AC3 2.0 vs. 5.1

[Rychezilla]

I'm creating a DVD that I really want to include 5.1 surround sound on. Not everyone I am giving this to has a surround sound set up (including me). My source audio is 2.0, I realize that outputting it to 5.1 doesn't create true surround sound but that it will play on all 6 speakers which is fine.

My real concern is for those of us with the old 2 or 4 speaker set up will this diminish the sound? It includes a lot of music and sound is crucial. I made a test copy of each and the 2.0 seems to sound a little richer but it's so insignificant that I am thinking it's all in my head. Unfortunately my software won't allow for 2 without recompression.

Any clues?

Thanks so much.[/b]

[dvd3500]

My limited experience in this has been a mixed bag.
I had a concert VCD that I converted to DVD. I found doing dolby 4.0 (FR, FL, RR, LR) with the fronts boosted a little produced a very cool effect.
All other material, TV shows, camcorder footage etc seemed to not benefit from the 5.1 mix at all.
I had an action film recorded from TV and I tried to make it 5.1 as it had lots of plans and rockets zining from left to right etc and after 3 days of tryin I gave up and left it stereo.

[SatStorm]

I prefer to use 2 audio channels. Audio amplifiers that supports dolby prologic II, makes the audio surround in a far better way

[guns1inger]

I'm with satstorm on this. The effort required to make it sound even remotely surround is huge. The few guides I have seen that attempt to create a virtual surround field really don't do anything but shove the frequencies around a little on the rear channels, but have little if anything in common with actual surround mixing. If you wan't to get an idea of the sorts of issues you would face doing it properly, watch the restoration feature on The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where they discuss having to add extra ricochets to hide problems moving from mono to 5.1.

People who don't have surround amps will only get a 2 channel down mix, which could sound very muddy and ugly if you screw up the 5.1 mix, whereas people with surround amps who have Dolby PLII will get a nice compromise from a 2 channel source up mixed by the amp.

[doggyofone]

I've also had mixed success.
Besweet will encode AC3 2.0 to 5.1. Get one of the gui's to help make this simpler.
DVDLab will encode other audio to AC3. You can then encode with Besweet.
Vegas and Soft Encode will do a wav to 5.1. Vegas works well, Soft Encode is very picky on the files it seems.
Try them and see how the homemade 5.1 sounds to you.

Most purists wouldn't do this, but its all learing to me.

[mrtunes]

some people just add reverb to the stereo channel and throw that in the surround. since you dont have a 5.1 setup i doubt you will be able to do this and it isnt worth your time.