Question / Advice 5.1 speaker set, rear sound, left and right settings panning

I have a Creative Audigy Fx soundblaster 5.1 in my computer and also have a speaker on the left front, center right, front right, rear right and rear left and a subwoofer under my desk.

I see many effects and options of samples and would like to edit and place the sample volume and panning per speaker.

you see in renoise in the screen that you have waves around you so

my is is it even possible to edit that, i thought that question i had found something but have come so far that it seems like it only grabs left front right in the middle and right front. . I do have Meta at effects, then Xy Pad, but I canā€™t get sound left or right, are there other options I should set it up better, please advise.

Good question, and I hope others with far more knowledge than I can chime in.

But, as i understand it; and please forgive me for probably over-simplifying this,
there are several surround encoders like:

DTS, Dolby Surround, Dolby Atmos, Sony 360, Auro3d, 5.1, 7.1, and othersā€¦

Each can create the surround crossover routing in a different way, that said,
it seems most encoders will utilize the dB of a particular frequency which is
on the ā€˜side channelsā€™ to route signals to the rear channels pushing stuff
out of LCR into Surround.

There are several topics on this forum which discuss mid-side processing.
Also fwiw, there are VST effects, like reverbs, which may help with surround.

Hth

I have actually been dabbling in quadrophonic (and 5.1) surround in Renoise for awhile now. It can be done, but there are limitations. Namely, Renoise really wants to do everything in stereo channels. This means you cannot use any plugins which support/output multichannel audio with more than 2 channels. This also means you canā€™t just configure the Mst track to use more than 2 channels of output.

My workaround is to use 3 send tracks, with the Pre-Mixer Routing for each send set to 2 of the 5.1 channels:

  • Send 1 = Front Left + Front Right = channels 1 & 2
  • Send 2 = Center Channel + LFE (sub) = channels 3 & 4
  • Send 3 = Left Surround + Right Surround (rear speakers) = channels 5 & 6

The Mst track by default will be channels 1 & 2, so you could use that instead of setting up Send 1 to be the front speakers. Donā€™t use both, or you will double the signal sent to the front speakers.

Any sound you want to send to the center channel must be panned hard left (mono) before sent to Send 2. Likewise, any subwoofer frequencies you want to send to the LFE channel must be panned hard right (mono) before sent to Send 2. If you arenā€™t dealing with vocals, I would suggest not bothering with the center channel. And donā€™t forget to properly filter anything you send to the LFE channel. (The Multiband Send effect is extremely helpful.)

With this setup, you could use an XY Pad device to drive 2 Hydra Devices which in turn control Send devices for the front and rear speakers, as in the attached xrns. Donā€™t forget to set the Pre-Mixer routing to your audio interfaceā€™s channels.
5-1_Surround.xrns (10.9 KB)

I started playing around in 5.1, but have since ā€œsimplifiedā€ a bit and now focus on quadrophonic. Same concept as above, just skipping channels 3 & 4 (center & LFE). And instead of setting up complex panner effects chains/doofers everywhere, I just automate the Send devices for front & rear directly. Most of the time, however, Iā€™m lazy and use the Multiband Send effect to route stereo audio to the front and rear speakers per frequency band, which has the added bonus of avoiding phase issues.

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