[ardour-users] Multi Channel Bus Panning Behaviour

[Iain Young]

Hi Everyone,

I recently got a 5.1 Soundcard (actually its built in on the EPIA MII
12000 board), and thought I'd start playing with multi (5.1 mainly)
channel audio via jack and ardour.

I can play 5.1 audio, and route it out via ac3jack, and the S/PDIF
connector with no problem. 

I then created a 6 channel bus in the mixer window of Ardour. I noted
the Panner area had (what I guess are loudspeakers), and 6 "pucks".

I'm confused as to how these work. I could understand a single
puck (eg the listener), but a puck for each channel seems strange to
me. Can anyone explain it to me ?


Now...when I fed a stereo feed into that bus, the bus itself appeared
to do some processing of the signal to create a surround effect - or
at least judging by the level meters it did.

Is there a way to have a multi channel bus not do any surround processing,
but just Pre/Post/Fader processing ? Or is it just going to be easier
for me to use 3 stereo busses ?

One thing I've done (outside ardour) is combine L&R signals to create the
Centre channel, pass that through a LPF out to the LFE channel, and delay
the rear surround channels slightly. Trying to implement this within
Ardour would seem to require 3 seperate busses.

One thing that I'd also like to be able to do is route certain signals
to the front/centre/speakers only as I choose (eg incoming phone calls,
gated audio from a real audio stream etc), but again, this looks like its
going to need 3 stereo faders.


Finally, can anyone confirm which of the 5/6/7/8 channels would respond
to which Loudspeaker in a surround sound setup ?


Best Regards

Iain