Anyone experienced with sony sound forge?

[Seraphic-]

If you create a 5.1 project for example in sound forge, then assign an audio file to each track, how does one assign channel mapping to the tracks (i.e - front left, front right, center, lfe, rear left, rear right)?

And on a side note, could anyone recommended a good process to merge six or eight mono waves into one multichannel wave? Also need a way to map each mono wave to correct channel mapping layout.

Thanks

[raquete]

If you create a 5.1 project for example in sound forge, then assign an audio file to each track, how does one assign channel mapping to the tracks (i.e - front left, front right, center, lfe, rear left, rear right)?
is the right order to encode AC3 5.1 but i don't know about 8 mono waves.

[Seraphic-]

What I mean is how do I assign tracks so I can map them to the correct speaker?

[raquete]

how to:
you have front left, front right, center, lfe, rear left, rear right that are in the right sequence to do the job for AC3 and multitrack wave.

open SF, File, New, (chose sample rate and bit depth equal as your sources), channels 6 (5.1 surround)

open front left channel, edit, select all, copy
double click in any place of track 1(of the new 6 channels file created) and past.

open front right channel, edit, select all, copy
double click in any place of track 2(of the new 6 channels file created) and past.

now do the same with the center and the others tracks.
save as ??? AC3 and/or multichannel wave.

[Seraphic-]

So in Sound Forge, the mapping control is just as simple as (for 5.1 anyway):

front left = track 1
front right = track 2
center = track 3
lfe = track 4
rear left = track 5
rear right = track 6

[raquete]

excuse, i need to ask.

what is your target? dts or wave or AC3(or all) and how much channels(5.1,6.1,7.1...)?

[Seraphic-]

In this case, AC3 - 5.1.
Might be 7.1 in the future, but both AC3/DTS cap at 5.1.

[raquete]

then you don't need Sound Forge.

just load each track in EncWAVtoAC3 using "MUX Wizard".
look in the signature of wisodev in AFTEN thread to get the last version or click here: http://code.google.com/p/wavtoac3encoder/

for DTS encoders(DTS Pro or surcode) is the same, load each track in the right place of the encoder.

[Seraphic-]

Took a look at the WAV to AC3 Encoder and looks pretty good.
But since when did AC3 support VBR encoding?
Also, does WAV to AC3 Encoder support 24bps?

[raquete]

you can load 16b,24b and 32b(float too) in WAV to AC3 Encoder.
i only use CBR(VBR option unchecked).
if you go to AC3 448k, adjust "Maximum Bandwidt 60" for better bandwidth.
read about that here, tests was done few days ago:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=149176
see last post for conclusion.

[Seraphic-]

you can load 16b,24b and 32b(float too) in WAV to AC3 Encoder.
i only use CBR(VBR option unchecked).
if you go to AC3 448k, adjust "Maximum Bandwidt 60" for better bandwidth.
read about that here, tests was done few days ago:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=149176
see last post for conclusion.

Did you find CBR to result in higher quality encodes then VBR?
Anyway, so based on the post you linked (post 11 and 12), WAV to AC3 Encoder produced better results then SoundForge AC3 Encoder? Also, the "23kHz/23kHz" for example means "target/achieved" I take it?

[Skelsgard]

There's a way to create custom-mapped 8 channel WAVE_Extensible files, but it's a kinda of a f'ed-up-and-slow-but-i-dont-care-cause-i-have-enough-discspace-and-time-and-i-like-to-do-things-in-a-really-complicated-and-messy-way kinda method. So not really recommended for ppl looking for something easy or all-in-one solution, but it does work.
I used it to create a 7.1 channel WAV to encode to 7.1 AAC with NeroAACEnc, the only problem was that there are no 8ch AAC decoders for playing, but FAAD2 decoded the file back to WAV and the mapping remained correct.
The way is to create the 8 channel mono WAVs, mux them in anyway you want into a single WAVE_Ext file (using SF, Vegas, or WaveWizard) and then using a hex editor to set the hex values for any given mapping that you desire.

