DV Info Net - Surround & Downmixing help needed

(1) When I've created a 5.1 mix, on previewing or rendering out a stereo version, I get clipping at the loudest points as if Vegas is just summing channels. The downmix function only affects monitoring (where I can hear the distortion) and Vegas lacks any sort of intelligence in creating a stereo file out of 5.1 project.

I don't know if this will get around after so much time from the original posting but I bet I have an answer to #1.

I recently had a professionally mixed and mastered audio project done in 5.1. It was a music concert. When I layed the 6 channels of final audio onto the timeline, I rendered and upon playback, it sounded like crap. It clipped in many places. After paying many dollars for the mastering, I promptly tore a new butt on the guy who did the work - after all, mastering sets final volumes right? He got back to me the next day and said it sounded perfect to him. (He is very well respected in the business). I took his files back to the mixing engineer and they played perfect to him as well. I was really starting to get embarrased. I went back home and reinstalled the tracks on a new Vegas file and again they clipped. I couldn't figure it out so I called Vegas support and after 3 days of caling them, I finally reached someone that knew what they were doing. He instructed me to right click on the left side of the track and a box opened up. It seems that the box needs to be checked for constant power. It seems that Vegas blends the front right, left and center by default. You have to check each box for constant power so Vegas won't blend those tracks. Their reasoning to me was since all three are front tracks, they default to be blended. I checked the boxes and everything sounds great. I ate a lot of crow. Vegas is a decent program but you think something like this would not be buried in the manual.

Hope this solves your problem.

Jeff