Re: DTS / 5.1 - advice, please

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On 17 apr 2007, at 02.32, David Kirkdorffer wrote:

> Has anyone here released their music mastered for DTS

No.

> or 5.1 ?

Yes.

> advice: do's and don't.... what to look out for...special  
> considerations.. etc.

If your material is only music you don't need to use the center  
speaker. That makes it a lot easier to create interesting "rooms"  
within the four ambience speakers by working with dual stereo signals/ 
treatments.

It's natural to think that the best tool is a "software mixer" that  
has a surround panning tool on each track. I too started out with  
that but after some time I found that I could do it much better by  
simply address the surround speakers directly and built whatever  
needed to circle, time delay, "dopplerize" - or whatever needed - the  
sound. I was working in Logic, but any mixer or software would do if  
it just has five (or six) addressable outputs for the speakers.

Get four equal speakers for the mixing and burn DVD-V discs to  
control listen on a medium crappy home theatre movie box with Dolby.

I even made the AC3 files myself and delivered them to the video guy  
who when mastering the movie imports the AC3 file as part of the  
Dolby Surround Sound (or whatever it's called). When making an AC3  
(for DVD-V, DVD-A is a different story) you are given the choice of  
how much to compress. I chose 256 kbps and am totally happy with that  
audio fidelity.

Do not forget to listen to all surround channels mashed into a mono  
bus. You have to watch out with mono compatibility, not only for  
phasing issues but also for musical reasons. You see, everything  
sounds so much better and more distinct in surround so you will  
become tempted to mix with less definition (as in more natural  
sounding), which will eventually may sound mashed up in mono when you  
do not have the direction of sound.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se (Swedish)
www.looproom.com (international)
http://tinyurl.com/fauvm (podcast)
http://tinyurl.com/2kek7h (CC donationware music releases)