Help me with my 5.1 Surround Setup (pretty please)

[DMH79]

Hi!

We're about to mix our film in 5.1 surround. I've done a bit of 5.1 mixing in Premiere and Audition and we tested it in a local theater and it sounded great but with only a 2.1 setup currently it was a lot of guessing and testing at the local theater. They were super nice to let me do that. But now I'm setting up my office to edit in 5.1 surround. I need to purchase speakers and the interface or controller to route all those speakers into and I'd love some advice. My office is 8' x 16' and has acoustic panels and 

The speakers I was looking at picking up were:

5 x JBL LSR305 MKII Speakers  ($99/each)

JBL 310s Sub

But what's a solid interface/controller option for less than $500 to run all those speakers into?

Focusrite 18i20 3rd Gen?

SPL SMC 2489? (I found one for a great price)

I'm not sure which of the above controllers is better. Does anyone here know?

Eventhough 90% of the time we'll just be editing stereo mixes for video,  I'd love to be set and ready for all 5.1 mixes as well. Thoughts?

[Peru Bob]

I moved this to the Video Hardware forum, hoping that you will get a better response.

[Guest]

I like Focusrite a lot

The SPL looks pricy and it's less feature rich, even if it does have a nice knob

[DMH79]

When you say the focusrite is more feature rich, what do you mean? I'm talking specifically for 5.1 surround mixing. 

(The SPL I've found for $450. Even being that price, is it still not as good as the much newer 18i20?)

[Guest]

You could use the focusrite for a bunch of other things in addition to running the 5.1 monitoring. It's got 18 inputs and 20 outputs, and you only need like 6 outputs. That's a 18x12 audio interface you're left with. 

[DMH79]

First off, thanks for your replies. That makes sense. I just read somewhere that the SPL had features that are really convenient when editing 5.1 but I wasn't sure of the focusrite had them too. I feel like I don't know what I'd want/prefer until I start editing something. I forget what those features are, maybe easy channel isolation? I can't remember. 

[DMH79]

THREE QUESTIONS...

So with the SPL SMC...do I still need an audio interface? I'm thinking I may have been confused and thought the SPL SMC 2489 could serve as the audio interface AND controller. But I think I'll still need to get the streams from Audition to an interface first before I send that to something like an SPL SMC. 

Oh, how I could use some help here. 

Again, I'm not looking to do any recording, only mixing in Audition and monitoring with 6 JBL speakers.

My second part that I don't know is...if I still had to get an audio interface, and I need 6 dedicated outputs, then with focusrite, the 18i20 is really my only option I think. Will I notice any difference if I used a 2nd gen vs 3rd gen? Only thing I can see being useful is the TB support. But is there any noticable difference in latency/lag when editing 5.1 surround with TB vs. USB 2.0 (focusrite 3rd gen vs. 2nd gen)

And finally...

If I haven't lost you already...

When I'm all done and I want to do a stereo fold down to hear what it'll sound like in stereo speakers only...does the SPL SMC do that with a push of a button? Or will I really want to do an actual fold down using Audition and then hit play and it'll route the mix to only my L and R speakers?

Not sure if this forum was the best place for these questions or if I should've asked this in the Audition forum...but here it is anyway. Help would be immensely appreciated.

[Guest]

I think you need to call up the sales people at SPL and ask some of those questions. 

On a PC, often USB 2.0 is preferable to Thunderbolt. It depends on your motherboard. 

On Mac, especially the new ones, DO NOT use USB 2.0 audio hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpVNkglXc84

[DMH79]

Thanks again for your response. I'm running a PC. I'm about to purchase a new supped up PC. So the Mac thing doesn't relate. SPL is a german company AFAIK and the device is so many years old that I avoided calling their support (if they even have a contact number...in germany). I'm surprised you said USB 2.0 is preferable to Thunderbold connections. The new PC motherboards that I'd be getting all have USB-C ports on the MB so I figured that would be best. But again, if USB 2.0 isn't any worse then I could conceivably get a less expensive Audio Interface for 5.1 mixing. Again, I'm NOT using this for audio recording. Only mixing.

Hmmmm...

[Guest]

Driver support for Thunderbolt and USB-C is terrible. If you don't need the bandwith, USB 2.0 is much cheaper and easier. 

I did a bit of research on the SMC, and it does not appear to be a DAC. It would not work for this purpose.