Hi All!

Okay, I'm testing codecs and bitrates and audio software/mp3 players, to see what sounds GREAT to me, in preparation for ripping and archiving and then converting to (fill in the blank lossy) for a DAP.

Of course, my CD's sound really nice to me through any of my media players (MM 3, WMP, WMC, etc), and my Dell E521 (without a sound card; just the Sigmatel OEM junk) and my Sennheiser PX-100's.

Ripping and encoding to high rate .MP3's even sounded fine to me. Not too much difference to my not-audiophile ears.

But then, I read about DTS conversions, and since I have a 5.1 home theater system, I thought I'd look around to see if I could find some files in DTS 5.1 online that were in my CD collection......so I could do a 1-1 comparison. I found a few samples, and tried them on my PC first. Just static on MM3--obviously not prepared for 5.1.

But then MPC with XP Codec pack…………..and WOW. The DTS 5.1 files, hands down, killed my CD version. The DTS files were WIDE, rich, deep: just plain exquisite!

The songs I found were converted to DTS 5.1 using "Plogue Bidule," whatever that is. And my questions are simple.

1. Why won't MM3 play them? Not that I care too much, because MPC does fine.

2. More importantly………I know SQ is relative, but is there ANY reason why the SQ might be improved running them through that conversion process and my system, as described.

I'm assuming the only answer to #2 is, "It's just different, not better."

3. I forgot about #3. How do I burn these 5.1 WAV files onto CD, to guarantee they play 5.1 in my home system? Just a data burn??

It would neat to learn something here that I'm ignorant about (which is a lot!) Maybe the DTS conversion did something to the files to make a normal pair of stereo headphones and a normal home PC without a special card end up with really the best sound I've ever heard through my base PC system.

TIA . . . even for the answer of, "Nope. Just different."

~jordan :-)

Converting CD Audio files that are 2.0 to a 5.1 lossy format making them sound better sounds a bit weird to me.

If your cd player plays DTS-CD you can burn them as one of those. Searching the H-A forums should tell you how to do so.

Converting CD Audio files that are 2.0 to a 5.1 lossy format making them sound better sounds a bit weird to me.

If your cd player plays DTS-CD you can burn them as one of those. Searching the H-A forums should tell you how to do so from DTSWAV files.

I don't think the conversion IS lossy. They're 50mb wav files, for a 4 minute song. I'd guess they were ripped to some lossless format (maybe straight to wav), then converted to 5.1 wav using that "Plogue Bidule" thing.

With the lack of replies, I'm thinking the answer is simply "different, not better."

Still wondering though how burn the 5.1 wav files and retain the 5.1-----simply a data burn?

~j

They used Bidule to make a custom 5.1 upmix process (instead of using PLII or DTS:Neo 6 or something like that). True surround mix can be made only if you have access to the tracks from the recording session (very, very rarely unless it's your recording ) Then they used a DTS encoder to make those DTS-WAVs.

Those WAVs are meant for burning to an ordinary Red Book Audio CD. Use any application that can burn audio CDs. Then you'll be able to play those discs in a home theatre system with a built-in DTS decoder.

Here is the website for Plogue Bidule. (I've never used it.)

AFAIK, Plogue doesn't include the DTS encoder. The only licensed DTS encoder I know of is SurCode ($100 USD for the CD version). DTS Nero 6 is not true discrete surround sound. It is a matrix technique, similar to Dolby Surround (i.e. used on VHS).

Whoever did the conversion may have done some other processing (besides upmixing) with Bidual. It looks like a very flexible program that can do lots of different things.

There is no guarentee! You are making a non-standard hybrid CD that will play on some DVD players. (I don't believe there are any commercal CDs available in this non-standard format.) It will not play on a CD player. The DVD spec does not require DVD players to play CDs at all, and it does not require that DTS can be played at all! (DVD players are required to play LPCM and Dolby AC3, and all commercial DTS DVDs also include a Dolby or LPCM track for this reason.)

In most cases, "upmixing" from 2.0 to 5.1 does not work as well as using your Dolby Pro Logic II receiver to generate the surround-sound at playback time. The exception is if you need to take full-control and pan the sound to specific speakers, or maybe to send some deep-reverb to the back speakers, or for some other effect that you can't get with one of the pro-logic presets.

DTS is lossy, although high bitrates are frequently used. I have no idea what you have... 50Mb is about right for a 4-minute 48kHz stereo file... A little big for a 4-minute 44.1kHz file. A six-channel uncompressed WAV file would be 3 times as big.

I use Plogue to do stereo to 5/5.1 conversions. Plogue is just the tool; it's setting up a bidule to do the conversions is where the art lies . For more info and sample bidules go to dtsac3.com.
As far as burning a dts encoded file to cd, it works just fine as long as it is 44.1 KHz. A 48 KHz file would have to be burned to DVD or DVD-Audio.
Hope this answers your questions.