Such a good question on SDE by our dolbyblue:
"I do like this album but David’s recent Atmos mixes are a little puzzling, why does he almost completely ignore the centre channel? I like what he’s putting in the surrounds, but why utilize so well the four discrete surround channels in a 7.1 set-up and completely ignore one of the three front soundstage speakers? The best surround mixes use the centre channel, particularly to anchor lead vocals. Additionally the “point one” of a mix? Nothing there in David’s mixes. Wonder if Paul ever gets to discuss mixing strategies with the mixers of these titles given there are exclusive mixes (5.1) found on this disc? Would love to let David hear how the centre channel is used in reference surround mixes like Billy Joel’s The Stranger (5.1 SACD), Steven’s Atmos mix of King Ghost or the atmos mix of Take On Me, Bob Clearmountain’s 5.1 mix of Bob Marley’s Legend, etc.
Love all these amazing ’80s titles coming to Blu-ray, keep up the great work Paul!"
Paul Sinclair answers:
Centre channel is used for Into The Gap for vocals etc.
The cool part is look at this answer from David Kosten(who did the Atmos mix) to dolbyblue's question:
Thanks for your messages! It’s an interesting debate for audio mix nerds like me and those (also like me) fairly new to immersive mixing – and I think I agree with you (in general) about it being a cool thing for lead vocals to feature on the centre speaker. My preferences will probably evolve over time and depending on the project I work on too. FYI on one of the mixes I’ve made previously I had to use a stereo lead vocal stem inc effects, so a dry mono centre channel vocal wasn’t an option. And on another thepanning of the lead vocals moved around quite a bit, and I wanted to mirror this and ‘bake’ it (and also the lead vocal level) into the LR speaker mix. But on Into The Gap vocal (and mono bass) are happening lots and hopefully nobody’s gonna feel their centre speaker is unloved.
As for ‘Low Frequency Effects’ Atmos mix paths – the .1 sub speaker element ought to be fed from all the available audio paths and not the LFE mix channel alone – there’s tons of low end on the mixes I’ve delivered (including King Ghost which I mixed), though as they’ve been mostly classic 70’s/80’s tracks in Atmos perhaps not as much as say on a modern hip hop record! I don’t use the LFE mix path much it’s true as there’s already plenty enough low and sub in the mixes and it’s really meant more as a special effect boost if needed (historically more for film explosions / effects etc) and not the sole source of low end audio. Official line from Dolby in fact if you chat with them is if you mix music you probably won’t need the LFE mix path that much and the sub will be fed plenty from the overall mix instead. I do tickle it with bass, kick drums and LF one-off moments but as I say, there’s plenty of sub that ought to be going to the listener and sub speaker, LFE path aside. On Into The Gap Tom said I’d ‘opened the gates’ to allow loads of sub present on the drums for instance into the Atmos mix, which hadn’t made it into the original stereo mixes – vinyl mastering trends in ’84 did a good job of shaving off anything much below 50 or 60 Hz. This won’t show on the Low Frequency Effects channel path display but doesn’t mean the .1 speaker isn’t being used!
Hope this helps a bit!
DK
