The DMS2Five plug-in is made with SonicBirth, a visual dataflow programming language for the creation of Audio Unit and VST plug-ins for macOS.
The DMS2Five plug-in, and the information on this page, are provided as is, without any guarantee regarding performance or end result. Ambisonic Studio and Daniel Courville are not associated with Schoeps Mikrofone GmbH, its distributors or vendors.
SonicBirth 1.3.1b2 is compatible with OS 10.4 to 10.13.
macOS audio utility downloads
X Lossless Decoder (XLD): utility for converting files between the following formats: Wave, AIFF, raw PCM, Wave64 (.w64), MPEG-4 AAC (.m4a), Apple Lossless (.m4a), FLAC (.flac/.ogg), MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack (.wv). Can also read Monkey's Audio (.ape) and True Audio (.tta). Files can be multichannel if supported by file format.
Scott Wilson's De-Interleaver: utility for interleaving and de-interleaving audio files. Can be necessary to handle Double MS files.
DMS2Five: Instructions
The DMS2Five has six inputs, M-Front, S and M-Back (plus three dummy inputs for compatibility purposes), and three different 5.1 output modes.
Input Trim Controls To adjust the individual input levels of the three microphones. The DMS2Five is adjusted to the different sensitivities of the CCM 4V and CCM 8, but if level discrepancies occured in the recording, they can be compensated by up to 6 dB. A good practice with a Double MS assembly is to globally adjust the recording levels (not individually per channel) to maintain the level relationship between channels.
Front/LR Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. Directivity: to control the directivity of the virtual microphones feeding the speakers between omnidirectional and figure-8/bidirectional (default to 0.5, cardioid/unidirectional). Width: to vary the width of the speaker feeds from 0 to 180°, with default to 60°, referenced to Center. Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Center Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. Directivity: to control the directivity of the virtual microphone feeding the speaker between omnidirectional and figure-8/bidirectional (default to 0.5, cardioid/unidirectional). Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Sub/Lfe Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. EQ: to control the lowpass filter between 20 and 160 Hz with the default at 120 Hz. Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Surround/LsRs Channel Controls Level: to attenuate the output by up to 24 dB, the default is 0 dB or no attenuation. Directivity: to control the directivity of the virtual microphones feeding the speakers between omnidirectional and figure-8/bidirectional (default to 0.5, cardioid/unidirectional). Width: to vary the width of the speaker feeds from 180 to 360°, with default to 240°, referenced to Center. Delay: to delay by up to 35 milliseconds with a default of 0 ms or no delay. Used for augmenting Front-Back separation. EQ: to control the lowpass filter between 1 kHz and 20 kHz with the default at 20 kHz. Used for augmenting Front-Back separation. Mute: to mute the output, with default to Off, meaning no mute.
Soundfield Controls Axis Flip: to flip the soundfield on the Front/Back axis (front becomes back) and on the Left/Right axis (left becomes right), both default to Off, no flip. Rotation: to rotate the soundfield, in degrees, from -180 to + 180. Default to 0°, no rotation.
Interpolation Control Affects the sound quality of the Surround Ls/Rs delay. The Linear interpolation setting will yield better sound quality, but will use more CPU. Default to No interpolation.
Outout Channel Order Control Configures the output channel order. This can be useful in preparing the audio stream for applications that expect the audio channels in a specific arrangement. Apple Logic users should select the third option: L R Ls Rs C Lfe.
Mute unused channels to optimize CPU performance.
Note on the Sub/Lfe: activate the Sub/Lfe when monitoring without bass management. Deactivate (Mute) it when generating the actual stream for the 5.1 media: the DMS2Five will then output a 5.0 stream, but the media player/surround processor will likely feature bass management if the 5.0 stream is delivered on DVD-Video, DVD-Audio, DTS-CD, SACD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray disc or HDTV broadcast. More details on the use of the Lfe channel available here.