5.1 mastering room recommendations?

[otoole]

Hello

I am in the awesome position of having a bunch of money to put together a 5.1 mastering room. The only catch is that I have to have my order in by Friday to get the money in this fiscal year. I don’t have a lot of time to think about what is going to work the best.

So let me have it, what are your suggestion?

Here is what I am trying to do. I am converting a booth about 10’x12’ in to a listening room/mastering room. I am going to spend money up front to improve the treatment in the room so I think I have that end covered.

I want to invest in quality monitoring and a good D to A. My theory is that the editing platforms are going to change, but a good room and good monitors should last me a while.

Currently I am looking at the Dynaudio Air 15 because of the slick controller. I am think about using and Apogee 800 with a Firewire Card to interface the MAC.

The electronic music studio here does everything in Digital Performer, but the director of the school wants ProTools in the room, so I am going to give them both. I am going to get a 002 rack and output ADAT lightpipe in to the Apogee 800 to get ProTools LE to talk to the 5.1 system. I edit my two track stuff in WaveLab, so I plan to come into the room with a PC laptop and plug in to the firewire to the Apogee 800 (Maybe in Decemeber we will get a Intel G5 and have dual boot in the room).

I also want to have a way of bring in DVDs and playing them back so we can test our finial product. That is where I am having the most trouble. Is there a pro level DTS and DDS (Dolby 5.1) decoder in one box? I have found a DTS decoder, but I don’t want to have to swap cable to play different DVDs.

Any suggestions both on and off the forum would be appreciated.

Thanks!!!!

Phillip

Phillip O’Toole
Audio Engineer
University of Minnesota
School of Music
612-626-1842
otoole@umn.edu

[Mike Chafee]

Check out the Lexicon MC 8B

Mike Chafee

[Jerry Tubb]

Originally Posted by otoole

I also want to have a way of bring in DVDs and playing them back so we can test our finial product. That is where I am having the most trouble. Is there a pro level DTS and DDS (Dolby 5.1) decoder in one box? I have found a DTS decoder, but I don’t want to have to swap cable to play different DVDs.

Much prefer the sound of DTS over Dolby Digital for 5.1

JT

[otoole]

Originally Posted by Jerry Tubb

Much prefer the sound of DTS over Dolby Digital for 5.1

JT

Thanks for the input Jerry.

I have heard this from a lot of people, but as consumer DVDs are encoded with both formats, I am looking for a pro level machine that will decode both.

phillip

[otoole]

Originally Posted by Mike Chafee

Check out the Lexicon MC 8B

Mike Chafee

That would do it Mike. XLR, multiformat, probably too much for me though. However, I am glad to know that it exists.

phillip

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by otoole

Hello

I am in the awesome position of having a bunch of money to put together a 5.1 mastering room. The only catch is that I have to have my order in by Friday to get the money in this fiscal year. I don’t have a lot of time to think about what is going to work the best.

So let me have it, what are your suggestion?

Here is what I am trying to do. I am converting a booth about 10’x12’ in to a listening room/mastering room. I am going to spend money up front to improve the treatment in the room so I think I have that end covered.

Dear Philip: Congratulations on having the budget to convert to 5.1. But I shudder at what you are going to get in a 10' x 12' room. Have you consulted with an acoustician on the treatment?

I want to invest in quality monitoring and a good D to A. My theory is that the editing platforms are going to change, but a good room and good monitors should last me a while.

The competitors for good surround monitor control are the Multimax, the Grace, and the Avocet. I like the soloing, muting, and selection/mixing features of the Multimax, but the sonics of the Avocet and the Grace are far more transparent. There's no DAC in the Multimax, and the DACs in either Avocet or Grace are very decent.

Currently I am looking at the Dynaudio Air 15 because of the slick controller. I am think about using and Apogee 800 with a Firewire Card to interface the MAC.

To my ears, the Air 15 is just not voiced as nicely as the older BM15A. They are not the same speaker. Be sure you get an audition with material you know. Every demonstration I've heard of the Air 15 has sounded a bit strident and "in your face". However, the best of the Air series, the Air 25, has a very nice balance, but is much too large for your room.

The Air controller is a very nice idea, but be aware that you will have to convert EVERYTHING to PCM-digital to go through their controller, and you may have AC-3 sources and other sources that you'll be forced to go through an A/D converter to hear it on the AIR system. That's its weak link, in my opinion.

The Grace, the Avocet, and the Multimax all have analog inputs so you can take any source and run a minimalist path with no extra conversions.

I also want to have a way of bring in DVDs and playing them back so we can test our finial product. That is where I am having the most trouble. Is there a pro level DTS and DDS (Dolby 5.1) decoder in one box? I have found a DTS decoder, but I don’t want to have to swap cable to play different DVDs.

