2 Channel Surround

Does anyone know of any good free (or cheap) virtual surround sound VST plugins? I used to use samplitude before I switched to reaper, and it had an inbuilt one on the pan knob (in advanced mode). It was really useful (if not amazingly convincing) and it's one of those things I miss. Any suggestions? it basically took a stero/mono input and gave you a room in which to position it in relation to the five speakers/listener. You move the sound source around including in front and behind any of the speakers and it recreated the effect through 2 channels.

These should help Steve

Ahhh, so many. Which one does a "virtual mix" (outputed on only 2 channels)? I can't figure it out.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for all the info DVDdoug, but I'm mixing for two channel (stereo) only. It'll never end up on a 5.1 system. Thanks for your links too jm duchenne. Unfortunately I can't seem to get onto . Must be a problem somewhere. The stuff at is more the kind of thing I'm after. However there doesn't seem to be any plugins where you can actually pan your sound around the 3d space. That's what I'm really after. Still, some very useful plugins there. I must give them a go some time. Any other suggestions? Jamie P.S. Thanks for bearing with me on this one, I'm probably not explaining myself very well.

Maybe is what you're after.

Hmmn, I thought about that. It looks pretty ideal, but I'm on a tight budget. :( Thanks though. I can't believe that there isn't a freeware alternative. It's such a useful little dialogue in samplitude.

afaik, samp's 2 channel surround is simply LCRS (pseudo prologic) encoding. as another poster is stated, mono center and rear surround signals are derived by the decoder from the left/right main channels. if you burn it to cd (with the 2-channel surround switch engaged, it simply puts a flag in the header that tells the receiver to turn on pro logic. otherwise, it's identical to a standard stereo cd. no encoded data is contained in the file itself. if you're monitoring two channel surround without center/surround speakers, and play it back on a surround system with pro logic engaged, you might be in for some nasty surprises. if you're just looking for a more 3-d stereo image, delve hard into reverb (mix and pre-delay levels/times in particular), and eq (distance/masking effects, and high-end rolloff). the only other program that i'm aware of with any sort of lcrs support for mix monitoring would be nuendo (by way of encoder/decoder plugins). kell

You may well be right. I never read up on samplitude's 2cs really. All I know is that it gave me a 3d space to move my sound source around in, and the results (played back through standard stereo monitors) sounded quite 3d (if not perfect). It was good enough for what I needed (which was to give people's voices a little depth and movemant in a scene). It could, as you suggest be a result of the prologic encoding, I don't know. But if you know of a plugin that produces a similar effect, that's what I'm after.

you could maybe try this: i don't know how well it works, but it might be worth a shot for $3. there were a few others, but none seem to be available anymore :( mine was just a cursory search, though. a more thorough search for 3-d panners might get you more hits :) k