Weird Audio Behaviour - Auto-Mono?

[great-bear]

In edit sections where the volume level is low, Premiere Rush turns the sound into mono!

Where the volume level is hovering on the edge of that threshold, the sound repeatedly flickers between mono and stereo. Rush does this regardless of whether the sound is from a separate soundtrack or recorded camera footage.

Why is Rush doing this?

- and how do I turn this "feature" off? - I want my sound untouched!

Thanks in advance.

[great-bear · Accepted solution]

OK - I've discovered what this is, but have decided to leave this post here in case anyone else has the same problem in future.

This issue has nothing to do with Premiere Rush, but is instead the Conexant "Smart Audio" control panel which got re-installed when I had to restore my Windows 10 laptop recently. The Conexant Smart Audio control panel has a default setting of "Voice Over IP" with "Speaker Noise Reduction" and it is this which appears to cause Adobe Premier Rush to auto-mono quiet stereo passages.

Solution is to either switch the panel to the "Voice Recording" or uninstall these enhancements completely.

I notice that by default, the Smart Audio control panel also has DTS sound enabled by default. This is doing all kinds of undesirable things to the audio such as adding bass boost, volume levelling and surround enhancement - none of which will be added to the output of Rush. Your system might not have the Conexant Smart Audio panel, but it is not at all unusual for other audio enhancement software to be included and switched on as part of the default operating system installation.

These sound system enhancements and their control panels typically do NOT show up under "enhancements" in the Windows Sound control panel, but can instead be found by looking at the list of installed software, and/or by looking for custom control panels in the Microsoft Windows Control Panel area of your PC. These so-called enhancements have been present on pretty much every laptop I've ever owned - and their presence is never obvious at first glance.

It is important that you turn all these enhancements off, so that you are getting a true reflection of what - if anything - Rush is doing to your soundtrack.