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Question

Looking for a clear, RECENT and step-by-step tutorial for 5.1 Surround mixing in Premiere Pro 2022.

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 25, 2022
3 replies
5411 views

Have done a bunch of Googling and looking all around.

Just trying to find a free step-by-step, clear and recent way to get started in 5.1 Surround sound mixing.

Adobe's help just spoke about Audition.

All the others are from 5+ years ago.

Does anyone have one or know of one?

Thank you.

This topic has been closed for replies.

T

Trevor_Asq

Legend

1. You'll probably want to figure out a way to get 5.0 output to 5 speakers (even if they are Logitech). You almost certainly don't need the sub initially - figure out 5.0 first. (Or maybe even do 3.0/LRC first - you can then upmix the LR to 4.1 and leave the dialogue in the centre as-is - this is how quite a lot of 5.1 content is generated. No fancy pans that way, thankfully, plus it should be guaranteed to downmix to stereo without sounding terrible).

2. Create a 5.1 sequence. Master bus will be 5.1, source tracks can match your sources (i.e. standard / mono etc). Start with a standard track with tone.
3. Learn how to use the 'touch' setting of the track mixer to record fader movements and view/edit them on the timeline. Find out how annoying they are to edit / move / delete.

4. Now do the same with the 5.1 panner - the keyframes live under track keyframes front/rear, left/right, centre and LFE

Attached is a screen recording of same. Have a play around. (I think you'll get bored of the limitations pretty quickly.)

Even though centre is muted the sound will appear to travel across the centre of the screen (look up phantom centre).

5dot1.zip

S

SpielbergRules24x7x365Author

Known Participant

Thank you for that reply! I downloaded your 5dot1 sample. Wanna know something? There was no sound at all! I played it directly from VLC at first. Then I dropped it into PrPro - there was no audio track 'attached' to it. Did I do something wrong? Thank you.

T

Trevor_Asq

Legend

Oh there's no sound it's just a quick video guide.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

"The other Neil" helping you is an incredible resource here, btw! As you have noticed. I can do color in way too deep for most people, "the other Neil" is a total audio brain.

I'll just add that you can do 5.1 in Audition, with the advantage of a fairly easy process to send to Audtion and get back into Premiere. One possibility.

And the Audition team is the entire sound team for the Adobe "DVA" section ... digital video/audio apps. The sound in PrPro and Ae is simply a simplified form of what happens in Audtion, so they all can work together.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

S

SpielbergRules24x7x365Author

Known Participant

Thanks for that great reply as well! I will have to check out Audition. That may be easier for my old brain (what's left of it.)

neil wilkes

Legend

Hiya.

Firstly, great to see yet another brave soul venture into the world of surround mixing. Sadly though there is no such guide that is worth the paper it took to plan it out, simply because there are no real 'how to mix in surround' tutorials in the manner I suspect you are looking for. What does exist are some superb technical recommendations I would striongly advise you to read. First up is the RPGA (Record Producers Guild of America) 5.1 guidelines.

This will give you the basics that are required to correctly set up, calibrate & utilize your mixing setup, as well as what some of the traps & pitfalls for the unwary exist. Then it will tell you how to handle the rendering of your mixes, and I really cannot think of enough good things to say about it - you need this book. We all need this book.

The other advice I would give you is frankly Do not mix for 5.1 using Premiere! Period. At all, except for valid reasons such as checking sync (although there are better ways) or - and this is the sole reason for me - unless you need to create an AC3 file for DVD or online use (although streamed surround can be a bugger, as you must always make compromises because of downmix issues). You mention that the tutorial for PPro is 5 years old - well, so is their audio engine (as a minimum, too) so no loss there - very little will have actually changed.

Use a DAW instead - Audition, Cubase, Nuendo, ProTools, Logic, Harrison MixBuss, Reaper - anything except PPro, because it's audio handling & panning in surround is not stable or solid, plus it simply isn't really designed to do this - it's an NLE. What I tend to do is bounce off an H264 mp4 file and use that in Nuendo as a sync reference. If you are worrying about audio tracks, then at the very least you can bounce each track off as a WAVE file (mono or stereo) out of PPro and rest assured things will not get out of sync at all.

Cubase/Nuendo will import AAF exports from PPro as well.

If your DAW of choice cannot handle the multitrack archive format, then AATranslator is needed, and this is another tool I cannot really live without. It can convert just about any multitrack or audio platform project type into any other - I often get sent ProTools sessions and use this to make a Nuendo XML instead, and just import it. Works a treat, too.

The big problem with 5.1 mixing is that for music the main rules are basically as follows:

01 - Do not treat the LFE channel as a subwoofer. They are totally different things.

02 - Never mix on a sub/satellite system as you cannot get the bass correct

03 - Always have your 5 main channels full range from 40Hz to 20kHz as a minimum, ideally with the top end as high as 45kHz in order to deal with High Resolution content and it's pitfalls.

04 - Bandwidth limit your LFE to 80Hz with a slope of at least 36dB/Octave.

There are additional rules for film/TV mixing though, and these are also kinda important.

01 - The Centre Channel belongs to the dialogue.

This is so the resulting dialogue can be dubbed into a different language (so be careful with SFX, especially background Walla) with relative ease, otherwise it would require a lot more work to do.

02 - Music can be either 4.1/4.0 or stereo - again, if there is any dialogue over the music, avoid centre channel. If the timing works, you could use a 5.1 music track, but the odds are you will be upmixing from stereo if you want music in the rear channels. There is a good argument to be made that the score should only ever be in stereo but as with all these 'rules', they mean less than nothing in most cases.

