Searching the internet I found Audacity as a tool for creating sound on the landscape of my modeltrains.
First suggestion was creating tracks in Audacity, export them as WAV-files, and using the standard Windows application
WAVAVIMUX for creating a 7.1 surround file (with extension .AVI).
I hoped that earch source file would result in a separate sound in each speaker, but it was a mix of them.
Checking the export options in Audacity I found ways the link source tracks and channels.
I experimented with different output formats (WAVEX, MP3, MPEG) but still it seems not to be possible to allocate
just 1 source to one channel (speaker). It is possible in Audacity to create really separated channels for my speakers ?
The common one is Dolby Digital AC3. That one can do 5.1 (broadcast surround) but I don’t know about 7.1. You need a Dolby decoder at the other end. I think you can manage that with Audacity and the FFMpeg software.
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#ffdown
A show that doesn’t “split up” into channels means the decoder (or the encoder) failed.
Koz
…I’ve only made surround AC3 files for DVDs using WAVtoAC3encoder and my DVD authoring program.
I wonder if you have a playback configuration problem… When you open the multichannel file in Audacity, does it look like a multichannel file?
I assume you have a 7.1 channel soundcard?
The only “truly-standard” multichannel formats that “anybody can play” are on DVDs & Blu-Rays.
Here are some links to some multi-channel files to test your playback system:
[u]WAV Sample Files[/u]
[u]Surround Test File[/u] (WMA & AC3)
[u]Multichannel DVD Files[/u] (AC3, DTS, MPEG-2, LPCM)
I experimented with different output formats (WAVEX, MP3, MPEG) but still it seems not to be possible to allocate…
MP3 is stereo only. I’m not sure about MPEG-2. WMA and AAC can be multichannel, but I’ve never actually seen a multichannel file in either format and I don’t know what it takes to play one.
You can have an MPEG video multiplexed with audio in any format… i.e. DVDs are MPEG-2 files with a limited variety of audio options. The only surround formats I’ve seen on commercial DVDs are Dolby AC3 and DTS. (Dolby stereo and LPCM stereo are also common on DVDs.)
My commonplace logical sense tells me that a file exported as a 8-channel mixdown (to be enabled in Preferences–>Import/Export) should actually play as a 7.1 file.
Hence, no encoding or decoding necessary.
I presume that the sound card (speakers) already runs in 7.1 configuration?
Do you use WMP, Foobar2000 or another player?
Just to remind there is so-called MP3 Surround Sound: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/export-multi-channel-mp3-file/29030/4 .
Gale