Calling all bass management surround sound gurus
 

I'm trying to get my surround mixing setup to professional levels as I have a project I'm working on that requires my 5.1 mix to be ready for theatrical and commercial DVD release.

My current setup is Vegas 6 using a e-mu 1820 M card - Vegas audio preferences are set to "enable Low Pass Filter on LFE with a cut-off of 120hz" .

I'm running unbalanced out from e-mu to a Panasonic SA-XR25 Surround Sound Receiver that has usual setting for speakers (large, small) and a variable cutoff (100-150hz) but these DO NOT apply on the 5 channel analog input I am using. Nor can you adjust the speaker levels etc.

I have 4 Athena technologies bookshelf speakers, 1 Athena technologies center channel and the Athena Channel sub with crossover set to 80hz(recommended by Athena for this config in home theater environment).

The question is - can I make this work for critical surround mixing? I believe I'm losing bass info below 120 on the 5 main channel because their is no bass management in the speaker/receiver setup to account for my small bookshelf speaker size.

Help is much appreciated...

If your reciever/amp doesn't have cutoff for bookshelf speakers you might be getting more bass rather than less. What this will sound like is anyone's guess, but small speakers usually don't respond well to LF so I'm guessing there would be distortion in the low end. Can you make this work? Well like anything else in audio, that's a pretty wide open question. Personally, a consumer amp and bookshelf speakers wouldn't be my first choice for "critical" listening. But it also wouldn't be the first time I couldn't excersise my first choice. :-) What does it sound like?? I usually play stuff I know the sound of through a new monitor setup. Use that as a reference, make changes as you think neccessary.

Sometimes I do use a BlueSky BMC driving an array of self powered Genelec 10" monitors and a Genelec sub. I don't think too many mixers would be totally unhappy with that...as a rule I like Tannoy speakers too...

BTW, thanks for setting the LP on the LFE. Getting tired of hearing full range sent to the LFE channel as I monitor a lot of stuff pre-encoding (and pre LP) and it drives my sub nuts.

I found that Outlaw Audio makes a BMC for around $250, but I think I'm going to sell my setup and get the Blue Sky Mediadesk instead.