Well I rebooted into the Wonderful World of Windows (NOT)... Love Vegas HATE Windows and I did originally have it wrong... still I edited the original post so now it is correct.

I have a Digi002R audio interface as my audio output running ASIO drivers for Vegas and when I set it up correctly for other programs, both PC and Mac I then have to do this in Vegas Options/Preferences/Audio Device

Front Left Right = Output 1/2
Surround (rear) Left/Right = Output 5/6
Centre/LFE = Output 3/4

So if you get the connections correct it should sound the same playing from the timeline in Vegas and after it is encoded to ac3 (Dolby Digital)

New Hope Media

I'd echo newhope's advice - I'm guessing that as he says you have your replay system misconfigured somehow.

However, as a check on where the problem lies (i.e. encoding or playing back) you might like to render out a short sample AC3 containing just isolated channels, preferably sequential in time. (For example, 2 seconds of just FL followed by 2 secs of just FR, then 2 secs SL, then 2 secs SR, then 2 secs of C (and finally perhaps 2 secs of LFE). Then you could post the AC3 file somewhere where we could download it and confirm for you that it is at least encoded correctly. If so, as I suspect, then you will know that the problem lies in your replay chain somewhere.

Mark

In my occasional 5.1 projects, I found that my soundcard setup on the computer running Vegas was extremely critical. As I remember, I never did get it exactly right. If you haven't done this, you should definitely do a test in Vegas where you put 100% directed into one channel and then play that from the timeline and make sure you don't get anything in any of the other channels. Repeat for each channel. When I first did this, I was still getting 20% in other channels.

As to reversal, I am 100% certain that this is not Vegas, but is exactly as the other posters have already indicated. Hopefully that will be an easy fix.

Ignorant question..... if you produce an Mpeg2 file with 5.1 Surround, and that file is then copied to a DVC-Pro tape which is played on a broadcast station, does the 5.1 audio mix remain?

I've heard it explained both ways. 1). I would retain a 5.1 mix because the stereo downmix contains information in it that the home receiver decodes, and 2). You must be all digital with a 5.1 stream embedded in the video for it to work.

Who is telling me the right story? : )

There is a subtlety to the surround panner which a number of people here including me didn't get and were asking Sony for support on for a long time that recently got cleared up.

This is if you are keyframing your surround panning. Both the key frames (show automation controls on) panning and the "trim" (show automation controls off) are in series.

I thought that if I was keyframing the surround mix and had show automation on that was the only control over the panning. Not so. Turn off show automation controls and make sure your basic trim is the way you want it. For me that is each speaker hard panned into a corner. You also have to set the center channel level and mix mode (eg. constant power or 0 dB or ...) to get the levels the way you want between the center and LF/RF speakers.

At the same time you can be checking to make sure your system is hooked up correctly as the posts above suggest.

Then you can turn on automation controls and it will behave correctly.

