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richard-ec2
Inspiring
June 28, 2017
Answered

Voxengo effect only modifies two channels out of five in multichannel

  • June 28, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1654 views

In Adobe Audition CS6, I have opened a five-channel multichannel audio track in the waveform editor. (It's extracted from my own personal copy of a DVD-Audio disc, because I like to keep all the audio from all my discs on my PC.) I am trying to change the EQ of the track using the Voxengo CurveEQ plugin, which I have been using in stereo for years. However, when I hit "Apply", the Voxengo CurveEQ effect only modifies the first two channels. The other three remain the same.

I asked Voxengo and they said it must be a problem with Audition. So I tried doing the same thing in Audacity and it worked without any problem. So it appears that Voxengo is correct and it's something to do with Audition.

Any ideas? 

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer richard-ec2

    Edit: please could you ignore all of the following post and see my next post, below it!

    I am attaching a sample from the troublesome album. It has a total of five channels - it is 5.0, with no LFE channel. When I try to apply Voxengo CurveEQ to this album in CC, routeing only shows for the first two channels and the other three are shown as "Bypass". When I apply the effect, it modifies the first two channels only - the remaining three are not modified but the audio is displaced about 0.5 seconds to the left!

    CC has no problem with my 5.1 albums (total of six channels.) It also has no problem with my quad (4.0) albums - but I notice that in the quad albums, the channels are padded out with empty channels to make a total of six channels. So I wonder if CC only works with six channels or even numbers of channels, and that you can only edit an odd number of channels if they are padded out with an empty channel to make an even number? Just to repeat, I have no problem applying Voxengo Curve EQ to the troublesome album in Audacity so at this point this looks to me like a quirk with CC.

    Here is the link to the sample. It is in WAV format so may take a while to download:

    Click here


    Thanks to your help, I have found the answer! Needless to say, CC is innocent and it's all my own fault. The surprise is that CS6 is innocent, too!

    The reason I could not get it to work in CC is because CC is 64 bit and I did not have the 64 bit VST plugin in my folder - but by chance I did have the 64-bit VST3 plugin in my folder and so CC had automatically installed that. For some reason, all these problems are because the VST3 plugin for Voxengo CurveEQ doesn't always seem to work properly in multichannel mode in CC but when I downloaded and installed the VST plugin, it worked fine. However, I did also find that it's necessary to select the correct routeing in the Voxengo CurveEQ plugin interface - you have to switch from stereo to multichannel.

    Out of curiosity I then went back to CS6 and tried the VST plugin. At first, as before, the first two channels changed but the other three disappeared. Then I remembered I had not changed the routeing in the Voxengo interface. When I did that, to my amazement, all five channels were modified in CS6 as well!

    So I am very happy.

    In short, you CAN apply the Voxengo CurveEQ effect (and presumably any other third-party VST plugin) to five-channel multichannel in CS6 and CC provided the following two conditions are met:

    1. You can only use the VST plugin. The VST3 plugin doesn't seem to work with five channels, though it seems to be OK with 5.1.

    2. You must remember to change the routeing from stereo to multichannel within the Voxengo interface.

    Many thanks indeed for all your help. I would never have found the answer otherwise.

    1 reply

    ryclark
    ryclark
    Participating Frequently
    June 28, 2017

    I think that you may need a newer version of Audition to be able to access all channels of a multichannel VST plugins.

    R
    richard-ec2Author
    Inspiring
    June 28, 2017

    Oh, really? That's a disappointment if it's the case. The in-built effects seem to work across all channels of the multichannel so it's a pity if something's stopping VST plugins from doing the same thing. I'll just have to use Audacity unless anyone thinks there's a way around this.

    Many thanks for answering.

    R
    richard-ec2Author
    Inspiring
    June 29, 2017

    I have just looked at the file info in MediaInfo and although it contains only five channels MediaInfo identifies it as a 6 channel file. That might cause some problems with software correctly identifying the contents.


    Yes, perhaps there is some confusion over the number of channels on this particular disc. In reality, there are only five and the booklet says:

    "Technical note: For creative reasons, the surround mix was done in 5.0; the LFE is not utilized."

    Even that's ambiguous. There's a difference between "not utilized" and "not there". I've seen plenty of discs where channels are not utilised and yet are still there, completely empty. But in this case, the LFE channel is simply not there.

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