That's not how it works for me. Nothing at all comes out of my subwoofer unless I specifically send something there. Is there something wrong with my setup?

And as far as I can see, there isn't a way to "split" a track and send all the low frequencies to the LFE and then the rest of the sound to the normal speakers. It could be done manually by creating a new copy of the sound, EQ away everything above 125 hz, put that new sound on an "LFE only" track, then going back to the original sound and EQ'ing away everything under 125 hz. But what a nightmare is that if you're working with a 15-minute action movie sequence with maybe 1000 different sounds? Surely there must be some other way to get the low frequencies to the LFE?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, I'm new to 5.1 mixing. In fact, is there a book or series of articles available on mixing and mastering in 5.1?

- Bjorn Lynne

You are right...

This doesn't seem right at all. Do we really have to do the LFE track separately? Any comment from SOFO?

And why is the center channel so quiet even if I put everything dead center?

Maybe they don't want us doing real mixes with the beta? ;-)

The thing with the center channel I can explain. Sending something to the "dead centre" of the surround mix just distributes it evenly to the 4 corner speakers. It doesn't send anything to the center speaker. The center speaker is the additional separate speaker typically placed on top of the TV, and you have to send sound there separately from the corner speakers.

If you look at the Vegas surround panner, there is a slider at the bottom where you can determine how much of that sound to send to the center speaker. Typically, I guess you would have music and sound effects going to the 4 corner speakers (and the lfe), and keep the conversation mostly in the center speaker. That's what it sounds like mostly when you watch a movie on a TV "home theater" system.

So if you want sound in the center speaker, use the extra slider at the bottom of the surround panner. Just placing the sound in the centre of the "room" doesn't make anything come out of the center speaker.

I'm okay with all that. I was just assuming that it would be the same thing with the LFE. If I want a helicopter flying overhead, I would think that I would be able to "send" some of the low frequencies from that sound to the subwoofer - without having to send the entire audio track *only* to the subwoofer. Why isn't there a slider for the LFE in the same way that there is for the centre speaker?

I'm not saying SOFO are at fault with this, it may be that there are ways and working methods of doing this that I am not aware of. That's why I was hoping for some advice from some seasoned 5.1 engineers.

Thanks,
- Bjorn Lynne

I discovered the Center slider now :-)

Actually, by "dead center" i didn't mean centered as in same distance to all speakers, but centered and in front (at the top of the Surround Panner window).

The LFE-thing seems like a bug to me. Or atleast they haven't thought it through enough.

For the helicopter rumble in LFE:

-Create a new track under the helicopter and make it LFE only.
-Make a copy of the helicopter sound and place it in the LFE track.
-Now you have two copies of the helicopter sound one going to LFE and the other to the surround speakers.

If you need more "rumble" items in the same place in time then create another LFE. Otherwise use the created LFE track to place copies of all sounds you want to have in surround speakers and LFE. Or just LFE only.

HTH

Ivan

I may be wrong about this, but isn't the whole point of a subwoofer that the other speakers won't have to deal with the lowest frequencies at all? Or are there times when you would prefer to have the full range in all the speakers?

Couldn't you just have an option for rendering 5.1 mixes that has a low-pass filter for LFE from all tracks, and high-pass for the rest automatically? That way we won’t need to mix LFE separately.

I believe what SOFO mentioned makes sense. first of all, please notice that a Subwoofer is an optional piece of equipment even in a surround sound system (and that is why it is the 1 in the 5.1). It makes more sense to create a track for LFE and ***let the user's subwoofer handle it*** since a subwoofer has a variable frequency range, it is left up to the subwoofer to filter all frequencies out and keep the range of low frequencies.
In other words, send the audio track to the subwoofer, and let the subwoofer handle the frequency range.

The bitrate for the subwoofer is one tenth (IIRC) of the other channels in Dolby Digital, so encoding the whole range is a bad idea. Luckily, this is not something Vegas does by default.

By the way, if you have a surround reciever, and no sub, you only have yourself to blame ;-) That is not a big enough reason I think, besides most decoders can reroute the sub to the front channels.

But that wasn't the point. What I'm trying to say is that the workflow suffers when it doesn't have to. I wouldn't want to remove the way it's done now, since it's pretty usefull, but I'd like the option to have an LFE channel rendered automatically.

Quote: --->
For the helicopter rumble in LFE:

-Create a new track under the helicopter and make it LFE only.
-Make a copy of the helicopter sound and place it in the LFE track.
-Now you have two copies of the helicopter sound one going to LFE and the other to the surround speakers.

