I've searched and see nothing relevant to what I'm trying to do and this seems the bext forum to post in, so here goes.
This is my 1st foray into a surround mix which will end up as an alternate audio source on a DVD (Vegas makes a matrix pretty easy and it will be the the mian audio source). I've got 3 seperate recordings I want to createa 5.1 mix from using Vegas 5.0. The following makes sense to me and is what I've done so far.
For two of the recordings I chose the individual l/r channels and placed them as individual trax on the time line making them front l/r and rear l/r (letting Vegas perform the seperation to individual l/r - not prerendered l/r wav's stuck into Vegas), mono'd another to be the center channel & mono'd one of the others that has the best bass as the sub channel. I then panned each of those completely into the apprpriate surround channel. Like i said, this all makes sense to me and i know i could "pull back" an individual track and pan it more (make it come through the other channels, not just the one). Anyone have any tips/tricks as to how better to do this? Thanks in advance for anyone's advice.
For starters, I wouldn't make your center track substantially different than the FL and FR. If they're from two different sources, a pan across the front would likely change timbre in the middle.
So you're suggesting to "pull the center back" and let it into the front left and right?
I've never done this, so this is a "use your ears" warning ... but without a true center source, I'd just sum FL+FR to mono and keep the levels consistent.
i haven't done it either, but based on discs i've heard, why not eliminate the center channel altogether and make it a 4.1 mix? I personally don't like the center channel in audio recordings; I think it muddies up the soundstage quite a bit. also, shouldn't you run a low pass filter over the sub channel so that it only contains LF information?
The sub channel is set up like that.
I like the idea of all the discrete channels myself, I just wonder if it's the optimal way to approach it. I know it's all in the ears, but other's experience is usually pretty valuable so...