Audacity Forum

I'm trying to edit a 5.1 .ac3 file in Audacity, and when I go to export the newly manipulated .ac3, I'm presented with a dialogue box that allows me to assign each of six tracks to one of six channels. Only problem is, the channels aren't labeled "center," "right," "LFE," etc.; they're labeled "1," "2," "3," and so forth. So I don't know which channels to assign the respective tracks to. At the present, I don't have access to a surround sound system, so I can't determine which track is which by trial and error.

So, does anyone know which channels are which? I've come across several entirely different answers online, and even a suggestion that the order was changed between Audacity 1.3.6 and 1.3.7, so I'm a little bewildered. Anyone know the answer to this? Thanks.

Teflon Billy wrote:a suggestion that the order was changed between Audacity 1.3.6 and 1.3.7

That bit is incorrect. By default Audacity always maps track 1 > channel 1, track 2 > channel 2, .....

Teflon Billy wrote:Only problem is, the channels aren't labeled "center," "right," "LFE," etc.; they're labeled "1," "2," "3," and so forth.

That's because Audacity has no way of knowing which tracks you want mapping to which channel.

When you import a multi-channel sound Audacity should map channel 1 > track 1, channel 2 > track 2,....
As long as you do not change the track order, exporting with the default mapping should produce a multi-channel file with the channels in the correct order.