I want to hire a sound mixer for post, but he knows nothing of 3 channel stereo.

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ironpony

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For theatrical showing at film festivals, I here 3 channel stereo is the best. I've looked at some sound mixers in my area, but none of them have heard of it. They only know how to do 2 channel stereo and 5.1 surround. I want 3 channel. Their is one sound mixer and I really like his portfolio and past work. I would like to hire him but he told me he hasn't heard of 3.0. Should I just tell him what it is, from what I know, and hope he does it right? Could he based on his audio engineering school knowledge? He does plenty of TV commercials and short films with 2.0 so far.
 
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Well my 33+ years in broadcast film and TV audio must be of no use whatsoever as I too have never heard of the 3.0 format.

Maybe some DSLR noo meediah expert invented it to make things better for his whizz bang wobble cam videoz! :2vrolijk_08:

Or is this the "tripple track troll" format we have all been waiting for???

I can just see the marketing now "mix and normalise in Doblee TTT"
 
Or is it a case of wanting a '3 channel stereo mixer' ...... Like the SD 302 or Shure FP33 ?
 
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OzGizmo said:
Or is it a case of wanting a '3 channel stereo mixer' ...... Like the SD 302 or Shure FP33 ?
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If you REED the post it says he want's to HERE his audio for film festivals in 3.0 not to have a three channel mixer.

THEIR must be some new format that we all haven't HERD of?

I have spent many years LOOKING at sound mixers but most of them seem to just sit there and don't do anything without me to operate them! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
ironpony = you really need to be far more suspicious of your friends. They continually give you bum information on almost every single thing to do with audio, video, lighting and everything! Surely when all the sound people you approached said the same thing "eh, what?" alarm bells should have rung.

HOWEVER - there is indeed a 3 channel system everyone here has forgotten about, and it's used in theatre. Even I have to use it from time to time, when a venue is very wide. LCR - Left, centre, Right. My digital desk has it as a preset set-up state. The reason for it is quiet simple. If the main left and right loudspeakers are too far apart, the audience begin to experience time delay issues, and level problems. So if you play a piece of music, like old recordings where left/right separation is total - you get the very weird effect of (when, say, listening to the Glenn Miller Orchestra) of hearing the sax 'Doo' from 60 feet away, but the responding 'wop' from the trumpet from the speakers near you. Start to add dialogue and you get intelligibility problems as the mono - panned centre signal comes from two spaced locations but arrives at your ears as two distinct separate events. So in wide venues a centre channel is used - and dialogue and critical audio comes from the centre, while leaving the wide spaced L&R for music and effects. Similar to 5.1 without the surrounds. If the venue is theatre & cinema, the centre channel for the movies is often set up behind the screen and fires through it. In theatre, the centre source is often a flown cluster that can cover the entire auditorium in one fan shaped hit. I've never come across video people recording to this format, because LCR is not usually matrixes, it's 3 individual channels. You could, of course do this on any multitrack, but if you need to encode multichannel audio into your video format you will need to use an encoder of some type, and these are what I have never seen in 3ch.

Somebody has probably got mixed up. Maybe the sound system for the event has been specified as LCR - if so it will only work when fed 3 sources - a 5.1 decoder with the surrounds unused would be possible. As usual, you need more info.
 
Actually some of the early work in stereo recording during the 1930s used a 3rd centre channel speaker and Blumlein's original playback scheme for his crossed figure-8 microphone array recording technique called for a centre channel speaker as well as Left and Right channels, the centre being derived by matrixing the other two to capture the phase data embedded in them. A couple of vendors have shown some concept systems at CES the last couple of years. As far as our OP though, don't bother. Even if you could find someone to mix it for you, none of the playback venues where your film might appear will have even heard of it, much less have the equipment to be able to play it. You're p***ing away time and money at that tree.
 
This guy, Ironpony, is some sort of weird troll, isn't he? He always posts these weird set ups. He's like some sort of benign passive troll or something.
 
It's simple - 3.0 is just 5.1 without the rear and LFE channels.

So - you record as 5.1 to just left, centre and right.

But it's *not* stereo, which is left and right only.

