Neillithan
5th January 2011, 20:39
Hi, I have pretty much declared from my own personal tests that 5.1 is pretty much useless and I can simply use stereo AAC-LC at 320kbps and it sounds identical to 5.1 when under headphones. I do have a 5.1 surround sound speaker setup, but I listen to everything in stereo x2 mode. I think this sounds a lot better than true 5.1.
However, this is only after manually downmixing 5.1 to stereo using Audacity. If I attempt to downmix 5.1 any other way, it comes out sounding like crap... probably because the additional channels are being discarded rather than downmixed.
What I did is this:
Front left, rear left = Combined
Front right, Rear right = Combined
Center: split between Left and right
I wasn't really sure what to do with the last channel (LFE) so I mixed it between both left and right channels.
I listened to the result and it turned out perfect, better than I expected.
Does anyone know of a program, or tutorial that will show me how to properly downmix a 5.1 audio stream to stereo easily?
Thanks,
-Neil
However, this is only after manually downmixing 5.1 to stereo using Audacity. If I attempt to downmix 5.1 any other way, it comes out sounding like crap... probably because the additional channels are being discarded rather than downmixed.
What I did is this:
Front left, rear left = Combined
Front right, Rear right = Combined
Center: split between Left and right
I wasn't really sure what to do with the last channel (LFE) so I mixed it between both left and right channels.
I listened to the result and it turned out perfect, better than I expected.
Does anyone know of a program, or tutorial that will show me how to properly downmix a 5.1 audio stream to stereo easily?
Thanks,
-Neil