The WAV file format supports six channels without any special encoding. Vegas may not allow saves in such a manner.

of all my years in the industry, and the studios which i have worked in, i (and asking many friends who still work in teh iunsustry) have never heard or seen any reference to 5 channel wav files, let alone see one in used in any context.

What application would one need to investigate to achieve this?
Im VERY curious to find about about wavs using more than 2 channels...

If I'm not mistaken (I'd need to check the docs to be sure) the
WAV format allows for unlimited or a large amount of channels.
Not sure if this is actually ever used by any application though....

Vegas can save surround sound project as 6 wave files (xxx-left, xx-right, xxx-left surround), etc. That's what I'm talking about. You cannot edit with AC-3 files, so you must do this if you wish to work with clips in 6-channels.

yeah but theyre still individual (stereo/mono) wave files...

the thread came across as though it was one file utilising 6 channels...

thats where the confusion lay...

its all clear now :)

So I still wonder - has anyone ever come across an audio rendering bug like this before?

>of all my years in the industry, and the studios which i have >worked in, i (and asking many friends who still work in teh >iunsustry) have never heard or seen any reference to 5 channel >wav files, let alone see one in used in any context.

Well, they exist and are part of an emerging trend. I'm played the 5.1 speaker test WAV file from Dolby Labs earlier today.
Left ...
Right ...
Center...
Surround Left ...
Surround Right ...
Rumble .....

Microsoft DirectX drivers allow you to play these files on most modern PCs. Sound cards contain all sorts of algorithms to even combine 5.1 files to play on stero speakers, or to synthesize 5.1 channels from stereo files. DVDs can hold audio in a multichannel compressed format. If you rip a DVD and extract the audio bitstream for storage in a WAV file, you will have a multichannel, compressed WAV file.

<<Well, they exist and are part of an emerging trend. I'm played the 5.1 speaker test WAV file from Dolby Labs earlier today.
Left ...
Right ...
Center...
Surround Left ...
Surround Right ...
Rumble ..... >>

Yes, however for a PC to be able to utilise this, its the hardware decoder (ie soundcard) which is directed to pan the channel via scripts within the .wav player application and teh direction of freq for each channel. Such as the Creative Surorund panner test.

Im just curious, are these tests all on the one file or are they individual files for each channel? if i provided an aemail adress could you email that file which you have jsut mentioned?

<<Microsoft DirectX drivers allow you to play these files on most modern PCs.>>

What exact files are you referring to? wav files or dolby surround embedded mixdown stereo files?

<<Sound cards contain all sorts of algorithms to even combine 5.1 files to play on stero speakers, or to synthesize 5.1 channels from stereo files. >>

Yes its called Dolby Surround Processing. Pro Logic Hardware which is found within Dolby certified soundcards and decoder amps process this data according to the frequency values within the individual channel bitstream.
This process is not a file process or a file "property", its a decoder process issue which segregates certain audio values and allocates them to their respective channels.

If what you are refering to is on the contrary to what i have jsut written, please let me know as i am extremely interested in finding out about this.


<<DVDs can hold audio in a multichannel compressed format. If you rip a DVD and extract the audio bitstream for storage in a WAV file, you will have a multichannel, compressed WAV file. -- >>

Audio within a DVD is either a seperate AC3 file, which is a dolby digital format, or embedded within the VOB file, which is a joint file allocation system, which holds a dolby digital formated audio bitstream.
If you have found an application which can split an AC3 5.1ch file into 6 seperate wave files, i would be VERY interested to see. So would Dolby Labs

If you rip the audio stream out of the DVD, it WOULDNT be a wave file unless the SW you use converts it from a lossey format (AC3) to non lossey (.wav).

Just some info for all who are interested, "DVD Video" standard MUST be encoded with Dolby Digital or RAW PCM. These are the "requirements" for DVD Video for commercial distribution.

Dolby Digital (or PCM Stereo) is the mandatory format, and if any other format is supplied (such as DTS, which is an optional format) the product MUST include a Dolby Digital or PCM format to allow it to be released commercially.
Here is some more info on that.
http://www.dolby.com/dvd/DVDVideo.html#cont

There is no reference to PCM wav 6ch stereo, which is why i am so curious.

I will get in touch with my contact at Dolby Labs and see if they have any further info on multichannel wav files exceeding the standard 2 channels.
I actually work closely with surround formats in audio and video so these revelations are intriguing to say the least.

I would appreciate if you can supply a link as to where i can find further info on .wav files which contain more than 2 channels. That would be greatly appreciated (from me and my contacts)

And if you know of an application which can seperate an AC3 file into 6 seperate streams, that too would be appreciated, as the information I have received from Dolby Labs stipulates that the encoded file cannot physically be split...
Unless of course there is an application out there which literally plays the file and records onto 6 seperate streams and records in all 6 channels in wav format as they pass the threshold....
Which at this time, doesnt exist as there is no application which can record more than 2 channel streams at the same time from the one input source (unless its run thru a mixer, which in turn is still converting the multiple .wav files to a stereo master stream, which is going around in circles as thats NOT what we want to do...)

There might be a way of doing this by running multiple passes... but to this day i still havent seen an app which can do this either...

Again any further info you may have would be greatly appreciated.

cheers
P

"If you have found an application which can split an AC3 5.1ch file into 6 seperate wave files, i would be VERY interested to see. So would Dolby Labs"

Sonic Foundry SoftEncode (a predecessor to the Vegas AC3 plugin) can do this. I don't think you can get SoftEncode legitimately anymore, but I know people who have gotten it.

i have softencode from about 2 years ago, but for some reason the VOBs and AC3 files i open are corrupted...

strange, gonna look further into this, as i can se where your coming from, but i dont think it can break a bitsream which is has the protection bit in place
-----------------------

update...
turns out softencode can only export as ac3.... bummer

ahhaa!!!!
FOUND IT!!!!!!!

http://dspguru.doom9.org/

check out the app called BeSweet

this does what were discussing.. and i know for a fact that Vegas CANT do this

this app takes an ac3 encoded file, then literally strips it down to 6 mono wave files, which can be put back into Vegas for remastering...

Vegas CANT do this...

this app needs the main dos app plus the frontend to run

I want to get Tsunami which needs 4.0d. As mentioned by some others earlier in this thread I am scared to do the upgrade in the middle of a HUGE project I am working on. If I lost this stuff I would probably die. Anyway, have there been any glitches with the upgrades? Or is everything gonna be OK?

I haven't had any problems. Just keep an extra copy of the VEG file and you can always reload the previous version. However, I haven't seen any problems with updating.

Great, thanks!