Hi Terry,

Never seen that before BUT I do notice that the waveform display is not the same on all three tracks. Could it actually be a multi-channel file, e.g. 5.1? So "track 1" is front L and R, "track 2" is rear L and R and "track 3" is LFE? If you solo each track in turn, do they sound "different" to each other, especially track 3 which "looks" quite different to the other two?

Jeff

EDIT: @johnebaker great minds!!

Hi

I can confirm that it is the normal behaviour of a surround sound file WAV.

I created one from the sound track of a video clip from my camera, then imported the WAV into a new project.

I see Jeff also got there with the same answer.

John EB

Thanks both. I've spent the last few hours of a long Sunday struggling to understand a whole bunch of things concerning my audio. It's currently set to 5.1. (I have front LR, rear LR, centre front,, and a sub-woofer.) Particularly confused about the speaker setup (which may also be the cause of my perceived poor playback raised in my other post). Different audio sources are getting played in different speakers. Should I not always get sound from all six speakers, albeit at varying levels, never complete silence? I'll get back into it again tomorrow morning.

Hi Terry

. . . . Different audio sources are getting played in different speakers. Should I not always get sound from all six speakers, albeit at varying levels, never complete silence? . . . .

No, it all depends on the sound source and format eg: - stereo ie 2 channels, 5.1 surround sound channels in ()

Mono microphone - usually appears on the left channel (front left), unless it outputs to both channels, either with an internal switch or its drivers (USB), in which case it should be equal left and right (front left + front right).

Stereo microphone or audio - should appear in left and right channels (front left + front right).

Surround sound microphones or audio - predominant channels will be Front L and R. Rear channels, L and R, may contain less important audio for 'ambience' or provide 'directional information' eg indicate a prescence or object that comes into camera view from the rear.

The LFE (sub woofer) channel is for very low frequency sounds < 120 Hz and is rarely directional, for effects eg rumble of a train.

However there are exceptions especially if someone has swapped (mixed up) the channels.

One side effect of having a camera that records 5.1 Surround Sound, I have found, is that the rear mics can pick up the sound of breathing in quiet scenes - I had to learned to practice breathing quietly 😁.

HTH

John EB

Morning John,

Thanks so much. As will be obvious I'm no audiophile and most of this stuff is a black art to me. I'm going to have to study this and experiment later. And I think this thread is probably not the best one to discuss my outstanding audio configuration problems, which I'll continue later today in the parallel thread 'How does this audio sound?'

Meanwhile though, my reason for thinking I should get all speakers contributing, regardless of source, was this setting:

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

Try changing the sound driver Direct Sound / Wave driver in MEP program settings to see if this has any effect.

If you do not want the rear sound you can make the front audio got to the rear speakers as well by separating the 5.1 channels into the three tracks as you show above, ungroup, remove the rear channel (3rd track) and copy the front channel, 1st track, into the third.

Edit - channel tracks corrected.

HTH

John EB

Thanks John, appreciate your hand-holding on this stuff. I'm pressing on to finish a project and will pick up my audio issues afterwards.

I've just posted about something else that has seriously been muddying the water, which I reckon is a bug. Reminiscent of others I've encountered over the years, involving both video and audio 'ghosts'.

Terry, East Grinstead, UK

@johnebaker

I can confirm that it is the normal behaviour of a surround sound file WAV.

That is strange because it is not the convention in MEP when it extracts the 5.1 AC3 from the camera into 6 channels / 3 tracks as WAV files, after using the Rt. click "Extract Audio Channels". The middle of the 3 tracks is the Centre / LFE.

Peter