Audacity Forum

I want to make a cd with 5.1 surround sound on it to play in my dvd player/5.1 surround sound system.

How do I set up audacity to record tracks at 5.1 surround sound.

I hope this make sense. Sound is not something I know much about. I have used audacity many times but I just alway saved my sounds as a mono sound.

My plan is: have sound play in the surround sound speakers appear as if its moving "around" the room and have a separate sound play occasionally.

If you want to record true 5.1 sound, you will need a multi-channel sound card that can record 6 audio channels simultaneously (and be compatible with Audacity).

You may be able to "fake" 5.1 sound by creating 5 mono tracks in Audacity and fading sound in/out of one track while fading out/in on another so as to create a "moving around" effect. Then use the "Use custom mix:" option in Audacity preferences to create a 5.1 file when you export the audio: http://manual.audacityteam.org/manual/h ... tions.html

I have several sound files on my computer that I wanted to put into audacity. Example.. is footsteps. I want those footsteps in one speaker, then another speaker then another speaker then on another speaker across the room, I want a loud door slam or yell.
Hopefully the end result will sound like someone walking around the room and while people are following the steps then a loud noise on the other side of the room will scare them! This is for a haunted house fund raiser.

I tried doing the fading in and out the sound from a left speaker to a right speaker it partially worked but I had one speaker play the sound all the time. I obviously did something wrong?
Then somewhere I found someoen that said to make 2 stereo sounds and then channel 3 and 4 were mono.
I really didnt understand ... so ... Here I am.

Oh I forgot... the first sound I created was with all the tracks being mono and then setting it to the 5.1 when being exported.
I am thinking that I may have missed something?

Do I have to have a 5.1 sound card on my computer in order to create a 5.1 sound file in audacity?
Right now I dont have a 5.1 sound card. But I am not going to use this cd on my computer. Just in my surround sound home theater system.

A normal audio CD does not do 5.1 surround sound - they are 2 channel stereo.
To play back 5.1 you need a 5.1 system and 5.1 media (such as a DVD with 5.1 sound or a "Super Audio CD" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD)

So rather than saving my file to a cd.... I need to save it to a dvd or a super audio cd? would any dvd work?