To all that are thinking of up grading to MSP 8

malwilliams · Post by **malwilliams** » Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:27 pm

To all that are thinking of up grading to MSP 8 if you want to work in 5.1 Dolby surround sound don’t !
That is not at the present. There is a problem with the way the sound mixer works it is not possible to set up 5 independent channels after channel A3 the mixer groups the rest of the channels, channels 1 to 3 can be mixed so that the sound can be positioned any ware in the mix with the surround pan pot, but channels 4 and up are grouped so all cannels are in the same position. I have worked with premier pro and this works just as you would presume it should work. I know that there is a big price difference and you get what you pay for, but to advertise that the program can produce 5.1 Dolby surround and not deliver this is misleading at the best and a big con at the worst.

Apart from the mixer I have not came across any major problems after up grading from MSP 7 the only problem is I upgraded for the 5.1 Dolby?.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 6:41 am

Whereas I agree that 5.1 in MSP is far from perfect, you do exaggerate the difficulties. The major problem is one of leakage. Any audio directed to a corner will leak at -20dB to adjacent corners (from any track) while all channels leak to C and LFE at too high a level. I'm hoping this will be improved with SP1; the beta testers pointed out these problems before release.

Jim J. Donaldson · Post by **Jim J. Donaldson** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 3:11 pm

I'd have to agree with malwilliams on this one. If you are looking to do REAL 5.1 mixing like you may be doing with other software (Acid Pro for instance) MSP is nowhere near ready. If this is your ONLY reason to upgrade, don't. If you are looking for other features like editing HD, built in music bed generation and greatly improved timeline editing, you won't be disappointed, they're great. But just because it can create a 5.1 surround sound file dosn't mean it's not like shooting in the dark as to what you'll end up with.

malwilliams · Post by **malwilliams** » Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:36 pm

Ok lets leave the 5.1 sound out for the moment and look at the mixer in stereo mode lets say I have five audio channels of five people singing one to the fare left one mid left one in the centre one mid right one fare right, to reproduce this in a stereo sound field I would set the pan pots to fare left mid left centre and the same for the right. Now if you look at the mixer in MSP 8 you will see that it is not possible to control five channels independent of each other, this is because if you put more than three audio channels on the time line the program banks or groups any channels above three into group four it is not possible to ungroup only change what’s in the group. Back to Dolby 5.1 sound. Dolby 5.1 is made up of 6 independent channels left, centre, right, right rear, left rear and Low frequency sound, low frequency is non diaconal and doesn’t need to be steered in any direction now back to the five people singing one on the left, centre, right, right rear left rear, again I need five independent channels not possible due to the grouping problem. If you know how to work round this please let me know?
The problem is not with MSP 8 producing 5.1 surround sound but the inability to control five or more channels independent of each other. As for the bleeding of sound at -20 dB this is not a major problem provided that it stays at -20dB below the main sound for the channel.