Matt, the discs arrived today and sound great!
Thanks again.
"Let's go down to the smokin' hole"
Thanks Lee! I want you to listen to a few things for me. I had the great pleasure of getting a responce to a few questions I had about 5.1 mixing from a guy who runs a surround studio in Burbank CA.
Please listen and see if you can detect any distortion due to over driving your processor at the hot points of dynamic impact. I think I held my levels up too high. as ageneral rule of thumb, he suggested keeping each track at about -2 db peaks unless I was going for a tv/broadcast mix. In that case, each network or station will specify but they are usually -10db and peaks at -4. He said if it goes the tinyest bit over they send it back to you and make you do it over.
He also told me I should not have pulled the bass frequencies out of the 5 main channels. In a situation like yours where you have no lfe (sub) in use, you should technically be missing out on the bulk of the lowend. Check and see if you have a feature in your processor to sum the lfe channel with the rest. If so switch it back and fourth and let me know if it makes a difference.
Most importantly did the channels seem to ballance without any major tweaking on your processor? Did it image like you were in the sweetspot? Could you tell the difference in the crowd responces from the front to rear?
Thank you so much for your help!!!!! +T
Matt
*edit* He was also kind enough to say that the way I was recording was "the most sensible approach to live capture that he had heard in a long time". I think the gymic of feeling like your head was inside the kit and the guitar player is doing the happy-panzie dance around the room is starting to wear off with the music business folks. I highly recommed others try this out and play with it a bit. It has been a lot of fun!
Matt