First, we must, of course, select the driver and the audio card :
PODIUM from Zynewave is not as well known as other multitrack softwares (like the Steinberg
ones !) since it has publicly appeared only in the Spring of 2004, but it provides a very
powerful base especially for multichannel work.
It's main feature is its up to 32 channel
busses, followed by a hierarchical track structure and a very special way of
handling peripherals with "Device Mappings" which
avoid to have to set a fixed number of channels for the audio tracks.
Sure, some aspects of the workflow must evolve in order to be able to work
with a comparable efficiency as with some other concurrent multitrack softwares
(like custom keys and mouse shortcuts, time-stretching and other minor things)
but thanks to the excellent support of Frits, Podium is certainly the software
(with Reaper in an other way) which offers, today, the greater potential
for
audio creation in general, and multichannel sound in particular.
needs : Podium (30 days demo version / 90 €), SpatSurround 12, MultiJoy 16
When creating a new project, Podium proposes a powerful
"Project Wizard" which is good
for stereo but doesn't suit our multichannel needs.
We will use it to obtain basic "mappings" that we will transform
in multichhanel ones after.
First, we must, of course, select the driver and the audio card :
and for example :
If you are not planning for audio recording, you can deselect the audio inputs
to preserve some resources.
You can also deselect the outputs that are
not needed in the project (here only 12 in this tutorial).
Attention : it
is not possible to select the order of the outputs and you must use only adjacent
outputs.
Then we must create a "Device Definition" for it and name it :
for exemple :
which gives you a first object on the Browser Window :
Now add a "Device Mapping"
for that sound card, which will make the link between your project and the
card,
you can name it "Bus
8 channels" (since this tutorial is
based on a 8 channel example),
for the Device Definition you can select the name of the one that you have
previously created,
as Audio interface "Any available interface" will use the one that
you have selected in the Setup,
and, the most important, the channels :
"Target" means here the input of the device, so as we want to hear 8 channels
the audio interface must receive 8 channels from Podium.
(the "First channel" offset is a
very powerfull option, but not for now...)
Now we have a second object in the Browser :
