AAC 5.1ch Troubles (BeLight Nero & AacMachine.exe)

[Typhoon792]

I'm trying to encode AC3 5.1ch audio to AAC. No matter what I've tried, everything has it's problem. I'm not too comfortable with this stuff as it is. Anyway, all that I was able to get working in BeLight was the Nero Digital Encoder out of all the other AAC Encoder Engine options. The others I couldn't find the proper dll files for at all.

The Nero AAC encoder mixes up the channels and it makes the sound sorta echo-like.. The voices come from the right speaker instead of the center is one thing I noticed specifically.. With AacMachine, even when I put the VBR Preset to "Internet", the file ends up larger than the original... Doesn't make sense. I don't understand. It feels like even if I get one of these methods working properly, that I wouldn't be getting the best result anyway...

My main goal is just to encode 5.1 surround using decent compression with minimal quality loss (as is anyone's goal but yeah..) Can anyone hep me accomplish that? Thanks.

[tebasuna51]

You can use eac3to, Foobar2000, BeLight, BeHappy, ...
All are tested methods and work fine.

Maybe you have some problem in the ac3 source, test it with DelayCut.

[Typhoon792]

You can use eac3to, Foobar2000, BeLight, BeHappy, ...
All are tested methods and work fine.

Maybe you have some problem in the ac3 source, test it with DelayCut.

The AC3 source is fine. This happens with any source I have. They can't all be problematic. The problem I don't think is BeLight. The problem is the Nero codec, I think. I've searched on Google and I've seen others with the same problem. The programs you mentioned are basically just GUIs. What AAC codec would you recommend if not Nero? From what I've heard, it's the most frequently used.

Besides switching the GUI, any idea as to what the actual issue might be regarding either of the two methods I've tried (BeLight and AacMachine)?

This might be a dumb question but.. When AAC was created, what was the method meant for its utilization to transcode audio? Don't really know how to phrase that better but you can expand on the idea behind it. I mean, obviously, BeLight wasn't in mind. AacMachine seems like the more "official"/"proper" way but I mentioned the problem with it.

[TinTime]

What do you play back your AAC with? Perhaps that is swapping the channels and your encode is fine. Don't know if this is likely or not.

Anyway another vote here for eac3to, which is what I use to encode to AAC if I need to (it uses Nero too).

Finally do you definitely want to transcode? You said you want "decent compression with minimal quality loss" but is space more important than quality, or vice versa?.
If space isn't really an issue then I'd just stick with the AC3. If space is your number one priority then my choice would be to use eac3to to downmix your 5.1 audio AC3 to a 2 channel DPLII track using AAC. If you're somewhere between these extremes then you're not going to save a huge amount of space - whether it's worth it or not is up to you.

[Typhoon792]

What do you play back your AAC with? Perhaps that is swapping the channels and your encode is fine. Don't know if this is likely or not.

Anyway another vote here for eac3to, which is what I use to encode to AAC if I need to (it uses Nero too).

Finally do you definitely want to transcode? You said you want "decent compression with minimal quality loss" but is space more important than quality, or vice versa?.
If space isn't really an issue then I'd just stick with the AC3. If space is your number one priority then my choice would be to use eac3to to downmix your 5.1 audio AC3 to a 2 channel DPLII track using AAC. If you're somewhere between these extremes then you're not going to save a huge amount of space - whether it's worth it or not is up to you.

Well, the point of encoding the AC3 is to get it smaller. I want to preserve the 5.1 surround though.. The file is currently 66.4MB in size for 20 minutes and 44 seconds. I want to use an AAC codec to at least get the size to 55MB in size.

Here's a very bad proportion that I'm setting which you can hopefully fill in. MPEG-2 VOB is to H.264 as AC3 is to _____. My guess is that AAC was best for decent compression and minimal suppression in sound.

Maybe one of my dlls is bad for the Nero codec, dunno... But, it's not what I'm using for playback. I've tried several different players and decoders. And plus, the typical one I use plays other people's AAC encodes back just fine.

[poisondeathray]

MeGUI or Behappy

If your channel order is screwed up, reorder it with avisynth (e.g. getchannels(), mergechannels() )

[Typhoon792]

MeGUI or Behappy

If your channel order is screwed up, reorder it with avisynth (e.g. getchannels(), mergechannels() )

Well, since the channel order is screwed up, it's already telling e that I'm not getting the best possible quality result because there are likely other things wrong. And in fact, there is. As I mentioned, the encode of the audio file has this sorta echoing sound. When they're talking, it sounds like they're in a huge hollow dome..

Is anybody using BeLight and encoding to AAC using Nero and NOT having the problem? If so, maybe you can send me the dll files you're using for this action. I'm pretty sure the problem is there.

As for AacMachine, it looks like not too many people use it... lol

[poisondeathray]

Not many people use belight or aacmachine, at least not in the last 2-3 years :) ....

[Typhoon792]

Not many people use belight or aacmachine, at least not in the last 2-3 years :) ....

Lol, so you're saying most people use BeHappy and MeGui? I mean, ok.. I guess I'll give BeHappy a shot. I don't really like MeGUI.. Maybe it'll work in BeHappy. I'll report back after I try. Thanks.

[poisondeathray]

Well MeGUI's audio component is based on BeHappy ....

[Typhoon792]

Well MeGUI's audio component is based on BeHappy ....

Yeah, but it has other stuff. I dunno. There's just something about it.. Doesn't matter. It's too much cramped into one little thing. Something like that needs to be made with an entire program interface, not just a simple GUI.

[tebasuna51]

1) Forget aacmachine and the very old nero dll's, NeroAacEnc must be better.

2) Yes, all this soft are GUI's between the free ac3 decoder (Azid, libav, NicAudio, ... ) and the NeroAacEnc (or the CT encoder-Winamp). Only a few parameters can be used.

3) The channel mapping is correct, and many times tested, in BeLight ( BeLight-0.22_RC1 (http://kurtnoise.free.fr/index.php?dir=BeLight/&file=BeLight-0.22_RC1.exe) + bsn_20070513 (http://kurtnoise.free.fr/index.php?dir=BeLight/&file=bsn_20070513.zip) ), Foobar2000, eac3to and AviSynth-NicAudio based (MeGUI, BeHappy, wavi, SoundOut)

4) Like decoder parameters is NOT recommended DRC, boost or any other. Only 'maximize' in Azid or 'Normalize' with eac3to and AviSynth.

5) Like encoder parameters with NeroAacEnc I recommend (to transcode ac3 or dts) a quality factor between 0.31 and 0.35

Remember use the last NeroAacEnc version 1.3.3.0 (Sep 17 2008)