Reference Guide

961
Importing surround mixes
Surround Mixing (Producer and Studio only)
Importing surround mixes
SONAR imports multi-channel (surround) files as a group of mono files. If the files contain
information that labels the speaker location of each channel in the file, SONAR copies these labels
to the clips in your audio tracks, but does not pan the tracks according to these labels. This is
because you may not have your SONAR project set to the same multi-channel format as the
imported project.
You can import the following types of multi-channel files:
• Multi-channel PCM wave files (.wav)
• Dolby AC3 encoded files. (.ac3)—these are encoded for Dolby surround. You will need to install
an AC3 decoder filter such as this one: http://ac3filter.sourceforge.net in order to be able to
decode these files in SONAR.
• Windows Media Pro
To import a surround multi-channel file
1. Use the File > Import > Audio command to open the Import Audio dialog box.
2. Select a file of a supported file type.
3. Check Import As Mono Tracks.
4. Click Open.
SONAR imports each channel to a separate mono track.
See:
“Exporting surround mixes” on page 962
Important: After installing the above AC3 codec, go to Control Panel and launch the "AC3 Filter"
control panel applet. From there you can set up the default speaker output for this filter to 5.1
channels. Until you do this it will only stream in stereo. Also check the sample rate of the
imported file. It’s recommended that you set your project sample rate to whatever the file uses
before importing. Otherwise the import process will go through a time consuming resampling
pass for each channel.
Tip: You can also rip the soundtrack from a video file by opening the video file directly from the
Import Audio dialog box.