good stero channel oringal sound to 5.1 channels audio freeware found?

[Balefor]

I had to edit my subject so it would all fit. But I just found a bit of interesting freeware on this very site. It will convert wave stero channel sound to true 5.1 surround sound or so the author claims....The only problem is i have know idea what gain levels to set for each respective audio channle/speaker. I'd like some help determining the proper values to set. Because I'm new at this even though i found freeware long ago to encode into ac3 5.1 just fine i couldnt remember what it was now or where to find it. So the program I want help setting is Aften - AftenGUI. I just dont know what gain settings to set.

[wildo2ne]

In order to get true 5.1 sound you have to have 5 individual sound channels ( a voice track, sound track, sound effect track which is split into front and back surround sound)

to make more sense track 1 is voice track, sound track is put across all channels accept voice, surround sound is split between 4 channels 2 front 2 back, the .1 is not really a sound channel but it is reserved for bass.

now you can mix a 5.1 surround from stereo but it will just be 5.1 stereo because you have no way of seperating the different sound channels properly to remix them into 5.1, my advice is if it is surround - encode in surround, if it is stereo - encode in stereo, if you need all 5 speakers with stereo use dolby pro logic, it will do the same thing.

[guns1inger]

Actually, what you need is 6 mono channels

Front Left
Front Right
Front Centre
Rear Left
Rear Right
Low Frequency Effects

Generally these are produced in a multi-track audio mixing program like nuendo, or even Vegas, then either output as mono channels for encoding later, or encoded directly from the mix.

How you mix is the art. There are a lot of myths about mixing multi-channel, and how well you can produce 5.1 from stereo etc. I do not profess to know all of it (or even most of it). I tend to mix to what sounds OK to me. A couple of things not the be mislead by though.

1. There is no vocal channel in a 5.1 mix. Yes, most direct dialogue is mixed toward the centre channel for clarity. However this channel is not exclusively dialogue, and you can also mix dialogue into the other channel for surround effects. I always laugh when someone says you can take the dialogue out of a mix by muting the centre channle. Patently untrue.

2. LFE (or the sub-woofer channel) is where all your bass goes. It isn't. In fact, many so-called 5.1 mixes have very little in the LFE channel, and some have nothing at all. It is not a bass channel, it is for, as the name suggests, Low Frequency Effects. One of the best examples is the whale scene in Finding Nemo. Most home amps will cut some of the bass over to the LFE automatically anyway. That's fine. Let it. But don't dump it there yourself.

Finally, there is no simple, make 2.0 into 5.1 button. You have to do it yourself. There are a variety of techniques and tools. Some are simple, some complex.

The simplest is to leave it as 2.0, and let your Dolby ProLogic II amplifier do the work. It will usually do a much better job, and save you a lot of time.

Funnily enough, the post under yours as I write this is this one : https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=322664, which asks pretty much the same question, and has some links you might wish to read.

[redwudz]

guns1inger has made up a nice guide for these type of conversions. Look for it in this thread: https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1659850#1659850

[Balefor]

thanks everybody for answering my questions. I will definitly start reading that guide and look into some of those programs.