Inspiring

Question

Help me with my 5.1 Surround Setup (pretty please)

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 6, 2019
2 replies
2508 views

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?

Audio

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

Anonymous

I like Focusrite a lot

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

D

DMH79Author

Inspiring

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.

D

DMH79Author

Inspiring

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

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...

Peru Bob

Community Expert

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

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