mp3->wave and headac3he

[jriker1]

I have some 2 channel mp3 files and am converting them to wave to be encoded into ac3 with Soft Encode. I have always opened the mp3 in headac3he and clicked 2ch for the downmix type which sets Left and Right DRC to normal instead of no. Since I am doing DRC in Soft Encode, was questioning if I should be using this with headac3he or leave it at "no". Or if it even does anything if you are not converting to AC3 within the app.

Thanks.

JR

[tebasuna51]

...Since I am doing DRC in Soft Encode, was questioning if I should be using this with headac3he or leave it at "no". Or if it even does anything if you are not converting to AC3 within the app.
Does anything because you are not converting from AC3 within the app.

In Headac3he the DRC is applied by the ac3 decoder azid.dll.
You don't need click at 2ch downmix type, because is a conversion 2 -> 2 without downmix. Let all DRC with "no", really don't touch the right panel, use if you want the "Normalize" at left panel.

And after when you encode to ac3 in SoftEncode, maybe you don't need use DRC (None) if the original mp3 don't have a wide dynamic range (like is habitual). If you don't use DRC maybe you want encode with Aften ten times fast than SoftEncode.

[jriker1]

Thanks for the reply. Very helpful. The mp3 itself makes me nautious. I now have very clean video, however the source I'm working with used to be ac3 and was saved as an mp3 for some reason. I would love to get back the 5.1 surround or some proximity of it as the sound is so flat, however most or all of the stereo to 5.1 conversion techniques are from 2004 in this forum and I'd like to think newer methods are available now that would produce even better results.