5.1 Surround Sound in DaVinci Resolve 16 | Tutorial

Watching this video in 2023 in 5.1 which YT now supports on a Chromecast with Google TV / Samsung TV / Onkyo decoder and there is basically no audio for your speech. (Only when you manually pan to left/right/center/rear.) I have to disable 5.1 surround in YT to hear you.

Excellent. Thank you!

when i open Bus Format i am getting Bus 1 not Main one and I am not finding the above option like Main Sub Aux. can u help me plz why it is happening ? I am using resolve 18.5...Even i am not getting save option when i am in the Bus Assign....I dont understand ami doing somthing wrong or it is reslove glitch.plz help me

Jason, two questions (1) other videos that provide instructions in this reference the SETTINGS of Davinci (System > Video and Audio I/O) and setting monitor speaker configuration to 5.1. Do you know what the difference is between you doing it this way and doing it in the settings? Also, other videos reference changing the track type to 5.1 (not sure why or if that matters whereas you set yours to Mono). (2) Have you used plugins like Waves UM226 or NUGEN Halo Upmix? If so, do I need to follow your same instructions or does it handle all of the routing?

I am working on delivering a movie and the audio guy supplied me the multiple mono and a stereo mix as that’s required on the delivery. I’m new to all of this but for the LFE what should I set the boom to? Or do I even need to since the audio guy already mixed everything and I’m just mapping the channels.

​ @Jason Yadlovski I downloaded your final file and tried in a 5.1 Home Theater System... there's is no sound on rear speakers, just on FL, FR and Center when it's supposed to. What am I missing?

Thank you so much for this video, it has been very helpful

Can you do surround sound in the free version?

Your videos are great!! You explain everything so clearly! Thank you so much for the effort you put into your productions and sharing your knowledge 🥰

How do you work with stereo music tracks with this setup? If you want the music in all 4 speakers? Do you have to split it up into 4 mono tracks?

That's a great one!! I want to play with sound design now! Great video, very clear even for a french speaker. Cheers from France, I just subscribed to your channel :)

Just discovered 2 easy ways to add an LFE without having a dedicated track:

1. Turn on the LFE in any of the channels you want to generate the effect. Set appropriate volume levels for the effect. Then add the LFE filter to your 5.1 buss. The LFE buss filter gives you control over the effect globally.

2. Create an LFE buss, then send each of the channels to that buss and route that buss to the 5.1 buss. Add EQ to the LFE buss that acts like a low pass filter. Then add the LFE filter. But in essence this is a bit redundant: the other channels with automatically route to the 5.1 buss as long as you have the LFE turned on in their pan settings as in method #1.

In either case, you can use the channel controls to automate the boom (LFE) levels any individual channel, which in effect, gives you the ability to turn it on and off as well.

You can have a dedicated LFE channel if you need it, or if it makes the sound design easier for you to understand. It also makes it possible to add fx, eq, etc. to individual sound clips.

Even if you leave it empty, it's probably a good idea to have an LFE channel, just to keep things clear about your 5.1 layout. Otherwise you can't use the group/ungroup track to quickly assign pans.

Your tutorial really made me think about this. Thanks.

Thanks! Great tutorial. You hit all the basics and a lot of them are tricky. I've been doing the Davinci tutorials, which are much more extended, and you did a great job of summarizing the critical information, especially about creating the busses and assigning the channels.

I have a 5.1 system and I actually managed to creat an LFE track for your tutorial. First, I cut up your download and put the clips in their proper places on the other 5 channels and set up the panning. Then I copied all the clips onto the LFE track, selected the proper clip attributes and used the eq for the LFE track to emphasize the low frequencies and push down the higher ones. I pushed up the levels on some clips and left most of them alone. There's almost always low frequency information in a recording like this one; to create an LFE track you just have to filter it a bit and bring up the levels. Then, I turned on the LFE in the pan control for the LFE channel and cranked it up. Finally I used the LFE filter on the 5.1 bus to add a bit of control there and fiddled with the levels to make sure I didn't exceed -2.0 TP.

Thanks again.

An insanely useful lesson. I would like you to show in another video the difference between a Fixed Bus and a Flexible Bus

Jason, I can't get my panner window to show in my mixer, and the panner option is chosen. Please help. Thx!

Hi Jason. Great video , thanks! I download
a lot of you tube rock concerts and i do stereo to 5.1 conversions using Fairlight as a hobby to play in my Home theater. What kind of eq's do you recommend for center channel as well as LR mains? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

I hope everyone one else becos successful because I’m not

Really well explained !!!!

