There is a trend in multi-channel music mixing to mix in 5.0. Several recording industry magazines have recommended doing this.

After all, the whole concept of a mono LFE channel is a movie thing. When it was created, absolutely no thought was given to it's use in a purely music mixing context.

The prevailing thinking is that the low bass be put into the 5 channels as needed, and those with 5 full range speakers will get nice spatial information all the way down into the low bass region. Those with small speakers and a sub will be using bass management, and the bass from the various speakers will get routed to the sub.

They are reasoning that the content of the sub in these systems with small satellites can be determined by the user as they set up their bass management, for their particular room. This is preferrable to a "one size fits all" crossover into the LFE channel below a certain frequency done by the person who mixes the music. In other words, this transfers control of the content of the sub to the user, verses the mixing engineer.

When I have mixed music soundtracks in multi-channel, I always use 5.0. Determining just what to put into a dedicated LFE channel is very messy, as you never know where the sub will be relative to the mains, what the low pass will be and what the polarity will be relative to the other speakers. If I low pass the bass from a particular instrument and put it into the LFE track, my low pass might not coincide with the low pass in the end user's system. There will either be a bass hole or more likely a bass hump because of an overlap from the user's bass management. I can see why the LFE is an "odd man out" in a music context.

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited April 11, 2003).]