Hello All. This is my first post!

Details and background not essential to my question:
I have a small collection of DVD-Audio discs and I have been wanting to back them up/convert to a more universal format for some time for several reasons. One reason is I don't want to to keep a separate player around just for one audio format. Another is my subwoofer analog in port on my surround sound receiver doesn't work, so I have to run the sub analog cable straight to the sub, leaving my adjustment options to getting up and messing with the knobs on the back of the sub. If I can get this to a format the receiver understands without too big of a quality hit I can use the digital in on the receiver and have all the controls there.

The "MEAT":
I recently discovered this DVD-Audio Explorer program and used it to back up a dvd-audio disc I had. I chose the merge option and so I end up with a .wav file that supposedly contains all 6 channels. When I open it in Adobe Audition is shows 6 different "tracks" but regardless of what I select it seems to try to play everything on 2 channels.

I went one step futher and encoded it to a FLAC file to try and save a little space. I'm assuming the FLAC encoder just examines the 6 channel .wav file and makes a simliar 6 channel, 24 bit, 96khz file, correct?

The problem is when I play it back out of my computer using the spdif pass-through I can tell my amp is just getting a 2 channel downmix of the song and then applying it's own surround effects on it. In other words, there isn't the same discreet sounds going to the different speakers, which really changes the overall experience.

When I look at the properties of the .wav files they clearly state they are 6 channels and 24/96..so I'm hoping it's just a setting I have off on my computer. I mainly want to verify that using the DVD-Audio Explorer and then the FLAC Encoder (not changing any of the switches to convert the sample rate/bit depth) SHOULD give me a 5.1 file that is a good quality representation of what was on the original dvd-audio disc?

My computer has the gigabyte 780g board with onboard realtekHD audio sound "card". Since I should be using spdif pass-through the quality of my sound card shouldn't matter as it should just be converting the FLAC to standard PCM wav and passing to my receiver. I'm using an optical cable link from PC to Receiver.

If I'm leaving out some critical detail please feel free to ask any questions and I'll answer them. I have heard some say you can actually enter the flac encoder commands in the "run program" section of DVD-Audio Explorer but I'm not sure how that would work..if it's smart enough to know to put in all the right arguments such as file name/etc. or if i need to put certain switches in the "run program" section and just leave the file name/path for DVD-Audio Explorer to put in.

I know it would take a slight hit, but if I could even convert it to a 24/96 DTS file and burn it to DVD that would be fine with me as well. My receiver will accept 96khz PCM and also DTS, Dolby Digital. It is a 5.1 receiver and does not have hdmi or support any of the "newer" audio formats such as DTS ES on up.

OK so this is a little bigger and a little less organized than I had originally intended. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to look at this and help me make sure I'm getting a good digital copy of my DVD-A's. I also have 2 SACD's which I understand would currently have to be recorded via analog cable to 24/96 .wav files -> whatever 5.1 format. One of the SACD's was allison krauss and union station live which i lost the first disc to..when I tried to go buy a new copy it as out of print and the copies online were going for $100+!

SPDIF is not capable of multichannel PCM. As a side note, your receiver is most likely capable of DTS-ES which is the 6.1 version of legacy compressed lossy DTS, and can also be transmitted over SPDIF.

yep I might just need to try to conver the .flac files to DTS tracks just to make sure I'm keeping the discreet channels..then I'll keep the .flac as an archive format for when I can save it as some better format to match the original sample/bitrate of the dvd audio.

The most universal multichannel format for playback would be Dolby AC3. All DVD players are required to play Dolby and PCM stereo. DVD players with stereo output are required to downmix multichannel Dolby. And, all Video-DVDs are required to have at least one Dolby or LPCM stereo soundtrack.

You are very unlikely to hear a "quality hit" with either Dolby or DTS. If you want to make a fully compliant "Video-DVD" with DTS, you should put both Dolby and DTS on the disc, along with at least one still image.

For lossless archive purposes, WAV or FLAC should be fine. Uncompressed WAV is the most universal file format. But, there is either a 2GB or 4GB file size limit for WAV (depending on which spec you read). This won't be a problem if you archive individual song files. But, you will exceed the file size limit if you make a single concert-length multichannel WAV. FLAC files don't have this limitation.

thanks for the suggestions so far. I have heard of people making AVCHD audio only discs as well, which may be the "standard" format I choose at a later time. I'm 1 bluray player and hdmi receiver away from that, however.

I might even make a dolby digital version just to make sure It has maintained the channel seperation, then burn the .flac's to data dvd's, unless anyone knows of any freeware .dts encoders???