I'm not sure where to begin here. 1st of all, Thank you for the responses.
I stayed up until 5 in the morning when I posted that, and am now just waking up.
I've spent most of my life pretending to be a Musician. (meaning I work a lot of low paying crumby jobs for the few paying music gigs I can get) So, I don't even have a 5.1 system for my own enjoyment, but I own two for the computer and mixing. The better, M-Audo LX4 system, started blowing fuses at about 1-2 months after setting it up, so I switched to my cheapo Creative Inspire 6.1 (set up as 5.1)and it seems to work. But I have to do everything from my computer, including using PowerDVD to playback 5.1 mixes, since Vegas won't. The one thing I've learned to do in my life, is double check audio connections. And I did so again, just now. I also have the Good Ol' Realtek sound manager, that will send tones to each speaker, including the sub woofer, to let me know if they are connected right. (Yeah, I know, what's Realtek?) The tones come out of each speaker right and their Bee and music fly around my head.
The interesting thing is, when I play back my ac3s, they sort of sound right, as long as my head is positioned right, but if I put my ear up to the center channel it's the Bass Isolated, and the Drums and Voice are on the right. But f I'm sitting in the right position, it almost simulates the sound, like what I was trying to do. (which is why I keep accusing Dolby of re-mixing)
Now, I'm using 20 year old, Live 4 track recordings of a band I had at the time, and technically, my guitar bleeds thru the drum and vocals, anyway, So they're not absolutely discreet recordings on each channel. But the Bass is coming from the line output of the Bass amp and it is fairly discreet. (those Peavey amps compressed the Bass so much, the volume would drop and hardly any bleed thru on Drum and Vocal channels
My guitar track is almost completely isolated but the guitar bleeds to the center (or Drum & Vocal on 4 track) channel on the original recording and the Bass is supposed to bleed the low end to the sub woofer on the ac3, there is no actual LFE, just the Bass low registers that are below the frequency cut-off. I thought it would be interesting to set up each channel discreetly, to get a unique playback. I originally planned to mix in a normal fashion, but I wanted to test my theories about Digital Dolby, remixing again.
The only thing I can't test is "PowerDVD", which is my only playback source for 5.1 right now. I've gone thru their settings and I don't see anyway to test it. I don't own normal DVD releases of Movies, but I do own a few Music DVDs. I just never playback in 5.1 and I hate watching DVDs on a computer, unless I HAVE to. So, it may take me a while to go thru the few I own and see if I can detect a problem with the way PowerDVD handles things.
If my other DVD players had 1/8 inch, stereo jacks, I'd try hooking them up thru my 5.1 system to test that way. I don't have the adapters to do that.
I have a half million things I have to do today, so it may take me a while to get back to this, tonight.
Dang, there is one other thing I forgot about and that's my Audio Device settings. I have to use the "Direct Sound Surround Mapper" as it's the only thing that shows
Left/Right Front
Left/RIght Rear
Center/LFE
BUT! I can't access them, they look grayed out. (yes, my Vegas is legit) Except for my center speaker causing me headaches, my 4.1 mixes worked using this, but maybe this is my problem??? (even the Microsoft Sound Mapper is grayed out in the surround section)
I tried, about a month ago, finding new drivers for 5.1 with Realtek, and had no luck. If I switch the Audio Device Type to WIndows Classic Wave Driver, it will show Realtek AC97 Audio in each window (NOT grayed out), but says nothing about assigning to L/R front, L/R rear Cen/LFE
But I had forgotten about this "not being able to access the drop-downs using the "Direct Sound Surround Mapper"
I have to hurry now, please don't suggest expensive solutions, I can't even do cheap ones right now.
Thank you so much for answering. Sorry have to rush, now.

MarkWWWW - Thanks, where can I post some audio 5.1 for download and do you want any original source too? It may take me a day to get it done as today is busy.
bastinado - I haven't entered the realm of keyframing 5.1, but that nightmare will come someday. This is supposed to be a very simple, straight transfer from wave to ac3
I'm already getting the feeling it's either PowerDVD or the grayed out "Direct Sound Surround Mapper"

I do a lot of 5.1 work and I don't have the issues you do. Not only do I playback my ac3 files for testing but I also drag them into Adobe Audition for a visual inspection as well and the encoding is almost always pretty close to what I have on the time line.... so I doubt Vegas is your problem.

I will say though that if you want TOTALLY discrete channels then instead of just setting for "inf"... you should be MUTING the speakers you don't wish to emit sound on a given track. You do this by left clicking on the speaker you want to mute and it will turn a dark gray.

I will also say that I gave up on using the PRO ac3 encoder.... it tends to adjust my levels according to what IT wants and not what I want (probably more my fault for not fully understanding the wealth of pro settings). The studio ac3 encoder I think does a better job at replicating what you have on the time line.

