How to pan individual channels with 4 channel mixer input

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

Mac Sierra 10.12.6
Audacity 2.3.2
Harman Soundcraft Notepad-12FX

My mixer provides 4 channel output to Mac via USB cable but it does not allow panning of more than 2 channels in mixer and then drops channels 3 & 4 to do so when output via USB. When I set the input on Audacity with mixer plugged in it allows for 4 channels but I don’t see how to select specific channels to pan, which I want to do, please and thank you.

Thanks,
James

2

According to the Notepad-12FX manual (https://www.soundcraft.com/en/products/notepad-12fx#downloads_and_docs), you need to use the “Notepad Control Panel” to set up the USB configuration (https://www.soundcraft.com/en/softwares/notepad-firmware-and-control-panel-setup-v1-09-mac).
As I don’t have a Soundcraft Notepad-12FX, I am not able to test the control panel or provide any advice about using it. Soundcraft’s support channel is here: https://www.soundcraft.com/en/support

3

Thanks for the response Steve but I have already exhausted that avenue as I wrote in my posting. I have read all the documentation and I have worked with Harman Tech Support.

If I go out the mixer XLR’s I can pan all 4 channels but if I go out the USB I can only pan the first 2 channels and then I lose the other 2 as output. They told me that if I wanted to output 3 or 4 channels through the USB then I had to pan in the software in my Mac.

It looks like Audacity knows and allows input of 4 channels but how does one pan individual channels within Audacity?

Do I need to find other software?

Thanks

4

If you are able to record 4 channels at the same time, then Audacity records whatever comes over USB as “channel 1” and “channel 2” as the left and right channels of a stereo track, and channels 3 and 4 as two mono tracks. The stereo track may then be split into 2 mono tracks (see: Splitting and Joining Stereo Tracks - Audacity Manual) so that you can then pan the 4 mono tracks left/right wherever you want.

The part that I don’t know (because I don’t have that mixer and their manual is a bit vague), is how to get your 4 mixer input channels to come out of the mixer’s USB as channels 1, 2, 3 and 4.

5

Thanks for the reply about splitting the first 2 channels into mono and then panning each. I read the documentation and think I understand and will try later.

When I record all of my tracks then as mono, does it sound like stereo when I play the recording back or do I have to do the Mix and Render after? As does the Mix and Render include the 3 & 4 channels?

Thanks

6

A mono track in Audacity will normally play through left and right speakers. If you pan it to the left, then there will be more out of the left then the right speakers. If you pan it all the way to the left, then it comes out of the left speaker only. Similarly if you pan a mono track to the right, then more comes out of the right channel. Thus you can “position” each track wherever you like within the stereo field.

On Export, the panned tracks are mixed down into a stereo file.

7

Thanks again for the explanations and references.

I figured out to add the mono track 3…I only have three inputs currently but when I record, after selecting them all, the display seems to show a different order than the track info on the far left…or the monitoring. Is that true? And the same for when I do playback. It seems that the display order of the recorded tracks has the left and right separated top/bottom by the 3rd mono track in the middle.

Thanks again.

8

The channel order in the Audacity tracks follows the “channel number” of the USB audio.
USB channel 1 as the first (topmost) track channel
USB channel 2 as the next track channel
USB channel 3 as the next track channel
and so on.

I don’t know how Soundcraft have ordered the USB channels in relation to the mixer’s physical inputs. I would have guessed:
Input 1 (left) → USB 1
Input 2 (right) → USB 2
Input 3 (left) → USB 3
Input 4 (right) → USB 4