Any suggestions both on and off the forum would be appreciated.

Thanks!!!!

Look into the Lexicon and Meridian and Denon consumer gear for decoders/d/a converters and even controllers. You might find that for price/performance, a single Lexicon controller will replace several pieces of dedicated pro gear. Neither the Avocet nor the Grace have any decoders.

You can also get the Lexicon unit with just decoding in and multiple input selection, without volume and other fancy things, feed that to the analog input of your monitor controller. Remember, the Air series controllers are all going to be doing an additional analog to digital conversion if you go in via analog. For mastering, to my way of looking at it, that takes you too far away from the source.

[Ethan Winer]

Phillip,

> I am converting a booth about 10’x12’ in to a listening room/mastering room. <

I agree with Bob - this is REALLY small for a room where you hope to make mixing and mastering decisions.

> I am going to spend money up front to improve the treatment in the room so I think I have that end covered. <

To make that workable you'll need as many bass traps as you can possibly fit into as many corners as you can manage. With enough traps you'll probably be able to get the LF response within 10 dB or so. I'm not trying to discourage you! Just be aware of what it's going to take to make a room that small useable.

--Ethan

[dcollins]

Originally Posted by otoole

Hello

I am in the awesome position of having a bunch of money to put together a 5.1 mastering room. The only catch is that I have to have my order in by Friday to get the money in this fiscal year. I don’t have a lot of time to think about what is going to work the best.

So let me have it, what are your suggestion?

Market research? Bigger room?

DC

[otoole]

I hear what everyone is saying about the size of the room. I know it is too small, but that battle can't be won right now. I am at the University of Minnesota—Minneapolis and I am buying the gear for the electronic music studio. Originally the professor wanted me to put together an eight channel mastering room in a closet. After I had discussion that there aren’t any consumer eight channel formats to master to I also convinced him that a four by eight room was the worst place in the world to put any critical listening equipment. That is how I talked him in to the ten by twelve room with the sloping ceiling (eight foot sloping to nine foot). For now the room is set.

I am getting a half dozen of the Auralex Elite CT45 Corner Traps to try to soak up the low, but I might be able to squeeze a few more in to the budget. The big problem is that I have to spend this money by Wednesday of next week (budget year voodoo) and I don’t time for a proper room analyses. Some things might have to be fixed down the road.

Put your fears aside, this is mostly a glorified project studio. Many of our electronic musicians compose in eight channel. The primary purpose of this room is to setup a system which can down mix to 5.1 and print to DVD. However, they want to spend the money on really great gear. I tried to talk them in to going with Mackie HR824s yesterday. My logic was they use Mackie HR824s everywhere else so if we have a problem with a speaker we can swap and HR824 don’t sound bad and it will be more than enough for our purposes. The answer was no, “I thought that you were going to get us some really great gear”. So much for trying to save taxpayer money.

The system as I see it today consists of a G5 running Digital Performer (and ProTools LE because that is what the director of the school wants). We are going to use a MOTU 828 to send ADAT Light Pipe to a Grace M906 and run 5 Dynaudio BM6As.

Not only is the Grace a great piece of gear but it makes it easy to run in my consumer grade DVD player (Dennon DVD-1920) in to the speakers for checking DVDs.

Can any one suggest an audio box that would convert firewire to six channels of AES/EBU? I would rather run AES/EBU in to the Grace (higher sampling rate) and use the ADAT input on the Grace to source ProTool LE from a 002 rack.

Can any one suggest 5.1 plugins or Powered Plug-in for this system? I don’t think that I can afford the TC M6000.

Remember this is a glorified project studio. No one is going to be sending projects here to be mastered for profit. This is for academic and education use only. I still can’t convince all of the eight channel composers that you really don’t need eight speakers to make the sound appear to come from eight different places. Really a phantom center is possible, really.

Thanks for all input!

phillip

[MIKEHARRIS]

definateley look at the Genelec 8040's in a 5.1 config...they also have a new 8240 series with built in DSP...you might find this preferable to the AIR15. the Lexicon MC8B can combine both decoding and level control functions...but the AVOCET may be more suitable in a mastering room

[Bob Olhsson]

Create something PORTABLE that you can take into a larger room. Trying to teach people in an inappropriate acoustic environment is not exactly doing them a favor.

Be sure to look into the latest NHT powered monitors.

[otoole]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

Create something PORTABLE that you can take into a larger room. Trying to teach people in an inappropriate acoustic enviornment is not exactly doing them a favor.

Look into the latest NHT powered monitors. I like them a lot more than most.

I know, i know. I just work here.

phillip