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

[Richard Crowley]

We could always ask such questions as:

1) WHERE did your hear, or WHO told you about "3.0"? (followup question: Why don't you ask THEM instead of coming here?)
2) Which standard delivery formats support "3.0"?
3) What alleged festivals, distributors, etc. want "3.0"?
4) Where are the published specifications for "3.0"?

Of course, given IronPony's seeming alternate reality, I would not actually expect straightforward answers to these questions, but only another round of nonsense responses.

 

[Paul F]

deleted.

 

[Noiz2]

The silver lining is that often there is some good information in the threads before it all melts down.

 

[Razz16mm]

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).

Every general purpose theater venue I have either designed systems for or installed consultant specified systems for since the mid 1990's has had LCR house arrays and mixing consoles, not necessarily top of the line expensive ones either. Public and private high school theaters, municipal theaters, college theaters, corporate theaters. All of them. Some have been equipped for surround sound and theater style video projection too. Some had LR + mono bus consoles, with speech reinforcement assigned to the mono center channel plus stereo program, rather than a true LCR pan type console. A console upgrade would make them true LCR.

 

[ironpony]

Okay. Well the person who told me most theaters prefer 3.0 is not around anymore, so I can't ask him. Well what's a good GENERAL sound mix most film festivals will accept then? I will ask a sound mixer to do that for me. What's the best general one? Mixers I have talked to, can do 2.0 stereo, but as Paulears said, it causes time delays and level problems.

 

[Razz16mm]

Okay. Well the person who told me most theaters prefer 3.0 is not around anymore, so I can't ask him. Well what's a good GENERAL sound mix most film festivals will accept then? I will ask a sound mixer to do that for me. What's the best general one? Mixers I have talked to, can do 2.0 stereo, but as Paulears said, it causes time delays and what not.

2 channel stereo for any venue that does not have surround sound decoders.

 

[ironpony]

Okay then. Well the one I thought about hiring says he knows how to do two channel, so I could hire him then...

 

[Richard Crowley]

Every general purpose theater venue I have either designed systems for or installed consultant specified systems for since the mid 1990's has had LCR house arrays and mixing consoles, not necessarily top of the line expensive ones either. Public and private high school theaters, municipal theaters, college theaters, corporate theaters. All of them. Some have been equipped for surround sound and theater style video projection too. Some had LR + mono bus consoles, with speech reinforcement assigned to the mono center channel plus stereo program, rather than a true LCR pan type console. A console upgrade would make them true LCR.

But LCR are 3 of the 5.1 channels. And LCR arrays were seen back in the 1930s. But is there ANY contemporary video distribution format that supports 3.0?

 

[Noiz2]

Every general purpose theater venue I have either designed systems for or installed consultant specified systems for since the mid 1990's has had LCR house arrays and mixing consoles, not necessarily top of the line expensive ones either. Public and private high school theaters, municipal theaters, college theaters, corporate theaters. All of them. Some have been equipped for surround sound and theater style video projection too. Some had LR + mono bus consoles, with speech reinforcement assigned to the mono center channel plus stereo program, rather than a true LCR pan type console. A console upgrade would make them true LCR.

Well that is interesting. Maybe that is a location thing. I'm not calling you a liar, just that I have never seen it. I've worked at two UC schools in 2 - 4 theaters each in each, The MAGIC theatre, ACT, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Berkeley Repertory, OET, Herbst theatre, and a slew more including three high-schools.

The small spaces usually have a 2 -4 channels system and the bigger ones range up to twenty for channels, none is set up as an LCR system.

I have seen the mixers your talking about though. And I can see it for music and dance. It seems like it's aimed at a general purpose PA setup.

A number of these places had mixers with LCR panners but there was no LCR speaker setup that was used for theatre. Most often for theatre if you use the panner at all it's to direct sound to a specific output because that mixer doesn't have a way to sent to a discrete output with out using the panner.

But I'm working generally in spaces designed for theatre and not general purpose spaces.

Truthfully mixers are largely gone except as interfaces to the amps. Almost all shows now are run on software cueing programs, so all levels are set in software.

 

[Josh Bass]

Another possibility (not ruling out the trolling) is that mr. mrs. Pony is very young. Like 14. Sometimes you are so inept at dealing with people at that age, and dont know how to spell, or research topics rather than asking every single question that pops into your head (see the ultimate-guitar.com message boards for piles of these type of posts). Also may just not be a good communicator in general (it happens). Thats a lot of oddly specific knowledge to come to a message board with just to screw with people (knowing anything about cams, white balancing, color temp, etc. etc. even enough to ask a coherent question). That would be a lot of work just to troll. Or he could be laughing at us for discussing it right this minute. I suppose well never know.

 

[davefisk]

Okay then. Well the one I thought about hiring says he knows how to do two channel, so I could hire him then...

Hire someone, and have them deal directly with the festival people so they can communicate the specs. You should just stay out of it at this point.

 

[ironpony]

The festival wasn't specific. They said good sound is all they care about. What about other festivals? I want to make it for general theaters.

 

[paulears]

Just make it in stereo, making sure dialogue is panned centrally - if a festival, or any other delivery medium cannot cope with that, something is wrong!

 

[GaryNattrass]

BTW you are wasting your time putting any effort into material for festivals as they tend to exist to promote themselves and not the content.

Stereo will do and hey you might win a prize that will further your career in selling burgers!

