duration of the pre release event.

The official release date is November 14th, but we'll be releasing some tracks before.

Here's the first track of the album:

Don't forget to use your headphones :)

A new track from the album has been released. It's a prog cover of Vivaldi's Summer, from the Four Seasons.

The album will be officialy released this saturday but we're allowed to share the private press link to potential reviewers. If any of you are interested, pleaste let me know!

Would be interesting to hear in a well designed music room with a 5.1.2 speaker system..........I'm not into that stuff for music though, I only have two ears.

Dolby Atmos is a Surround system that requires, at least, five speakers. It's pretty cool, but only works if you have the right speaker setup and you have to be exactly on the sweet spot, right in the middle of the speakers.

In 8D Audio you have a similar surround effect that can be heard on any headphones. Check it out for yourself:

Dolby Atmos setup:

Last song before saturday's album release!