Way to prevent PPro’s -3dB audio export?

[Tim Kolb]

Strange. It’s been a while since I used CS4 frequently. Does it seem to make any difference what format you’re exporting to?

I assume you’re on Windows?

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Marc Brown]

I hear you. I’d love to be able to go back to CS3, or have somebody hand me CS5, so I could use Avisynth again. That would save gobs of time (though I’d happily be rid of Media Encoder).

I’m only exporting wavs. Input is also wavs. I’m not expecting anyone to be able to figure this out. I was really just hoping somebody had noticed the problem and already determined whether or not a fix can be had. It’s pretty obvious, from the absence of discussion anywhere, that the problem came and went with CS4 and it wasn’t ever a big enough issue to discuss during that period of the software’s history.

[Todd Kopriva]

Is this what you’re seeing?
https://blogs.adobe.com/insidesound/2010/10/following-the-letter-of-the-pan-law.html

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Technical Support for professional video software
After Effects Help & Support
Premiere Pro Help & Support
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[Marc Brown]

It’s an interesting find, and I appreciate the effort needed to have dug it up. And I do feel that the -3dB nature of the attenuation is related to this “sweet spot” the article discusses, in the sense that whatever purpose was meant in reducing the audio, at least it wasn’t entirely arbitrary.

But in my case, there are two variables which seem to rule this specific possibility out. 1) I’m dealing entirely with mono audio. 2) Re-importing the attenuated .wavs back into Premiere Pro reveals the 3 dB reduction in the waveform, and then re-exporting them simply reduces the volume again by a further 3 dB, ad infinitum.

[Hillary Lorimer]

4 years late, but I’ve found the solution for anyone who stumbles across this cold and alone like I did.

Note that the way I’ve implemented this is kind of clunky since I was tiptoeing around our staff’s workflow, so you can adjust the sequence settings a different way if you so choose. The goal is to change your audio track type from “Standard” to “Mono.” I haven’t tried this with Stereo.

In your timeline you’ll see one A1 audio track with a master track attached to it. The master track will have a speaker icon next to it, and the A1 track will likely not.

You will need to make a new track with the desired settings, and then delete this old track. To do this go to Sequence > Add Tracks…

Change the number beside “Add” under “Video Tracks” to 0
Change the number beside “Add” under “Audio Tracks” to 1
Under “Track Type” select Mono
Press “okay”

Go back to “Sequence” and select “Delete Track…”
Uncheck “Delete Video Tracks”
Check “Delete Audio Tracks”
Select “Audio 1”
Press “okay”

You should now have 1 audio track in your timeline that has a speaker icon beside it.
Your audio will now export at the same level it was imported at.

For those who are curious, the dB drop is caused by different implementations of “Pan law” in different programs/track types, mentioned by Todd Kopriva above.

[Jason Rayment]

Finally an answer! Yet interesting this is never mentioned by anyone in their tutorials when exporting multiple channel output not naming anyone whom are supposed industry experts.

The -3dB reduction on output finally solved when using Premiere Pro, thanks Hillary! 🙂