[tebasuna51]

-Aften can encode AC3 VBR but may be not compatible with many decoders, and not supported like audio track in audio/video containers.
-I can't recommend 448Kb/s with "Maximum Bandwidt 60", if you want the max quality use 640 Kb/s
-The channel order for 7.1 is FrontLeft, FrontRight, FrontCenter, LowFrequency, BackLeft, BackRight, SideLeft, SideRight

[Seraphic-]

So as of 2009 are the main AC3 encoders to choose from Sound Forge and WAV to AC3 Encoder?
I know of other ones, but I recall those being from several years ago.

There's a way to create custom-mapped 8 channel WAVE_Extensible files, but it's a kinda of a f'ed-up-and-slow-but-i-dont-care-cause-i-have-enough-discspace-and-time-and-i-like-to-do-things-in-a-really-complicated-and-messy-way kinda method. So not really recommended for ppl looking for something easy or all-in-one solution, but it does work.
I used it to create a 7.1 channel WAV to encode to 7.1 AAC with NeroAACEnc, the only problem was that there are no 8ch AAC decoders for playing, but FAAD2 decoded the file back to WAV and the mapping remained correct.
The way is to create the 8 channel mono WAVs, mux them in anyway you want into a single WAVE_Ext file (using SF, Vegas, or WaveWizard) and then using a hex editor to set the hex values for any given mapping that you desire.

Yeah, that looks like a complicated method for someone who hasn't done it before, but I'm sure it isn't too bad once you've done it a few times. Could you go into a little more detail about how the hex editing works? You need to do that in order to assign the correct channels to each mono track? I didn't know NeroAACEnc would accept a six or eight multichannel wave and encode it though.

But speaking of 7.1, is AAC the only real method for encoding with eight channels?
Seeing as we don't have access to Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio encoders or anything.

Also, here is a code from tebasuna51 I saved from awhile back.
Lets you mux/encode 7.1 with neroaac. Just save as avisynth script.
Seems to work well, but not sure how it compares to your hex edit method.

fl = WavSource("C:\FL.wav")
fr = WavSource("C:\FR.wav")
fc = WavSource("C:\C.wav")
lf = WavSource("C:\LFE.wav")
bl = WavSource("C:\BL.wav")
br = WavSource("C:\BR.wav")
sl = WavSource("C:\SL.wav")
sr = WavSource("C:\SR.wav")
MergeChannels(fl, fr, fc, lf, bl, br, sl, sr)

-Aften can encode AC3 VBR but may be not compatible with many decoders, and not supported like audio track in audio/video containers.
-I can't recommend 448Kb/s with "Maximum Bandwidt 60", if you want the max quality use 640 Kb/s
-The channel order for 7.1 is FrontLeft, FrontRight, FrontCenter, LowFrequency, BackLeft, BackRight, SideLeft, SideRight

In my case, I don't think I would ever encode to be compatible with much hardware decoders other then PS3/Xbox360, but sounds like VBR wouldn't be the best idea or any hardware. However, how does quality/size compare with AC3 CBR vs VBR (at or near max settings) though?
One can expect the same results as MP3/AAC cbr vs vbr correct?
And yeah, I would always use 640Kb/s as file size would not be much of an issue.
Also tebasuna51, how many channels does FLAC support?

[tebasuna51]

- EncWavToAc3 is a perfect GUI for Aften encoder and .avs input is also accepted

- Aften encoder is free and can't be Dolby certified. Other commercial encoders are Dolby certified. I don't know blind test to select the best.

- AC3 VBR with max quality is equal to CBR 640 Kb/s because is the max encoder bitrate. Please forget AC3 VBR.

- NeroAacEnc and Flac support 7.1 and both can accept multichannel wav input with standard and WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE headers.

