AC3 encoding with BeSweet / eac3to

[sundance]

Hello,
I have 6 WAV files (FL,FC,FR,SL,SR,LFE) I would like to convert to AC3 using eac3to. But since eac3to doesn't support multiple WAVs as input (or at least I don't know how to do it...) I planned to use BeSweet to generate an intermediate 6-channel-WAV file.
But when it comes to prepare the mux file for BeSweet, I'm not sure which channel layout has to be used. The BeSweet sticky says:
31. i have six mono waves and would like to encode it to a multichannel ac3/ogg. can BeSweet do that ?
yes. you need to create a ".mux" file, i.e., a textfile with the name of the mono waves :
g:\channelFL.wav
g:\channelC.wav
g:\channelFR.wav
g:\channelSL.wav
g:\channelSR.wav
g:\channelLFE.wav
then feed it to BeSweet : -core( -input channels.mux ... )

31b. and what's the advised channel ordering for producing 6chwav/6chaiff ?
it's :
g:\channelFL.wav
g:\channelFR.wav
g:\channelC.wav
g:\channelLFE.wav
g:\channelSL.wav
g:\channelSR.wav
So what's the correct channel order to use for the following workflow:
BeSweet -core( -input d:\input.mux -output d:\output.wavs -6chwav )
eac3to output.wavs output.ac3 -448

[doom-nine]

Guess you'd use output.wav instead of output.wavs

[tebasuna51]

1) You don't need eac3to to convert wav files to ac3, you need only the encoder (used by eac3to) Aften.exe.
Last version here http://code.google.com/p/wavtoac3encoder/downloads/list . The syntax is:

Aften -b 448 -readtoeof 1 -ch_fl fl.wav -ch_fr fr.wav -ch_fc fc.wav -ch_lfe lf.wav -ch_sl sl.wav -ch_sr sr.wav output.ac3

You can use also encWAVtoAC3 GUI (same link)

2) The correct order for a multichannel 5.1 wav file is: FL,FR,FC,LFE,SL,SR
BeSweet can't output wav files greater than 2GB, use WaveWizard instead.

[sundance]

@tebasuna51,
thanks a lot for the recommendation!
I used encWAVtoAC3 and it worked like a charm.

The only thing is that the AC3 volume is lower than the WAVs and the DTS audio file where I extracted the WAVs (I only use FL, FC and FR, no back channels (3.0)).
There are a lot of encoding options that indicate -3.0dB - maybe just what's missing here. Any idea where I have to tweak here? (since the WAVs are already from an 3.0 setup, there is no need to apply another -3.0dB here, right?) --- I have to admit, that I don't completely understand the explanation in aften's "help_long_aften.txt"...

edit: Just checked the loudest WAV (center file): Almost full scale (peak amplitude has 1.1 dB headroom only)
Maybe it's not a problem with the Lt/Rt Lo/Ro mixing levels at all but a matter of "Dialog normalization" or "Dynamic Range Compression profile"

[tebasuna51]

...
The only thing is that the AC3 volume is lower than the WAVs and the DTS audio file

If you let defaults:

Dialog normalization 31 (default)
Dynamic Range Compression profile None (default)

the volume of your AC3 must be the same than your WAV (or DTS with the same channels).

If you listen different volume is a problem with your player.

Try this:
Decode to wav the AC3 file with eac3to, if the decoded WAV sound with high volume than your AC3 it means than your player decoder is buggy.