What is the best way to switch my stereo project to a 5.1 project?
I did a project in stereo and now the client wants a 5.1 mix (no upmix, but a dedicated 5.1 mix).
The way I think to do it, is to delete the stereo groups/FX channels and stereo output and replace them by 5.1 groups/FX channels and a 5.1 output and re-route everything and them re-mix everything to 5.1.
But is it OK to delete all stereo busses and replace them by 5.1 busses or will this corrupt the project?
There are 2 ways I use.
The main one is to basically set things up so that all projects are “5.1” but with the addition of Child Busses.
This allows you to do the stereo by setting the routing to the Stereo child buss, and switch to 5.1 when ready to go up in channel count.
The second option is to set everything up as a 5.1 again, and when you have got all your audio tracks imported, select the whole lot, hit Q-Link & open a panner and make sure you set the centre channel divergence all the way to 100 to route a mono track to L/R instead of centre. This is the better way for me as it allows easy 5.1 creation from the stereo.
FX channels & group channels can be problematic, but with groups again set to 5.1 & just use the first 2 channels of them - rendering the mixdown is as easy as telling it to just use stereo L/R interleaved. FX tracks? There are very, very few genuine 5.1 effect plugins & sadly most seem to use global parameters so are pretty hopeless so I tend to use 2 instances in a 5.1 group/FX channel, and open the routing editor to get them where they need to be. It works well enough for me.
Happy to try & give more details if needs be - please just let me know or reply here