Disabling 5.1 Audio Tracks

I am having a myriad of problems with audio tracks in Adobe Premiere Elements.

This seems to stem from audio tracks 5 and above in the timeline being labeled as 5.1 Audio tracks.  Any new audio tracks I attempt to make are also automatically set as 5.1 audio.

The problem with this is that audio inserted in those tracks will never fully mute.  All I want to do is fade in an audio clip in one of these tracks, but it starts at partial volume.  I have tried everything, including dragging the ENTIRE yellow volume bar down to the bottom so that it displays it as "- infinity" decibels which SHOULD BE MUTED.  I cannot for the life of me figure out what causes an audio clip that is muted still plays audio. 
Dragging this same clip down into one of the non-5.1 audio tracks DOES mute it so it's NOT the clip it's the TRACK causing this problem.

This would not be a problem if I could just circumvent these tracks by creating new tracks that WEREN'T AUTOMATICALLY 5.1 tracks, but any new tracks I create are also 5.1 tracks and I have no idea how to disable this or anything!  All I want is for my audio to start ACTUALLY muted.