Is anybody doing any serious 5.1 surround mixing?

That said, I can't wait to get into surround mixing myself, but it's going to require an upgrade in monitors.  ... However, my budget is gonna have to upgrade before my setup does!Josh

Poor man's 5.1 surround sound:  stand in front of a good pair of speakers ... and spin.    

younglove - I'm in learning stages on this and found this article while I was looking for standard curves to pre-master to:

http://millimeter.com/ar/video_serving_two_masters/

The X-curve for cinema, also some bass management besides pipe it out the LFE and duck. I think they talk about the 2nd or 3rd ISO octaves a bit which is where I'm having trouble on stereo mixes.

I don't know how much I'll get into actually mixing at 5.1 but may just re-master a few things to AC-3 as I like that sound so far. Too soon to tell. I began to purchase some 5.1 music but after 2 or 3 songs tend to get up and move out of the 'field' so I switch back to 'stereo' piped out of 5.1 speakers - the Yamaha 1200RX sounds pretty good that way too. This feels like quadraphenia all over again !  

For movies it's great though...

kylen

Ed: bonnder - I like your spin idea !  In many cases it sounds just as good!

There's a nice series of articles pertaining to Surround Sound here... http://www.studiocovers.com/articles12.htm  

Thank you, Voodoo!  True to form, and that's a good thing.  There's quite a series of articles there that I'll look forward to having a read-through.

The X-Curve:  if it went away and never were to be heard from again, I'd not weep.  It is just another standard that is applied, misapplied, and causes confusion as far as accurate playback goes.  I've heard one of LA's major benchmark theaters apply it so "perfectly" that the surround speakers sounded like they had tweeters and the main channels behind the screen sounded like they didn't (and that was when it was brand new).  But surround is full of these.  How about the LFE +10 dB playback boost called for in AC-3 and DTS (but not, by the way, Windows Media 9).  It doesn't always get implemented!  And theater surround channels are supposed to have a relative gain of -3 dB.  Or the crossover point for the LFE channel:  80 Hz for DTS, 120 Hz for AC-3, and who know why, a cutoff of something like 260Hz for WMA.  THen there's the perennial question of whether to use bass management or not.  And we want our surround mixes to translate correctly to other systems?  It's well nigh impossible, but worth trying for.

Anyway, some of the best reading on surround is from Surround Professional Magazine (Tomlinson Holman pretty much always comes up with an amazing column), a great deal of which is archived at www.surroundpro.com.  Here are a couple of recent Holman examples, the first of which is strongly pertainent to bass management, the second on mixing in general:

http://www.surroundpro.com/2003/may-jun03/col_5point1.shtml
http://www.surroundpro.com/2001/04/feature2.shtml

Their best columns on bass management would probably be these:

http://www.surroundpro.com/2002/october/columns1.shtml
http://www.surroundpro.com/2003/nov-dec/col_bass.shtml

Also, they have a related forum, where this following discussion between pro surround engineers is probably a real eye-opener:

http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=000269

And SteveG, if you're reading this, you might enjoy Holman's "Analog Chamber of Horrors."  I thought of you a couple of years ago when I first read this, and didn't know that it had been archived online.

http://www.surroundpro.com/2001/09_10/feature_analog.shtml

Happy reading, everyone!

Hello everyone, nice forums here !! Yes I am getting into the 5.1 recording and mixing, one step at a time. First step was to set up some speakers and amps, and 7.1 sound card. Then came a DVD player for the computer, then the upgraded Platinum DVD player software to play 5.1 24/96 resolution DVD's. Then a few DVD's and DVD concert video's for comparison to see how it's supposed to sound. A little tinker here, and a few tweaks there, and now the system works & sounds great !!!

It takes a bit of money, time , thought and wire, but well worth the effort. I view it as a hobby type thing that you continually work at, similar to fixing up an vintage car, a custom van/motorcycle type project. By using what I already have, and doing a little homework on the subject, and spending some time actually working at it, over a period of few months, I have a setup I'm really happy with it, but I'm constantly looking to improve on it. Next step- a different amp for my center-channel speaker & Sub. The Kenwood Home strereo amp that I got at a thrift store for $15.00, has a problem with it cutting on & and off on occassion, and it's colored a little too bassey for me,  so I want to replace it with maybe an Alesis RA-150 or another Carver eventially.

Yes, it takes a little effort, but the results are worth it. The music sounds much better than stereo, and once you get into it, there's no going back. The improvments I've made, I view as permanent additions to my home studio, and look forward to making lots of great 5.1 music in the future.

Now's the time to be learning and setting systems up, as I'm certain they will become more popular with customers and artists in the future. There's a real need for more High Resolution DVD Titles,  as the selection is currently very limited, but many artists are getting into it, so it's a growing trend. Personally as a musician, I feel it opens up a whole new type of canvas on which to create art, limited only by your creativity. It'll be interesting to see what the future brings, and how various people use the 5.1 format to present their art, whether it be remixed classics, or completely new music.  Either way, it should be fun !!

I'm still trying to learn to work with 2 speakers.....  

...and who know why, a cutoff of something like 260Hz for WMA.

For the 2.5" woofers on laptops ?

I'm kinda with Voodoo - still working on stereo mixes but interested in 5.1 that I can do. 6.1 and 7.1 might be stretchin reality for me although I'm sure I'll have playback for mastered DVDs using it. I'm sure whatever X.1 or X.2 synth I plug my stereo into will sound just fine !

...cut to sometime in the future - 2017 A.D. , Voodoo's son is mixing down a 24.6 mix using 4 joysticks per track and glances at an 'old' picture of his dad on the wall using a pan knob and a slider...he then remembers a long time ago as a baby when his Dad would pull the studiocovers.com up over him and read stories about left and right balance, EQ and things to come !

Goodnight  
kylen

  Yea, my (almost) 3 week old is already using telepathy to communication with the rest of us aliens...  he says he wants to give remixing the Disney Sing Along collection in surround a shot!!

NO NO  No!! Not That !!! I've been to Disney World !! It's a small world after all..It's a small world after all. It's a small world after all, It's a small small world... repeat about 2,000 times... It's a small world after all.......ahhhhhrrrgggg !!!!! It's a small world after all... Arrrrggggg !!!!!....


About 12 years ago,  I was there for three days and couldn't take it anymore !!! It's a small world after all... never again !!! Everywhere you went..It's a small world after all ..It's small world after all !!!
Cringe, cringe....It's a small world after all........keep the kid away from the 5.1 stuff !!! .... It's a small world after all....Arrrggghhh !!!!!

Yea, we did the Disney thing about 3 years ago for "Son #1".  FWIW, I actually look forward to going back for "Son #2".  I especially enjoyed the pub in "England" (at Epcot center)!!  

NO NO  No!! Not That !!! ....It's a small world after all, It's a small small world... repeat about 2,000 times... It's a small world after all.......ahhhhhrrrgggg !!!!! It's a small world after all...

We had a lot of fun taking my kids to Disneyland for the first time just a couple of months ago.  It was really a very good day, except... well, little William's favorite ride was... you guessed it.  We did it 3 times.  Come to think of it, he was humming that tune just today!  I won't complain when he'll match the pitches so well, regardless of what the tune is!  But once it's in my head, it loops for hours...