Handle Multichannel Audio same as Stereo (as one track)?

Hi;

is it possible to handle multichannel audio same as stereo? I mean when i import a stereo file audacity makes one track with both of the channels in it. But when i import for example a 5.1 AC3 track it splits them up in 6 single channels. So when i want to cut around i have always to expand the marked area over all open Tracks per hand (CTRL-Shift-K) and unmask the unwanted tracks by hand…

To me and any other people who are working with multichannel sounds it would a great help if i could combine my for example 5.1 track to one in that style like Audacity does it with stereo files - where my marking operations are marking always both channels of my track…

Is this some how possible?

thx!
HM

Currently the maximum number of channels in a track is 2 (stereo).
There are plans to make tracks more flexible and allow any number of channels, but there’s a lot of code tied to the old way of “mono or stereo only”, so it’ll be a while before Audacity breaks free of this limitation.

You can mix and render the five channels down to one. The sound doesn’t stay 5.1 Surround when you do that, though. It turns the show into Mono (one blue wave).

Koz

@kozikowski - no, thanks - i want to work with multichannel sound… maybe somebody of the coders will have mercy for me in the future and add this in my opinion very good functionality to the programme…

i want to work with multichannel sound

Actually, you could make this more general and even more desirable. The ability to bind any number of channels into one.

Select several tracks by Shift-clicking just right of the up arrow > Tracks > Bind Tracks. From that point on, they act as one track. Some graphic means must be found to indicate the bind tool is working. That may be the hard part.

Doesn’t have to be literally a multi-rack show: Front-Left, Front-Right, etc. You might want to automatically apply an effect or correction to many tracks at once in a logical grouping and have more than one group.

Koz

Exactly - it would be best to bind any tracks everybody wants together to a logical one. If possible multiple “logical tracks”.
And maybe an option to define tracks and theses new logical tracks which should not be part of the multi track marking with Ctrl+Shift+K.

In that case i could open track which would be my master tracks; open additional tracks under them to edit and synchronize with my master (which should be something defined like “read only” or so)

And - in the future - if all the cutting (editing) operations could be saved and reused on any now opened (logical) track this would be great!!!


cheers,
HM

Also see:

Dear Forum,

All my music tracks are stuck together and I can’t figure out how to unstick them. Please help.

Koz