Manual

SR front panel
The four holes on the front panel are for level trims to adjust the balance between the
front speakers (controlled by ST) and the surround speakers. The order on the panel is
Left Rear, Right Rear, Center, and LFE.
The alignment procedure requires the procurement of a Sound Pressure Level meter and a
pink noise generator. There have been many attempts to come up with a practical
alignment that covers all the different manufacturer’s methods of properly aligning a
surround system. Sometimes there is conflicting information. In our work at Sterling
Sound, the principals at Dangerous Music have tried to define an alignment standard that
satisfies the requirements for mastering in a surround environment while accommodating
the sometimes conflicting information available to do so. As such, we believe that we
have a pretty good procedure but are certain that some people would disagree with certain
aspects. Such is the state of the art in surround facility setup these days. The only
suggestion we can offer is to set the system up as described here and tweek it according
to your studio requirements, good judgment, and experience.
Run pink noise into all 6 channels and solo the Left Front. Adjust the volume to obtain an
spl of roughly 80 dB at the listening position. Solo the Center channel and adjust the 3
rd
pot on SR to read the same. Solo the Rear Left and Right channels one at a time and
adjust similarly. Solo the sub and adjust it for a level roughly 6 dB down from the others.
This puts the energy band of 20-200 Hz in approximately the same magnitude as the
other speakers. The spl meter should be measuring level in the ‘Flat’ or ‘C’ mode
weighting.
Play some surround DVDs that you are familiar with and tweak sub levels to taste. One
will notice that Sub levels differ with format, type of work (movies, multi-channel audio,
Dolby or DTS, etc.) and mastering facility preference room configuration and sub
placement. This results from the differing standards and the issue of who is correct is
difficult to rectify as of this date. The Audio Engineering Society has taken a stab at
defining the issues.
http://www.aes.org/technical/documents/AESTD1001.pdf
The Recording Academy has also made an attempt at defining the setup of surround
equipment. There are differences in these two attempts mainly in the proper setup of
subwoofer levels (specifically, the 10 dB boost in some home theater sound decoders)
and channel assignment (easily rearranged in the DAW I/O routing setup).
http://www.grammy.com/pe_wing/5_1_Rec.pdf
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