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Transcoding from 2 channel to surround??

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Dr. Righteous

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 1, 2007
Messages
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Just spent some time trans-coding my CD collection of 100+ CDs to FLAC format.
Nothing new and fancy there. I had previous done this all to MP3s but was never really satisfied with the quality of the MP3 conversion no matter what bitrate I used. With FLAC, I cannot tell the difference between the track played on the CD or the FLAC conversion. That was never true when I did a MP3.
After all that I pondered HOW COOL it would be to trans-code a 2 channel CD into a DTS or similar format that my receiver could decode into discrete channels.
Anyone know of an easy method of doing this??
 
If you do a web search on this topic, you are going to find 100 different ways to do it. It will be trial and error and each song will have very different results from the other. You may just want to add a plugin to your player of choice like MediaMonkey or Foobar. Both have 5.1 upmix and they work well with NO transcoding. Foobar is free, MediaMonkey has a free version as well with limited functionality. I am not certain, but they are a lot of free plugins that may upmix or transcode those to DTS, etc........without doing each file individually.

If you do not like the results, your original file will be intact.

Hope this helps.
 
There really isn't any way to properly do this. If the sound wasn't mixed in surround, there is no surround data in there. You cannot "recover" it from anything as it was never there in the first place.

Now that doesn't mean there aren't ways to send the stereo mix to more speakers, just that none of them are the "right" way to do it.

So in terms of playing back using multiple speakers, well don't bother using your computer, just use your receiver, unless it is a complete piece of crap it has what you need. The two modes to check out that will do the best job in general are Dolby ProLogic II and 5-channel stereo or something similar.

5-channel (or sometimes 6-channel stereo, or multi-channel stereo) will simply direct the sound to all speakers. All left speakers get the left channel, all right speakers get the right channel and the center gets both. It kinda gives you a "sound coming from all around you" feeling.

Dolby ProLogic sends sound to different speakers based on the phase of the sound, and is a system for encoding surround data on a stereo movie track. In particular you are looking for the Dolby ProLogic II Music mode. This produces a nice effect where the left and right front speakers get most of the sound, the center gets things in the middle (like vocals) and the surrounds mostly get out of phase data. It usually is quite pleasant.

So if you are looking for a sort of "cinema" like surround experience, I recommend doing PLII Music. If you are just looking to get all the speakers going for more sound or whatever, then use 5-channel stereo mode.

That will get you the best results and is easy to do. Works with any two channel source the receiver gets, including CDs, TV, and so on. I normally watch TV in PLII mode since many programs are actually surround encoded.
 
EarlKeim said:
If you do a web search on this topic, you are going to find 100 different ways to do it. It will be trial and error and each song will have very different results from the other. You may just want to add a plugin to your player of choice like MediaMonkey or Foobar. Both have 5.1 upmix and they work well with NO transcoding. Foobar is free, MediaMonkey has a free version as well with limited functionality. I am not certain, but they are a lot of free plugins that may upmix or transcode those to DTS, etc........without doing each file individually.

If you do not like the results, your original file will be intact.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Yeah, did some searching before I posted and really didn't find any good information about a software package that would give me the results I wanted.
I'm not interested in a computer player plug in. More trans coding the files to DTS or whatever so my surround receiver can play it back and I can then select what kind of playback I want on the receiver. I know most surround receivers have a sudo surround mode for plain 2 channel music. But I have never been satisfied with the results.
 
From what I understand of the process of transcoding, and I know quite a bit after doing it for eleven years, you are going to get DTS 2.1 out of the music files at best. If you do 5.1 you will be upmixing, no matter what software or plugin you use.
 
EarlKeim said:
From what I understand of the process of transcoding, and I know quite a bit after doing it for eleven years, you are going to get DTS 2.1 out of the music files at best. If you do 5.1 you will be upmixing, no matter what software or plugin you use.
Click to expand...

Ok, DTS 2.1 would be ok. I understand you can't get something for nothing for the most part.

Now, is there an easy software solution I can transcode this with ? :D
 
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