I’m working with a 4.1 surround sound system and I want to be able to ring out my lav mics in the main PA whilst not affecting any music or sfx that comes through.
I have tried stereo groups but they don’t allow me to individually pan the channels front to back which might be needed. Any ideas?
I assume that even the dLive does not have surround functionality.
However, you might be able to easily achieve what you’re looking for using the Mixing Station app, which can (simulate) 4.0 surround panning.
How do you achieve the surround panning? Via Matrixes?
David Schumann writes at the link provided:
You need two stereo (or linked) busses for the front and rear channel.
If you can route input channels also directly to matrices on the dLive, then in my view, using them for surround sound should be an option.
How old is your dLive system or firmware. Newer systems have a 5.1 surround config available. That should allow you to pan front/rear. If your speaker setup is missing the center speaker(traditional 4.1) the Divergence function allows you to send your signal strictly to the L/R instead of the Center output.
Via the built in 5.1 panning in the routing page
It is true that dLive supports 5.1 mains, but groups are stereo or mono.
A group (stereo or mono) can be routed to surround mains and has the benefit of the surround panner at that step; channels routed to that group are limited to left/right panning to the group.
So, surround panning of microphones while utilizing groups does pose its challenges.
You mentioned ringing out microphones, which makes me think that your reason for using groups is to use their EQ for feedback control. If that is the case then I submit that one group with one set of EQ parameters might not do that job very well anyway. Problematic feedback frequencies will change based on each mic’s location relative to the speakers.
If you really need to smoothly pan a mic from one place to another there is not much you can do but use your channel EQ (or an EQ insert if you have the resources) for your feedback control, assign channels directly to the mains, and localize using the surround panner.
If it is sufficent to localize sound “close enough” and it is acceptable to localize sound in discrete steps, then you might be able to designate a number of groups to represent zones. If the groups are stereo then left/right panning could still happen with the channel pan control, but front/rear “panning” would happen in discrete steps by assigning the mic to one (or maybe two) groups at a time. Each group would be panned to a chosen place in the surround field using the group->mains assignment and surround panner. You could use the group EQ for feedback control and those settings can be tailored to suit the zone. If it is appropriate to have different delays for each zone then that can also be accomplished at the group level.