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A
AGSJunior
Participant
April 4, 2018
Question

Help Me Understand Master Output for 5.1

  • April 4, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1494 views

Howdy!

I hope that this is an easy answer.  I've spent a long time working in the stereo world for video and radio work.  And only recently have I breached the 5.1 wall for work I am doing on audio theatre recordings (think old school radio shows, but brought up to speed).

So we are adding sound effects into our recordings and for the life of me I cannot seem to find an answer as to what is needed for the Master Output on a 5.1 multitrack session.

We setup all of our tracks to go to the Master.  We set the Master to the default 5.1 output and we actually had it working fine.  We did a show last week and it was great.  But we get back onto our system and it just will not work.  The transport freezes and it says it is playing but there is nothing happening.  I change the Master Output to a stereo or mono output and I get audio and the transport starts moving again.

But I accidentally discovered that if I set the Master Output to Stereo/Default Output, that I get my surround sound mix just as I had before.  After a lot of researching online I could find nothing that verified whether the Master Output on a 5.1 multitrack is supposed to be set to Stereo/Default Output.  The only thing I found was loading a template from Audition for Film Sequence Surround and it is indeed set for Stereo/Default Output.

So what am I missing? Again, forgive my ignorance. But why would the Master Output need to be set to Stereo/Default Output instead of 5.1/Default?

My system setup is Windows 10. Adobe Audition CS6. Running a Dante Virtual Soundcard out to an X32 Rack.  It is an ASIO driver.  All other Windows audio devices have been completely disabled. All channel mapping is appropriate. 

And as a reminder, I had it working last week running the Master Output to 5.1/Default.  If anyone could please give me some help and clarify for me the proper settings and explain this so that my brain can understand it, I would appreciate.

Thanks and Peace!

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

ryclark
ryclark
Participating Frequently
April 5, 2018

If nothing happens when you click the Play button it means that Audition has lost connection to the audio interface. You probably need to check Audition's Audio Hardware preferences page to make sure that the Dante interface is correctly selected. Also that the master output channel mapping is set correctly in the Audio Channel Mapping page.

A
AGSJuniorAuthor
Participant
April 5, 2018

Howdy Ryclark,

Thanks for your reply.  Yes, i am aware of what the transport stream freezing most likely means.  And I can assure you that one of the first things checked was the Audio Hardware and Channel Mapping settings.  Those are all correct.

As mentioned I have no problem playing back if I simply change the Master Output to any of the other non-5.1 settings available.  Is it wrong to assume that none of the other outputs would be playing as well, if there was an honest problem in connecting to the audio interface?

But my larger question still remains as to having an explanation as to the purpose of the 5.1 master output when my very few finds was that the output should actually be set to Stereo/Default Output.

Thanks again for the reply!

Peace,

ryclark
ryclark
Participating Frequently
April 5, 2018

OK. There are two places where you can select the Master output. The first is on each individual track in the Track header where you can select to send the Track output to any of the available outputs on the active audio interface. Normally this is set to master so that all the tracks get mixed down to the one final Mixdown/Export file. Then on the Master Track itself you can decide the where the mixed outputs from the Master get sent to on the audio interface. If you are working with a 5.1 Surround session then the Master will be the appropriate six channels of your audio interface that are mapped in Audition's Audio Channel Mapping. However if you haven't started with a 5.1 session the normal default is Stereo and the master will only have Stereo outputs available, even if you have inserted six channel audio files into any of the tracks. So you have to have all of the set up correctly when you open a new session of the correct type, although you can have mono, stereo or surround tracks within the session.

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