[QLab] Surround Effects

[Steven Devino]

On Jul 9, 2007, at 10:45 AM, Paul Gotch wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 06:56:23AM -0400, Steven Devino wrote:
>> Secondly I think that theatre surround is more a matter of 6 (or 4 or
>> 8 or 20 or whatever) number of discreet outputs with sounds sent by
>> the designer as needed.   I use QLAB via a MHLABs MIO 2882 to send 8
>> channels from the computer to the DM1000 via ADAT.
>
> What you can't do like this is pan an effect across the space easily.
> Obviously if you've prepared a surround sound effect in Digital  
> Performer or
> ProTools etc then you can play it back.
>
> What would be extremely nice is if instead of the standard matrix  
> mixer you
> could put in a surround sound panner Audio Unit where the position  
> of the
> sound in the field could be automated using a "pan" cue with the  
> sound cue
> as its target.
>
> You could then play mono or stereo effects in QLab and have them  
> fly around
> the auditorium in response to cues.

Since you are using QLAB you could do all this offline on a proper  
DAW then create the multichannel file and source it in QLAB.
There is a joy stick panner on the dM1K, if you put the board into  
surround monitor mode and you assign channels correctly you should be  
able to manually pan, but I think a proper DAW is probably better. If  
you have cubase, PT, or Nuendo you can setup one of the remote layers  
of the DM1k as a controller and use the joystick to edit the playback  
in the theatre itself.

You could also effect the pans by a little well thought out cross  
fading if you want to do it on the cheap.

Steve