6 min read
How to import a poly WAV into Premiere Pro
Premiere will happily fold your eight track recording into stereo. Two settings stop it.
The complaint is always the same: a multichannel WAV imported into Premiere plays back as a stereo mix, or only the first two channels are audible. Nothing is damaged, the interpretation is simply wrong.
Modify, then Audio Channels
Select the clip in the project panel, choose Clip then Modify then Audio Channels. Set the clip channel format to Mono and the number of audio clips to match the channel count. Each channel now becomes its own clip item that drops on its own track.
Set the default before you import
Preferences then Audio then Default Audio Tracks lets you set Multichannel media to Mono. Do this before ingesting a shoot and every future import behaves, which saves modifying clips one by one.
Sequence settings still matter
- A stereo sequence will sum whatever you put in it, so use a multichannel or adaptive sequence for dialogue work.
- Match the sequence sample rate to the recordings, normally 48 kHz.
- Check that channel mapping in the sequence is not routing everything to the same output pair.
Merged clips and sync
Premiere merges camera clips with audio through Merge Clips, using timecode or in points. Merging works best when the audio is already mono per track, because the merged clip keeps each source on a separate channel.
The faster route on big projects
Splitting poly files into named mono stems before ingest means no Modify dialog, no default preference to remember, and filenames that already say Boom or Lav1. On a long documentary that is hours saved.