Working with Surround Sound

You don’t need a stereo, 5.1, or 7.1 timeline track in order to create surround sound mixes. You can create a delightful 7.1 surround sound mix from a sequence having only mono tracks. It’s not what kind of tracks or source clips you have; it’s how the clips on those tracks are played out of the various speakers. That’s what gives you a surround sound mix.

Media Composer supports surround sound environments having six or eight speakers, in which one of them is a LFE (subwoofer), designated by .1, and the other five or seven speakers are positioned around the listener. Put together, you get 5.1 and 7.1 surround, meaning five main speakers plus one LFE, shown in Figure 8.15, or seven main speakers plus one LFE, shown in Figure 8.16 from the Media Composer 6 User’s Guide.