Can anyone help me with this as well.
I have two computers running into one sony 5.1 prologic II/ DTS stereo.
My sound cards are: SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio
I have mini jack - RCA Y cable going from - front out to L/ R in on the stereo.
I was told that the Pro-Logic would then break the sound into it's seperate and appropriate channels.
If I play a DVD on the computers, the sound sounds to be in 5.1.
I haven't done the THX test though.
If I do a 3D sound test from the sound card control interface... it obviously only does L/R because it's only hooked into the front output.
In Vegas... unless I specifically set my project to individual buses for front, back, centre, and sub I can't 100% control where the sound is going in the surround panner for previewing while editing.
Even then I get bleed into all audio channels.
Am I doing something wrong here? I want to be able to hear exactly what my final mix will sound like. Before I render and preview on home theatre.
What do I need to do? I don't want to do all the buses.
I should be able to say this track I want on centre only - (clicking all speakers off on the surround panner but centre) Fronts - clicking all off but fronts) - I do this and I still get bleed.

Geez...

I don't know what you people are doing but I assure you Vegas is NOT the issue.

Here's a screen grab... The left side is the Vegas time line before a AC3 render. The right side is the resultant AC3 render broken down into individual wav files in Adobe Audition. As you can see, the files are pretty close to identical before and after the render. The only difference is that the channel levels have been adjusted by the encoder (the studio encoder). You will note that there is no bleeding of signals over into other channels.

http://forums.pinnaclesys.com/forums/storage/143/170425/Compare.jpg

that is a good test to do.
I am quite confident that within vegas it is doing it's job.
My problem though is in playback within the project. When I isolate the speakers like you have. I can turn off the fronts and center but yet the sound that is suppose to be coming from the rear speakers is coming through the front 3 still.
How do I get around this.
I suppose I could have got a 5.1 "computer speaker" package from logitech, however I chose to go through a stereo because I have two computers sharing the sound. There is no setting on the sound card to "put out to a stereo reciever".

Alright, I think I found the culprit. (emphasis on 'think')
As I said in my last post, I never play DVDs on the computer, besides my own. So, my DVD software is OEM that came with my computer and they made the mistake of making me waste my time, just like DVDit did with my last computer. As with my last computer, the software will be uninstalled and I'll find a different manufacturer and they will get my business.
Every professional disc I tried to play in 5.1, would only play on the front 3 speakers. Yet it allowed mine to play, I'm guessing wrong, but all 5 speakers did play and it did sort of sound like Surround. So, once I'm absolutely certain, it's GOODBYE PowerDVD. So, that also raises the question, how come my disc came thru all 5 speakers, yet my Pro discs, would only play on the front 3? On my homemade disc, the surround speakers were actually the ones that sounded normal.
Why can't these stupid OEM software companies just have a Pop up that say's YOU MUST UPGRADE? I wasted a month. And I'm still not 100% sure that it's swapping my center and right front speakers, but that's what seems to be happening. I"ve only been home for an hour and I still need to confirm some things, but I can't tell you how much this really pi$$es me off.
You should have seen me back at the beginning of my computing days(2003), when DVDit would only allow me to make DVDs in the worst quality and nothing would tell me why. I called Pioneer, the supplier of the OEM software, and they kept shrugging their shoulders about it and finally one day, one salesman told me to download a free trial from Ulead. Well everything came together and although I"ve heard DVDit is very good, they will never receive a dollar from me. I spent almost 3 months trying to burn a decent DVD and they all looked terrible. Ulead saved my sanity and a year and a half later I found Vegas 4.

Blink, I didn't know about graying out the speakers. Thanks for that info. I will try that too. DId you use Wave hammer on your ac3 in the jpeg? The center and LFE look normal but the corner speakers look like the dynamics have been crushed. I can't see my ac3, but I imagine the same thing has happened. My ac3 waveforms, in DVD-A, look LOUD.

Maybe, my mix is okay, now I just have to find out.

L8R, you will need 5.1 set up to hear it right, but my problems are not solved yet, so don't listen to me.

"DId you use Wave hammer on your ac3 in the jpeg? "

No wav hammer. The encoding was done raw with no filters at all. The finished wav files are within the proper range, but just amplified by about 3db. This is one thing I HAVE noticed about both the encoders.... they DO play with your levels (the pro encoder more so than the studio encoder) so you do have to watch for this.

I can't stress the importance of proper hardware for the 5.1 work. And if you happen to have any fancy filters and such on your sound card switched on, you will surely screw up your encoding and/or your playback.

