If you mean preview 5.1 audio on the Vegas timeline, you need a card/interface with 6 discrete in/out channels, not a 5.1 surround card.

Timeline audio is discrete PCM multichannel that you can bus to your card inputs, it doesn't become Dolby 5.1 or AAC 5.1 until after it's been rendered.

Hi Guy's,

My motherboard 'Asus P6X58D Premium' on-board sound has gone faulty, currently having to preview audio through my black magic video card.. so I want to purchase decent a sound card.

Project is a concert that i'm editing for a band, they have supplied me with a professional mastered 5.1 mix, this came to me in the form of a zip file containing 5 audio tracks each labeled appropriately(FL,FR etc..) . My Vegas proprieties are set up for surround sound but everything is sounding distorted on the timeline.. I've adjusted each track to it's corresponding location on the surround panner.. but I need a proper way to preview my audio which is why i'm ask for some sound card recommendations?

The band have told me that the 5.1 mix is mastered and good to go, so I shouldn't need to change a thing.. but why then is it that my audio levels are peeking on the timeline when I layer these 5 tracks?.. I shouldn't have to mess with the mix, anyone got any expert advice for me? wish there was tutorial on this.

Thanks

What musicvid said - you need min. 6 discrete outputs, and an external amplifier driving all channels with in "direct" mode (i.e. w/o any decoding or DSP).

Have no idea what to suggest in this case; if you are going to do more projects like this in the future, investing in a sound card is inevitable. Or, wait until you have more reasons to buy a new mobo; most of them have at least a Realtek chip with both encoded (digital) and separate analog outputs. It's more than enough for multi-channel audio monitoring.

Piotr

My on-board motherboard sound is definitely faulty, I've ordered a compatible sound-card which I should have tomorrow to keep me going...

I guess I should of stated that i'm not editing the sound as such but working with a 5.1 mastered mix..

Would any of you guys be willing to share your workflow, or provide me with a link to some tutorials on working with a 5.1 mix? This audio has already been mastered at a professional level and supplied to me digitally in a folder.

Folder contains 6 wav files labelled.. C, FL,FR,LFE,SL,SR i'm not sure of the workflow here, if I layer them onto the vegas timeline and assign them using the surround sound panner.. it's just one big distorted mess..

Any advice? has this mix been supplied to me in the correct format? or do I need to use any third party plugin,software?

Thanks

WAV files are probably correct, and being "Mastered" Music, the levels are likely fairly hot.

What is happening is that the Default Surround Panner type adds +6db to the signal when a "mono" discrete track is panned entirely to a L, R, Ls or Rs speaker, and when panned C is also sending exact same to L & R !!!, so your outputs are overloading and distorting.

What you have to do is right-click on each Surround Panner and select "Pan Type = Film" from the popup Menu, then re-adjust all the pans on each track to point exactly to the correct speaker (double-click on each panner to see a bigger pan window).

With this setting, the track will play out a specified discrete speaker unchanged at unity gain if all your Faders are also at "0"..

Hi ChristoC,

Thanks so much for your help, this has made a significant overall improvement to my levels, brilliant.

Can you explain the other options under 'Pan Type' I'd like to be sure that I'm using the correct setting 'Film' for mixing a concert dvd?

Also when adjusting pans on each speaker is there any right or wrong way to do this? I've moved my pans to the far extreme on each speaker. Everything seems to look ok, but i'll get a better listen when I render out the project.

Thanks for your help and guidance, it's very much appreciated.

For music, I'd use 'Constant Power".

Piotr

megabit, Pan Type = 'Constant Power' is an excellent choice for Stereo.

However in VP9, 10, 11 & 12 the Constant Power 5.1 panner will never allow you pan a mono or stereo signal to L or R Front. To my mind this is a bug....

Therefore must use 'Film' setting. The Film panner is also constant power in it's pan curve behaviour.

Try it sometime! :-)

cal79, what you are doing is good. For your case there's no need to worry about differences in the other Pan Types, so long as for this setting, Pan Type = Film, each Track is panned only to a single speaker (in big pan display will read '-6' for that speaker, all others '-Inf') therefore there is no level gain or loss and each discrete track is 'pointed' to it's own output. Your Output is a replica of your Input!

If you look at VegasPro Help, search for 'audio panning modes' you'll find explanation of the differences between modes.

I forgot to mention what to do with the LFE Track panner - maybe you already worked this out - simply right-click on the Surround Panner for that Track and select "LFE Only"; nothing more to do!

If you are later rendering this Audio to AC-3, elsewhere Musicvid kindly came up with this 'recipe' which would be appropriate for music-only AC-3 5.1 render:

"Use AC-3 Pro Encoder, I am prepared to make the following recommendations with notes:

Dialog Norm = -31 (this sets it at unity gain)
RF and Line Mode DRC = OFF (WYHIWYG)
DC High Pass Filter = ON (this operates at <=3Hz and takes DC bias out of the mix)
Bandwidth High Pass Filter = ON (this takes aliasing noise at >20kHz out of the encode, but it also lowered the final volume by -0.1dB in my tests)
90 Deg Phase Shift = ON (makes it easier for Pro Logic decoding on older equipment, Dolby says it is inaudible in 5.1 except in "very rare" cases)

Everything else can be left just as it is in the 5.1 DVD template."