Dolby surround plug-in vs. hardware

[soundman2002]

Can anyone provide insight into the Dolby surround plug-in for ProTools? I'm talking about LCRS encoding/decoding. Most places use Dolby hardware, but can the plug-ins act as a successful substitute for hardware? What about monitoring issues?
Thanks!

[iamstudios]

hey there,

The Dolby ProLogic plug-ins are perfectly fine for prologic encoding. Indeed, many facilities own the hardware version but the fact that you can work from within PT makes it great. We use it all the time. And you even get a license to use it for radio, TV and video. The plug-ins are not suitable for theatrical mixes though as you need a special license (and the encoding process is a bit different). No monitoring issues as you can set PT busses in such a way that you can check your mixes. They are great for simple TV/video work.

Barnier

[potatohead]

The plugins are very good, but the big issue for theatrical mixes has to do with containing the Lt/Rt to the technical limitations of the optical recording medium. Dolby Hardware provides for multiband-compression/limiting and optical clash-simulation.

As to the plug-in fidelity, I did notice on a MixPlus system recently that when I set the DECODER to monitor in STEREO mode (which is essentially a passthrough of the Lt/Rt undecoded back out the channel), the audio sounded a bit phasey(!) compared to just bypassing the plugin. I'm confident my monitors were setup correctly.

This left me feeling a little concerned for the quality of the decoder. The encoder, on the other hand, has been great for TV, VHS, etc..

-Phil

[ekuehnl]

I've also heard from clients with Dolby hardware and software that the hardware sounds somewhat better.

-Eric