(V5) 5.1 surround question and a possible bug

MRe wrote on 4/27/2004, 10:45 PM
I'm fairly new with 5.1 surround mixing, just doing my first project. There is something in surround panning that I really do not understand:
- no matter of where I move the panning reticle and regardless of surround mode, I cannot pan the sound to just one speaker (e.g. to rear left speaker) even all the other speaker volumes show "-inf". Am I missing something here? At least volume level meters show that there is sound present in other channels too. Is this how surround is inherently designed?

Only way that I can isolate one channel or direct all sound to one channel is to mute other speakers, but this is not keyframeable and thus cannot be used.

Could this be because not all sound plug-ins are not "5.1 compatible" or something like that.

And the (possible) bug: when I mute surround soundtrack, it just mutes front spekers, not rear + LFE. This is a bit annoying, I need to put the volume in all tracks to -inf to really mute them.

And this is with Vegas 5.

Comments

cosmo wrote on 4/28/2004, 7:32 AM
What kind of sound card are you using? What kind of monitoring system are you using? Be detailed in your description as every little thing makes a difference.
MRe wrote on 4/28/2004, 10:31 AM
Thought that this was a generic problem ;)

Anyway, the soundcard is integrated on motherboard (Abit AI7, soundchip is Realtek ALC658 6-channel w. 3 analog outputs for 5.1 sound).

Monitoring system? Speakers are Logitech Z-5300 5.1 system w. 3 analog inputs for front r+l; rear r+l and LFE+center.

I've checked the cabling with the audio application which came with the MoBo and channels are correctly wired. Speakers have also fixed wiring, so there should not be any possible phase-problem.

Hope this helps...
MRe wrote on 4/28/2004, 11:19 AM
OK, my mistake (as always...) I triple checked my setup and somehow the driver didn't correctly identify the speaker setup (it didn't recognize LFE/front), therefore the mute and panning didn't work.

Sorry for any inconvenience...
cosmo wrote on 4/29/2004, 7:07 AM
ho-ha! It seems you've solved your problem for me! Nothing like the triple check, three's the charm.
MyST wrote on 5/16/2004, 3:44 AM
What do you think of the Z-5300 system as far as sound quality goes?
I might be looking for an inexpensive set-up to monitor my surround mixes.
Pro and semi-Pro stuff is out of my price range.

Thanks

Mario
MRe wrote on 5/16/2004, 10:31 AM
IMHO the z-5300 sound quality is good enough for non-commercial use i.e. for material which is intended to be played back using standard home-theater systems.

It does not have the same white noise problem as more expensive z-680 and this actually was the reason why I disgarded it and selected z-5300 instead. Normally I keep volume very low when editing after hours and therefore it is mandatory the system to be as "clean" and quiet as possible.