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How to render songs in real 5.1 multichannel sound

Renoise Forum - October 21, 2021 - 17:10

This is a short User Guide for producing WAV audio tracks in true multi-channel 5.1 format, “just using Renoise”.

I will take the reference with Windows 10/11, but it has its equivalents for other Operating Systems and their versions compatible with Renoise (Linux or MAC). I will also take the 5.1 multichannel distribution as a reference, but it can be 2.1, 5.0, 4.0, 7.1, etc., depending on the characteristics of the sound card.

1. Introduction

Generally, Renoise composers render songs in stereo, that is, in 2 channels front right (FR) and front left (FL), or 2.0 multichannel sound (two channels without subwoofer division). We can ask ourselves, why is this happening? Probably many Renoise users are unaware of this great ability to render 5.1 audio.

What if the composer wants to render a song in true 5.1 multichannel sound? Is it possible just using Renoise? We will see that the answer is affirmative, but with nuances. Pay attention, because it is very easy!

2. Requirements to render WAV files with real 5.1 multichannel sound.

Basically you will only need two things:

Renoise Full Version. The demo version does not support ASIO. You can buy Renoise 3.3.2 or future version here: Shop | Renoise
Sound card compatible with 5.1 multi-channel sound, compatible with ASIO and compatible with Windows 10/11.
Obviously, a machine compatible with these things …

There are a multitude of sound cards, both integrated into the motherboard, as well as dedicated PCIe or USB. For example, I use a PCIe Sound Blaster ZxR sound card, which is ASIO 5.1 compliant and offers very low latency. You can look for a similar sound card.

The important thing is that it is ASIO compliant. Focusing on my sound card, its ASIO support allows up to 6 channels to be used:

Right Front (FR)
Front Left (FL)
Rear Right (RR)
Rear Left (RL)
Central (C)
Subwoofer (Sub)

Pay attention! When Renoise is properly set to ASIO, it will detect the following for routing tracks (remember this for later):

Track Routing → Master (if the track is different from the Master track).
Track Routing → Front L/R
Track Routing → Rear L/R
Track Routing → Center/Sub

If you have a different sound card, the names (like Front L / R) may vary.

3. Configure Renoise. Setup to listen/render true multichannel 5.1 sound.

You already have the sound card drivers installed and you also have the Renoise 3.3.2 or higher version software installed within Windows 10/11.

Run Renoise. To start your project you can use a preconfigured song template with your tastes…
Go to Renoise: Edit/Preferences/Audio
1. Select: Device type → Asio
2. Select: Device → Creative SBZ Series ASIO (or the name of your sound card)
3. Sample Rate → 41000 or 48000 (…also depends on the size of the buffer high enough)
4. Buffer size → go to “Control Panel” Button. A window appear. Configure the ASIO Latency here → 5 ms, 10 ms… The longer in ms, the more buffer size and vice versa.

If you have doubts about the terms “sample rate”, “latency”, “buffer size”, etc. please refer to the Renoise User Manual or or check out the Renoise forums.

After understanding and setting up all these settings in Renoise, you can now route your tracks to each channel.

4. Route tracks to independent channels in 5.1 configuration

Renoise has 4 types of track:

Note track
Group track
Send track
Master Track

By default, the first 3 are routed to the Master Track.
By default, the Master Track is routed directly to the sound card input. Being ASIO it is routed to “Front L / R”. If it were Direct Sound, it would be routed to the name of the sound card, which is equivalent to “Front L / R”, but there would be no possibility of routing to other channels.

So you can force any track to be routed directly to the sound card, ignoring the master track, with all that that entails.
Let’s see how to distribute 6 Note Tracks, each one to a different channel to obtain 5.1 multi-channel sound, with the following distribution:

First track, right front channel: In track DSP Routing change to → Front L/R; Panning → 50 R.
Second track, front left channel: In track DSP Routing change to → Front L/R; Panning → 50 L.
Third track, right rear channel: In track DSP Routing change to → Rear L/R; Panning → 50 R.
Fourth track, left rear channel: In track DSP Routing change to → Rear L/R; Panning → 50 L.
Fifth track, center front channel: In track DSP Routing change to → Center/Sub; Panning → 50 R.
Sixth track, subwoofer channel: In track DSP Routing change to → Center/Sub; Panning → 50 L.

This distribution redirects the sound signal completely separated to 100% to each corresponding channel.

Now if you want to change the panning to partially redistribute the sound on 2 channels, you are really playing with three 2-channel systems:

system 1 front: Front L/R
system 2 rear: Rear L/R
system 3 center/subwoofer: Center/Sub

Maybe sharing the sound between the center channel and subwoofer channel doesn’t make much sense. The subwoofer channel is intended to receive desirable low frequencies and ignore all mid and high frequencies depending on the cutoff.
So you can play with system 1 and system 2 to redirect the sounds.
In addition, you can use the group/send tracks as tracks routed to the 3 channel systems of the sound card. To redistribute sound, you must think of each “system” as a group of two channels (left and right).

5. Render the song in true multi-channel 5.1 sound, WAV form

Once you’ve finished the song and saved the project, you can render it in multichannel WAV 5.1 format.

Go to Renoise: File/Render Song To Disk… Configure this panel and press Start button.

The result will be a WAV file with all 6 separate channels. Each sound will be directed to the corresponding channel during playback. Voilà, everything is ready!

As you have seen, the procedure is very simple. However, many users may be unaware of this Renoise capability. You just have to keep in mind that the WAV file’s playback source must support this format with this 5.1 distribution.

For example, I can play the resulting WAV file in 5.1 channels by changing the sound card settings (my Sonud Blaster ZxR) to Direct Sound and using any compatible audio player, such as VLC, Dopamine, Windows Media Player or JetAudio.

Remember this is a guide for 5.1 multichannel. It has its equivalents for another number of channels.

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