posted 16 March 2010 07:20            

My system will be fairly ad hoc at first, because I'm not investing in studio monitors straight away, or monitors which match my stereo ones. I'm using some old speakers (with a hi fi amp) which are pretty good quality but un-marked, so I don't even know what make/model they are.

I only have 4 of them, plus a sub. I initially thought of setting up these 4 as the front and surround, and then another speaker for as the centre. However because the sound will be very different through the centre, the system may not be tonally balanced. So I'm wondering if it might be better just to use 4.1, so the front and back speakers are the same, with no centre speaker? (I might also try with the rogue centre speaker, listen through a lot of reference material and see if it's going to sound reasonable).

I understand Kyma can translate easily between any surround format (in fact I think I can even do this on Logic Pro now, haven't tried it yet). However, as an example I believe the dialogue is usually in the centre speaker, apart from panning effects? If I were to work on a mix to picture in 4.1 but had to deliver the mix in 5.1, is there any way I'd be able to "standardise" it so the dialogue just comes through the centre speaker once it's translated? Otherwise I guess it's impossible to produce a standard 5.1 mix on a 4.1 system, even though Kyma can translate between them? I may have several misconceptions about this because I'm completely new to surround, but any advice would be appreciated, thanks!