How are movie soundtracks mixed?

[docferdie]

Does anyone know what speaker set-up a movie studio engineer uses when mixing a film sound track. I am particularly interested in what kind of surround speaker (direct, bipole, tripole, etc.) is used. Does anybody know the size of the mixing room and what the exact locations of the monitors are relative to the engineer. There have been many set-up tips on setting up speakers like they are setup in the movie theaters but there have been none detailing how they are setup for the guy who actually decides how stuff sounds in the end.

 

[Khellandros66]

They tend to use the current 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 setups, Software such as Protools or NUENDO are used to mix the audio effects with the music, as well as place the audio to separate channels. The process takes an enormous amount of effort as the audio is like taking each pixel of a picture and placing it by hand and ear.

As far as Equipment goes, they have the standard L,C,R, LFE, and depending on the size of the studio have LR, RR, SBR, and SBL but if its a larger studio they might use doubles of those channels similar to a movie theater. Also if you look at soem really good Studios they use multiple brands to test on to make sure of clarity and uniformity.

~Bob