Mixing in 5.1 - What methods & tools do you use?

mosc · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 5:15 pm Post subject:

RME has their own Firewire ASIC chip that works with all known Firewire chips. That's very important. MOTU only works with a few chip makers. If your hardware has another chip (how would you ever know in the first place - especially in a laptop) you are in trouble. The RME is more expensive, but in the potential problems it could avoid, it is worth the money.

kkissinger · Posted: Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:16 pm Post subject:

kkissinger · Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2007 7:29 pm Post subject:

Well, today I just "bit the bullet" and purchased the RME800.

It not only solved the incompatibility problem but has brought other benefits:

1) Latencies down to 8ms (from about 21ms)
2) Adat support -- I am now successfully running all eight busses from my K2600 into the RME800 -- 24bit digital at 48khz. Though I had the ADAT capability on the K2600, the Firepod only supported AES/EBU (stereo) and I could only run the front two channels digitally.
3) Analog attenuation of the outputs -- the lack of this feature on the Firepod was causing me a good deal of hassle. This feature is important so that I can tweak my surround sound balances from one location to the next.

The low latency will be helpful for my looping works were a little "sloppy" working at 20-22ms latency.

Thus, the advice to keep my laptop (it is 3.2Ghz, 2gig ram) was excellent.

A special thanks to electro80 and mosc for your help on this.

-- Kevin

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:35 pm Post subject:

The RME Fireface 800 is pretty cool! Very Happy

IMO it does pretty much everything right and then some. BTW: the internal routing/mixer is awesome.

kkissinger · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:48 pm Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 5:03 pm Post subject:

Kevin, I´m actually considering some kind of 8 mic/line to ADAT device to go with the RME. I might wait a few months before buying something, but I am almost in love with the MOTU 8Pre. It has the same AKMs as the RME, it sounds prettty good, it has firewire too and the build quality is good. So far I haven´t found anything wrong with it. Clealry it seems like a better choice than the Behringer ADA800. Laughing

elektro80 · Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:39 pm Post subject:

kkissinger

Ah, who among us has done things such as:

1) soldered a patch cord then discovered you forgot to shove the cover onto the cable...

2) no sound from monitors -- so check every patch cord, connector, signal path, reboot/restart everything -- only to find that the monitors' hardware volume control was turned all the way down...

There are many more "DUH!!!" moments I've experienced and I had yet another one last week. However, this one was a little intricate and I'm mentioning it here in hopes that it may save someone else some headaches.

Last week I wanted to create stereo mixes of some of the music that I am performing live with in 5.1 format. For live performance I send signals to a Lexicon MX400 (used for reverb) and the MX400's output, in turn, is mixed and sent out to the monitors -- no need to bring the signal back into the computer. To accomplish the 5.1 to stereo mix, then, I had to create four input busses to bring the reverb signal back into the computer.

In addition to the additional signal routing, I used Cubase's 5.1 to stereo plugin, dithering, and a software limiter into the chain, too.

My initial mixing attempt was pretty horrible -- too much reverb -- too mushy. So I went back to remix and found that, no matter what I did, the mix was horrible -- sounded like it was in a can! I spent hours messing with the limiter (even removing it entirely). What in the heck had I done?

The breakthrough came when, in desperation, I started working with EQ settings. As soon as I increased the gain -- I got a jarring and unpleasant surprise in the form of feedback. Somewhere, I had inadvertently created a feedback loop -- not enough to produce howling feedback but enough to color the sound and create horrible resonances on transients!

The solution was simply to remove every signal routing that was unneeded for the task at hand.

Now, where exactly was the feedback loop? To be honest, once I rid myself of it I never went back to find it... I suspect I had created it with the signal routing within the RME800. Yes, your first thought might be that I had done the deed when I routed the MX400 back into Cubase however -- well... I knew to watch for that! I suspect that the actual loop was outside of the computer occurring between the RME800 and the MX400.

The moral of the story: if you have strange resonances, if transients sound muddy, and you absolutely can't get rid of it -- look for unintentional feedback.

For me, another "DUH! Why didn't I think of that sooner?" moment.

Embarassed

Jason · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:54 am Post subject:

kkissinger · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:00 am Post subject:

Jason · Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:22 am Post subject:

yes yes thank you
wasnt sure. My brain must be dusty

Joe Misra · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:45 am Post subject:

I received a private message from ramechling about what I had come up with after all this time, figured I would share:

What I ended up figuring out is that I was aiming too high, so to speak. Most (if not all) consumer devices can't stream 6-channel lossless PCM audio at 96kHz/24bit fast enough to play it, apparently. You have to encode to MLP, DTS, or Dolby Digital. Also, sometimes you have to use the video layer to "link" to the audio files, if the player won't recognize DVD-A. Most commercialy released DVD-As I have contain both.

I found a pirated version of the really expensive ($3000) MLP encoding software (which I obviously can't use and didn't keep around, but wanted to see if it made a difference), that worked. Also, DTS or Dolby Digital will work, again only with expensive conversion software.

Ultimately, I've ended up mixing my songs in 5.1 and downmixing them to stereo. Samplitude has worked out well for this, Cubase/Nuendo, Logic, Digital Performer also seem to have that functionality, maybe others too?

That usually results in file a Dolby Pro Logic I / II decoder can use to get 5.1 or at least LCRS (without using the standalone Dolby Pro Logic encoder), albiet not as distinctly as 6 channel audio would yield. It's practical at least Smile

mosc · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:53 am Post subject:

That's interesting. How does the stereo file deal with the center and rear channels? I mean, how are your stereo files different from stereo mixes you might do directly?

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:15 am Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

Yes, I know about Dolby PL. Are there encoders in the software he is using? That's the part I didn't get. He said:

elektro80 · Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:14 pm Post subject:

You can get encoders that run as DAW plugins as well as standalone apps.. and then you have the standalone hardware boxes. The latter used to be pretty expensive way back then.

mosc · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 4:14 pm Post subject:

Well, hardware makes very little sense these days.

Personally, I'd rather mix for good stereo and let the playback system do the PL encoding. Anyhow, this requires a lot of experimentation.

W.T. · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 10:32 am Post subject:

I am looking for a panning device for a multi speaker setup, 4 speakers.
i was thinking that i perhaps good use a joystick for this, a kaoss pad or perghaps there is a good other (standalone) device on the market for this (perhaps DIY, but i am not one to make greasy hands Wink

)

The sequencer that i use is Logic studio 8.