Lesson 19 - Posted on 2014-01-17 by Collin McCombs

Lesson 19 was about surround sound mixing. Aaron started the lesson telling us a little about the set-up and how it is utilized. Surround sound mixing is normally used in post-production for T.V. and movies, but is also used in some music. The basic set-up consists of a screen with the visual content, a center speaker in front, two speakers to the left and right of the center speaker, and two speakers to the left and right in the rear. A sub-woofer is usually placed somewhere off to the side. You then need an encoder and a decoder to be able to sync the audio mix with the video. After everything is set-up the mixing can begin. T.V. show and movie mixes are done one scene at a time and is typically carried out by several people. With each play of the clip the engineer begins to move sound to the desired regions until all the sounds are placed accordingly. The next day Aaron went over the test with James and I sort of giving us a pre-quiz. This was a big help and cleared up alot of questions. Next week we take the final. The final consists of a mix and a written test. I am excited to see what song Aaron is going to pick for me to mix, and I am confident that I will do well on the test.