This way basically just gives a stable centre image for films, while still basically being a stereo sound.

Or - you could just record normal stereo and then feed L+R to the centre channel.
 
Normal stereo mixes are handled in venues with 3 channel LCR house systems by the the house sound engineer and mixing console. No need to do anything special. 5.1 soundtracks encoded to 2 channels can be problematic as the center dialog channel can be out of phase on an LCR system dropping your dialog levels significantly if there is not a decoder in the system. A straight 2 channel stereo mix is best for venues that don't have surround sound decoders.
 
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3.0 may be a speaker format as is 2.0, 7.1 and 5.1 but it is not a know delivery format to me in audio post!

Maybe a tripple track machine like the Beatles used or using a 1/4" with a timecode track will give the desired results ???
 
LCR 3 channel systems are a standard fixture of performing arts theaters. The consoles have a pan control that lets the operator place any individual channel across the space from left to right with dead center pan position being the center channel. Sources are normally either mono or stereo, not multichannel. A properly designed LCR venue will have nearly equal levels of all three channels audible at any seat in the house to preserve stereo imaging and SFX localization. The center fill just provides a more seamless stereo image, but without any unusual channel encoding. Center localization of a stereo source becomes a mono summed signal. That is why 2 channel 5.1 surround encoded audio does not work well as the center channel in the encoded mix is out of phase, so it gets partially cancelled out in an LCR mix.
 
Razz16mm said:
LCR 3 channel systems are a standard fixture of performing arts theaters. The consoles have a pan control that lets the operator place any individual channel across the space from left to right with dead center pan position being the center channel. Sources are normally either mono or stereo, not multichannel. A properly designed LCR venue will have nearly equal levels of all three channels audible at any seat in the house to preserve stereo imaging and SFX localization. The center fill just provides a more seamless stereo image, but without any unusual channel encoding. Center localization of a stereo source becomes a mono summed signal. That is why 2 channel 5.1 surround encoded audio does not work well as the center channel in the encoded mix is out of phase, so it gets partially cancelled out in an LCR mix.
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Really? Actually I can see it for tour houses. But I have to say that in 30 or so years in theatre many as a sound designer I have never come across a LCR set up. For plays it actually makes very little sense unless you have a really large proscenium house. Your localization isn't good enough unless your audience is pretty far away. Most theatres have a mixer with a number of outputs for desecrate speaker placement. On a set the only place you could really stick a center speaker is over the set which makes it too high for anything but general ambient sounds.

I could see it for dance though.

Most films spend most of their time mixing to the LCR but there isn't any LCR delivery format that I know of. The closest are "dolby surround" (4.0) and stereo (2.0).
 
Pickthorne said:
<<in best Micheal Caine impersonation>> "Some men just want to watch the forums burn"
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As silly as the idea of someone going to all the trouble to troll this forum, There is very good evidence that that is exactly what IronPony does.

He has only come up with really crazy questions, and then usually adds complications if it looks as if there is some sort of solution. He also does not respond to personal notes or offers of help. He has no location and refuses to give any hint as to where he might be located. But early on he couldn't hire anyone because there were no media folks anywhere around him, and later he's hiring folks and companies and seems to have lots of options. The gender and number of his post people change in the same thread. And his questions are beyond basic. If he isn't trolling???? He must not read or listen to anybody because the same questions with different twists come up over and over.
 
And after reading every new ridiculous thread, I make a promise to myself to never click on another IP nugget of mischief. But every time I fall off the wagon.

I did notice that in another thread he posted a youtube link that revealed a channel with the entrails of a 15 min short. I thought I caught a glimpse of Saskatoon. If this if indeed Ironpony, I can speak on behalf of all Canadians: we're sorry.

I have things to do with my day, really I do. But these threads always have a delightful train-wreck like appeal to them. And since many of them are about audio, I learn bits and pieces from the frustrated responses.

Peace,
Craig
 
Keeps me amused thinking up responses to suit the banality of some of the original posts!

At least it is all reasonably civilised as on thr DV Doc forum we had Nimtembo but his troll mate made threats to my domains and streaming services so action had to be taken!
 
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