I use the SoundBlaster x-fi Elite Pro sound card which has an "audio creation" mode that allows me to take maximum advantage of its ASIO2 capacity. And instead of microsoft sound mapper I will use the ASIO drivers

"My problem though is in playback within the project. When I isolate the speakers like you have. I can turn off the fronts and center but yet the sound that is suppose to be coming from the rear speakers is coming through the front 3 still."

This is almost certainly a hardware issue. Check to make SURE you're not using some kind of filter on your sound card that mimics 5.1 audio. My sound card has a feature to expand stereo to 5.1 for non 5.1 recordings.

> MarkWWWW - Thanks, where can I post some audio 5.1 for download and do you want any original source too?

If you have a website of your own you could upload it there. If not, you could use one of the free file-sharing facilities like yousendit.

All it would need would be the 5.1 AC3 file. If you do it so that the audio moves around the channels sequentially as I described it will be easy for anyone who is interested enough oi download it to determine if it is encoded correctly.

Mark

ProLogic is a more sophisticated version of the older Dolby Surround analog matrix system. It encodes 4-channel surround into a single stereo pair and can only be used with a suitable decoder. Neither PL nor DS are true discrete 5.1 surround schemes and they are not usable with Vegas (at least not without an awful lot of jiggery pokery).

To monitor the kind of discrete 5.1 surround that Vegas does you need a soundcard with at least 6 analog outputs (typically configured as three stereo pairs) feeding a replay system with a separate 6-channel (5.1) analog input.

After encoding to AC3 (Dolby Digital) 5.1, to replay the file you will need suitable playing software (typically your DVD playing software), a digital output from your soundcard that can carry a Dolby Digital bitstream and a replay system with a Dolby Digital 5.1 input.

Without all of these in place and correctly configured you are not going to be able to monitor or playback the suround audio properly and you will just be working blind (or rather deaf).

It sounds to me as though your soundcard is not suitable for use with surround in Vegas. I thnk what you are hearing is just the ProLogic decoder "faking" it.

Mark

I know this is TGS's forum post and I don't mean to steal the emphasis from his postings but when I read his I thought, oh there's another question I have.

What sound cards would people reccomend to allow me to properly put out to a stereo receiver that I use as I am editing? (this is to hear while editing not post)

I'll look into the soundblaster one, for sure but is there any others other then the one that came with my computer.
I was going to customize that one too but the people that built the computer said there was no need.
But I see a need to do something. there aren't that may options on the soundcard setup. There is stereo speakers, stereo headphones, 5.1, 7.1 speaker setup.
However, going into a stereo receiver I would have to do multichannel for that and it doesnt' have that.

If the soundcard you already have can be configured for 5.1 output then you would need to set it up in that mode. You will then need a suitable 5.1 channel replay system with a 6-channel (5.1) analog input which you will connect to the soundcard using 3 leads (1 carries FL&FR, 2 carries SL&SR, and 3 carries C&LFE). The connectors are typically colour-coded Green (FL&FR), Blue (SL&SR) and Pink (C&LFE).That will take care of the monitoring side of things to allow you to mix your surround material to your liking. And once you are happy with the mix you can render it to a 5.1 AC3 file.

But if you want to replay the AC3 file you will need a different arrangement - some playing software, and a digital connection to the Dolby Digital decoder in your 5.1 surround replay system.

Mark

Response to an earlier question by Sony PCH (Peter):


"To mix a 5.1 project in Vegas you do not need a card that supports 5.1 playback. You need a card that has 6 physical outputs. You map these to the specific channels in Vegas' Audio Device preferences page according to how you have the outputs of your hardware connected to speakers.

"To mix a 5.1 project in Vegas you do not need a card that supports 5.1 playback. "

You don't need a sound card PERIOD..... for mixing and rendering.

But for playback you NEED at least a sound card with 6 SEPARATE channels that can be mapped (or in other words a 5.1 card). You also NEED software that is capable of proper AC3 decoding and playback.

OR

A 5.1 surround sound home entertainment system.

Bottom line.... Vegas and dvda are working properly.... it's the hardware or improper time line adjustments that's occurring here.