making a soundtrack cd from dvd (quality problem)

[spiritgumm]

I edit movie audio tracks to get soundtrack music . Before I had a dvd drive, I'd hook up a cd recorder to a dvd player/vcr. Now with a dvd drive, I can skip the cd recorder entirely and demux the dvd audio (with VOBedit) and edit the wav file in Nero Wave editor. While the resulting cd played in a dvd player will sound exactly like the dvd, it sounds poor (& also VERY low volume) in a cd player. Any suggestions on how to improve this? Or should I go back to the cd recorder-dvd player hook-up?
Also while Nero Wave editor can accept the initial demuxed audio file, the file is not supported in regular Nero or Windows media player, but the demux audio has a .wav suffix. So why isn't it playable?

[yoda313]

Probably because its 48khz if you didn't reencode it. A lot of audio programs don't like 48khz they prefer 44.1 khz which is cd audio standard.

To get a cleaner sound you might try using the pcm soundtrack if you have the option on the dvd. Chances are your doing a concert dvd which most likely has a pcm soundtrack (that is plain stereo not surround sound so it would be a source for making a cd).

Of course there's nothing wrong with your output to a cd recorder as I've done that before and it works great except it's realtime.

Another option would be try to rip the dvd to the harddrive and load the vobs into besweet. From the besweet gui you can output to wav and should get decent source files for making a cd. Though again you may want to use a pcm track if its available.

[spiritgumm]

"Probably because its 48khz if you didn't reencode it. A lot of audio programs don't like 48khz they prefer 44.1 khz which is cd audio standard"
Is this in reference to why the regular NEROcopying software and WindowsMedia won't play the demuxed file? Or is this why my audio doesn't sound good ? If the latter, I guess it's too late to improve my now-edited wav files?
I make cds from both commercial dvds and homemade dvdr transfers from other sources. This particluar dvd is from a dvd recorder, so there's only one audio channel. As I posted above, I'm editing movie audio for soundtrack music. Soundtrack music is not concert music, and doesn't always influence what the audio format is on a dvd. However, that's good advice about avoiding surround sound and selecting stereo.

[yoda313]

Oh if its from a dvd recorder maybe the recording input was set too low. You could try a freeware program like audacity to boost the volume.

48khz is the frequency level for dvd audio (the regular dvd for video programs not the special dvd audio thats different). 44.1khz is the standard for cd audio.

[LloydAZ]

Nero Wave Editor produces WAV files using the Extensible wave audio codec. I tried converting them to standard PCM/WAV audio with besweet, and it couldn't read the file.

I ran them through dbPowerAMP Music Converter, and that did the trick.

[spiritgumm]

Nero Wave editor exports a wav file, so I didn't think it would make a difference if it was a wav first. However, I opened the demux audio (ac3) in Nero Soundtrax and saved as a wav and the result was louder and better (loudness wasn't the only issue, as I posted above) than Nero Wave editor EXCEPT it also has pops and crackles, etc. I tried it twice, so I'm not sure what going on.

[LloydAZ]

I'm not an audio expert. I just play around with it a little bit.

Try impoting the wav file into Goldwave and use it to remove the pops and crackles.

Before doing that though, run gspot on the wav file. If the audio codec shown shows fffe, it's using the extensible wave audio codec.

I've played with both Nero Wave Editor and Nero Soundtrax and the wave files that I got were extensible waves. To use them in anything else, I had to convert them to standard WAV/PCM files. I used dbPowerAMP to do the trick, but Foobar is also supposed to do the conversion as well.

[spiritgumm]

Hi Lloyd, I think you missed the point about NERO Soundtrax - it created the pops/crackles so that's not something I would clean up, there's some glitch going on. I was pointing out that it seemed to output a wav file differently than from Nero Wave Editor by increasing the clarity and loudness; I expected them to be the same output. Anyway, I guess the answer might be to convert ac3->wav first, so I need to fix Soundtrax, or try something else like Besweet or Audacity as Yoda suggested.

[yoda313]

or try something else like Besweet or Audacity.

That's what I suggested earlier. I usually get very good results with besweet. Actually you can go straight from vob to wav in besweet and then boost the audio in audacity. Though I do think besweet has some volume gain options built in but that might slow the conversion process and I'm not sure how good their internal booster might be.

[spiritgumm]

Hi Yoda, I'm taking your advice to try Besweet. But as I've posted, loudness is not the main issue; there's some quality-aspect that's missing. If it was just loudness, I could easily increase the volume when I edited in Nero Wave Editor, but all that does is magnify the quality problem (kind of hollow, boxy sound). I'll post back afterwards.