Hi there,

I've been tasked with the sound design and mixing for a project this weekend and have been asked if I can mix in 5.1, something that I've never done before.

Is there any stereo to surround VSTs you can recommend? And are there any bits of advice you can impart? I've got FL12, two monitors, a pair of headphones and a belly full of nerves. Help!

 

maybe this could be something

http://www.newaudiotechnology.com/en/products/spatial-audio-designer/

 

5.1 surround is 6 discrete channels.

stereo is 2 discrete channels.

stereo is not surround, unless you want to mix in matrixed surround???

What kind of project? music? video? film?

I can suggest some, but the usual process is you mix IN 5.1, not mix in 2,0 and upscale afterwards. This loses the whole point of 51. People can just press the upscale button on their AVR if you don't mix in 51 natievly.

You can upscale SELECT CONTENT to 51, and pan/mix in 51 the rest.

since FL doesn't support surround natively, it would require an INCREDIBLE amount of hax to mix in 5.1 natively (like abusing buses). Unless you're mixing in binaural/HRTF.

Easiest thing would be to use say, cubendo, logic pro, ntrack, reaper, etc something which supports 5.1 (or at least multichannel) NATIVELY.

(oh, And Adobe Audition, I use that)

 

Last edited: Apr 8, 2017

mixing for 5.1

- daw master output on 6 channels,
- an audio interface with 6 analog channels
- 5 monitors and a subwoower

Create and mix your project, then export the 6 tracks individually.
Now, if requested, you can encode your master in .ac3 (google for “Dolby Digital ac3 encoder”)

I cant imagine a way to acheive 5.1 results in a stereo enviroment

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 8, 2017

You want WAV (or FLAC/Wavpack) , as those are lossless. ac3 is lossy, unless a ac3 file was specifically requested.

 

Very true.
My point is that there is no way to have 5.1 mix without 6 REAL channels

 

Waves NX can do this. But you would probably need the tracker to use it effectively, maybe?

 

the plugin i mentioned is made to mix surround with just your ordinary headphones

its actually mind blowing:

 

Last edited by a moderator: Apr 8, 2017

This downmixes surround to binaural . But, you need to have a surround mix in the first place.

You can monitor in stereo or binaural, but for your first few mixes or 1st year of surround mixing, you want real speakers to monitor.

 

A hint when mixing for film: you want to keep the center channel (pretty much) clean from music. Keep the centre channel for dialogue, for music use only L, R, Ls, Rs, LFE).
But as said earlier, there's no point in mixing in 5.1 with just 2 speakers. The plugin above won't tell how a mix will sound with a real 5.1 speaker setup, so I wouldn't touch it. Also, it's very important to know how a 5.1 mix will translate back to stereo, as most users don't have a proper 5.1 sound system.

 

Thanks for all your replies - I've informed the director that I don't have access to a 5.1 set up (I do, but I'm not moving my gear over to the lounge) and she's happy for me to mix in stereo then if the film gets taken to festivals I can send over the stems for someone to upmix it.

 

You can as long as you've had experience with doing so previously (I do this all the time), and if you've had a check of previous or current mixes on a real 51 setup on how different things sound.

Indeed, As long as you're not doing anything too dodgy & downmixing/checking your levels constantly downmixes sounding bad shouldn't be a problem.

You mean remix, right?

 

Some advice on levels: If the film is played in a proper film theatre, you should know that theatres are calibrated to a certain level, and sound will be played against a certain curve, called ‘the X-curve’ (it’s like an equalisation curve, but actually a little different).
When mixing a film, you want to adhere to those ‘rules’, so the audience will perceive the film like you and the filmmaker intended it.
It’ll make sure your mix has intelligible dialogue and the right dynamics.

So, how can you mix a film to those rules?
You might have heard of the LUFS standard (sometimes also called R128 or BS 1770). These levels are for broadcast. NOT for a movie theatre.
The proper way of calibrating a speaker setup is to use a ‘C weighted’ Level meter, play Pink noise set to -20 dB Peak from your DAW, then adjust your monitor level until it reads 75 dB. The actual monitor level is depending on your room size, but 75 dB will get you in the ball park.
If you’re unsure, you could measure the LUFS of only the mixed dialogue, this should read around -27 dB.
Referring to the X-Curve, read the article below, then know that both High and Low frequencies will be rolled off in a movie theatre.
http://www.psneurope.com/what-s-the-x-curve/

After a Festival premiere, a film could be broadcasted on TV, or put on Youtube. The ’problem’ of your job is that they both have different level standards. Broadcast levels are usually -22 dB LUFS, Youtube does -17 dB. So you actually need 3 mixes, or at least the Theatre mix needs to be adjusted to match those levels.