Dolby Surround captured tracks - options

[Jetrell Fo]

One channel at a time is better than nothing at this point even if it takes a little more patience .... until the next advance in progress here of course.

Great thread all, keep up the great communication and share of info.

[spoRv]

Thanks Jetrell!

@anyone: I need someone who could, and would, test the files and report feedbacks - c'mon, small files, and short test clips... can't you spend 10/15 minutes of your life, for the benefit of the community?

[spoRv]

Hardware Pro-Logic (not II and newer) take stereo Dolby Surround encoded tracks and get four channels: Left, Center, Right and Surround; now, I'd like to add at least a LFE channel - that is an option also on HW decoders; how could I achieve this task in software, preferably using Audacity, Foobar2000 or an AviSynth script?

Also, I'd like to have a stereo surround, using the mono Surround channel, correlated somehow with Left and Right ones... is it possible?

[spoRv]

UPDATES:

I was "stuck" with just four channels (L, C, R, S) and wanted an LFE channel and stereo surround... put those tracks in Audacity, used the Pseudo-Stereo plugin (settings: 50 & 80) to create the stereo surround from the mono one - it does not apply drastic changes, but only slight, to retain the most of the original track; then, the obtained 5 channels (L, C, R, newly created Sl and Sr) are low passed (80Hz 24dB) to get an LFE channel, while at the same time high passed (same settings of low pass filter) to let the bass go just on the LFE...

Link to test files: https://www.sendspace.com/file/4lx4yv

To have things a bit more "spicey", I put the original stereo track and five upmixed tracks - randomly named from 1 to 5 - including, of course, the latest test track.

Your task it to listen to the stereo track, decoded with your hardware Dolby decoder/ampli/etc. and compare it to the other tracks (encoded in DD 5.1 640kbps); then, write a list of the upmixed tracks, from better to worst, and also if one (or more) of those tracks sound actually the same, or better, than the stereo properly decoded track.

It will take ten minutes to do this test, so please... spend some of your time for this test, that could lead to an important "milestone" in the audio restoration department - IMHO!

[Jetrell Fo]

I listened to the audio and it sounded great. I heard the audio effects in separate channels too. Since I'm not an audio guru, this is probably the best I can do for you.

[spoRv]

Every feedback is welcome! Now, have you downloaded the latest clips? If so, now you have to write here if there is one (or more) ac3 track that sounds similar, if not better, than the stereo wav files listened through your Dolby Pro Logic decoder!

[Jetrell Fo]

Link to test files: https://www.sendspace.com/file/4lx4yv

^^^^
This is all I listened to. I heard DTS and THX, both sounded really nice.

[spoRv]

Link to test files: https://www.sendspace.com/file/4lx4yv

^^^^
This is all I listened to.  I heard DTS and THX, both sounded really nice.

So, which is the closer to (or better than) the original?

[Jetrell Fo]

I felt they both were good as is. In a theater, they are gonna sound bigger due to the volume, speaker spacing, types of speakers and eq used. I think you did a fine job capturing both without going overboard.

[spoRv]

I wrote a little article about all this: https://fanrestore.com/showthread.php?tid=395