Downmixing 5.1 to stereo?
Posted by: jfritzen on 18 June 2010
Perhaps someone else has done this before:
On my quest for hires music I bought some 5.1 music (classical, 24bit, 48kHz). I don't own 5.1 playback equipment, so I'm currently experimenting with downmixing this to stereo.
Obviously there are as many ways to do this as there are real numbers
, so I have some questions how to do this properly:
- Is the the .1 channel (subwoofer) needed or can it be ignored? I guess that (for classical recordings) the bass signal must already be present in the other channels?
- From an audiophile point of view: Is the mixer tool essential and what software do you use? Currently I'm using "sox", a command line Unix tool, on a Mac, no problems so far (apart from getting the command line right).
- Do you have standard settings for stereo downmixes or do you adjust your mixer settings for every single recording?
- Do you dither the results?
Kind regards,
Jochen
On my quest for hires music I bought some 5.1 music (classical, 24bit, 48kHz). I don't own 5.1 playback equipment, so I'm currently experimenting with downmixing this to stereo.
Obviously there are as many ways to do this as there are real numbers
, so I have some questions how to do this properly:- Is the the .1 channel (subwoofer) needed or can it be ignored? I guess that (for classical recordings) the bass signal must already be present in the other channels?
- From an audiophile point of view: Is the mixer tool essential and what software do you use? Currently I'm using "sox", a command line Unix tool, on a Mac, no problems so far (apart from getting the command line right).
- Do you have standard settings for stereo downmixes or do you adjust your mixer settings for every single recording?
- Do you dither the results?
Kind regards,
Jochen
quote:Originally posted by jfritzen:
Perhaps someone else has done this before:
On my quest for hires music I bought some 5.1 music (classical, 24bit, 48kHz). I don't own 5.1 playback equipment, so I'm currently experimenting with downmixing this to stereo.
Obviously there are as many ways to do this as there are real numbers
- Is the the .1 channel (subwoofer) needed or can it be ignored? I guess that (for classical recordings) the bass signal must already be present in the other channels?
- From an audiophile point of view: Is the mixer tool essential and what software do you use? Currently I'm using "sox", a command line Unix tool, on a Mac, no problems so far (apart from getting the command line right).
- Do you have standard settings for stereo downmixes or do you adjust your mixer settings for every single recording?
- Do you dither the results?
Kind regards,
Jochen
Jochen
I have done this only a few times. I also used SOX and eac3to and just compared the results.
I always used the default settings of those tools because I find it much too difficult to change the matrix settings with a feeling that I know what I'm doing.
I think the centre and subwoofer channel must be mixed in as well. Afterwards I always did a normalisation on the end-result.
The 'best' or maybe most knowledgable forum for these kind of technical questions is the Hydrogenaudio.org forum.
I you find some tweaked settings you like, let it be known here as well
-
aleg