Help with Adobe Premiere Pro Audio

I'm FINALLY starting to get the hang of basic editing in Adobe Premiere, with the exception of audio. For the most part, all I'm done are simple edits, and I would like to cut and splice the audio right along with the video WITHOUT changing its attributes. For example, if I start out with a 7.1 DTS-HD file in 24 bit, I don't want to re-encode the audio through Adobe. I know I may have to re-encode to Wave files and put in as multichannel tracks but when it comes time to render out the file, I don't want to change the audio attributes from 24 to 16 bit or make any other changes. Anyone have any advice on how best to proceed on 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 audio. As it stands now, I have to edit the audio and video separately, which is a bit annoying, to maintain the exact same quality.

With Premiere CC, you may be able to do basic syncing with multichannel audio. PPRO treats mch WAV files as n x mono (grouped) audio clips. Assuming you have a 6-8ch wav, make a new sequence with "multichannel" 6 or 8 for the audio master.

Then assign your audio channels to the appropriate pairs (1+2, 3+4) in the audio mixer. Don't for get to pan the tracks L & R alternately.

Group the clip with the video & Make your cuts.

Monitoring will be hard.

You should then be able to export in your desired format (SR, bits, #ch).

For 6ch/5.1, monitoring & assigning the channels will be easier.

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PPRO's actually bad support for editing files already in 6+ch is bad, which is why I don't use it unless I really have to.