| Many 5.1 productions allow a constant stream of reverb, crowd noise, whatever, to irritate from the side-rear and that tends to let the side down. The Floyd remix of Pulse was like that.
Just as the best lighting effect is sometimes darkness - i.e. an absence of light - so a good stereo mix has mono in it and a good 5.1 has just stereo some of the time.
There seems to be a great temptation to put too much into a 5.1 mix and I find (just my opinion BTW!) that I get better results by keeping things simple and using those side channels only now and then. |