surround mix for choral work

[audiothings]

i recently recorded a 150 piece choir with pipe organ in a huge church with lots of reverb. we did not consider micing for surround, but as this project is meant for a dvd (video), we are considering mixing in 5.1.

The thing is that we have only 5 tracks (don't ask why!)... a stereo X/Y main pair, two cardioid spots and a mono mic for the pipe organ.

Do you folks think we can accomplish anything by mixing this in surround? i was thinking to put some reverb in the surrounds, sum the low frequencies below 80 Hz and feed it to the sub, and high pass the material going to the satellites, at 80 hz. Would this be the correct way to do it? All the mics have a tremendous amount of natural reverb already, so in order to create material for the surrounds, i will have to put the already mushy tracks through another reverb... Is there any point to doing this? Is there a better way?

thanks,

[Pascal Sijen]

Originally Posted by audiothings

...sum the low frequencies below 80 Hz and feed it to the sub, and high pass the material going to the satellites, at 80 hz.

I won't comment on the rest of your questions, because that is outside of my expertise, but I would not recommend high passing the main channels and sending everything below 80Hz the LFE channel (I think you meant LFE and not SUB - what you are saying is a description of bass-management, which is a function of the monitoring system and should not be part of the mix). I think you may be confusing bass-management, which is a function of the monitoring system, with the proper use of the LFE channel.

We have an article that discusses the confusion surrounding bass-management, subwoofer and the LFE channel, on our website. You can read it by following this link.

I hope that helps...

Cheers!

[mpdonahue]

Originally Posted by audiothings

i recently recorded a 150 piece choir with pipe organ in a huge church with lots of reverb. we did not consider micing for surround, but as this project is meant for a dvd (video), we are considering mixing in 5.1.
The thing is that we have only 5 tracks (don't ask why!)... a stereo X/Y main pair, two cardioid spots and a mono mic for the pipe organ.
Do you folks think we can accomplish anything by mixing this in surround? i was thinking to put some reverb in the surrounds, sum the low frequencies below 80 Hz and feed it to the sub, and high pass the material going to the satellites, at 80 hz. Would this be the correct way to do it? All the mics have a tremendous amount of natural reverb already, so in order to create material for the surrounds, i will have to put the already mushy tracks through another reverb... Is there any point to doing this? Is there a better way?
thanks,

WRT the high passing of material. This is something that is achieved on playback and is system specific to the speakers in question. Definitely read the link and learn about the differences between subwoofers and LFE.
Now, to the recording. I don't hold out much hope of making any kind of decent surround from the elements that you have recorded. You don't have any real rear information from your XY pair, so basically you would be synthesizing surround, not unlike running the stereo mix into a surround reverb, like you describe.
I would suggest that a good stereo mix will be a lot better than a faked up surround.
As always, YMMV.
All the best,
-mark

[John Willett]

Originally Posted by Pascal Sijen

..... I think you may be confusing bass-management, which is a function of the monitoring system, with the proper use of the LFE channel.

We have an article that discusses the confusion surrounding bass-management, subwoofer and the LFE channel, on our website. You can read it by following this link.

Please give me a warning before posting such things - it's so rare that I come across someone who actually understands what the LFE channel is all about, I almost had a heart attack.

[Pascal Sijen]

Originally Posted by John Willett

Please give me a warning before posting such things - it's so rare that I come across someone who actually understands what the LFE channel is all about, I almost had a heart attack.

[audiothings]

pascal,

thank you for the eye opener. makes me think that for now, i should simply ignore the .1 channel and mix it for the main speakers only. the receiver will anyway take care of bass management, and i have no earthquake effects to put in the LFE channel.

I would suggest that a good stereo mix will be a lot better than a faked up surround.

Thank you for the fair warning mark.

On a related note... Do DVDs generally have discrete stereo and surround mixes or is the stereo mix derived from the surround mix, by downmixing of some kind? If the latter is the case, I would certainly not want to mix in surround, I cannot have any more reverb being added to the stereo material, when downmixing the rear channels from the 5.1 mix. OTOH, if there are, in fact, discrete files for stereo and surround, maybe I can leverage some advantage from going ahead with it?

Another thing is simply that the prospective buyer of the DVD probably expects to see its 5.1 capability advertised on its cover... it just might be a factor in his decision to buy the DVD or not, particularly if he has recently invested in one of the $100 surround systems that are beginning to come out. This is of course a commercial cop out, but it might make sense to the guy who has invested in the project.

thanks and looking forward to more inputs.

[Roland]

You'd be surprised how many pro's missunderstand the use of the LFE channel. I've seen "respected" engineers talking about putting a little amount of double bass and BD in LFE on orchestral DVD's, and some BD, synths and Bass guitar on rock DVD's. The LFE channel is not calibrated to the other channels and can be several db different which can lead to all sorts of strange mix results. As Pascal said above, just leaving it to the bass management system is by far the best way. With surround, from your channel list I would personally take the omni outriggers (possibly a little of the organ spot) and use a convolution verb to generate a couple of phantom rear's (LS,RS), mix the stereo reasonably as before, but adjust it listening with the new surrounds switched in (you may also want to experiment with a few ms of delay on the rear's, see if that helps or not) and I would recommend with your listing of tracks to not bother with the centre speaker just to work 4.0.

Good luck.

Regards


Roland