Creating LFE Sends in ProTools 12.5 HD

[SimonB_01]

Hello everyone!

My name's Simon. This is my first post here, but I've been lurking for years. After going to recording school, I thought it would be a good idea to actually sign up. Now, firstly I'd like to apologize if this is in the incorrect sub. I have no idea where to post this so I just threw it in PT12 discussion. Anyways, let's get to the point.

I've recently joined a film team. During the summer we'll be recording two short films that will be released at a local film convention. I've mainly worked with music and some podcasting before, so I decided to do some research both on surround mixing (since we'll be showing it in a 7.1 theater) and some general pre/post techniques for film. During my research I encountered a question that my Google-Fu couldn't really answer. My question is; how would I go about creating an LFE aux? I'd like to be able to control volume on all of my LFE's, not just individual ones in the output window. It would be a real hassle to do that if I noticed that the master LFE-channel seems a bit overpowered. I'd like to group it similarly to how you often group different foley sections trough a VCA that goes into a foley chain. Of course I could just assign the output tracks containing LFE to a buss, but that would most likely include a lot of higher frequency information that shouldn't be sent to the master LFE-track.

Maybe there's something that I'm completely missing here. I apologize for my noob questions, but everyone's gotta' start somewhere, right? Oh, and excuse my English. I'm not a native speaker.

[smurfyou]

Assign it to a bus and put a filter on your bus aux. The built-in LFE send doesn't filter anything out either.

[SimonB_01]

Thanks! But should I assign it as a send or as the output? If we imagine a scene with a helicopter taking off with two layers of effects, one LPF'ed and one with a lot more sub. Now, I wanna send the one with sub to the LFE channel, but it contains frequencies as high as 8KHz. I don't really want to filter those either, since it adds to the sound. If I assign a send to a LFE-aux, will the active bass management in a surround system take care of that and trim off the excess frequencies, or will it try to reproduce those?

[jonmichaels74]

The quick answer is that if you want the most flexibility, you should use a Send and not an output.

The Send goes to an LFE bus that comes in on an Aux track. Use something like Avid EQIII 1-band as a low-pass filter on the Aux. The output of that Aux track goes to the LFE channel your FX Stem for recording. You can even use a Subharmonic generator plug-in like Waves LoAir, ReFuse Software Lowender or Avid Pro Subharmonic on the Aux to create additional sub frequencies to really make it kick.

So you have a series of FX tracks with your helicopter FX on them. The outputs of those tracks go to your FX Stem. Additionally those tracks should have an LFE Send to the Aux that I mentioned above. When you need the extra oomph, use the LFE Send on the appropriate sounds.

If you craft your own specialty LFE-only FX, you can put those on tracks that output directly to the LFE of the FX Stem.

This is also all assuming that you're cutting and mixing it all yourself. If you're simply cutting it and someone else is mixing it. I would suggest you talk to them ahead of time to find out how they would like you to provide material to them. Often mixers have a template they will insert your tracks into.

[SimonB_01]

Thanks Jon! That clears up a lot. Great way to go about it. It's really nice to have that extra freedom on the aux track as well. Have a good day!