How do the old movies sometimes come with 5.1 sound?

[Stephen Mann]

[Paul Gregory] “so what did they do just add rear tracks that are basically just a quieter copy of the front tracks?”

Dialogue is always in the center channel only (unless the character is off-screen but talking).
Music can be filtered to put the high-pitch instruments on the left and the midrange on the right, and boost the lows for LFE (the .1 channel).

Basically, it’s an art and it’s psychology. You *want* to hear stereo or 5.1, so your brain will fabricate he spatial separation that is artificially generated.

BTW – most prosumer 5.1 mixes that I’ve heard are absolutely horrible.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Matt Smitherz]

”BTW – most prosumer 5.1 mixes that I’ve heard are absolutely horrible.”

Could you elaborate and include some ”horrible” models?

Thanks

[Stephen Mann]

I don’t have any saved examples, but they were wedding videos using cameras with a whiz-bang 5.1 microphone on it. The resulting sound from this kind of microphone arrangement usually does not match the events on the screen. You want to use the sound to enhance the video – not to be a distraction. That is, if you notice the sound mix, it’s probably done wrong.

From https://www.soundonsound.com:
“What should I feed into the surround channels?
This is the subject that causes the most heated discussions, because it’s a matter of art rather than science. In classical or acoustic recordings, the room acoustics (or simulated room acoustics) can be used to provide the listener with a ‘best seat in the house’ listening experience — the music still comes from the front while the reverberant field (and audience noise, if a live event) come from all around. On the other hand, if you fancy yourself as a rival to Pink Floyd, or as a cutting-edge dance producer, you can put instruments all around the room. With some types of music this might be too distracting, so you may decide to play the game a little more conventionally while still moving some of the effects or incidental instrument parts out to the sides or even to the rear. The point is that there are no rules, so you can do whatever is most artistically pleasing — keep in mind, though, that it may be prudent to help compensate for bad setup in consumer playback systems by keeping all the important elements of the mix near the front. Subtlety is the best approach, just as when mixing in stereo. Don’t go mad by spinning sound sources around 360° all the time. Use special effects as exactly that — as special, and therefore rare, effects. That way they become far more powerful and effective.”

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com