Editing 5.1 Stems for a Stereo Delivery?

[#1]

Hey guys, I've been given a cinema movie export with 5.1 stems for a teaser cutdown that will be delivered for online publication. And I'm struggling to find out what the best way is to go from 5.1 to Stereo without it all going haywire. Thanks!

[#2]

There are many ways to do this,I would start by making a stereo master sequence. Make a 5.1 submix track and send all your stems to this track. Send the submix to the stereo master. Use the stem faders to alter the 'main' mix and use the 'Channel Volume' effect on the submix track to balance the centre , L and R and the surround and LFE tracks.

You may want to add some dynamics control on the final output.

[#3]

Thanks so much! Ok so there's not really a way around that manual part, is there? That's what I was referring to with 'haywire' 🙂 I thought there might be an easy way to automate a decent stereo mix without me having to do fading and channel volume controlls.

[#4]

Set them all at unity and see what it sounds like.

[#5]

Set them all at unity and see what it sounds like.

By @Richard M Knight

I can save you the trouble - it would be bloody awful.

As a starting point I would recommend the following:

Left Front = -6dB, Right Front = -6dB, Center = -9dB, LFE usually OFF or to taste (never more than -9dB in this
scenario), Left Surround = -6dB, Right Surround = -6dB.

See how you are with levels at that point (results will heavily depend on how good or aggressive the 5.1 mix is), adjust to taste and then gang your faders once you are happy with the balance to adjust overall levels. Always remember that you are cramming 6 channels into 2, so nothing should be at Unity or you will clip the outputs (or limit the life out of them)

[#6]

I apologise for the godawful formatting of my above reply - it does not look like this in the Preview (see attached image) yet when posted, one line gets split for no good reason. Who codes these forums??