How to Customize output paths for a non-theatrical surround mix

[bhunterwoodruff]

Hey everyone, I'm a bit lost in the weeds with this one but I was hoping to get some help with a surround mix for a museum installation I am working on. Basically I would like to create an octagonal sound mix for an installation which takes place in a square room with projections on each wall. Each screen has two speakers so we have a total of eight in the room.

What I am running into is setting an output path that reflects this in the surround panner in PT. I've tried using 7.x.x and 9.x.x paths and reconfiguring the various L & R channels to try and recreate this but this involves forgoing the center channel and utilizing the top channels which is very unintuitive when mixing.

is there a way to create my own output path for a surround mix that is in a non theatrical setting that has an L and an R channel for each screen but I could still have my main 8 channel output so I can pan between these speakers easily?

I am using Protools Ultimate 2023.9.0 and will not be using an LFE channel for this project.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

[Frank Kruse]

Not possible with on-board means of ProTools but there are a few specialised tools that retrofit "exotic" speaker setups to ProTools panning. I have never used them but so don't ask me if they are any good:
This one for example

https://www.newaudiotechnology.com/p...ducer-plug-in/

or this (although very little info on how it ties into ProTools with regards to defining the physical outs)

https://inagrm.com/en/store/product/15/spaces

But I'm sure there are a few more...

But if you don't need to have panning between the screens why not just use stereo busses and feed those for each screen? Not sure how you'd get an octagon from 4 screens on 4 walls in a square shaped room (even if every screen is stereo) but maybe the above helps.
Or you just unse an Atmos bed format and use the surround panner and connect the 8 speakers and then mix with the normal surround panner? Obviously you'd need to use a little different movements as one of the two top channels would go to your last wall speaker. So essentially 7.0 plus one leg of the Atmos bed to the remaining 8th speaker. But like you said: it's not intuitive but at least you can pan between them all.

[bhunterwoodruff]

Yeah I might be using the wrong terminology here but essentially there are moments when they will want the sound to travel across the screens so the sound needs to pan across the 8 the eight speakers. I think for the most part I will be fine using stereo buses for each screen. Maybe for the key moments where I need more spatial panning I could route to a 7.0 output reconfigured for the room. Thank you for these links though I will check them out

[Reckless Erik]

Would not a quad set up suit you? Or even a double quad. The panning space would match your room better than an altered 5.0/7.0 setup.

[Sonopolis]

You could work in Ambisonics if your familiar with it. There the output format is independent since its "scene" based, not channel based. With the right decoder you can address any speaker layout.