Another alternative is to play your 6ch flac/wav through a stage that does DD (or DTS) encoding on the fly, then outputs to S/PDIF. This works for me on my laptop's sound codec, which came with a 'Dolby Home Theater' option that performs the on-the-fly conversion of multichannel wav or flac (output from foobar2k) to high-bitrate AC3. The main hassle is that unfortunately, as implemented in my laptop, Dolby HT also automatically converts 2ch to 6 ch (via DPL II), which I don't want to happen in my laptop. So I have to manually toggle Dolby HT on and off, which is a drag.

My sound card does allow DTS encoding on the fly, but unfortunately it's still somehow reading the .wav files as a stereo file and not sending out the discreet sounds to the right channels. It sounds like my receiver is getting 2 channels and smearing them around using it's built in DSP.

maybe I need the right software...I'll try this foobar program.

or maybe I'll try to find something that converts the 5.1 flac into 6 mono .wav files and make sure the channel seperation is still intact.

My MLP rips are to a single wav file for all 6 channels, and that seems to work with foobar2k-->Dolby HT.

As an alternative to all this, you could instead just rip the DD or DTS version that comes with every DVD-Audio disc. Most of the time that's what I do (using DVD Audio Extractor), though some discs are authored bizarrely enough that I have to grab the lossless surround files instead. The latter are what I use Dolby HT for.

What audio device do you have? I assume you're using your mobo's audio, being a Gigabyte it probably has a Realtek 889 device?

If so, it most probably also come with Dolby/DTS on-the-fly technologies (Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive). Those should encode 5.1 channels from the Windows mixer into Dolby or DTS 5.1, so if you're only getting stereo out it can be your player/decoder, your Windows settings or some setting on the Realtek control panel. What player are you using, and what Windows version?

Hi Andy O...thanks for your patience.

I'm using Windows XP and it is a Realtek chip which does have the DTS on the fly encoding, which resamples to 48K but I understand this is most likely a requirement to be able to pass 5.1 over the optical cable. I have it set up for SPDIF out to my receiver and I have the speaker setup as 5.1 in the realtek control panel.

I've tried winamp, MPCHC, and the foobar2k but they all seem to be stereo. This is what concerned me wondering if DVD Audio Explorer gives me what it says is a 6 channel .wav file but nothing understands how to play it any way other than stereo. In the past when converting 5.1 audio I would always get 6 mono .wav files which I would then convert to AC3..this worked for previous projects, but I never had an audio source of this quality so I'm just trying to keep it.

For anyone who has used DVD Audio Explorer, can I extract it to 6 mono .wav files? Or will this EAC3to application extract mono .wavs from a DVD Audio Disc? I know there are a couple people on here who have been archiving their DVD-Audio so I want to be sure my process isn't messed up.

Thanks again for your time!

Not sure exaclty how your Realtek control panel looks, but on mine, there are separate setups for speaker output vs digital output(s). And mine only converts to AC3, not DTS. But here's what I can say about mine (vaguely recall it being something like Realtek A888 or so), in order to get on-the-fly AC3 encoding of 5.1 wav/flac, and maybe it applies to yours too:

The Speaker Output control panel is really only for speakers connected directly to the computer. For my purposes, where I am sending digital out to another system, it is irrelevant. And indeed setting speakers to '5.1' doesn't make my on-the-fly AC3 5.1 work.

To enable THAT, I have to go into the "High Definition Digital Output" panel. In there, there are several tabs that need to be visited to assure 5.1 output. One is 'enhancements' where i have to make sure the 'turn enhancement off' box is UNCHECKED. Then there's another tab (whose name escapes me, is it the last tab on the right of the panel) that lets you set the output format on a pulldown menu -- e.g. 44.1 16bit ("CD quality") , 48 16 bit, etc...but the FINAL item on the menu is 'Dolby Digitial 5.1' and THAT is what needs to be selected. Finally, there is a 'Dolby' tab that has a single checkbox for 'Dolby Home THeater' -- but this is automatically checked when 'Dolby Digital 5.1' is selected and applied in the other tab. So no need to select it There is yet another tab that has checkboxes and tests for all the sample rates your AVR might accepts -- make sure 48 kHz is checked. (My AVR accepts 44.1, 48, 88 and 96, but apparently not 192)

Finally I also need to select the Realtek Digital output in foobar2k as its Output device, as well as select it as the compuer output device.

Once all THAT is done, I can get automatic 5.1 AC3 encoding of 5.1 flac output (ripped via DVD Audio Explorer to a single wav, then encoded to flac) from F2K (which probably requires some plugins I'm forgetting, I'm sure). I verified that the channel assignment is correct by comparing it to DVD-A disc play from my Oppo 970.

So keep at it, it CAN be done. If you need more help let me knwo, I can be mroe specific when I am home with my laptop in front of me, rather than where I am now.

thanks krab..good to hear it from someone who's gone through the whole process . I'll post my settings with screenshots but it will probably be this weekend before I mess with it again.

Have you tried with other 6-channel files that didn't come from DVD-A Explorer rips? Download these.