The Centre channel: what signal gets sent to it? How demanding compared to Left and Right?

[dlaloum]

Part means the artist is still involved.

I respectfully but vehemently disagree. Artists' work are sacrosanct. They should be protected and their work left untouched. Without them there will be no society.

Hmmm... painters get little or no say in how their artwork is hung and illuminated - yet that has a substantial effect on their impact on the viewer...

Ultimately the artist has little or no control on where and how the artwork is used/displayed - and that process has a definite effect.

Which is to say that the presentation of the artwork is directly involved in the ultimate outcome - some artists take that into consideration in their planning/design (smart!) - other don't (heh heh...).

We can do our best to reproduce the original intent - but ultimately the performance that is experienced in our homes, is a completely new and original artwork... and much of the input into that artwork, is our own, our choices of equipment, placement, equalisation and adjustment.....

Am I a narcissist if I enjoy my own "artwork" ?

 

[Sancus]

I respectfully but vehemently disagree. Artists' work are sacrosanct. They should be protected and their work left untouched. Without them there will be no society.

Fortunately that's ok since you're not required to listen to music under my conditions lol. But I think the ship has long sailed on the topic of remixes without the initial artist's involvement. Their tacit approval is not even the same thing either.

One of the things I like most about the classical genre is that pieces of music and their recordings/performances are separate and we get to hear many performers interpretations of that music over the years.

 

[sarumbear]

Am I a narcissist if I enjoy my own "artwork" ?

That will not be the word I would use but everyone has the right to feel as they like. However, unlike you (trying the opposite), I don't need to justify myself why I respect the artist and treat their work as sacrosanct.

 

[Spocko]

Here are the 6 channels from Loki episode one. A movie with plenty of explosions and such in all the channels.
Order is L, R, C, LFE, left surround and right surround. In general terms of energy the center channel has the most going on.
Despite how it looks, the analyzer function shows the average level for the right and left tracks are only 3-4 db lower than for the center track in this one instance.

Listening to each track there is definitely zero dialog leakage into the left or right channel. Though the center channel has quite a bit of info similar to the left and right channel included. And surround channels do include echo like sounds of dialog at low levels. It does appear after I did some filtering that much of the LFE channel is included in the center. Though a few areas the center doesn't have what the LFE has. I'm guessing that varies with who mixed a video.

For what it is worth, I'd been using a JBL LSR305 for the center which I knew was too small for my moderately large video room. Switching to an LSR308 mkII resulted in about what is subjectively a 25% or so improvement. Now I need a smooth Harman speaker with the efficiency of a K-horn it looks like.

PS_All I did was open the movie video file with Audacity and it provides this. I'm on Manjaro linux and I seem to recall in the past Audacity acts differently if on a Windows machine for such multi-channel files.

View attachment 171920

This is insightful information! Do other DAWs do this too?

 

[Spocko]

Part means the artist is still involved.

I respectfully but vehemently disagree. Artists' work are sacrosanct. They should be protected and their work left untouched. Without them there will be no society.

I think there's definitely some room for artistic license when it comes to home theater movie audio mixes. What the original artists (composer, director, et al) do for the original big screen Dolby Theater release does not necessarily include their participation in the blu-ray release or streaming version as both diverge from the theater release. This means consumers are left to their own devices to try and recreate what they think the movie should feel/sound like in their home.

 

[Blumlein 88]

This is insightful information! Do other DAWs do this too?

Probably though I have not tried others.

 

[raistlin65]

Nonsense.

I would say what's 'required' is that it be timbrally matched to the Left and Right. (and those should be good speakers too)

For maximum utility as an good-sounding anchor for people sitting well off the central axis, it should have good horizontal dispersion characteristics too.

I've been thinking about that more. And it's not nonsense depending on the context.

For several years, I spent hundreds of hours participating in recommendation discussions for home theater setup at AVS forum. And sometimes you have people with very minimal budgets who wanted to use small speakers for the left and right which were not very capable for their space, and you would tell them that they should at least use a more capable speaker for the center channel since that's where a lot of the content comes from.

So my guess is this "more muscular" speaker idea has been taken out of context. Like many poor generalizations that float around the internet.

 

[Newman]

If you noticed I asked for 3-ch not immersive audio, which is different to the argument of 2 or 3 ch playback. There is very few immersive encoded music done by the artists themselves. Almost all that is available by the record labels without the artist in control. I like to hear what the artists agreed for release. For instance most early The Beatles albums were in mono. Thankfully many agrees with me and the anthology was released in mono as well.

I can’t make myself to change what the artist intended.

No artist ever ‘intended’ 2-ch stereo. They made music, and translation to a recording was in the hands of the producer.

Also, the information I get from recording engineers is that musicians ask them only to make the recording that will sell the most volume. The artists listen to the mix and ask themselves, “Are people going to want to buy this, or does it need to sound different?” If the answer is yes and no need to change it, the master is approved.

