Need help with Surround Sound

Mark Seibert wrote on 1/3/2008, 6:36 AM

Hey All,

I've been trying to work with Surround Sound and can't seem to get it to do what I expect. I have my project in Vegas 8.0a set in the properties audio tab to 5.1 surround, and I my track shows the surround panner. I then drop a piece of audio on the track and set key frames to move the sound from channel to channel. I have successfully isolated audio to go to only the front right, the front left, the Sub, and the Front R/L and center. However, when I pan the audio to the rear channels it ends up in the front channels on playback.

I've tried rendering this from Vegas as both AC-3 5.1 Surround Studio and Pro . The difference I hear between the two appears to be a difference in gain only. I am testing this using DVDA 4.5, and I have set the audio properties for the project in DVDA to AC-3 5.1 Surround.

I'm playing back on my XBox360 and I am using the digital audio connection out into my Dennon Amp. The Dennon recognizes the signal and goes into 5.1 mode. The system plays back 5.1 perfectly fine on factory discs.

So...I must be doing something wrong. Anyone got any ideas?

Comments

jbolley wrote on 1/3/2008, 11:11 AM

I'm not 100% sure but I'd look at your routing. There is a setting in preferences, audio device for the outputs. I don't know if this effects the render though.
Do you have a surround setup with your vegas PC or do you have to burn a DVD to hear the results?

Jesse

Mark Seibert wrote on 1/3/2008, 11:49 AM

Hi Jesse, Unfortunately I have to burn a DVD to test it. The Master Bus meters indicate what I expect to hear - rear channel meters moving when I assign something directly to them, but on playback on the DVD it ends up on the front channels. There must be something that is killing the rear channels somewhere...

R0cky wrote on 1/3/2008, 12:27 PM

It's a problem in Vegas that some people have, some don't. See this thread:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=554720

I have a support case open on it. Sony is currently waiting for me to upload a project file and media to their ftp server so they can look at it, just haven't had time over the holidays to do it.

Rocky

Mark Seibert wrote on 1/15/2008, 8:40 AM

I have some more information on this. I now have my editing system setup on a surround system. While editing, everything works fine - I can isolate each individual speaker. When I render a WMV with 5.1 sound, it also works fine.

However, and I render an AC3 file and use DVDA to burn a disc, all the rear channel information ends up on the front speakers. I made a test Vegas file for tech support and they have acknowledged that there might be some kind of an issue that is being worked on.

Can anyone else reproduce this problem, or is this working fine for most?