03 - SFX/Walla can be used in all 4 channels but again, avoid using them in the Centre as it is reserved for the dialogue.

The one golden rule we all work to?

If it sounds right, then it is right.

What, exactly, would you like to know? I would need to know what experience you have in 5.1/surround, as well as what tools you have available. Let's get you happening!

S

SpielbergRules24x7x365Author

Known Participant

I ma sorry I forgot to answer your last question. I don' have an incredible setup. Just a new system I put together a few month ago. Not being not audio guy, I just have a very simple 5.1 surround audio speaker system. Nothing fancy at all You'll know that instantly when I mentioned the company name: "Logitech". 🙂

The most professional piece of equipment I have is a Mackie 1402VLZ-Pro mixer. Love that thing.

Also, even though I have been doing lighting and video since 74 (learned the skills then from my dad, wasn't doing actual work that early...) fro 2012-2019 Had some family issues to take care of, so I hav ebeen out of the loop for a while. Plus, the pandemic that destroyed all of us didn't help, either. (Lost my 28-year-old backstage pass production company then, too.)

That was a great ending tho: "Let's get you happening!" Like the sound of that.

Ok, again thank you for that great reply.

Mike

yeshuacreates

Participant

peace mike, neil(s), trevor, & others:

for some reason i ended up on this forum link when i needed a quick tip about some other things in premiere pro. to preface my comment here: for me audio engineering is by far my most natural discipline, in both live and studio contexts. and even it comes to video and 2-d design my chops are better suited with a program like resolume (which has a performative infrastructure) than other things including adobe options--tho i am getting the hang of photoshop and illustrator over time.

anyway, i'm chiming in here to speak a bit of wisdom on the ever-eternal dilemma of mixing and mastering in a DIY case. i believe it boils down to a couple key points:

1) gear & production environment: quality vs familiarity.

2) end product(s): perfection/technicality vs immediacy/digestibility

i'm supposed to be working on something else right now, so i'ma keep it especially brief here:

1) at the end of the day, no matter how badass your monitoring gear is (interface, speakers, amps, dsp modeling, etc) it doesn't really do the trick without corresponding, scientifically precise considerations of the acoustics in that given monitoring environment. in this sense, i would respectfully disagree with the monitor rec from the loving & super helpful mr. neil wilkes, in recommending the Adam A7s which I think go for like $800 each (imagine that times 5, plus a sub hopefully). even for someone who already has some sort of entry level pro monitor gear, let alone a simple consumer grade logitech system, i don't think this move would be optimal. honestly, tho I personally can relate very much to SpielbergRules24x7x36 's income situation: even for folks who actually have ample income but are not embedded in the pro audiophile/engineer work environments which make it possible to truly benefit from the fidelity that higher-end products offer——it is far more useful & resource-efficient to invest in much cheaper entry-level "pro" gear, while spending more time, energy, and resources on a few things i''ll list below, after first recommending a couple options for much cheaper yet very effective studio monitors: Kali LP6 (probably my top rec even tho i haven't tried them!), Yamaha HP5, or various iterations of used Behringer Truths. Also maybe the Presonus Eris series which seems to do the trick for lots of folks. Also make sure you get a sub. It can be any sub of decent quality but you have to make sure you have a crossover which is accurately criss-crossing the cutoff slopes between LoPass (for sub) and HiPass (for tops); since you're working with surround sound you're most cost effective option will probably be a digital software/app as opposed to a dedicated hardware solution, so long as you dont need it to happen in realtime for live performance. anyway, back to the things that i believe matter more than choosing higher-end instead of entry-level audio gear:

1) really knowing/treating/enhancing your monitoring environment. Fully accepting the inevitable flaws it will manifest in comparison to a scientifically precise / accurate environment, relying on your intuition and by comparison to very basic consumer devices such as car speakers, stock apple headphones, or whatever else. "it's all relatve today" as my brother & i have said in songs long ago. you will be better of learning about / accommodating for the acoustics of a given room for surround sound implementations (and then applying them accordingly) than you will be by simply acquiring higher end gear.

2) that said, you absolutely must choose some sort of pro-ish audio interface for your speaker monitor setup. it could seriously be like $75-150 max used on reverb ebay etc and still have a magnificent impact on your work flow. of course, you have to pick a device that has enough output channels for your purposes (5.1?) and ideally with a little wiggle room for future growth. for example, i started using the focusrite saffire pro 40 like 11 years ago and today it still sounds great when used (if even just for adat preamps), and has a variety of applications still relevant today. motu also have lots of old models and probably more current OS support for those old models than does focusrite for their old models.

3) really getting to know / access the dsp tools that will help all your components of a pending surround mix/product be great / have parity ... and then then (what i know way less about): actually allow you to upmix or otherwise work in surround formats.

a) just make a given input source or output channel/bus sound dope in an automatic way (look into ERA bundle for decent results without having to understand parameters well, or even better yet, one of my absolute faves, FabFilter plugins. also here are some relevant lists of free plugins that might be helpful:

b) enable you to convert between different codecs. i haven't messed with this for surround, so i'll leave it to others if they wish to comment further. apparently tools such as Penteo or Neural or UpMix are popular and more effective than some alternatives. but then there are open source methods for those who are sufficiently brave or insufficiently financed.

anyway i hope these notes offer some helpful insight for y'all, whether major, minor, or any other mode of creative expression.

peace & blessings,

yeshua

yeshuacreates.com

consensusafp.org

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