tooLAME, LAME, SSRC - and yet still bad audio?

[Witch_King]

Hi there,

I ripped a dvd using SMART RIPPER then I used DVD2AVI with:

Dolby Digital Decode = Dolby Surround Downmix
48 -> 44.9 KHz = Off
Normalization = Off

Then I used tmpgENC with the following audio specs:

MPEG-1 Audio Layer II encoder:
tooLAME
MPEG-1 Audio Layer III encoder:
LAME
Sampling Frequency Converter:
SSRC

In the end I created a SVCD PAL (MPEG-2 480X526 25fps CBR 1430kbps Layer-2 44100 Hz 160kbps) video.

However, though I have followed earlier posts and guides,
the high-pitched hissing-distortion sound still prevails.

Any fresh ideas on how to get rid of it will be greatly appreciated.

[sterno]

Have you tried just using a higher audio bitrate? At 160k I hear significantly more background hiss and so forth than at 192k or 224k. 160k is the absolute minimum that I consider to be even acceptable for playback through real speakers.

[EddyH]

If you rip to WAV and play the sound that way, is the noise still there? Noises like that tend to get lost when playing through TVs and might be a part of the original DVD.

Otherwise it might be an idea to encode the audio outside of TMPGEnc where you can have more control over e.g. what TooLame and SSRC do, for example filter out some (or more) of the treble. Like sterno says.. at anything under 192 joint stereo, or 224 simple stereo it's pretty much essential to do that to stop nasty encoder artifacts occuring. (Though toolame seems to filter a lot of treble natively anyhow)

PS Try turning the dolby surround downmix off too, especially if you don't plan on using a prologic decoder. The sounds from all six channels are still mixed to stereo, but it doesnt use the clever (and encoder unfriendly) methods of producing Prologic decodable signals, which may account for the high pitched distortions. The surround signal will be pretty badly mangled at 160k anyhow, especially if you use joint stereo, so it will sound nasty if you enable it. (it'll still go thru all 4 speakers, but will sound even more over-compressed than stereo does)