- The method to obtain a multichannel wav with WaveWizard and hex editor is only for WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE header (WaveFormatEx option) but you can use standard header (Wave PCM) for NeroAacEnc and Flac (with '--channel-map=none' parameter)

- If you have AviSynth installed you can use a .avs input, like in Sheraphic post, and output AC3 (until 5.1), AAC/MP4, FLAC, WAV (standard and WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE) ... and also W64 to support wav files > 4GB.
You can use SoundOut() AviSynth plugin, Wavi command line or BeHappy GUI

[Skelsgard]

how many channels does FLAC support?
FLAC supports up to 8 channels.

I didn't know NeroAACEnc would accept a six or eight multichannel wave and encode it though.
NeroAACEnc has been able to encode 6ch for quite some time, and it added 8ch support in the latest release.

But speaking of 7.1, is AAC the only real method for encoding with eight channels?
Seeing as we don't have access to Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio encoders or anything.
AAC is not the only method to get 8 channels, you can also use FLAC, I think WavPack too, also WMA Pro, the only issue with AAC is that there are no decoders for DirectShow or any other player that supports the 8 channel file. (monogram's 0.9.5 decoder decodes the file but it screws up the mapping).

About the messy method, it gets easier within the first few times you try it, like you said.
Tebasuna's method is good and it'll get the job done, but it doesn't send a mapping to the encoder, the encoder just assumes a mapping, the same way it does for 6ch files with WAV PCM header.
With the hex method you can actually create any combination of channels with any posible position within the channel positions defined for the WAVE_Ext header. For example, a 2ch file with a Left Channel and a Back Right Channel.

Steps:
Create the 8 channel WAVE_Ext file. I don't know if there's a way to get Avisynth to do that, I haven't tried but probably there is. It MUST have a WAVE_Ext header.

http://i27.tinypic.com/2mmw97c.jpg
The channel order in the table is:
FL-FR-FC-LFE-BL-BR-FLOC-FROC-BC-SL-SR-TC-TFL-TFC-TFR-TBL-TBC-TBR
Set the channel order in your muxing according to the channel order in the table.
I.e. if you have a 3 channel file, FL-FR-FC, the first channel cannot be Front Center while the second channel is Front Left. The first channel will always be the first channel in the list defined by the hex value.
If I want to create a 6.1 ch file using FL-FR-FC-LFE-BL-BR-BC, then channels 5 must be the BL file, 6 must be BR, and 7 must be BC.
But if the 6.1 file uses FL-FR-FC-LFE-BC-SL-SR mapping, then BC is not channel 7 but channel 5.

Once you've decided on your desired mapping, you need to calculate the hex value for that mapping.
Simple, just use a calculator in hex mode to sum the value for each channel. So FL+FR+FC+LFE+BL+BR+BC = 1+2+4+8+10+20+100 = 13F
Add zeros to pad the number to 4 digits --> 013F
Then, invert the number pairs --> 3F01

Open your WAVE_Ext file in a hex editor (I use HxD, which is free).
Search for the hex values at offset 08-09 in the third line (greymarked in the image)
http://i29.tinypic.com/1rt661.jpg

replace them with the values you calculated
http://i31.tinypic.com/2wrf38n.jpg
and save.
Done.

- The method to obtain a multichannel wav with WaveWizard and hex editor is only for WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE header (WaveFormatEx option) but you can use standard header (Wave PCM) for NeroAacEnc and Flac (with '--channel-map=none' parameter)

Like tebasuna51 says, is not necessary to feed a WAVE_Ext file to these encoders, they will assume mapping and apply it to the order.

[tebasuna51]

...
Tebasuna's method is good and it'll get the job done, but it doesn't send a mapping to the encoder, the encoder just assumes a mapping, the same way it does for 6ch files with WAV PCM header.
...
The 3 AviSynth methods I say can output WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE header with ChannelMask.

SoundOut put a default ChannelMask like this:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=951530#post951530

But Wavi and BeHappy can put the default or the desired value. For instance:
wavi input.avs /M 1551 FL_FR_FC_LF_SL_SR.wav

[Skelsgard]

@tebasuna51
Sorry, I based my comment on the avs script, which doesn't send a masking. I didn't know your method was using wavi or soundout.