The best way to mix it is simply....
close your eyes and listen. When you open them the people should
be on screen where you expected them.

LFE is perhaps the hardest. Punching music helps increase the mood
but I think is generally overdone.

Unless you're doing special effects a la "Earthquake" (1974), then leave LFE out of the mix. Modern surround speaker systems have more than enough oomph for anything you would want to do.

Some good advice Sounds like I'm on the right track.

Thanks Guys.

Mark

I *HATE* movies with surround sound & all the vocals are in the center, SFX on the rear & the music on the front.

Not sure which movies you watch but I haven't seen any that use that sort of music and SFX assignment.

Generally dialogue, if on screen is panned to the centre. This is done because when movies made for the cinema end up on the small screen the left and right speakers are no longer behind the left and right sides of the theatre screen but left and right of the TV monitor. Hence panning dialogue hard right and left for actors still onscreen actually pans their dialogue offscreen for TV.

Many movies though do pan dialogue though and use the surrounds for dialogue off screen and behind the camera.

SFX are generally directed to the screen direction where they sounds are derived. Hence a gun shot from front left will be panned front left though the bullet impact and whizz overhead may be panned through to the rear speakers as well, think of the Omaha Beach scene in Saving Private Ryan. Atmosphere tracks are usually assigned to all speakers but different layers of tracks to create a surround feel. Music is predominantly assigned to the front left and right but, particularly if mixed in 5.1 itself, will be assigned to all channels of the 5.1. If the music is stereo in origin then it is wise to only assign it to front left and right as well as rear left and right and LFE leaving it out of the centre channel. Putting a short delay on the feed to the rear channels may be something you would want to experiment with as long as it doesn't create an unwanted echo or reverb of the music.

You can send a split of your tracks to the LFE so that the subwoofer can reproduce frequencies below 120Hz. This isn't generally necessary for dialogue but is useful for both SFX and Music. I use a Buss send in Vegas assigned to the LFE Submaster to allow me to do this and control the amount of send to the LFE channel for each track or individual pieces of audio on a track.

I've worked as a sound professional for 30 years and even managed to win a professional audio award for 5.1 mix of a 30 minute short feature, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1002975/Death's Requiem[/link] I did in my home studio with Vegas 7.

New Hope Media

I absolutely agree with newhope re: dialog location. Yes - some off-screen shouting etc. can be placed at the back/left/right, but the main dialog should be pinned to the screen - unless there is a possibility of creating a separate mix for theaters only.

On slightly another note: how do you mix for all those pseudo-surround decoders, such as Prologic II, Neo 6 etc. - so that some controlled surround content can be encoded within the stereo track?

I quite agree.
The one thing I've noted is that people on this forum (as well as other nle forums) tend to sadly underestimate the power of audio, and you can do some pretty amazing things with surround sound. It takes a lot of work but if recorded/mixed correctly (just for example) you can tell with your eyes closed where each section of an orchestra is on stage.

I don't know about others but there is just something not quite right, particularly on a big screen tv when the sound is coming from just one or 2 general areas. There is an important rhythm between the eyes and ears that is completely lost. To me this is as bad as an audio track that is out of sync.

Of course it all depends on the video being shot. Corporate videos with people standing at podiums talking wouldn't gain anything from surround sound so I guess everything has its place. But overall, surround sound used properly is an incredible effect that brings the eyes and ears in sync with each other for a perfect experience.

I saw Death's Requiem BTW.... well done!

"On slightly another note: how do you mix for all those pseudo-surround decoders, such as Prologic II, Neo 6 etc. - so that some controlled surround content can be encoded within the stereo track?"

Phasing mostly... in both time and frequency. The addition and subtraction of the different phases in the left and right channels brings other channels.

A very simple center channel for example (what we used to do when we were younger and lacked the proper equipment) is take an extra speaker and connect it from the positive on the left side to the positive on the right side. This would form a center speaker that would react to the difference between the left and right channels.

On slightly another note: how do you mix for all those pseudo-surround decoders, such as Prologic II, Neo 6 etc. - so that some controlled surround content can be encoded within the stereo track?"

In the Dolby AC-3 Pro 5.1 template, leave the 90 deg. phase shift "On."

if you're waning to put the dialog mostly in the front irregardless of where it's coming from, use stereo. If I wanted things to sound either left or right I'd enable the stereo track (if one is bothered to be made). Any decent player will mix the rears with the fronts if you have a stereo setup so mix with intentions.

I could list some movies that did the sound horrible as examples but I don't remember those movies. I only remember the ones that sounded good as examples. :/

Hi Newhope

What a great film Deaths requiem.

Great advice.

Mark