Sync by audio continues to fail

So I ran into this issue today and was getting the same error message, I can here for answers but it didn't get resolved. I kept playing with it until I realized what the issue was.
For me, I had imported video clips with 8 built-in audio tracks from the camera. I deleted all except track 1 when I was attempting to merge it with the seperate audio recorded from the sound guy. It didn't work! I had to have all 8 tracks on the timeline (this is just how many tracks my cam recorded) then added the boom/lav mics audio tracks underneath it, then boom it all synched! I guess you can't delete default camera audio tracks before syncing in premiere. 

This issue - and this conversation - is driving me insane.

Some people know better, some don't, but being an active paying user of premiere for years I don't need a workaround, I need a solution : the audio sync is broken.

And yes I tested everything.

I pay a high price for things to work, not to troubleshoot, not to rant, not to find excuses for my customers.

It is 3 in the morning in my contry and I'm still synchronizing clips : yeah !!!!
One cam front, one cam on stage, a stereo mic front and the backround music. Litteraly nothing difficult, I can do it by looking for the clap on my waveforms.... But I pay Adobe a premium price to NOT do this very intersting job and I'm certainly NOT intersted in troubleshouting it.
Same sound, 4 different sources, same bitrat, same brand, same clap : come on, what's the problem !
And don't get me starded on your deficient AI : still waiting to have an audio clip properly rendered (so many better free options) and still waiting to just be able to try the extension clip option ("can't render, ask your administrator for credits" : yep, that's me, can't do a thing about it, still waiting a response from Adobe....)
And can we talk about rescaling the windows ? Can we ? Works fine in photoshop, works fine in AE but is just impossible in PP ! How many years do you need to adress this issue !!!!
Un - F - B... !!!
Oh, also, I almost forgot, the mask atomation doesn't work anymore, yeah !!!!

Thank you Adobe, thank you so much.
Take my money and send me straight to the "how to synchronize audio" FAQ. 
It's not you, it's me,

I'm so stupid.
XOXO

Premiere simply does not have the ability to sync audio when they are sufficiently different compression and bitrate.

 Over the past few days, I have spent 6 hours collectively with adobe support regarding this reprehensible audio sync issue. It will not sync audio that is of different qualities (bitrate, compression etc) I have been trying to sync WAV recordings from a ZOOM H6 (96000 Hz - 24-bit – Mono) to scratch audio from a Sony fs5 I 48000 Hz - 24-bit – Mono). It simply does not work.

6 hours of futile customer support. Including a 3-hour phone call. Nothing. They got me to upload the audio files to their server for testing.

And please no “I Am nOt hAviNg tHat IsSuE” comments. You aren’t having that issue because you’re a vlogger who never had to deal with real audio management.

Hundreds of dollars a year for windows movie maker with extra steps

Synchronizing only the audio aside from the video part should work. Then move the videos back to their respective audio tracks since they are the same length. This worked for me.

So sorry the previous suggestion didn't work for you... it does for me. Waiting 15 minutes and no result must be super frustrating.

I don't know what your media is like... it could be that there actually is a slight discrepancy that is enough to throw the algorithm off. Like audio drift? (One device gradually slows down the audio, barely perceptible unless the file is really long.) Or... maybe one mic was very close to a voice and picked it up clearly but the other mic was far enough away that it just didn't pick up... or whatever. If the two audio tracks are "different" enough for PP to not match them... maybe try this:

1. Make a copy of the sequence (just in case)

2. In the sequence copy, trim your two audio tracks back to a very short span where each picked up the same audio clearly (maybe just the clap in the beginning, or a section where a few loud bursts happen). So basically, if your entire sequence was (let's say) 2 minutes long, trim the beginning and ending of each clip to just that span of 15 seconds (let's say) somewhere in the middle where the audio was clearly picked up by both mics.

3. Select both clips and synchronize with audio.

4. After syncing, they're lined up correctly in the timeline, and you can "untrim" them both out to their full length.

I know this works... but I do wonder if after all that it would have been easier to just manually sync the clips. Probably same number of clicks. ?

A2 doesn't show any waveform at the beginning of the clip. Go into that, and set audio gain to max all peaks to maybe -6dB. It will probably work then.

Neil

I used to get super irritated by this... and then I discovered that, if I go to the Sequence menu and choose Render Audio first, and then sync with audio, it works. I'm sure there's a technical reason why this is a "feature" and not a "bug". Whatever. Hope it helps.

Are you clips linked? They are all different colours. Does it work if you select just the clip on A1 and A3 for example? Which track are you using in the Synchronize Clips dialog?