[ardour-users] Surround Sound Mixing and Panning

[Thomas Vecchione]

Hello-

   I apologize if this has been asked repeatedly... I am sure it has.

   I am currently having problems understanding the multi-channel 
panner, or else it seems a bit buggy.

   Taking a mono channel in a project with 5 outputs, the panner for the 
channel has a single blue puck, and 5 orange squares.  I would assume 
the orange squares would represent the inputs to the master track and 
the blue puck would represent the output of the source track.  Moving 
the 5 orange squares to a setup similar to the 5 speakers in a 5.1 
surround set up I can move the blue puck around and see differences in 
the send levels going out of the track.  However these dont seem to 
match up correctly to the proximity of the blue puck to the respective 
speakers, and I never completly lose signal to any speaker, say if I 
wanted to pan a track hard into the front left speaker and none of the 
others.

   On the master track I have the same 5 squares, but now I have 5 blue 
pucks to move around, I am a bit confused on this.  I would think that 
either I would have one, or the other, but not both, but it seems I have 
both and am confused as to that.  It would seem on the master track 
panner I would place the locations of the inputs into the master track 
in the 2d panner, and the source track panner I would place the location 
of the output of the source track.

   So I am a bit confused as to why I have 5 meters I believe showing 
outputs into each of the master tracks inputs on the source track.  It 
would seem to me that I should only have a single LED meter on the 
output of that track, as I might not choose to send that track directly 
to the master ports and send it instead to a stereo bus which I then pan 
into the master track.  So if someone could explain to me why this is, 
or how I am misunderstanding it I would appreciate it greatly.

   I am also a bit confused why I have the 5 orange squares and 5 blue 
pucks in the master track panner.  Again see above, to me it would make 
sense for this only to allow me to place the inputs into the master 
track.  The outputs I would assume would be fixed into various ports 
typically and cant find a reason for this not to be the case.

   I would love to use ardour for multitrack mixing and I tihnk it has 
great capabilities, but I seem to be misunderstanding some of the 
implementations of it and would love some help in figuring it out.

   Another thing I have noticed is when editing ANY of the above 
features of the panners in the Editor Mixer(Not the mixer window) 
whenever I switch to a different track and come back it has reset to its 
defaults and none of my edits stay.  I would assume this to be a bug but 
want to double check since i am having so many problems.

   So any help? ..... Bewler?

          Seablade