Hi folks, I have a question about how best to up-mix a stereo track to surround in Studio.
So I have a bunch of ambience events which are comprised of stereo base loops, which work as the foundation of the ambiences, and various one shots within Scatterer Instruments.
I can see from the output meter in the event that the scatterer instruments are playing in all 6 channels, but the stereo base loop only plays in FL and FR. What i want is to distribute the stereo base loop into RL and RR to improve the envelopment of the ambience.
Should i be setting the output of the event to Stereo In: Distributed or Stereo In: L/R to achieve this? Or indeed, is this not the correct way to go about achieving this at all?
I don’t have a surround system to currently check this on, so need to set it up on the assumption that i have used the correct mode.
Hi , first you should change the output of every channel to 5.1, than switch to Distibuted.
What i found is that stereo ambiences don`t sound good when you just put it in the center.
Like this
Instead i like to pan them out a little bit. For example, room tones and lighter stuff and less bassy tracks can go like this.
And more active tracks and heavier once i put in front, like this
Either way it`s not perfect but with all of them in the center you route L channel full to L and Ls speaker, same thing for R channel and C is i guess mixed from both. So you get a mono-ish sound and possibly some phase issues.
And for example this is the output of one of my 6-channel ambience tracks. You can see that try to put the focus on the front where the screen is.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply Koca.
You’re right that leaving it in the center after switching to Distributed sounds very mono, but moving the sound forwards, so there’s just some subtle bleed into the rear channels seems to sound OK (I’m monitoring in stereo).
I’ve also noticed that you can disable the center channel completely, so I’ve also done that as I like to keep that free from the main ambience.
When moving the position of the white dot, is it possible to force it to center, and just adjust the Front/Rear position? Adjusting it by hand seems like a bit of guess work and I can’t be sure it’s dead center.
The only way to set the surround direction precisely is to automate it: Right-click on the panner, select “Sound Direction > Add Automation,” then add a flat automation curve that sets the sound direction to 0 degrees.