Even in the case where the musician(s) are deeply involved in the production, it is usually at the mixing of the tracks stage, hence, still part of ‘making music’ such as where to cut in an instrumental or vocal or sound effect, at what level, etc. Not so much about how many tracks to end up with.

As for multichannel, music producer and engineer Mark Waldrep used to say, “Show me an artist that’s heard great high-resolution multichannel and I’ll show you a surround sound convert.”

A good example is King Crimson. Clearly they worked together with the sound engineers to craft all their special effects, fades, etc. And decades later, when Steven Wilson approached Robert Fripp about accessing the recording tapes and making fresh multichannel mixes, Fripp was very negative about the project, but agreed to let Wilson do just one song as a demo. When he heard it he completely flipped his opinion and said something like “that’s the way we would have wanted it to be at the time, if we only had the technology”. And a major project was born to remix their albums into surround.

So I reckon there is about a 1% chance that 2-channel productions are all the artists ever wanted their work to be, in terms of sonic production values.

 

[Thunder22]

As far as the 5.1 music, and as it pertains to the center channel. I'd say "get a very capable center:" For instance, throw on The Eagles, Hell freezes over DTS 5.1. This CD will show you all you need to know about your center channel limitations.

 

[theyellowspecial]

My center channel gets sent to my LR because I think phantom center sounds much better. Bonus is it's cheaper and cleaner.

 

[KMO]

The optimist in me would say that Atmos music may be that step in the right direction, as I'd assume it's comprised of object based audio stacks. Imagine having sliders for dynamics/compression, panning width, room reverb, and a full EQ for every song.

...It's never going to happen.

The closest to this I've seen in the general consumer world is the console game "Rock Band". Real multitrack recordings in the game, with individual vocal, guitar, bass, drum, keyboard and background stems, and you have the ability to raise and lower individual parts, and fluff up your playing of them so they cut out... Fantastic stuff.

Had paid no attention to those games for some time until I realised that you weren't just playing along to the final mix.

 

[tecnogadget]

I respectfully but vehemently disagree. Artists' work are sacrosanct. They should be protected and their work left untouched. Without them there will be no society.

I get your point. But when talking about adding a center channel + surrounds and up mixing 2.0 music with the aid of a smart algorithm/matrix like ProLogic IIx, it’s pretty much all benefits and it doesn’t really change the artist work in a gross way.

You are not inventing the content or modifying the original in an abrupt way, you are simply redirecting the information that already existed in an intelligent way. The best way I could explain it is as an “enhancement” of the original 2.0 experience. Its really difficult to describe such a subjective experience. Those with reference speakers and text book normative surround layout will understand what I’m talking about.

My center channel gets sent to my LR because I think phantom center sounds much better. Bonus is it's cheaper and cleaner.

Have you tried with a discrete center channel that matches your LR tonal balance ? Phantom center won’t sound any better once you are out of the sweet spot either side by a low margin. If listening music, move to either side and the voice will be localized coming from the closest LR speaker.

No artist ever ‘intended’ 2-ch stereo. They made music, and translation to a recording was in the hands of the producer.

So I reckon there is about a 1% chance that 2-channel productions are all the artists ever wanted their work to be, in terms of sonic production values.

Amen broo.

 

[dannut]

Mr. Technogadget gets this exactly right. Stereo is meant to be played by 3 speakers. Preferably identical. That way you eliminate most of the idiosyncrasies of 2 channel listening. For further details see Steinberg and Snow.

 

[KMO]

I kind of see both views on the "sacrosanctity" of original recordings. Music always used to be, and still is, a live thing. I don't imagine even the purest of pure would demand that bands stop reperforming their works after getting the canonical recording down.

But they may well have often put a lot of effort into getting that recording as they wanted it. So you don't want to destroy that vision.

I'm far more of a purist on visual stuff. Visual media, due to the "framing" nature of the screen, is far more of an artificial, controlled thing. There's far more scope for directorial vision there. Messing around with aspect ratios or interpolation drives me nuts. But I'm not going to complain when Peter Jackson goes off and does his restoration work on WWI footage.

But audio, less so. In my experience, taking the original masters used to produce a 2-channel recording and redeploying them multichannel feels just like "increasing the resolution", if done sensitively. The original balance, and all its components are still there, but you can hear more detail, because you're no longer trapped in that phantom space between 2 speakers. They're more a remastering than a full remix or reimagining.

Although sometimes the feel can be shifted a fair bit - one example in the DVD-A version of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, in the ending of The Chain, you can far more clearly hear the keyboard part because it's isolated in Surround Right, and hearing that expands it quite a bit. It's just lost in the wall of noise in the 2-channel mix. Much as I love the original, I would hate to have never heard that detail pulled out.

