Keram's Book Report

It’s surprisingly easy to upmix and create a totally pro surround mix from you regular stereo track, but only if you know the steps. In the WAVES Audio documentation, there was no instructions for Cockos Reaper or Adobe Premiere Pro. So I asked a WAVES rep to create the guide for me, and here is what I got, along with some of my own notes. I am sure this will help someone, and with the world of WebXR looming, and more and more 3D audio applications becoming available, this is your change to get into the mix!

1. Make sure your Master track has 6 outputs (for a 5.1 setup), by clicking on Route, then changing Track Channels to 6 and adding the appropriate hardware outputs:
   
2. Create a new track and add your stereo audio file to it
3. In the audio track’s Route window, set Track Channels to 6, and make sure “Master send” is selected:
   
   
4. Insert UM 226 on the audio track – it will now be upmixed to 5.1 and routed to your master track

Note that all the surround waves plugin can take all the standard channel orders SMPTE, ITU, Film, ext’. As long as the host application declares the channel order correctly to the plugin, the plugin will adjust the channel order accordingly.

The channel order in the plugin is in the Film format.

The channels in Reaper don’t get named automatically but you can easily match them with the output of the plugin.

In Premiere Pro

:

1. Go to the New Sequence window and click on the Tracks tab
2. Under Audio, set Master to 5.1 and add 3 more audio tracks so you have a total of 6:
   
   
3. In the new sequence, go to Sequence > Add Tracks…
4. Don’t add Audio and Video tracks, but add 1 Submix track and set its Track Type to 5.1:
   
   
5. Add a stereo audio file on one of the available audio track.
6. In the Audio Track Mixer, set the output of your stereo audio track to the surround submix you created:
   
   
7. Make sure the submix is routed to the Master track.
8. On the submix track’s insert, add UM226 (It’s going to be in VST3 > Surround > Waves)
9. ​Now, the stereo audio file is upmixed to 5.1 and routed to your master track.

Special thanks for Ziv Shor at Waves Audio for putting together this guide for me.