OTHER TECH

Appetites whetted by the excerpts, Messina and I now choose various tracks to play in their entirety - and we're having such a blast that we keep going until we get through nearly the whole album. We begin, again, at the end:

You See Me Crying. The orchestra fills the room. "It's still an Aerosmith track with orchestra, not the other way around," Messina emphasizes. "But one of the reasons why I like this track is that an orchestra is really suited to surround. When I set up the strings for the original recording, I put three mikes up high because I wanted to get a little leakage from the brass. And in the surround scenario, you feel the space of the room because of that leakage. It's what makes the sound really magical."

Sweet Emotion. Effects seem to hover everywhere as the bass riff anchors the opening. Then come the drums. "I wanted to accent the rhythm section by including it in the center channel. It just kicks you a little." And by the way, that's Messina on bass marimba, doubling the bass riff. "I used to play vibes, and Jack knew that. Back when we were recording the song, the bass track was basically done, but Jack felt it didn't have enough punch, and he thought of the bass marimba. So it was a big thrill for me to play it - and it worked. It's a little thing, but it puts that point on the bass."

No More No More. There's fine detail in the opening sequence, with electric guitars up front and acoustic guitars in the rear, helping create a great sense of spaciousness. Yet Messina says those acoustic guitars don't have to be too loud. "In my apartment a while back, I had just set up my surround system, and I was playing a demo DVD for a friend. And he listened and said, 'Are the rear speakers on?' I said, 'I'll shut 'em off. You'll hear the difference.' And it was a subtle thing, but - wow."

Toys in the Attic. We cancel all the speakers except the center, so we can hear only bass and drums backing a "raw, dry, naked" Tyler, as Messina describes the lead vocal. Would Tyler mind that discrete surround sound makes it possible to isolate him so? "I think he'd be okay with it. He's secure enough with his talents."

Walk This Way. The guitars rock - but now they're more clearly defined. Otherwise, as Messina acknowledges, "I had a real good start mixing this for surround because it's such a great song by itself." So he and Douglas found that their biggest decisions here were actually putting the cowbell in the right surround channel and the schoolbell in the left surround. Simple but effective. "We were just putting the icing on the original recording."

Uncle Salty. In a wonderful touch, Tyler's overlapping lines at the end - "Ooh, it's a sunny day outside my window" - crisscross the room. But the motion isn't random. "Jack wanted me to come up with a pattern for the four left-and-right speakers. But he also wanted it to change overall, so that the next time the four-part pattern came around, it wouldn't begin in the same speaker it did before. That took a little doing, but it was very cool."

Big Ten Inch Record. Ah, those horns! "Jack and I noticed lots of horn parts that we hadn't realized were there. Maybe back when we recorded the song, we still wanted it to be an Aerosmith song and not have it be overpowered by the brass. But now, with the extra channels for surround, you can make out more of the horns."