Lt-Rt mix center heavy

[by-tor]

Hello. I am mixing a film for theater release in Jamaica. The producer wants it mixed in Dolby. Not 5.1 but the 2 channel encoded version. So Lt-Rt encode and decode. I have never mixed for this format before and I have a question.

I am mixing through the Dolby Surround Tools plug in (I rented it) and my mix keeps coming out VERY center heavy. Even with center percentage turned all the way down in Pro-Tools. If I take a stereo music track and pan it hard left and right and send it through the encode and decode process the muisc is MOSTLY in the center. Same thing for ambience or foley. Setting up a good LCR mix of foley has been difficult. Very center heavy. The whole mix is very center heavy. Any tips for mixing in this format?

Thanks in advance!

[Dunebuggy]

if you could send a snapshot of your masters(aux) section , it would be easier figure out if the problem is in your set up or the audio source itself.

eric

[MixinMonkey]

Originally Posted by by-tor

Hello. I am mixing a film for theater release in Jamaica. The producer wants it mixed in Dolby. Not 5.1 but the 2 channel encoded version. So Lt-Rt encode and decode. I have never mixed for this format before and I have a question.

I am mixing through the Dolby Surround Tools plug in (I rented it) and my mix keeps coming out VERY center heavy. Even with center percentage turned all the way down in Pro-Tools. If I take a stereo music track and pan it hard left and right and send it through the encode and decode process the muisc is MOSTLY in the center. Same thing for ambience or foley. Setting up a good LCR mix of foley has been difficult. Very center heavy. The whole mix is very center heavy. Any tips for mixing in this format?

Thanks in advance!

Providing that nothing technically is wrong with your setup.. hopefully this may help based off of what you have written -

For example, regarding your stereo music track, if it doesn't have a whole lot of stereo 'width' information within the track to begin with, and you're panning it Left and Right of the encoder, it will likely still decode towards the center. Put your stereo music on your XY scope and take a look.. that'll tell you a lot.

The big thing to keep in mind about LtRt Dolby Surround mixes -
For the most part (and this is REALLY basic info here) anything that has mono information between the Left & Right of your 2-channel LtRt mix will mainly decode in the center.. the extreme opposite would be that anything that's 180 degrees out of phase will mainly decode only in the surrounds.. what stays into the rest of pretty much a phase dance between mono & wide-stereo image audio (plus any discrete panning left or right etc.)
of course there's WAY more to it than this, and I'm leaving a LOT out here, that's the basic idea to keep in mind..

[by-tor]

O.K. That seems to be what I thought. I have attached a screenshot to this message. Thanks a ton for the hints so far. Any other hints are welcome! Thanks agin for the input.

[jimlongo]

Dolby supplies a template for a 5.1 downmix to LCRS that downmixes into the Encoder and then a decoder monitor matrix. It should be installed with the plug-in.

[by-tor]

Thanks for the help!

The Mix came out pretty well. I found the I have to really play with extereme panning to get things to go where I want. The center channel stuff was really do to mono stuff in the music tracks. THe fact that the music was mastered into a squarewave of poop didn't help either.