Export to Multi-Channel WAV

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

I was hoping that the 1.3x versions would have this feature. I am able to open a 8 Channel WAV file in Audacity but it is converted to a stero and multiple mono tracks. Exporting to WAV only supports stereo.

Here is a intro to 7.1 audio from Microsoft with links http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/creating71audio.aspx
here is some detail about the multi-channel wav format http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/audio/multichaud.mspx

Microsoft provides a command line utility that will combine 8 separate mono WAV files into a single multi-channel WAV file so you could export your tracks to separate WAV files and then use this utility. Would be a LOT nicer if you could select the channel for each track and then just export to a single WAV file.

2

It appears that I was wrong. This feature does exist in 1.3x (beta). In the preferences there is an option under inport/export to save as multi-channel files.

When you go to export the file you are given a nice little screen that lets you map tracks to specific channels.

I have been able to create these files but so far have not been able to play them back. My Media Player says that it can’t find the codec? But I am able to play Microsofts Multi-channel (8) WAV file they provide for testing 7.1. Not sure what is wrong? I am saving as a 16bit PCM WAV file.

3

This is a cutting posted from discussion in this thread: http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=4716.

WC

4

Never got a response to my last post?

Was wondering if anyone else has had the problem of creating a multi-channel WAV file with Audacity but then get a missing codec error when trying to play it in Windows Media Player?

5

I’m on Linux, but I had a go creating a 4 channel wav file - 16 bit 44.1kHz.
Playing it back through my SB Live card with VLC player worked perfectly.

You can try VLC player on Windows http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html