Please help with Audio levels and Panning

musman wrote on 10/27/2004, 12:33 AM
I'm remixing a short film I made and in so doing am trying to make more clear to the audience a few things I was going for. A lot of the movie is supposed to be audio from a television and appearently the fx I added to make it sound like a cheap tv- well a few people said they didn't understand that until later in the movie.
So my thought was to pan audio supposedly from the tv to the right about 45% for a mono effect. The problem is when I play back stuff that is only 1 channel on some TVs the audio just doesn't play. Of course, if I send a copy of the movie to a festival and they can't hear the tv stuff well, I've wasted around $50 each time.
I was just wondering how other people deal with this. Seems to me that to make things interesting, panning is a good idea (and it's in DSE's book)- but then you're taking some risks. How should I deal with this? Multiple audio versions? Something else?
Thanks ahead of time for any help!

Comments

B.Verlik wrote on 10/27/2004, 1:10 AM
I may be wrong, but I believe when the TV is mono, the sound is normally channeded from the left channel of most playback units. Sometimes both channels are mixed together, but if one channel is going to dominate, it's going to be the left channel. I only have Vegas 4.0 and DVD-A 1.0, but I think that in Vegas 5 and DVD-A2, you can make a DVD with more than one sound track, that would at least give the watcher a choice of either watching it in stereo or mono, providing they bother noticing that there is more than one audio track to choose from. It seems hard to believe that at a festival, the T.V.s would not be stereo T.V.s. I would normally just say mix it toward the left, but I'm sure you probably want it on the right. There may be a work around for this, but somebody else will have to tell you.
musman wrote on 10/27/2004, 1:37 AM
Thanks for the help. The left might be okay actually. I was just guessing which side was primary.
With regards to festivals, the thing is to try to make a good impression w/o being annoying. But, I review movies for our festival and know that people review stuff on different kinds of players. I know one lady who uses her ibook occassionally, and it's mono. I actually own a Sanyo tv that has 2 prominent speakers on either side of its screen, but it's actually 2 speakers of mono. That's the tv that I discovered wouldn't play my audio panned all the way over to one channel. Thank goodness I never used it for reviews or I'd be feeling very guilty right now.
So, go with the left channel, huh? I'll give it a try. Thanks!
farss wrote on 10/27/2004, 1:54 AM
Firstly I don't understand how panning anything to one channel is going to make it sound mono? If it's mono then it should be bang in the centre and each channle should have the same thing in it.
There's a difference between off centre mono and off centre stereo. The location of a sound in the sound field is determined not just by it's relative amplitude in each channel but also difference in the phase between the channels.
To create a mono sound from a stereo one first you need to combine the two channels and then pan that. This is not the same as panning a stereo signal. If you started with say a stereo track with female voice hard left and male voice hard right and panned it hard left all you get is female voice from the left channel. If you make them mono and pan that hard left you get male and female voices from the left speaker.
You MUST always check any mix in mono, this is crucial. All TV receivers that are not stereo equiped will combine the two channels. However when someone hooks up a DVD or VHS player that's stereo to a mono TV, well anythings possible!

Bob.