Well I am not into professional sound field. Just a hobbiest trying the 5.1 system.

I have the nVidia SoundStorm for 5.1 encoding/decoding and a 4 speaker setup.

Which surround popup window are you referring to? Are you referring to that graphical surround panner?

You must use an audio card that exposed 3 discreet stereo pairs in order to monitor surround in Vegas. A typical Surround audio card does not do this. The Audigy card requires the use of the ASIO drivers in order to expose the Front/Rear, and Center/LFE channels.

If your audio hardware only exposes a single stereo pair, then all audio will be spread across this single stereo pair. Typically this will route to both the front and rear speaker set of a audio card.

Peter

I have noticed the same problem.
I set the center channel slider to 0dB and changed the pan mode but I can't get discreet channel separation.
All fx are turned off and no additional buses are used.
When panning mono sound to center with "add channels (0 dB center)" -pan mode, all three front channels show -6db volume.
Same situation with "balance (0 dB center)" -mode.
In "balance (-3 dB center)" -mode, center channel shows -6 dB and L/R are -9 dB.
In "balance (-6 dB center)" -mode, center has -6 dB and L/R are -12 dB.
In "constant power" -mode, center has -6 dB and L/R are muted (-inf). But when I try to pan between L/R in this mode, left and right channels stay muted.

Is this a bug or a misconfiguration in my system?
I tried to do the same in Acid Pro 4 with same results.

I have two soundcards in my system (Echoaudio Darla and Creative Audigy).

BWO

Please read my previous post.

Peter

Hi

I'm tried Audigy with Asio drivers but I can't do clean panning that goes through all channels. If I start panning from left and move towards the center, right channel is gaining volume too. This happens in all three "balance" -pan modes and in "add channels" -mode. In "Constant power" -mode, L/R channels are muted.
Center channel volume slider is set to 0dB.

So what I'm asking is, when I'm trying to do a pan between three front channels, why there's sound in all of them. When panning from left to center, right channel should be muted, right?

BWO

Ok, I understand what you want:

You want panning to go from

left to center and then center to right.

That is not how 5.1 panning is defined. Panning is between left and right and the surround field. Center is not part of this. This is not how the center channel is defined for use. The center is the "mono" channel of 5.1.

You might be able to do this manually using key frames, but there is no automatic way to do this.

I know, there are different opinions on how this "should" be done - even amongst the Surround experts. We followed convention on this.

Peter

Hi

Thank you for your reply.
Following question goes to Sonic Foundry programmers:
Would it be possible to add one more panning mode to surround panner in a future updates/versions? This "left to center" mixing is very useful for those who mix sound effects to center channel and pan away from it. :)

BWO

I will discuss it with the rest of the audio team, but define this mode? Why is this important other than for some very special and exception to the rules?

I looked at all the literature on the subject and found nothing that indicated this type of panning would be desirable. In fact one article speaks against such usage of the center channel.

I am not agaist it, I just cant see adding such a feature unless it was in widespread use.

I assure you that it will be discussed.

Peter

Surround panner should process each channel as a discreet channel.
When sound is in full center (or left or right), all other channels should be silent.
For example...when panning from left to center, other channels should be silent.

This kind of panning can be found in many motion pictures (Star Wars episodes 1 & 2, Terminator 2 SE and Titanic to mention a few…)

BWO

I disagree. That is not how it is defined by the industry.

I have listend to SWE1 and 2 on my surround system. They follow the conventions. I never found a case listening where panning when from center to left or any other speaker. Is there a specific example in these films that you can point me to that is exposed on a 5.1 set up using AC3?

Center is for dialog, not FX or other "data". Yes other material can be composed there, but this is NOT what it was intended for. I would love to hear an example of this usage of a center channel - that is pan from left to center and then center to right or visa versa.

Having said this, we will look at how reasonable it would be to add a "Treat Center channel as if it were a front or rear channel" mode.

Peter

Here's two examples where center channel is used in panning:

James Cameron's "Titanic" R2 DVD Time: 74:30
Scene where Titanic's designer mr. Andrews talks Rose about lifeboats and how strong the ship is.
When mr. Andrews exits the screen to the left the line: "Next stop will be the engine room" is panned from center to left.


Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" R2 DVD Time 37:05
Scene where Tom Hanks is talking with Tom Sizemore about their new mission.
A jeep passes camera from right to left. Jeep's sound is panned from right channel to center and then to left.

BWO

I listened to the Private Ryan one:

I turned off the center channel and heard a stereo image of the jeep sound that follows what you said.

