Daniel Pellerin is a Toronto-based Genie and Gemini Award-winning sound supervisor, rerecording mixer, music supervisor and contractor. Recent credits for Daniel Pellerin Digital Sound Productions include the dramatic features Where the Truth Lies by Atom Egoyan, Lie with Me by Clement Virgo, and the third season of the comedy TV series Puppets Who Kill.

Who would have imagined that this past year would have yielded so many positive technological advances for sound mixing long-form projects, in both the 5.1 digital theatrical format and 5.1 HD for broadcast. Blending the proven strengths of traditional mixing techniques with the convenience and flexibility that new technology provides offers us the best of both worlds.

As the technical complexity of projects has increased, it became abundantly clear that properly setup, modern 5.1 digital mixing facilities were needed and the operating capabilities of mixing systems had to be increased. Mixers were burning up and on the edge, running out of DSP in a hurry.

The current tool of choice for most studios is the Pro Tools|HD 3 system, powered by an Apple G5 computer and at least one core HD card plus two HD Accel cards, run in conjunction with a ProControl mixing surface. For additional DSP, one need only add more Accel cards to an extension chassis for the G5, until you have sufficient DSP for the system of your dreams.

A number of audio shops have leapt into the Pro Tools universe, including Toronto’s Theatre D Digital, Spence-Thomas Audio, Crunch Recording Group and Kitchen Sync, Vancouver’s Leo Sound, and Edmonton’s Blackman Productions, and they have set up their facilities in a similar manner.

For the freelance mixer, this uniformity bodes well for adapting your working style to newly evolving technologies. It creates a familiarity between different studios and certainly facilitates moving around.

Having access to a well-thought-out hybrid studio provides a flexible mix/conform environment that works intelligently, from loading tracks/sessions to creating mixing templates and accessing audio plug-ins (audio processing software within your computer).

The result is that the mixer and client can flow smoothly through the process to achieve an accurately balanced, properly executed 5.1 mix that translates properly to all other formats.

The system should be set up to provide a proper output for separate stems (narration and voice-over/dialogue/music/effects) and print masters in 5.1 digital, the Dolby Surround-encoded format and AC-3-encoded 5.1 for DVDs.

Mixing season three of Puppets Who Kill at Spence-Thomas was a breeze, since the show opening was common to all 13 episodes and the mix setup was identical. Owner Richard Spence-Thomas was diligent in creating a comprehensive template with all the appropriate plug-ins, a properly set gain structure, and a properly adjusted monitoring chain through the MultiMAX for all the speaker configurations (5.1, Dolby Surround encode/decode, stereo and mono for large and small monitors).

He also set up proper metering throughout the chain for both mixing and mastering outputs. And the show opening was copied automatically with our weekly template for each mix. Simple and quite elegant. 

Long-form sound mixing has vastly improved in the last year also because of the advances in picture projection quality in both theaters and studios.

In the not-so-distant past, when film projection took a back seat to video projection, the deterioration in quality of the projected image in most mixing theaters was mind-boggling. The projected image was a mere afterthought.

To compound the problem, nonlinear digital image carriers were introduced, and digital offline images, which were already compressed, needed to be compressed further in order to be digitized, creating a projected image that was decomposing before our very eyes – muddy, grainy and lacking any detail whatsoever.

But improvements in digital picture projection and digital capture technology have brought about much-needed changes in sound post-production. The image we now work with in the studio is almost as good as the final print projection, and far superior to any of the video formats we had to deal with in the past.

The newest projectors even allow you to select the aspect ratio, adding a new level of precision to our sound work. The crispness and fullness of the image allows the mixer to relate to the space and distance surrounding objects and people on the screen. In short, it places you in the image without having to strain for definition and detail.

On the mixes for Where the Truth Lies and Lie with Me, which we mixed with John Hazen at Theatre D, the Christie projector and properly color-graded digital image made the overall picture quality breathtaking and made mixing the projects such a joy.

Also, the shop having upgraded its mixing computers to G5s allowed us to do temp mixes with premixed dialogue and group ADR prepared for both projects.

Once finished that stage, we saved our sessions as final mixes, yet were still able to add new material to those sessions before proceeding to the actual final mixes. All that we approved in the temp was saved for the final, and the effort spent on the temps saved us ample time for finessing the final mix. Both mixes benefited greatly from these approaches.

Such technological advancements have improved sound mixing conditions immensely. The quality of our work has been elevated by allowing us to concentrate on what matters most – the creative process.