Mixing Channels in Multitracks

[hello-there]

Hello there!

I get a multitrack from PP where I'd like to mix the right and left channels of the thousands of audio snippets I get in a row.

However, it doesn't look like that at all https://helpx.adobe.com/de/audition/using/multichannel-audio-workflow.html

There is no "Source Channel Routing" in AU 13.0 2020 or I can't find it.

Any ideas how to mix a track?

[emmrecs]

That video is about multichannel audio mixing (e.g. for "Surround Sound", 5.1, 7.1 etc.) but you are asking about multitrack mixing (where the various audio constituents are placed on separate tracks, all of which "playback" in sync with each other, but which eventually require "mixing down" to a single, normally stereo track for final distribution.)

The question "how to mix a track" is a little bit like asking "How long is a piece of string"!

Have you first opened your PP multitrack project in the multitrack window of Audition?  Do you see all the tracks on screen?  Are those Audition tracks labelled as "mono" or "stereo"?  Have you explored the Mixer tab (on the multitrack window)?

Those are the places to "start" with any understanding of multitrack mixing.

[hello-there]

When exporting a sequence audio to AU, PP saves the clip audio snippets in WAVs, they are stereo. The sequence audio comes in a multitrack containing those clips.

The mixer shows constantly the same level on both channels although the clip have different R and L channels - as I said stereo.

I didn't find a Mixer "tab" neither a multitrack window. I've got a Mixer window in AU and an Editor for the multitrack. I can pan there for the output but not access the input channels.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

If you've imported files from PP then you're in the Multitrack window. At the top of the part with all the tracks showing, there are two tabs, which let you alternate between the track display and the mixer display. We've called them all sorts of things, but never windows. They started out as panes, but now they are generally referred to as panels. The whole thing is a window, and each of the parts of it are panes or panels, and you can rearrange it however you like.

I don't understand your obsession with 'input channels'. You are importing files, not channels - the concept of channels in this scenario doesn't exist. You have a file, you put it on one of the tracks on the edit screen and effectively it becomes a clip. In this session you can put any clip, mono or stereo, onto a track and either pan or balance it across the output.

When you say 'mix the right and left channels' what do you actually mean? Technically doing that will make them mono.

[hello-there]

The terms "left" and "right" channel I took from PP. That's also how I hear them from the camera while recording and how I hear them on the headphones when replaying in PP.

Let's call them channels A and B.

My footage has not many but one audio track with two L/R or A and B channels.

The WAV files in AU have therefore also two channels with different audios.

The multitrack delivers a mono mixdown of those channels.

I'd like to change the way how they are mixed together. The result should be mono. But I'd like to set how many % of A and how many % of B.

Obviously, I'm not a professional sound designer. Sorry if I get the terms wrong.

But my purpose is quite simple and, I hope, comprehensible.

[hello-there]

PS

As there so many of the WAVs and I need to apply the same thing to all of them, I wonder how to do it.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

So these are not true stereo files? They have a two people and essentially one is on one side of the stereo and the other is on the other side? If that's the case I'd split these two-channel files into a pair of single-channel files and place these on separate tracks in Multitrack view. You can then control the level of each one independently, and that's how they will sound in your mono mix. If you open each one in Waveform view, then you can do this in Edit>Extract Channels to Mono Files. All you have to do is save the individual files and place them where you want in the Multitrack session.

[hello-there]

Thank you for your answer. As there are many of them, I wonder if there is no way to automate this process?

[hello-there]

Hello there! From my camera, as a result from Premiere Pro, I get a bunch of video clips with some not-true stereo. Two different microphones record to the left and right channel of a track.

When it comes to mixing in Audition, I'm not sure how to handle it, as they are so many and I've got to "split these two-channel files into a pair of single-channel files and place these on separate tracks in Multitrack view. You can then control the level of each one independently, and that's how they will sound in your mono mix".

Splitting manually is as time-consuming as it seems senseless inasmuch as it's the same procedure with hundreds of clips over and over again.

I'd appreciate any help to optimize the workflow.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I'm afraid that this is where the current incarnation of Audition will fail you. In older versions it was possible to create a script that would allow you to split the file like this, and you can certainly still do this manually - but you can't include that split function in a Favorite, which is what you'd need in order to be able to process these automatically using the batch processor. The reason for this is quite simple; you can't create new files during batch processing - it's simply not allowed, even if you were happy with automatic name creation.

I've been trying to think of any other way out of this, and the only thing I can come up with involves the creation of a favourite that would remove one channel from each file, and then save the resulting processed file in a different folder. You can do this okay - the Favourites system lets you program the Channel Mixer to remove one channel, so you do that twice, once for left, once for right. You can set pre and postfix names, and so you prefix one lot left, and the other lot right - they retain the rest of the original file name after the prefix.

You are still going to have a bit of fun with them in Multitrack view, but at least you'll have two lots of files with only left audio on one set, and only right audio on the other. I can't see any other way of doing this though. I even looked to see if anybody's created an app to do it, and whilst I can find a lot of people with an identical problem, I can't see any easy solutions at all - which is a bit strange, considering that this must be quite a common problem.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

And then it occurred to me that Sound Devices have a quite complicated app called Wave Agent, and I think that will do it. It's in the download section that you can get to from the home page - here. Won't cost you anything, either. Can't find anything else similar, although I'm sure that they must exist...

[SuiteSpot]

The OP could try this application - it both splits and joins (which is what cleave means)

https://www.aatranslator.com.au/cleaver.html

[Richard M Knight]

I would look at duplicating all the clips in Premiere so you have, say, 20 tracks instead of 10. Do 'fill left with right' on one lot and 'fill right with left' on the other and then export to Audition.