Re-routing stereo for 5.1

[idris]

(Apologies to the high end purists used to big budgets for this question. I know this is not how things should be done but ...)

I've had a stereo session thrown at me that I need to convert to a rough 5.1 mix. (This is a quick job with no budget, and there's no immediate need for a perfect theatrical mix, LFE etc.)

The session has separate stereo aux busses for dialogue, spot FX, atmos and music and for reverbs.
I am not planning on doing much more than pushing a little of the reverbs into the surround channels and twiddling with the panning a couple of spot FX when appropriate.

Am I right in thinking the simplest thing to do is just change the outputs of all the aux tracks from stereo to 5.1 and pan accordingly?

[Bokir]

In short yes.

What usually I do when I received that kind of element is:
- Dialog - Pan to center (99% of the time)
- Spot FX - If it's sync to picture, panned to center
- Atmos - If it's a real stereo recording I'll pan up to 50:50 (90% of the time to front only)
- Music - Pan 90:90 and pull to surround a bit
- Reverb - If it's music verb, I'll make two copies (can use multiple aux) and spread one track to front and the other delayed to surround.

But then again it's a creative process. If it's sound good then It is ...

[idris]

Thanks Bokir. Pretty much exactly what I was doing, but good to know I'm not missing something important.

[MIKEROPHONICS]

Use spanner to pan and unwrap to make your music and atmos into 5.1

[Mike Thornton]

+1 for Spanner, AAX DSP and with a Rotate feature now