I have actually been dabbling in quadrophonic (and 5.1) surround in Renoise for awhile now. It can be done, but there are limitations. Namely, Renoise really wants to do everything in stereo channels. This means you cannot use any plugins which support/output multichannel audio with more than 2 channels. This also means you can’t just configure the Mst track to use more than 2 channels of output.
My workaround is to use 3 send tracks, with the Pre-Mixer Routing for each send set to 2 of the 5.1 channels:
- Send 1 = Front Left + Front Right = channels 1 & 2
- Send 2 = Center Channel + LFE (sub) = channels 3 & 4
- Send 3 = Left Surround + Right Surround (rear speakers) = channels 5 & 6
The Mst track by default will be channels 1 & 2, so you could use that instead of setting up Send 1 to be the front speakers. Don’t use both, or you will double the signal sent to the front speakers.
Any sound you want to send to the center channel must be panned hard left (mono) before sent to Send 2. Likewise, any subwoofer frequencies you want to send to the LFE channel must be panned hard right (mono) before sent to Send 2. If you aren’t dealing with vocals, I would suggest not bothering with the center channel. And don’t forget to properly filter anything you send to the LFE channel. (The Multiband Send effect is extremely helpful.)
With this setup, you could use an XY Pad device to drive 2 Hydra Devices which in turn control Send devices for the front and rear speakers, as in the attached xrns. Don’t forget to set the Pre-Mixer routing to your audio interface’s channels.
5-1_Surround.xrns (10.9 KB)
I started playing around in 5.1, but have since “simplified” a bit and now focus on quadrophonic. Same concept as above, just skipping channels 3 & 4 (center & LFE). And instead of setting up complex panner effects chains/doofers everywhere, I just automate the Send devices for front & rear directly. Most of the time, however, I’m lazy and use the Multiband Send effect to route stereo audio to the front and rear speakers per frequency band, which has the added bonus of avoiding phase issues.