Many thanks for offering us all the benefits of your hard work and I can see this saving a lot of time for some people.
Welcome to the group.
On Wednesday, March 27, 2013 6:08:20 AM UTC, DanielF wrote:--Being new to this group, I don't know how many of its members might be users of the Squeezebox forum, where I posted this topic in 2010. So I'm posting an updated version here for your interest, in case you haven't seen it before. If you've previously downloaded my file from the Squeezebox forum, replaced it with the updated one attached here.
As you know, ReplayGain can't be applied to DTS tracks, as it wrecks the DTS coding and produces just white noise. This frustrated the hell out of me, since when a DTS track played on my Squeezebox system (about 20k tracks on shuffle) I would often have to race for the remote volume control to bring it down to the level of my ReplayGain-adjusted stereo tracks.
The easiest way I could think of to fix this problem was to split the DTS tracks into 6 mono components, adjust their gain to (roughly) match my stereo tracks' level, then re-encode the mono files to DTS. Trouble is, with over 800 DTS tracks, this would be a horribly time-consuming task. But after stumbling across a freeware program, WaveGain, I saw a possible solution...
I could automate most of the required steps (split, scale, etc) using a batch file. But there were a few stumbling blocks. WaveGain was intended for scaling stereo wav files, not a set of 6 mono files. And my DTS encoder (SurCode CD Pro DTS) doesn't support command-line execution (and doesn't even have keyboard shortcuts, which might have allowed a keyboard simulator to drive it!).
The first problem was overcome by e-mailing the author of WaveGain who, fortuitously, happened to want to do a similar thing on his own surround sound files. So he kindly modified WaveGain especially for surround sets of mono files, producing the special version WaveGainS. The second problem wasn't so easily solved...
I e-mailed Minnetonka Audio Software, and after some discussion they indicated it may be some time before they release a command-line capable DTS encoder version. [If you want to get rid of the 'nasty' bits of my automated process, I suggest you hammer their enquiry web page with requests for a command-line version, so they can gauge the extent of the demand, which might speed them up a little.]
By a further bit of serendipity, I read in a PC magazine about Sikuli, a magic piece of software that automates on-screen button-clicks and other things. With a bit of trial-and-error I soon had it 'clicking' the start button of SurCode and then (when encoding completed) 'clicking' the close button.
As mentioned in the supplied notes (Scale.pdf) this is a fairly fragile process, but it's the best I can do with available software. I ran the batch file on my system (over a few days while I was away), and ended up with most of my DTS tracks scaled to a similar volume to my stereo tracks.
There were several tracks (one whole CD, plus one track from another CD) that Tranzcode failed to correctly split (the single track it decodes as stereo, even though it correctly plays as DTS on my surround receivers, and the whole album it decodes to 6 mono files [per track], but truncated and of poor audio quality). I don't know why. Besweet also fails to correctly split those tracks, so I've given up on them for the time being. (If anyone has any suggestions I'd welcome them.)
All the required batch files, plus documentation, are in the attached Zip file. It is supplied free and with NO SUPPORT (though I might answer the odd question from this forum). You'll need to acquire copies of the third-party programs required, and edit the batch files to suit your directory structure. Read Scale.pdf for details.
Have fun!
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Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Re: [SurroundSound] Re: ReplayGain for DTS tracks - a solution
The biggest problem with this technique in my opinion is the quality loss incurred in teen coding back to to dts-cd format, which is extensive.
This would actually be one of the cases where it would be bendicial to convert dts-cd to multichannel flac. You would get the benefit of your volume adjustment but not lose any quality by reencoding into a lossy format. Also, there exist command line tools like eac3to that would convert from multiple mono wavs to multichannel flac.
The downside would of course be larger files, but you may also gain some tagging capabilities.
Something to consider.
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