Apr 4th, 9:56am (Mississauga, Canada) I am thinking of trying some 5.1 mixes as I have a very nice surround theatre system upstairs in my living room. My studio is in the basement. But I have a few questions / observations to put to the group before I go ahead....so here comes a new thread! I have about 10 "in concert" music DVD's that offer both stereo mix & Dolby 5.1 Surround. It's only recently that I've listened to any of them in 5.1 & to be honest.......I hate it so far. Maybe it's just done for the general public / consumer mentality that 6 speakers are better than 3 (L, R & sub)......I don't know. Here's what happens to the beautiful stereo image when I switch on Dolby 5.1 surround: The center channel is way to loud by at least 3db & contains most of the vocals (including bg's) , most of the drums, most of the keyboards etc. There is some stuff panned L & R of course but to my ear it's odd having the centre info coming from a center speaker as opposed to being centered "naturally" with 2 front speakers only.......the "old" way! On my system I have to re-adjust levels to make it even tolerable (center -3, rear L & R surround +2). Even then, the panorama that was so nice in stereo mode (3 speakers / L & R & sub) is now crap. The back speakers seem to just contain audience clapping in reverb & general ambience. I do enjoy watching movies in 5.1, but music......NOT??????????? So is 5.1 really only for movies or is The Dave missing something here? miffed in Mississauga, David Norris-Elye www3.sympatico.ca/dnerd/

At 10:13 AM 04/04/2003 -0500, you wrote: >I have about 10 "in concert" music DVD's that offer both stereo mix & Dolby >5.1 Surround. It's only recently that I've listened to any of them in 5.1 & >to be honest.......I hate it so far. Keep in mind that the Dolby Digital mixes are compressed to AC-3, which is a pretty lossy compression whose quality degradation you may notice when compared directly against the full-bandwidth stereo mixes. >The center channel is way to loud by at least 3db & contains most of the >vocals (including bg's) , most of the drums, most of the keyboards etc. >There is some stuff panned L & R of course but to my ear it's odd having the >centre info coming from a center speaker as opposed to being centered >"naturally" with 2 front speakers only.......the "old" way! This is pretty weird, as most of the interviews I've read with surround mixing engineers suggest little or no use of the center channel. Many of them do admit, however, to overusing it in their initial tries at surround mixing. But if your balances are that whacked out, I have to wonder if the system is properly decoding the mixes. Turning on "Pro Logic" on a receiver will actually create a form of surround even on audio that isn't surround encoded, and it can sound pretty strange since it's somewhat random in its placement (it can be pretty cool at times, too!). A true 5.1 mix must be decoded by either the DVD player or receiver, and must have either six discreet analog or one digital connection. Is it possible the system isn't quite right?

> >I have about 10 "in concert" music DVD's that offer both stereo mix & Dolby > >5.1 Surround. It's only recently that I've listened to any of them in 5.1 & > >to be honest.......I hate it so far. When you mix surround music in Logic, set it in quadraphony mode. Don't use the other outputs, except for the sub output perhaps. Still, make sure you render in 5.1 so you have the other channels as silent tracks otherweis you might run into problems when authoring Audio DVD's. At least that's my experience. But I'm quite a n00b on the surround scene so... well...