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Ok. I picked up copies of Vortexzoom and imgburn. What part of the process do I use these?

I also got a copy of R8Brain. Not sure how to use it.

I have gotten confused yet again. Will go back through the stuff and see if I can figure it out.

A checklist or how to do things would be really nice..... So I can just follow along and do the steps.
Making progress but it is slow.

So I need what all programs and how do I get them into Plogue or what order do I use them?

Thanks again.

I was looking through the Plogue basic guide and it was talking about adding VST's and there were a boatload listed. Which VST's do we need?

It also said "This article should help you get through your first conversion.......your job is simply to load a source in the Audio File Player and follow the specific instructions of this method."

Where can I find the specific instructions?

Going to go back through all the answers to my post and see if I can find something..

Very Simplified:
Pick the music you want to use as one combined .wav file and setup a cue sheet to load into ZAG.
Open the .wav file of your music with the file player in the layout
Select the method you think sounds best (ArcTan, SLICE, etc) and tweak the settings until you are happy while live monitoring.
When you are satisfied with the way it sounds, enable ZAG (processing on), set up the file recorder, check offline processing in the Edit menu (it will go faster) start the file player and click the off button at the top to on and it's on it's way.

For now I would disable processing on any VST's, free mastering, etc until you know or think you know what you are doing/need any of that stuff. I seldom use VST's of any kind for the most part.
Just dig into it and keep trying. We all had to figure it out at some point but once you get over the hump it's really not hard at all.

I only have one music CD so that part was easy.
Made a Cue sheet.
I didn't do offline processing.

Didn't quite understand the "click the off button at the top to on and ..."

I know very well I don't know what I am doing.

I got it started and had to add speakers so I could monitor it... That wasn't in the layout that was supplies.
My output sucked. Slow spot, loud spots, quiet spots, dragging spots. I think my computer is not strong enough to handle this.
I am using Vista on a 3.2 ghz machine, but with only 2 gigs of memory. It's slow.... The output sounds was terrible. I am playing one of the tracks right now and it sounds fine.

Ok. I think I have part of a handle up to the point of what do I do with the 6 channel files?? How do I combine them into 1 file.

>1) Open vortex surround encoder

>2) Open the folder with the six mono files in it

I got sort of lost some where in this process. I did the same time the 2nd that I thought I did the first, but I must have missed a step because on the 2nd time I sent it through plogue I didn't get the 6 track files.

Where did I go wrong? If I remember correctly there is a place you put in the name of the song to use (the main .wav file) and then it process and outputs the 6 mono files. I think this is correct. But I don't remember where to put the file name in to which module. If that make sense.

In order for the recorder to record you have to give it a file name. Once you do that, it well record every time you press play, in the audio file player.

So, you either don't put a name in there during the "measure levels" step, or if you already did you can just let it record or double click on the "Layout Control" bidule and set recording to "off" (instead of "Arm Recorder"). Of course, you'll want to put it back to "Arm Recorder" when you are ready for the "Apply Gains" step.

To put the file name in the recorder, double click on "Zmeter & Recorder" and then click the button with the three dots in it. That will let you enter a file name. I usually just use "OUT" as a file name but it's up to you.

That would give you six mono wav files like this:

OUT_0001_0.wav

Where 0001 is the "take" number (how many times you have recorded) and _0 is the channel number (0 through 5; LF, RF, C, LFE, LS, RS).

Again, the "simple" layout might be easier for you to start with. No ZAG, no "measure levels" then "Apply Gains", no cue file, no VSTs.

The name of that layout is SPEC4.8-Simple.bidule

You can come back to the one with ZAG after you build confidence/experience with the simple version.

>7) Edit your cue file, with notepad, so that the FILE tag now points to your DTS wave file, instead of the stereo source. No you can burn your DTS to a CD using the >cue file and imgburn, or you can play it on your computer using the cue file and foobar (with the DTS decoder plugin).


I have the cue file (I think it is correct)

REM GENRE Country
REM DATE 2005
REM DISCID BE0CAA0E
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.0b3"
PERFORMER "Carrie Underwood"
TITLE "Some Hearts"
FILE "Carrie Underwood - Some Hearts.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Wasted"
PERFORMER "Carrie Underwood"

What would I edit and how would it look???

You would change:

FILE "Carrie Underwood - Some Hearts.wav" WAVE

So that it says something like this:

FILE "Carrie Underwood - Some Hearts-DTS.wav" WAVE

or whatever you call your DTS wave file.