Best way to mix in surround via anything LE?

[Phil Jeffers]

Hi, you can use DP with just about any hardware and also software i.e. routing MIDI thru Ableton Live etc. There are varying reports of using all the I/O of a 002 & 002R with Digidesign's Core Audio Manager. You can run DP in DAE mode, however this is meant for Pro Tools HD hardware only. Many professionals use Digi's hardware as a "front end" for Digital Performer. You can route DP's 'audio bundles' out in any configuration you like. Personally I've gone for a fairly hefty PCI set-up (the MOTU PCI-424) which can connect up to 4 MOTU interfaces for a total of 96 physical I/O at 24-Bit. I might add, that my MOTU 1224, which I bought new, but is a old & discontinued interface, is still fully supported by MOTU with the latest version of Digital Performer (ver. 5.01), so is my Digital Timepiece, which is one very cool little sync box. There are plenty of guys that use both PT's & DP in their workflow. I'm beginning to see the benefits of having both apps on the same system. But just a word of warning... DP is a serious app that I thought I'd learn in a few hours... very wrong; it's a very different animal. DP is a favourite with film composers, such as Danny Elfman and the composer of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy (whose name escapes me right now). These guys would definitely compose in surround, with the final surround mix in mind... We Pro Tools LE users should be able to do the same thing if we chose to.

[mindnoise]

hi,


perhaps this helps you: (http://www.surroundassociates.com/fqmain.html#6.1)

Quote:

"6.6 How can I get a surround mix from a stereo console?

Here's a little trick that will give any standard console the ability to do surround panning as long as you have at least 4 busses available. Although the following is a bit easier to visualize on a English-style split monitor desk, it can be performed on an in-line console just the same.

In the stereo world we're used to panning from left to right using a left and right stereo mix buss or odd/even recording busses. If we dedicate two mix buses, say busses 1 and 2 for example, to left and right front and busses and 3 and 4 to the rear, then we are restricted to only being able to pan back and forth between left and right either in the front or in the rear. The hard part, and what we want most, is the ability to pan front to back.

We can do this by just assigning the busses a little differently. Simply make busses 1 and 4 the front mix and 2 and 3 the rear. Now by assigning busses 1 and 2 you can pan left front to rear and busses 3 and 4 pans right front to rear (See Figure 1). Although it doesn't work perfectly, you do get the sense of panning diagonally as well by using 3 busses such as 1, 2 and 4 for left rear to right front for example. In fact, any combination of buss assignments (even all four at once) will get you most places that you want to go in the surround field.

This method doesn't give you the ability to pan to the center speaker though. You still need a hard buss assignment (buss 5 perhaps) or preferably an aux send for that. But it does stretch some added surround mileage out of that seemingly over-the-hill stereo desk."



regs

[Phil Jeffers]

Hi, thanks... yeah I know all those tricks. Fortunately I can do full surround sound editing & mixing through MOTU Digital Performer, a PCI-424 & MOTU 1224 with full DAW control. This comes in handy when using fantastic surround soft-synths such as Absynth 3, as well as having divergence control, which is essential. I hope that PT LE ver 7.X or ver 8 can do the same!