Building
a Surround MixerIn this installment, we are will start learning the nuts-and-bolts of actually doing a Surround mix. Doing Surround mixing is so simple it will surprise you, but so much fun you'll wonder why it isn't illegal. And just one more warning: once you've mixed Surround, you can't go back!
We are going to build a Surround mixer. We are going to start from scratch and build a custom Surround mixer using Mx51. (Note: while these instructions are specific to the Mx51 software you should be able to get a good idea how the basic surround sound connections would be made.)
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The main screen of Mx51 is familiar to anyone that has worked in a studio. The top part of the window are your tracks....think of them as tracks on a tape. The bottom of the window is where we will construct the Surround mixer.
In the bottom of the window you'll see a "Component Toolbox".
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The Toolbox provides us with all the components we need to build a mixer. We construct our mixer by using the mouse to drag components off the Toolbox and drop them onto our mixer desk. We usually start by dropping an input fader. The input fader is the component labeled "IN". To drop the input fader, put your mouse pointer on the "IN" button of the Components Toolbox.
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Then, while holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse pointer out to the gray area of the mixer desk. While you are dragging, the mouse pointer will turn into a silhouette of a fader, with a white box that says "INPUT".
When you let go of the mouse button, it drops an input fader and creates a new input channel for a mixer.
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Now we have an input channel with a fader. Next the channel needs a Surround Panner. This is the Toolbox button labeled "SUR". When you click on the "SUR" button and drag onto the gray area, the mouse pointer changes to a silhouette of a Surround Panner, with a white box labeled "S PAN".
Drag the Surround Panner onto the top part of the mixer channel, above the fader, and let go of the mouse button. It will drop the Surround Panner onto the channel strip.
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Let's say that we are going to start out making a mixer with one input channel. So what do we need next? Output channels. Before we drop the output channels, lets drop a spacer to the right of the input channel, to give a good visual separation between the input channel and the output channel. The spacers are on the right side of the Toolbox.
We'll choose the one labeled "LVS" for "large vertical spacer". When we drop it next to the input channel, it looks like this:
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Now, lets drop the output section of the mixer. The toolkit has a single button to drop a 6-channel output section for us. It is the one labeled "MON", with the picture of multiple faders.
When we drag-and-drop the MON component to the gray area, it creates 6 output faders.
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The connections and bussing are all handled for you automatically. At this point the mixer has created a 5.1 bus, connected the outputs of the Surround Panner to the bus, and connected the bus into the output faders. The output faders are connect to the soundcard outputs of your computer, based on the settings you provide in the "Default Monitor" section of the Mixer>I/O Connections menu.
The only thing left is to connect a track to our input channel. This is done by going to the Track Control area to the left of the desired track, and clicking the mouse in that area.
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Hold down the left mouse button and drag the pointer. The pointer will change into a silhouette of a 1/4-inch phone plug.
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Now drag the plug down to the mixer channel, and touch the tip to the input meter.
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The track is now connected. You can tell it is connected because the name of the input channel changes from "Not Assigned" to the name of the track you connected.
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CONGRATULATIONS!!!! You have now created a Surround mixer. You can hit the play button, and listen to the track you connected. You can grab the red ball of the Surround panner, and move the sound around the room. You can even move the sound around with a joystick, if you have one.
How do we add more input channels? "Piece 'o cake", as Duke Nukem would say. Just right-click on your first channel, and select "Copy Channel".
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Then right-click again, and select "Insert Multiple Channels". Type in the number of channels you want to add. If we type in "6", we will wind up with a mixer with 7 input channels.
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All that's left to do is to connect the input channels to the tracks.
You can go back to your Component Toolbox and drop other components onto the channels if you want, like effects and solo/mute buttons and aux sends.
In the next article we will take your mixer and start trying some techniques for Surround Panning. Can't wait.
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