When watching this video on my 5.1/7.1 channel setup, I can't hear you talk until you are sending to one discreet channel. For example, during your intro and initial speech, I don't hear a thing. When you start mentioning only hearing from center or panning to left/right, I hear where it's supposed to be. Then after that, nothing again.

What is going on? I really want to watch and hear this lol.

I had to watch this on my phone because I didn't get any audio through my amp for my TV, only a little bit when you moved the sound around.

Mi pregunta es ¿cómo hago sonar el 5.1 hacia mi equipo de audio ( home theather ) una interface, pero cuál ?

I've been really struggling to get 5.1 to work as I expect it too.
It's easy enough for the mono dialogue to be played on the center track and be faded to FL/FR via automation or the pan controls. However, I could never figure out how to make my also mono SFX not appear on the center speaker and only on FL/FR or RL/RR. If panned to the front, it will also always come out of the center.
Do you happen to know how to fix this?

Thanks Jason. This is a great tutorial. I recently got a short film I'd previously mixed in stereo into a film festival and must now make it 5.1. So this video is timely. Question. Stupid question. Originally, when I mixed my audio tracks, I had multiple tracks, like 9 for different characters, SFX, foley, etc. I'd like to have dialogue, foley, and fx coming through the center channel. I know how to use the pan tool to move those audio tracks to the center in a 5.1 mix. But, here's the stupid question, do I need to mix those three separate tracks into one track then assign the combined track as my center channel? Or, can I leave them as separate tracks and pan each of them individually to the center channel so they all come out of the same speaker. I need to deliver a 5.1 mix. But, not sure if me leaving them as separate tracks on my end will result in something being wonky on the DCP end???

VERY helpful!

Your explanation was better than the 1 hour davinci video i just watched. but combining what you did in laymen terms and their technical expertise gives me a good grasp on how this works.. thanks great great great stuff...

great video!
can you please share where do you get the sound of the transitions in this video

great work.Thank you.

Saved my life with this one Jason <3

Hey, why can't I but the audio bitrate above 192kb/s when selecting AAC?

Awesome tutorial, there is a more convenient way to do this however that you should do an update tutorial on. If you check on the Dolby Atmos box in the settings and set your track to Dolby Atmos 5.1 or 7.1 and open the track properties in Fairlight you eliminate the need for multiple tracks. The single track is spilt into 5 or 7 tracks that you can control within the properties of the track itself, then you can check off the speakers you want. This helps your workflow and frees up a lot of space on your timeline. This way, if you have a big project with 50 audio tracks it won’t multiply it by 5 or 7.

Thank you for this wonderful video! It really helped and made such a difference!!!

At first thanks for this great explanation but i have a question
How can i mix up my 2.1 sound to 5.1?
I separated my 2.1 in left and right but when i copy it now in davinci resolve its logically still just left and right
How can I integrate left- and right- surround so that it doesn't sound 100 procent exactly like left and right?

I swear to god, the amount of times I get lost doing this, only to realise my stupid ass keeps forgetting there's a Fairlight tab on the BOTTOM of the screen, and I have to go tutorial hunting to figure out what I screwed up.
Every time I'm like "oh yeah, dumbass, it's at the bottom" and then I forget about it overnight anyway.

I also never done/learned this, much appreciation for the Demo Jason!!!

Would be really cool in the export page if you could select codecs such as Dolby or DTS but unfortunately Davinci doesn’t have them 😞

Thank youu very much.

Can we seperate bgm from movie dialogues

Is the paning of each channel necessary – do they not automatically get panned to the correct speaker when you link them up as a 5.1 group?

As a beginner this is teaching some seriously flawed fundamentals. Tracks are generally not organized like this when editing. Best practice is to track out by contents like Dialogue, Music and FX. Then just pan those tracks to left/right and surrounds in the panner. Mapping out each track like this this early is a really restricting method and I think could really hurt a beginner trying to learn the skill set here.

Hi, Could you please do the same turorial in 17.2 version, Controls are little different, and bus assign is confusing because in 17.2 it is showing bus send, bus out, and volume isn't coming out in 5.1. Thanks Brother...

Thank you for posting all this help. I am importing a 5.1 mix, and it turns into one track of audio. I put the track to 5.1 and can hear it but it doesn't break out into multiple tracks. Is it possible that the track can open up to the 5.1 as it was put together? thank you!!

If you have a discrete center channel, would you send that to your 'surround' main because it isn't front left or front right?

Is the stereo output Lt Rt when downmixing?

THIS IS GREAT ,THANKS A LOT FOR SHARE THIS

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks

Excellent video - I was wondering why my 5.1 was being rendered as stereo. Thanks for your help!