 

[simonpwood]

Its bizarre.

He's trolling or something; i cant figure out where he gets off on it.

But enough people just keep blindly offering solutions to his 'dilemma' and ignore the posts saying he's trolling, that he still gets whatever he's looking for. Ironpony also ignores the accusations of trolling and continues on unperturbed.

Its so weird.

 

[mhood]

I'm not sure I follow this trolling thing. He asked about LCR (most had never heard of it...including myself) and I learned that there was in fact LCR and what it is and how it works. How is that a troll post for the purpose of eliciting negative responses? Actually, the "troll" name calling is a personal attack and the posts that scream "troll" can be considered trolls in that they are designed to elicit negative responses and are combative. I don't get it.

 

[Blit]

Hi

Just my opinion... I think Ironpony is a knowledgeable sound guy who wants to stimulate the audio forum. He posts esoteric questions and keeps the answers coming. I enjoy and learn from all the responses, some really great posters here. It may be under false pretenses, but it works so what the heck. The continuing saga of Ironpony may become a book or maybe he will shoot it and enter it in a festival, LOL. In any case I encourage him, I think he is brilliant. He has this forum eating out of his hand - and enjoying doing so. So from me thanks to both Ironpony and the posters for high quality education and entertainment.

But it is just an opinion...

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

The festival wasn't specific. They said good sound is all they care about. What about other festivals? I want to make it for general theaters.

Then make it monaural. Woody Allen still produces his films in mono (last I heard...)... Since his films are filled with wordy dialog, low on special sound effects, just sufficient Foley to give the 'realism' etc. mono should pose no problem.

This is equivalent to my suggestion to you on the topic of 'color' and various wyrd lighting situations... if you shot with the goal of producing B&W(monochrome) 99% of your 'color problems' would disappear. (What's more no 'amateur' ever shoots in B&W...).

Furthermore, B&W and a mono track will definitely put you on the 'avantegarde' map, far more than attempting to have the most sophisticated 'sound' or 'visuals' with equipment that has no possibility of delivering such.

 

[Richard Crowley]

What everyone seems to have missed is that there appears to be no contemporary "3.0" format for distribution, which makes Ironpony's opening premise bogus.

Ironpony always claims he has "heard" that {insert your choice of Ironpony's schemes here} is the case. But he never identifies where he heard this or from who. In past cases, at least IIRC, they have ALL turned out to be bogus, making his batting average 0.000 And making his dubious sources equally improbable. He also seems impervious to the notion that if he hears something from someone, he should go back to THEM for questions about it. Instead, he comes here where more conventional (and experienced) people find his questions bizarre to say the least.

That is all fine and well if you accept the fact that the only good coming out of it is the subsequent discussion. But consider the problem of having all this misinformation archived and indexed by Google for the next unsuspecting person to stumble upon. It hardly makes this forum a better and more reliable source of production audio information.

 

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

I'm not sure I follow this trolling thing. He asked about LCR (most had never heard of it...including myself) and I learned that there was in fact LCR and what it is and how it works. How is that a troll post for the purpose of eliciting negative responses? Actually, the "troll" name calling is a personal attack and the posts that scream "troll" can be considered trolls in that they are designed to elicit negative responses and are combative. I don't get it.

Here's a quote from the wiki on stereo sound, and the use of 3 audio 'paths'...

---
Utilizing selections recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski, intended for but not used in Walt Disney's Fantasia, the Carnegie Hall demonstration by Bell Laboratories on April 9 and 10, 1940, used three huge speaker systems. Synchronization was achieved by making the recordings in the form of three motion picture soundtracks recorded on a single piece of film with a fourth track being used to regulate volume expansion.

This was necessary due to the limitations of dynamic range on optical motion picture film of the period, however the volume compression and expansion were not fully automatic, but were designed to allow manual studio "enhancement"; i.e., the artistic adjustment of overall volume and the relative volume of each track in relation to the others. Stokowski, who was always interested in sound reproduction technology personally participated in the "enhancement" of the sound at the demonstration.

The speakers produced sound levels of up to 100 decibels, and the demonstration held the audience "spellbound, and at times not a little terrified", according to one report.[10] Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was present at the demonstration, commented that it was "marvellous" but "somehow unmusical because of the loudness." "Take that Pictures at an Exhibition", he said. "I didn't know what it was until they got well into the piece. Too much 'enhancing', too much Stokowski."
---

I'm somewhat enhumored by Rachmaninoff's quote... 'too much enhancing, too much Stokoswski'...

As for trolling, Ironpony has apparently become a fixture on a number of boards, I'm only familiar with their postings on this one, but others have indicated that a poster with Ironpony's style posts elsewhere...

Ironpony seems to have a cadre of 'friends' who give advice or feedback, and for the most part, said 'advice' is either wrong, as given the responses by those who work in the field, or so 'confusedly' stated, that if the 'friends' are 'right', Ironpony's acquisition of the information has been totally faulty.

The 'trolling' aspect comes in when given 'advice by working people in the area', Ironpony doesn't go off, make a clip based on said advice, and come back with 'is this right?', or 'does this work?'... but rather continues to state their 'understanding' over and over, rather than either 'move on', or 'test the ideas and suggestions' made.

I have met some set of people in the 'real world' who have had patterns like Ironpony's... mostly working for Goodwill or similar 'outreach' entities, but they usually don't have the skills necessary navigate on the Internet... but I digress...