I use Audition V3. Here's more or less my work flow for a four track...
- Master each stereo pair separately as you would normally in edit view. Don't worry about multi tracking at this point.
- Once you're happy with each stereo pair, switch to multitrack view.
- Load both pairs into the multitrack view by dragging the files from the 'files' are over to the 'main' area.
- Zoom way in and make sure both pairs start in the multi track session at 00:00:000.
- Find a distinct percussive peak, a drum hit or something, in the recording and zoom way in on that.
- Determine the time difference between the two pairs...one is usually lagging the other by some number of milliseconds.
- Go back to edit view and locate your cursor at the very beginning of one of the stereo pairs...before an music starts.
- In Edit view, move one track pair forward or the other back to make both pairs line up exactly.
- Go back into multi-track view, zoom in, and confirm that both stereo pairs are now lined up by zooming way in again.
- I usually have to repeat the above few steps a couple of times to get them to line up precisely.
- Once you're happy with the alignment, you're ready to start figuring out the mix you want between the two.
- On the multitrack view, you have a rudimentary mixer available to you. Each stereo pair has three buttons labeled M, S, and R. M means Mute, S means Solo, R means Arm For Recording.
- There are also two dials available for each stereo pair. These dials are located immediately below the three buttons. The left hand dial is your volume control, the right hand dial is for panning. Since you're mixing stereo pairs, leave all of the pan dials straight up so that '0' is indicated to the right of the dial.
- Play around with the volume dials and use the M and S buttons to help you decide what mix between the two sounds best.
- Generally, if I have a good sounding AUD, I mix in alot less SBD...say 70/30. The worst the AUD sounds, the higher percentage I make the SBD. Your ears are the only judge at this point.
- Once I have a mix I'm happy with, on the menu at top, click edit.
- On the pulldown, find the selection 'Mixdown to a new file'
- Click 'Mixdown To a New File' and that brings up another pop up menu...select 'Master Output in Session (Stereo)'
- Boom!