If you need more "rumble" items in the same place in time then create another LFE. Otherwise use the created LFE track to place copies of all sounds you want to have in surround speakers and LFE. Or just LFE only.

--->Unquote

So you're basically saying that ALL sounds have to be duplicated, and new copies have to be placed on new, separate audio tracks? That doesn't bode well for a project already containing maybe 20 audio tracks and 1000 audio events. You're really saying that for each audio event, I've got to make a new copy of the event, create a new track, make the new track LFE only, put the copy on the new track and have basically two copies of everything?!

Except of course, the sounds that have no frequencies under 120 hz in them. But I guess that means I'll also have to check each of the 1000 sound events in a frequency spectrum to see if it contains any frequencies under 120 hz - and if it does, create a copy of the sound and put it on a new LFE-only audio track...

Surely this can't be the case? It sounds like a horribly backwards way to work? It would take me weeks to go through this procedure for every sound event in my project.

- Bjorn Lynne

You don't have to copy everything.

Create a Sub bus (or busses) and set its panner to LFE only.

Any track that you want to contribute to the LFE you just route its AUX send to this bus. You can even automate how much each track sends to the LFE and when using simple envelopes. You could even put a nice EQ or other FX on the LFE bus.

Peter

Or you can add a buss to the mixer and route the tracks you want to it as well as to the surround mixer.

Then route the buss to LFE.

HTH

Ivan

Quote:-->
Create a Sub bus (or busses) and set its panner to LFE only.
Any track that you want to contribute to the LFE you just route its AUX send to this bus. You can even automate how much each track sends to the LFE and when using simple envelopes. You could even put a nice EQ or other FX on the LFE bus.
Peter
--->Unquote

Ah, thank you! That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. It just didn't occur to me that I could set the buss to return to the surround mix AND set it's panning to "LFE only".

I knew there had to be something I was missing. Thanks again.

- Bjorn Lynne

That's more like it. :D Thanks.

After a moment of reflection, this makes more sense :D Maybe I should not comment on what I never used, and maybe I should give this whole Vegas 4 and Co. a try :-)

I think we realy need an LFE Send...!!!! That's the best way ..!

Does anyone agree...?

maybe in ther next update....?

I don't. We don't have separate "L send" or "R send" sliders. The bus solution works perfectly, and feels rather consistent with how the rest of Vegas is designed.

Isn't the LFE for Low Frequency Effects, like 15-120hz or so?

I'm not a psychoacoustic expert but this is what I've learned from some sound sytem design (Synaudcon) classes I've taken.

Our ear/brain system is not very good at determining the location of sounds at very low frequencies so the exact placement isn't important. For the helicpopter example the "thump" "thump" from the rotor probably can't be localized while other parts of the sound can. The idea of duplicating the track for LFE only seems to make sense.

Larry

If you make a Bus for your surround mix, the problem is that when you send to the LFE Bus there is not an option for LFE only. It still only gives you an option for
Center/LFE so in effect you are not mixing a clean LFE only bus. It is also pulling the center channel. mute the surround master channels (front l/r, rear l/r) so that only the LFE bus can be heard. If you do this you will hear the sub/LFE AND the center channel. If this is not how you guys were talking about routing in the above posts, then I guess i didn't follow how to do this.

To follow up on this thread, I think that the confusion comes with the way the the program displays the information. I think the program allows you to select the LFE only to isolate the channel to hear/see it by itself. I was thinking that nothing was being sent to the LFE channel becasue the meter wasn't displaying the level in the surround master mixing window. So, the LFE seems to be routed there, but it was confusing, becasue the meter does not visually show that there is a level going to the LFE channel when set to surround pan. I know its going there because I can hear it through the speakers. If that makes sense...

I always thought that 5.1 worked in the following way:

Full range signals sent to the LCRLsRs speakers might also be sent to the subwoofer, however the amount of signal sent to the sub is a function of the bass management system in the decoder / amp rather than a function of the actual encoding. I think this is why you are hearing your sub, but not seeing anything in the meters.

Additional 'sub-only' effects which are intended ONLY for the sub are where the LFE channel comes in.

Does this make sense?

Mark

How does one completely isolate the center channel? I have a track that I want ONLY in the center and not in the LF/RF. No matter what I do, some of this track bleads over to the R/L tracks. I have already mixed for surround and want 100% track isolation kept in Vegas. Can this be done?

From the panner for either the track or the bus that the track is routed to, enable only the center speaker icon. This will force all output to the center channel. You then control the gain with both the thumb and the Center gain control.

Peter