I want to mix 7.1 music for BD Audio, where do I start?

[shadyJ]

Like the title says, I am interested in seeing what kind of music I can make for 7.1 surround sound systems. I am not new to two channel audio, but I have no idea where to begin with surround sound! To increase the difficulty, I am poor so I can not spend a lot of money. I know a lot of people mix and use protools for surround sound audio, but I just can not afford to buy pro-tools HD, that is over $2k. There has to be another way. I also looked at encoding audio for DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD, both the encoding programs for those are very expensive, well over $1k. So maybe I can use PCM audio.

How do I mix, master, encode and burn a 7.1 audio Blu Ray for not too much money? What am I going to need, and where do I start? I can spend a little bit of money, but not a whole lot. Is this even the right forum for this? Any help is appreciatted, if even only pointing me to a start point.

[Cornucopia]

You are doing audio, and want to do multi-channel audio at high quality, right?

If so, why Blu-ray? DVD-Video AND DVD-Audio both support multi-channel audio, particularly if you are giving priority to the audio tracks. Both LPCM & Hi-bitrate AC-3 or DTS, and in the case of DVD-Audio, MLP. And you can get at least ~2 1/2 hours worth, even with 6ch LPCM on a DVD (assuming muxed with low-bitrate still picture), much less the more economical compressed formats, so there is plenty of capacity. Why move to BD already?

Now, 7.1 is uncommon with DVD (though possible), but dude, you have to walk before you can run! Start with 5.1 and work your way up (the difference in the way of working/thinking is miniscule, but you have that many less tracks to have to corral).

First, I very much do recommend ProTools, but you DON'T need the HD version to get the job done here. The student version is $295USD, the full version is $699USD, AFAIK.
However, there are plenty of apps that are lower cost/free that you could start out with: Audacity, WavLab, Wavosaur are free (and support M-Ch). Plus you can easily get copies of SoundForge, Audition, Cubase, etc on eBay that are full-featured (though maybe not the MOST recent) and support M-Ch.

The problem as I see it for you is not going to be the editing, compression, authoring, burning or playing of the material, it's more in the simultaneous recording, and the mixing, panning and monitoring of the material. For that, you will probably need some good quality multichannel hardware. So maybe you should look into a used ProTools HD (or similar) rig after all...

Scott

[aedipuss]

used to be you could use the REAPER demo forever. don't know if it still works but worth a try. it can export multichannel wav.

[shadyJ]

I should have added I do have a few things. I can deal with tracks individually because I do have software and hardware for two channel sound, like I have older versions of sound forge, cubase, I have a pro-audio sound card and a 16 channel mixer.

As for 5.1 vs 7.1, I figure I might as well go straight up to 7.1 because the difference is not great. I will look into the links you guys gave me, thank you very much. I am sure I will have many questions in the future!