Surround Mixing in Stereo Formats

[tygrus2000]

I came across this plug in that supposedly allows you to encode panning/surround effects into a normal stereo mix. On a 4 speaker stereo system like your car or when your receiver is put in DSP 5.1 stereo, you will have surround type effects to each individual speaker. On a 2 stereo speaker system you will just hear the mix the same but without the effects. Might be an interesting way to make sure everyone can hear the audio portion of disc but still keeping it in surround. I could see some interesting uses of this.

http://www.sonicengineering.com/lcrs_encoder_panner_plugins.html

Here is an excerpt:

With over 33 million surround sound decoder's worldwide
Why are you still mixing in Stereo?
Surround sound - It's not just for film anymore!

It used to be panning could only be done with expensive hardware, now the same results can be achieved using software, for thousands less.

There is no specialized hardware to buy. If you own Adobe Premiere, Cool Edit Pro, SAWPro, Cubase VST, or any Two-Track DirectX application you shouldn't be without the PanHandler.

The PanHandler is a surround sound panner and encoder in a single plug-in. It can be used to pan and encode sound files in surround. These surround encoded files can then be placed into a normal stereo mix consisting of stereo music and dialog. Currently the PanHandler is available for Adobe Premiere (Win and MAC), Cubase VST (Win and soon for MAC), DirectX, SAW32, SAWPlus32, SAWPRO, and Cool Edit Pro.

Tygrus

[Kurt S]

I'm not sure I would spend $100 for it. If you have Cool Edit Pro, you can acomplish the same thing with the built-in Stereo Field Rotation effect. The Expand Stereo Field option will also create the effect to somewhat.

They also didn't say how this process works and what type of surround setup is needed. Does this work on Dolby ProLogic II, or one of the crappy surround effects that recievers may have? It certainly won't work in a car with 4 speakers since most system set up in cars just have 2 speakers for the left and 2 for the right. There is no way to decode the information in that type of configuration.

Save you money for real surround encoders like Minnetonka's DTS encoder or Dolby Digital, don't waste your hard earned cash on this junk.