5.1 Listening position - Question?

[Waltz Mastering]

For those with experience, when mastering audio for for 5.1,

Do you master for:

A) the listener to be sitting in the center of all the speakers, so all speakers are relatively equal volume.

or

B) the listener to be sitting more toward the rear speakers, so the rear speakers have slightly less volume than the front.

And for those who listen to 5.1 where is your listening position in regards to front and rear?

[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

For those with experience, when mastering audio for for 5.1,

Do you master for:

A) the listener to be sitting in the center of all the speakers, so all speakers are relatively equal volume.

or

B) the listener to be sitting more toward the rear speakers, so the rear speakers have slightly less volume than the front.

Hmm... are you asking because of that crap that dolby suggest for home setups? ( Dolby - Dolby Speaker Setup Guide - Speaker Placement )

Listening position here is equal distance to all speakers (ITU setup, image attached, disregard LFE placement). For music applications, it can't really be any other way. By moving the listening position, you're not only changing respective levels but also laufzeit (?acoustic runtime?), so imaging gets skewed unless compensated (delayed) - which may create other problems in real acoustic environments.

I.e. mastering music with a non-center listening position is pointless, imo. Every skewed home setup, every surround receiver that delays the surrounds to compensate (or not!) will be different.

Different positioning / levelling standards for the surruround speakers may of course be of interest, depending on what format / medium / standard you're mastering for, but a center listening position (as far as is possible) is desirable in just about any authoring scenario.

[jayfrigo]

Dead center of the (more or less) ITU circle for music. Film is, of course, a different story.

As with stereo, you master for the reference, not for the anticipation of a certain number of users' shortcomings. You don't master on a boombox because many people may listen to one. You master on a set of reference speakers. That gives you the best chance of the program playing well across the spectrum of possible end-users' systems.

[Waltz Mastering]

Thanks Robin and Jay,

In this example your rear are spaced farther apart in width than the front, is that common?

[jayfrigo]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

Thanks Robin,

In this example your rear are spaced farther apart in width than the front, is that common?

They have to be spaced to maintain identical distances among all speakers to prevent things arriving at different times, i.e. out of phase. That's also why the fron 3 are on an arc rather than a straight line (as in film, for different reasons).

[24-96 Mastering]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

Thanks Robin,

In this example your rear are spaced farther apart in width than the front, is that common?

What Jay said. And all that Jay said in his other post too.

[glassmaster]

Originally Posted by Waltz Mastering

For those with experience, when mastering audio for for 5.1,

Do you master for:

A) the listener to be sitting in the center of all the speakers, so all speakers are relatively equal volume.

or

B) the listener to be sitting more toward the rear speakers, so the rear speakers have slightly less volume than the front.

And for those who listen to 5.1 where is your listening position in regards to front and rear?

You should go to the NARAS and Dolby websites and download their surround production guidelines.

[Waltz Mastering]

Danke Shein.