Audio Enhacement

[masteripper]

hi to everybody
I have a rather unsual question but anyway i will give it a try.
I have an old movie with a 5.1 ac3 track (the movie is around 1984 ) and because i would like to make a nice backup of it (just in case)
i would like to somehow enhace the audio quality to something like DTS.
Let me explain it a little better.
I am not talking about simple demuxing the ac3 and remuxing to DTS ; i am talking about some kind of processing in order to get a higher quality audio from the original track .
Do you have any suggestions or it is quite a waste to consume time on this?
Thanks in advance..

[Sirber]

Most audio tools are for 2.0. COuld be very difficult to "boost" audio quality for 5.1...

[ursamtl]

Remember that since AC3 is a lossy format, you're not going to be dealing with the best material. Does the movie also have a PCM audio track? If so, I'd take this and use for the front left and right since it would be lossless and in theory provide much better quality.

You would need to demux the AC3 file to wave files and work with those. If the LFE channel doesn't contain any-thing, drop it; otherwise, just keep it as is. If you need a bit more oomph, you could try compressing it a bit, but be very careful with this as even a bit too much can ruin your mix.

In fact, be very careful with any "enhancement" you do. It is extremely easy to get carried away with EQing, add-ing effects, noise reduction, etc. Be sure not to do it all in one sitting. Your ears get used to a certain sound and this can cause you to make judgments that sound great one day, but then when you come back and listen to it a couple of days later or on a different system, it sounds horrible!

Anyway, work with your wave files and then re-encode. You mentioned DTS, do you have the proper encoding software? If not, you might consider re-encoding to AC3. It should certainly be adequate for what you're doing. DTS is widely perceived to be of higher quality for music but this is subject to debate.

[krazyklown]

Converting AC3 to DTS format does not enhance the sound in anyway. I thought so too. Imagine converting a very old cassette tape to WAV, is it gonna sound better? No. Same with AC3 to DTS. Just letting you know.

[ursamtl]

No, the actual conversion in itself will certainly not enhance the audio. However, if he converts to wave and then does some EQ, noise reduction, etc., then it would be an improvement that warrants the best encoding possible.