Oh, and all these multichannel releases still have the 2-channel versions. The multichannel is an addition, not a replacement. If it was a replacement, sure, I'm with all the sacrosanct people.

 

[Spocko]

I kind of see both views on the "sacrosanctity" of original recordings. Music always used to be, and still is, a live thing. I don't imagine even the purest of pure would demand that bands stop reperforming their works after getting the canonical recording down.

But they may well have often put a lot of effort into getting that recording as they wanted it. So you don't want to destroy that vision.

I'm far more of a purist on visual stuff. Visual media, due to the "framing" nature of the screen, is far more of an artificial, controlled thing. There's far more scope for directorial vision there. Messing around with aspect ratios or interpolation drives me nuts. But I'm not going to complain when Peter Jackson goes off and does his restoration work on WWI footage.

But audio, less so. In my experience, taking the original masters used to produce a 2-channel recording and redeploying them multichannel feels just like "increasing the resolution", if done sensitively. The original balance, and all its components are still there, but you can hear more detail, because you're no longer trapped in that phantom space between 2 speakers. They're more a remastering than a full remix or reimagining.

Although sometimes the feel can be shifted a fair bit - one example in the DVD-A version of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, in the ending of The Chain, you can far more clearly hear the keyboard part because it's isolated in Surround Right, and hearing that expands it quite a bit. It's just lost in the wall of noise in the 2-channel mix. Much as I love the original, I would hate to have never heard that detail pulled out.

Oh, and all these multichannel releases still have the 2-channel versions. The multichannel is an addition, not a replacement. If it was a replacement, sure, I'm with all the sacrosanct people.

Don't you always master with the end user playback in mind? Whether it's for AM radio playing in the car, Spotify + headphones or vinyl + stereo, the mastering engineer is taking the listener's use case into consideration rather than mastering in a vacuum without assumptions. However, if these assumptions turn out to be wrong, aren't we as consumers expected to make the "corrections" to adapt these master to fit our use case whether it's the limits of our room, our own hearing loss or amazingly bad stereo speakers?

Certainly, there is artist intent in the mix as to how loud or prominent the toms or cymbals should be, how much compression for vocals, but there's definitely an element of practicality that has more to do with playback equipment and less to do with artistry. As listeners of music, we are a part of the art - some listeners LOVE the sound of bass and will raise it with tone controls allowing them to love the music more. Would most musical artists forbid this or encourage this?

 

[Newman]

Don't you always master with the end user playback in mind?

A lot of mastering is paid for by the artist, so the engineer’s client is the artist, and the artist’s instructions are typically “do whatever will sell the most volume”. And, if the artist has any pre/misconceptions about what that is, the instruction will usually be to make it sound “hot”.

 

[aarons915]

I'm still not seeing that a center speaker needs to do anything special that other speakers don't simply because more is going on with them in movies. It seems the beefier centers simply have more and/or bigger woofers to achieve louder SPL similar to the towers vs bookshelf speaker arguments we're all aware of? Most speakers only have a single midrange and tweeter to take care of whatever frequencies are playing above about 300Hz and seem to do just fine so I'm not convinced the center playing more audio really matters in this context?

 

[Newman]

Yes I think that is were we arrived.

 

[audio2920]

I guess my own take on it is that the center doesn't need to be more "muscular" than the L/R, but it needs to be just as capable in SPL terms if it's not to be limiting factor in a system.

Moreover, since it leads the way in terms of content for film, when deciding on a system (for movies only, not mixed use) I'll build from the center outward. By that I mean, when listening on demo I'll start with the center and choose the rest once I'm happy with that, rather than falling in love with stereo pair and then finding there isn't a good center to match in. It is undoubtedly the speaker that you hear the most from in a movie.

 

[audio2920]

Maybe @audio2920 can explain more about the different substreams in each codec, and how the LFE is treated in typical downmixing scenarios(like with DD+ 5.1, TrueHD, and Atmos, which are the 3 codecs I see about 99% of the time). I don't know of an official Dolby document that actually explains it for each format in plain language, lol

Unfortunately all the coding is downstream of me in the post production process and my knowledge on this area is mostly anecdotal.

However, it's true that by default the stereo downmix in DD used to discard the LFE. These days it seems to me to be dependant on specific AVR implementation.

With Atmos, the backwards compatible DD (5.1) part of the DD+JOC stream is a "downmix" of the Atmos master provided from the mix, not a discreet 5.1 provided by the mixer. Then, the stereo downmix of that 5.1 excludes LFE if done by Dolby. The metadata doesn't allow us to inject LFE, and furthermore, the Dolby metadata is a minefield anyway and the numbers we supply rarely make it through the distribution carnage to the consumer.

I work on the assumption that LFE might or might not be discarded. This means I don't want to have content duplicated in mains and LFE because it makes the downmix summing unwieldy, and if content is only in the LFE then it mustn't be mission critical.