The 'Surround Master' bus (B key) fader or automation envelope 'should' affect the sub-masters (Front stereo, Rear stereo, Center mono and LFE mono) equally.

@rraud
Maybe it is a misunderstanding from my side. Suppose I have my 2 stereo tracks (front and surround)
When they are not assigned to an audio bus I can assign the front track to the master front speakers (using the channel surround panner) and the rear track to the master rear channels.

As soon as I assign those channels to the audio bus, the channel surround pan options disappear and they all are output depending on the surround master surround panner. So when I set the front channel to solo, then it is audible on both front and rear.

Am I overlooking something here ?

If you not find me disgusting, go investigate for what does surround sound come into usage, and how to remix 5.1channel soundtracks.

That 5.1 original record was once trickery advertisement from Sony, nothing but garbage.

@Yelandkeil I do not find you disgusting, comment is alwasy appreciated.
it is clear to me that Vegas is not the perfect solution for surround mixing. However in my case it is just for personal use, for which it is suitable. The only thing I am looking for is an easy way to adjust the volume (by envelope) of all the (5.1) camera tracks simultaneously.
 

So my question is, what is the easiest way of controlling the volume of multichannel audio, while preserving the channel assignment ?

Just enable the volume automation on the Master Track.

@Joelson Thanks for the reply. The reason I do not want to apply volume automation on the materf track is because I have 2 sources:
1 - Camera with 5.1 audio
2 - Music

At certain points of the vieoI want to reduce the volume of all camera tracks and increase the volume of the music.

@jetdv
I just did a quick check on Wavehammer. I have a feeling it ca do what I want, but how to route the 5.1 audio to the Wavehammer fx ?

@marcel-gielen Go to the "routing" tab on that effect. It's actually already set up to work with a VEGAS 5.1 project.

Wave Hammer is a compressor/limiter, and can control levels to certain extent, it is not a substitute for volume transitions.. many plug-in's output can be automated.. but that is not possible with the Direct X WaveHammer.

The reason I do not want to apply volume automation on the materf track is because I have 2 sources:
1 - Camera with 5.1 audio
2 - Music

At certain points of the vieoI want to reduce the volume of all camera tracks and increase the volume of the music.

@marcel-gielen

Very simple to solve... Just select the audio tracks on the timeline, insert the volume envelopes and automate the function. See my screen recording below.

I agree, it's not a "volume control" but it will help "control volume". If you're wanting consistent levels across the video, it will certainly help. If you're wanting to change a specific volume level, probably not. Based on the original post, it seemed to me like he was wanting to "control the volume" - which the compressor will do. I may be wrong - I have been in the past and will be again in the future!

@Joelson Using a volume envelope is clear to me. Your your screenshot is nice, I use the same setup as you. (track 2 = front, track 3 = center, track 4 = LFE, track 5 = rear, track 6 = music).

Referring tou your screen shot, I like to use a volume envelope to control track 2,3,4,5 simultaneously while preserving the output channel allocation. Those tracks contain the camera audio and at certain point I want to fade in the music and fade out the camera audio (without having to use 4 individual volume envelopes)

It looks like a very basic mixing feature, but so far I have not been able to accomplish this. When I assign them to an audio bus, the channel allocation is gone (all channels are output according to the audio bus surround panner)
It seems something similar happens when using Wave Hammer.

@marcel-gielen If you want to manipulate the channels differently and independently of one another, definitely put an envelope and/or fx up on each of the mono source tracks. Put them on the bus if you want to manipulate them as a single group entity. You can do it without a bus by manipulating each source track identically but it might be easier to route them to a bus and do it with a single envelope or fx operating on the quad sub-mix. I think that operating on the quad bus would have less of a tendency to alter acoustic imaging.

Basically my point is, that a 'bus' is not a 'bus' (transport medium). It is changing the surround allocation.
See the following example with 2 audio tracks:
Track 1 = Front Left
Track 2 = Rear right

The first screenshot shows the mixer output when not using a bus: only front left and rear right are active.
With the second screenshot both tracks are assigned to output bus 'A'. As soon as you do that, the surround panner for the track disappears and the audio is output to all channels (because of the bus surround panner)

This means a bus is not usable at all for surround footage ,which sounds strange to me.

@Yelandkeil Unfortunately the resolution of your screenshot is too low to read the text. So I have no idea what you are trying to demonstrate 🙁

There are a few options to display VP's master and sub-master buses, the 'Mixer' view window has faders, the 'status bar' display has the option to directly edit the master bus automation envelopes.

The first screenshot shows the mixer output when not using a bus: only front left and rear right are active.
With the second screenshot both tracks are assigned to output bus 'A'. As soon as you do that, the surround panner for the track disappears and the audio is output to all channels (because of the bus surround panner)

This means a bus is not usable at all for surround footage ,which sounds strange to me.

@marcel-gielen I see exactly what you mean. Looks like as soon as I assign a quad track to a bus, Vegas throws away the quad panning and reverts the track to stereo. This is illustrated more clearly if I enable surround envelopes in Internal Settings and activate audio envelopes on the track. With a quad track set to the Mapper, a front/back panning envelope can be inserted that appears underneath a separate left/right envelope. Set the track's output to a bus and the front/back envelope disappears. Left/right panning envelope remains. I'd say it's a Vegas defect and suggest reporting it to support.

Couldn't you duck the volume via an effect, then copy that effect, highlight the other tracks, and "paste event attributes" onto the other tracks?

@marcel-gielen I tried recreating your setup by de-matrixing a dolby ac3 clip, muting the 5.1 audio track, and pulling in the de-matrixed frontLR, rearLR, LFE, and Center tracks. Only got bleed-through soloing the L-R tracks if I failed to remove Center from them in the surround panner. Not sure if I'm treating Center correctly... only the front, rear, and LFE meters show activity with this setup. And only front, rear, and center show activity with the matrixed 5.1 track unless I select LFE-only. Here's a screen shot of my de-matrixed setup:

Also played around a bit with the matrixed 5.1 clip:

@Howard-Vigorita Thanks for trying and for your reply. The first interesting part for me was the shift key and the "internals" menu option. This makes it more easy to find something.
But with respect to your setup, if I see it correctly your audio track output is set to the "surround master" and not to "bus-a".
As soon as you assign it to "bus-a" the surround panner of the channel will disappear and your track surround properties are 'lost' (or better to say 'ignored')