SurroundByUs.com

Yeah not to be discouraging but many folks here (many longer than me) have been trying different things for years, with things similar to what you're suggesting being tried and discarded years ago.

Typical progression of ideas:

using phase to add and subtract signals in the time domain
various VSTs
ambisonics
combinations of all the above
spectral domain spam and re-synthesis (where are now)
next... Wavelets?

There is even a similar progression of ideas in SPEC:

LCR is a spectral version of what you are doing in the time domain, google Michael Gerzon (but nobody really uses it any more).

CC uses a quadratic to extract a center channel from the stereo (Spectral Domain) , then that is subtracted from the original signals to create the rears.

SLICE uses repeated stages of CC to create all five channels (plus an optional rear phantom center)

ArcTan uses trigonometry to spread the stereo mix across (up to) 360 degrees

Anyway, by all means experiment! That's what I did and came up with SPEC. Just suggesting that you try SPEC and see how you like it.

Maybe you will be the next to suggest ideas for improvement. It's a community effort. Also a plug here for Plogue Bidule. A Great tool for audio manipulation and experimenting.

Cheers,
Z

In the beginner's guide you say to convert all songs for an album in to one, long track with Foobar.
Later, in DVD-Audio authoring, you say to be sure to have individual tracks, as the DVD-A won't recognize the cue (or something to that effect) and will not be able to skip to chapters.
Since my files are 96k I assume I want to do DVD-A, not DTS, correct? If so, I want to be converting each track, one at a time in Foobar, but still "multitrack'?
If any of that is confused, I apologize and look forward to your advice.

Thanks.

DVD-A is an old format. Do you have a DVD-A player?

You could do DVD-V with DTS96/24 or you could do Blu-Ray or AVCHD (Blue-Ray format on a DVD blank) if your Blu-Ray player is OK with that (all recent ones are).

In any case audiomuxer, also available here, is the swiss army knife for audio and prepping audio for discs. it can work with either single song files or an album long file.

I have an OPPO, which plays dang near anything!
I do not have any BD burner, yet, though that could be remedied for the right reasons.
Burn to DVD and/or figure out how to play straight off my computer (as per our other discussion, I'll try to find an hdmi soundcard) is Plan A, at this point.
Is 96/24 DTS lossless?

Well unless you need to put more than a DVD's worth of audio on a disc you can use AVCHD format and DVD blanks to get DTS HD Master quality.

For playing from the computer; Raw files I recomend foobar2000, with various plugins to decode DTS, DTS HD Master, etc. For play discs or disc images or disc formated folders I recomend Total Media Theater. There is something (I forget the details) about later versions having less functionality than previous. Probably HydrogenAudio forums would have the details.

I'm running TMT 5.3.1.146

VNC will also play almost anything, but you don't get a lot of choice/control over the audio stream/decoding or audio output hardware.

As to DTS 96/24, I went to wikipedia to get the answer and didn't find a definitive answer on ANY DTS format being lossless or not. I have it in my head that DTS HD-MA is considered "lossless" but not any of the others. I could be wrong.

Ok, so, per the better half...

Mixing computer needs to be out of common area, thus away from main surround system.
I think I should research soundcards meant to supply output to computer surround speakers.
like Logitech type stuff? Unless that's a really bad idea.
I'm very much open to suggestions.

Something like this?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7769071&CatId=2769

The problem with creative cards is they put tons of crapware on your computer that you just want to defeat to get straight through audio.

You'll want something with an ASIO driver.

DTS-Master Audio (or DTS-HD) is lossless. Regular DTS is considered lossy, but just barely. You have to have a really good system to hear the difference between DTS and DTS-MA. As Z stated, you can make DTS-MA blu-ray discs using a regular DVD burner and regular DVD blanks. You don't need a blu-ray burner or blu-ray blanks. With 6 channels of audio and a picture slide for each song (if desired), you can get approximately 100 minutes of 24b/48k audio and still video on a standard 4.7GB DVD+R. (Higher bit and sampling rates will obviously reduce that time capacity - i.e. bigger files.)

Concerning DVD-Audio verses DTS or DTS-MA discs: You can make either with the files that SPEC produces (as long as your bit rate is correct - they differ some for DTS vs. DVD-A). I can tell you from experience that using Audio Muxer is much easier to get to the end product and adding pictures is much easier. I think the audio quality of DTS-MA and DVD-A is the same, since they are both lossless. DVD-A requires a few extra programs/steps to get the files to fit into the format if you are using more than two channels. I have used DiscWelder to make DVD-A discs and the artwork never seems to work out the way I want. I have also used HD-DVD-Audio Solo Ultra and it is a bit easier, but still doesn't offer the ease and predictable results that Audio Muxer delivers.

There are several other handy programs you will want to get as you get the hang of conversions, such as Channel Renamer, but wait to get those until you feel like you have a better understanding of what you are doing.

As Z suggested, start with just one song. You mentioned problems monitoring. The program works much faster and uses less cpu if you set it to "offline processing". You will find that on the Edit dropdown box at the top of the Plogue program. You won't be able to hear the song as it is being processed but when it finishes, stop Plogue and then listen to the results using another program (Foobar, Sound Forge, etc.). Make some adjustments, re-run the program and listen to the new results. Trial and error.

Listen closely to the rear channels (isolated) as those are the ones you are really creating via the program and also the easiest to sound bad. Watch your levels - remember that unlike spam, digital sound cannot go above 0db. If you push your channels above 0, they are clipping and distorting. Even the loudest music doesn't need to be hitting 0db. Give your tracks some headroom and let the music breathe. If you want to hear it louder, you have a volume control on your amp.

As you said, baby steps. Good luck!

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'm finding it very helpful. Today, I picked up a new 2TB 7200rpm drive to install Windows on (will dual boot from grub, probably).
I also picked up a BD burner - if for no other reason than to be able to watch/listen to BDs if my family is occupying the media room (I had an extra slot for it).

Regarding 5.1 output, I feel kinda dumb, but I think my motherboard supports it onboard:

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/pcs/motherboards/1402721/msi-970a-g43-review

I haven't found specs yet that prove whether it can do 192k out the 3.5mm jacks, but I bet it can, as that would be spam, right?

If this is the case, I only need to find the right 5.1 speaker set meant for 3.5mm and I could be up and running soon!

Assuming I figure out how to dual-boot with grub!