When I turned off the left/right (and rear) and turned on the center, there was no center component of the jeep. Just stereo imaging on the left and right channels. All I heard from the center channel was dialog and very faint background noises, but no FX or foley.

I was listening to the Dolby Digital, not the DTS version.

???

Peter

This is very interesting...

I tested the same scene from R1 and R2 Dolby Digital and R1 DTS DVD.
When center channel is muted, there's a gap in jeep's sound when it passes camera at the center.
I also tried this at my PC and got the same result.

I have that scene's soundtrack in 6 mono wavs. I can send them over if you want to check them (via email or ftp).

BWO

No need to. I will record them here and have a look.

What decoder are you using?

Peter

Infact, I did testing in three different 5.1 surround system setups:

Pioneer DV-626D (Build-in Dolby Digital & DTS decoder) & Denon AVR-2400
Panasonic DVD-RV 60 & Yamaha RX-V630 RDS
Pioneer DV-454 & Pioneer VSX-808 RDS

BWO

>>Pioneer DV-454 & Pioneer VSX-808 RDS

This is exactly what I have...hmmmm...maybe user error on my part. I will look at the raw wave data, that will tell me what is going on.

Peter

Hi Peter

Have you checked the raw wave data from that Jeep scene in Saving Private Ryan?
I was wondering is your system decoding 5.1 signal differently than mine?

BWO

Just to add my -2dB:

Logic has the option of selecting several Surround modes for each track: 5.1, quadraphonic, LR+sub, take your pick. I find this EXTREMELY convenient, since I use Logic to create quadraphonic surround ambiences and then render four mono WAVs: One for each corner. We import these into our game engine and play them back, fully positioned inside a virtual "sound cube". The effect is tremendous.

Problem is: If I wanna use Vegas to edit them, I can either mix in 5.1 and throw the center and sub channels away after rendering the WAV's, which is quite tedious on 200+ wave files. I can instead choose to ignore the surround and only line them up in stereo pairs, thereby forgoing all the surround advantages that Vegas has to offer.

Now, I would not need Logic to do this if I could specify "quadraphonic" as a Surround Mode in Vegas, for either a channel or a bus. Vegas would just mix between an arbitrary number of channels, in this case four, and then render these four channels to separate wav files. I'd drop then into our sound packager, and off I go to implementation. Really a timesaver.

This reminds me that I still haven't gotten a reply to my good old semi-bugreport about the "render all buses mono" render mode works: Sometimes I get only stereo, sometimes the full 5.1 monty AND a mono mix of all channels...? =)

It would be great if Vegas would have multiple surroundmodes.
Like in Steinberg Nuendo where you can choose from 2-channel stereo to 7.1 surround modes. This really gives more flexibility to surround mixing.

Multichannel wav support like in Cool Edit Pro would be nice addition too.

BWO

Our specific target was 5.1.

We are looking at different Surround arrangments for a future version of Vegas.

Peter

Forgive me for jumping in, and I don't mean any offense, but in reading the above thread, it seems like the SF guy is stating as fact that which is not true.

Maybe I am missing the point of the thread, but it is a fact that any proper discrete surround panning scheme (for reproduction in Dolby Digital or DTS; Dolby Surround aka Pro Logic is not discrete by definition, at least with regard to center channel) allows for dialog only to be placed in the center channel, typically with a bit of center signal dialog and dialog ambient efx to the front L and R speakers.

All you have to do to verify this is to find a movie (any typical Hollywood release) with a center dialog channel and mute/unhook/turn down your center channel speaker.

In FILM postproduction, the center channel is NOT just a reinforcement of the stereo phantom mono center image as stated above. It is true that in surround MUSIC mixing, the center is often used in the manner suggested by SF(as a reinforcement of center) or the center channel is not used at all.

It is interesting that SF implemented surround in a manner almost exactly opposite of accepted methods. In Pro Tools, Nuendo and most surround consoles (including LCR live consoles, btw), the amount of center channel appearing in the front L and R busses is controlled by a "Divergence" setting, with higher divergence equalling more of the discrete center spread to the L and R busses. The default is 3 discrete channels up front.

In Vegas, it seems like the default panning scheme is L/R with no actual center until the "Center" fader is turned up, which simply takes a L and R sum and feeds it to the center. With this configuration, it seems impossible to take a SINGLE mono track and pan it so that it is predominately in the center with a much smaller percentage in the L/R busses, as is common in film dialog mixing. Also impossible to do discrete dynamic panning as suggested by the original thread post.

Smurph

Only way to pan just to center channel is to use "constant power" pan mode and set center volume fader to 0 dB or higher. L/R channels are then muted.

BWO