Term: Multitrack (audio)

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Term: Multitrack (audio)

Definition:

A multitrack recording consists of multiple, separate streams of sound without defined locations in a sound field. During a typical music-recording session, individual instruments or voices will be recorded on separate tracks. When these multiple tracks are mixed at the end of the session, combinations of sounds are assigned places in a sound field for future playback, thus producing a mixed and edited multichannel recording.

In this glossary, multitrack is distinguished from multichannel, which is defined as the output from the recording production process, after the tracks have been mixed into a set of channels, each of which is assigned a location in a sound field. Some audio professionals use these terms in different ways in different contexts.

Category:

Audio

See also:

Track (audio); Sound field; Channel (audio); Multichannel (audio); Interleaved sample audio