Mixing and exporting for more than 8 channels and non-standard multichannel setups

Question

I am trying to do something kind of unconventional, although I have seen people on the forums trying to do similar things. Unfortunately, it's unclear if they succeeded or not, and if they did, how.
I'm trying to figure out how to mix sound for an environment that has many (somewhere between 8 and 16) independent speakers, all connected to an audio interface. I know that WAV, AAC, and other audio file formats can carry that many channels and I can map them to the individual speakers. My question is how to edit/mix. Specifically,
Is this possible in Audition? It seems like it might be in CC, but not previous? (I have CS6.)
How do you set up the project file. When I create a new multitrack project, I can choose mono, stereo, or 5.1. The 5.1 option allows me to assign sounds to the five speakers in a standard 5.1 setup and the LFE. Is it possible mix for an environment with more than that? Or with a different configuration of speakers? In Audio MIDI Setup (for Windows people, that's where in OSX you set the more advanced audio preferences) I can configure up to 7.1 as well as geometric arrangements like quadrophonic, hexagonal, and octagonal. Is it possible in Audition to mix for anything like these?
There have been some threads where people talk about using 16 discrete outputs in Audition. How is this possible? Is each track able to be routed to a different output? If so, is it possible to write a file that has all of these tracks assigned to their discrete output channels?
Is it possible to nest audio sessions like you can nest Premiere sequences? For example, can I create a multitrack project with mono output and have that session be embedded into another multitrack session or do I have to finish editing the first one and write a file from it to use it in another project? Can buses be used to do this? What I'm wondering is if what I describe in #3 above IS possible, then how to have more than just a single pre-made audio file going to each of the outputs, to allow me to mix each channel with various sounds.
Sorry that's a few questions, but they all revolve around how to work with multi-channel sound that isn't stereo or 5.1.
Thanks!

Answer 1

SpdCncpt wrote:
I'm trying to figure out how to mix sound for an environment that has many (somewhere between 8 and 16) independent speakers, all connected to an audio interface. I know that WAV, AAC, and other audio file formats can carry that many channels and I can map them to the individual speakers. My question is how to edit/mix. Specifically,
Is this possible in Audition? It seems like it might be in CC, but not previous? (I have CS6.)
As you have probably gathered, this is effectively a work in progress...
How do you set up the project file. When I create a new multitrack project, I can choose mono, stereo, or 5.1. The 5.1 option allows me to assign sounds to the five speakers in a standard 5.1 setup and the LFE. Is it possible mix for an environment with more than that? Or with a different configuration of speakers? In Audio MIDI Setup (for Windows people, that's where in OSX you set the more advanced audio preferences) I can configure up to 7.1 as well as geometric arrangements like quadrophonic, hexagonal, and octagonal. Is it possible in Audition to mix for anything like these?
At present, this is restricted to what you can see, but there's sort-of a workaround - albeit not an ideal one...
There have been some threads where people talk about using 16 discrete outputs in Audition. How is this possible? Is each track able to be routed to a different output? If so, is it possible to write a file that has all of these tracks assigned to their discrete output channels?
If you have a multichannel sound device, and all the outputs are visible to Audition, then yes, each track can be assigned directly to a different output. And if you set one up, you can do this with buses as well...
Is it possible to nest audio sessions like you can nest Premiere sequences? For example, can I create a multitrack project with mono output and have that session be embedded into another multitrack session or do I have to finish editing the first one and write a file from it to use it in another project? Can buses be used to do this? What I'm wondering is if what I describe in #3 above IS possible, then how to have more than just a single pre-made audio file going to each of the outputs, to allow me to mix each channel with various sounds.
It's not possible to nest sessions at present in any version, and this has been asked about before. There are some significant issues with this, mainly to do with things like sample rates, output formats, etc. Doesn't mean that it won't happen, but don't hold your breath... As I said, there's a workaround, and yes, it's buses. Since you can effectively submix to a bus, and the bus output can go directly to hardware, then you can do what you want. The compromise is that in order to save the overall result, you'll end up with all of your source files, and a session file. And you'll have to play the whole thing back in Audition, rather than export it to a single file and be able to play it on a multichannel player. But yes, it should work.