Avidemux audio conversion question

[sycor]

I'm kind of new to all of this and I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out the difference between AC3 (Aften) and AC3 (lav). I'm trying to convert some eac3 files that are causing some issues. Any advice on which, (Aften) or (lav), are better or should be used would be appreciated. These files will be used for Plex but the eac3 is causing transcoding which I would rather avoid.

[DB83]

I am no audiophile so, perhaps, I should not be here (or should that be hear ? )


The question was raised in a topic some years ago and the respondent rated Aften higher than Lav. But it could come down to a personal preference and what actually sounds better for you. And at lower bitrates there may be no perceptible difference at all.

[sycor]

I saw that thread but when looking at avidemux it looks like the LAV option goes to a higher bitrate, 640. AFTEN only goes up to 448. The source is 640. Not sure how much a difference that would make, 448 vs 640 though.

[scream13]

Maybe my answer is quite delayed, but I recently had the same question and came to an obvious conclusion. I needed to encode EAC3 movie audio track to regular AC3 (my old Pioneer receiver doesn't support EAC3). I converted the track in Avidemux using both AFTEN and LAV. After that I opened the files in Spek and noticed that AFTEN lowered the frequency from 18 kHz to 14 Khz and LAV's spectrogram has no any visual difference form the original EAC3. That's why I would never go with AFTEN an will always use LAV.
P.S. Don't forget to use MKV as a container.