No control of center/LFE

ccondon23 wrote on 6/14/2005, 7:38 PM

I'm trying to make a 5.1 surround mix in Vegas 4.0, but I can never seem to control the center channel or LFE channel.

I'm using a Soundblaster Live 5.1. From poking around on this forum and elsewhere, I'm thinking that I need the ASIO drivers from kxproject, but I can't tell for sure.

Should this solve my problem or am I missing something?

Thanks,
Chris

Comments

MRe wrote on 6/14/2005, 11:35 PM

I'm now answering based on V5, since I haven't done any surround projects on V4, but I think that surround hasn't changed between 4 and 5.

First of all: center channel can be controlled in surround panner window. Default is that center is disabled (-Inf), just move the slider to whichever position you like. It is also keyframeable control.

LFE is feeded automatically through low-pass filter (which you have set up in project properties) and it is used only for Low Frequency Effects, as all books remember to point out. So it is not legally possible to feed any random sound there e.g. just to boost bass. Remember: Low Frequency Effects (said with Darth Vaders' voice).

Nuff said for that.

Non-orthodox way of controlling LFE is to set up another bus and dedicate it to just for LFE (add bus and then select from its surround panner LFE). Remember to make the bus feed eventually to surround master and not to actual Center/LFE-channel, otherwise when you render the project this won't get rendered.
Let's call this LFE-bus "B". Now, you have possibility to feed *any* sound to LFE channel by selecting the multipurpose slider to adjust Bus B instead of Volume. And this is of-course fully keyframeable and you can just select which audio tracks will feed that bus. Either only to LFE or standard volume + LFE.

And lastly you can dedicate whole audio track to feed only LFE and nothing else. This is also done in track's surround panner, where you select LFE instead of Master Surround.

I hope this helps. And I hope thet you can understand what I tried to explain. And I hope that these instructions are correct ;) (I'm writing this from work and I do not have Vegas on my work laptop. Should have though, I might get something useful done during the day).