Center Channel Phantom?

Rednroll wrote on 2/16/2003, 2:12 PM
I was playing around with the new surround features, and noticed I am not getting any signal going to the Center channel no matter where I pan it. It shows the same indication in the "surround panner" window. If you pan it dead front Center, shouldn't I get mostly center channel signal? Currently I'm getting a phantom Center of LF and RF out. I opened ACID 4 and noticed it's done the same way. What's the deal is this 5.1 or really 4.1 or is there something I'm doing wrong?

Comments

barleycorn wrote on 2/16/2003, 3:31 PM
The centre channel is muted by default. Click the centre channel icon and you can adjust the gain.
Rednroll wrote on 2/16/2003, 4:14 PM
Aha!!! Thanks, took a little while to figure it out. Now, it just makes me wonder why that would be the default when working in 5.1? Now if I selected 4.1 in the properties...that would make sense.
Bjorn_Lynne wrote on 2/17/2003, 1:44 PM
This is the normal and correct behavior for the centre speaker in a 5.1 setup.

Normally the 4 corner speakers are used for atmos/fx/music, and the center speaker is used for things that need to "stand apart" from the background sound, usually the conversation or a particular sound that needs to be separated from the rest of the audio. If you watch a film in Dolby Surround 5.1, listen carefuly and you'll notice that the music and sound effects play in the 4 corner speakers, whilst the conversation mostly happens in the center speaker. This makes the conversation "stand out", easy to hear even when the volume is low.

If you pan a sound dead center, all the way forward, it will just be distributed evenly to front-left and front-right. The center speaker is used separately from this, with it's own slider independent of the 4 corner speakers.

If you think that's complicated, just wait until you start messing with the LFE/Subwoofer, where what you hear when you are mixing isn't even the same as what the end-user will hear. :-).

Bjorn Lynne
www.lynnemusic.com