Surround sound - what goes where ?

[Arok]

Just have a question for the people encoding surround sound.

What would you have in each channel ?

Would it be something like this : (Example of documentary)

Left and Right front : Voice of people
Center front : Background music
Left and Right rear : Background music

Any help would be appreciated.

[E-Male]

that is basicly a up to the guy doing the mix

on movies you mostly do it like this:
the front speakers get the basic stereo mix
dialoge goes to the center
the surround support with music and surround effects

on good mixes the front and surround speaker work together to produce a 3d soundfield, which can have echos or planes flying through the room

[mpucoder]

I would add - never put music or sound effects on the front center, this channel is to make it easier to understand dialog, which often gets lost in all the other sound.
Most home theater systems allow the user to adjust the level of this channel seperately from the main and surround, and I've had to bump that channel up on many movies just to hear the actors.

[hendrix]

i agree with mpucoder - what I would do is:

Center - Dialog
Front R/L - Music and ambient sounds
Rear R/L - ambient sounds (same as the front) -90 degrees phase shifted for the surround effect

[E-Male]

i thought phaseshifts where only for pro logic and the likes
and that we talk discrete 5.1 here

[mpucoder]

For 5.1 you do not use phase shifts. If you are making a 2.0 Dolby Surround compatible you would use them to mix in the surround (rear) channel, left +90, right -90 .

[hendrix]

actually audio mixing is an art - so there's really no wrong way of mixing, just personal style...i like the way phase shifting sounds...the music would only come out of the fronts, not the rears...at work we have a digital audio monitor, so we can actually see the position of the audio in the surround spectrum, which makes it easy to position sound, which sounds great on our Genelec monitor speakers.

and yes i am talking about 6 discrete channels. i know the difference between 6 discrete channels a Dolby Surround/Pro Logic.

[E-Male]

Originally posted by hendrix
...i know the difference between 6 discrete channels a Dolby Surround/Pro Logic.
i never daubetd that

i just thought phaseshifts where for pro logic (and similar) only

also "(same as the front)" made me wonder

[hendrix]

my big mistake...sorry...i got the terms mixed

what i ment was have the ambient sounds from the front right come out the rear left and the front left to the rear right...also put a slight delay to the rears and maybe add a touch of room to it :)

[E-Male]

we're not talking about mixing with seperate source-tracks, right?

[hendrix]

ya separate source tracks - we use the DK-Audio MSD600M audio meter here at Technicolor Japan.

[Arok]

Thank you all...

Very helpful...