Audio Track Mixer in Premiere Pro

The Audio Track Mixer is one of the most overlooked pieces of video production. Understanding how it works can save hours of editing and enable more professional sounding project.

You can edit audio tracks using the Audio Track Mixer or the Audio Clip Mixer. The difference is:

• The Audio Track Mixer controls tracks.  
• The Audio Clip Mixer controls individual audio clips in each track. For more information, see Audio Clip Mixer. 

Each Audio Track Mixer track corresponds to a track in the timeline of the active sequence and displays the Timeline audio tracks in an audio console layout.

The Audio Track Mixer contains a certain number of audio track sliders that directly correspond to the number of audio tracks available in the Timeline. When you add a new audio track to the Timeline, a new track is created in the Audio Track Mixer. You can rename a track by clicking its name. You can also use the Audio Track Mixer to record audio directly into a sequence’s tracks.

The Audio Track Mixer represents the tracks in the active sequence only, not all project-wide tracks. If you want to create a master project mix from multiple sequences, set up a master sequence and nest other sequences within it. 

The Audio Track Mixer is hidden by default in most Premiere Pro workspaces. To open the Audio workspace, click Windows > Audio Track Mixer.

Channel Functions

Each Audio Track Mixer track corresponds to a track in the timeline of the active sequence and displays the Timeline audio tracks in an audio console layout. Each vertical column in the Audio Track Mixer, as seen in the image below, is labeled Audio1, Audio2, Audio3, and so on. These are the same exact audio tracks that exist in the normal editing timeline.

The Audio Track Mixer allows you to adjust entire tracks at the same time. For example, you have music on Audio1 track and a voiceover on Audio track2. If the music is too loud, you can adjust the slider to decrease the volume of the music. 

To stay organized, you can rename audio tracks at the bottom of the mixer.

Panning

Mute, Solo, Record

Automation

Track Effects

If the Track Effects are not visible in the Audio Track Mixer, click the tiny arrow in the upper left corner of the Audio Track Mixer. You can apply and combine audio effects like EQ, reverb, and compression to entire tracks. 

In the Track Effects panel, you can see a set of slots where you can place different effects or send assignments to. Click on the available slot to see the list of effects that you can apply to the track. Once you apply an effect, you see a box at the bottom where you can control the parameter for this effect. You can add multiple effects to occur at the same time. 

The Fx button keep the audio effect but mutes it. To get rid of an effect, click on the effect and select None from the dropdown menu.

Submix

A submix is a track that combines audio signals routed to it from specific audio tracks. You can make adjustments to the submix that can be applied to multiple tracks. A submix is an intermediate step between audio tracks and the master track. It’s almost like the audio version of an adjustment layer.

For more information, see Advanced Audio - Submixes, downmixing, and routing.