Upmix 2ch mp3 to 5.1ch

vivekam

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Hi All,

I found this player KM Player which says it can upmix 2ch mp3 to 5.1 channel.
I have not tested this. But sound quality and functionality wise I found this player very good. If upmixing thing is really working then this player is excellent.

What I expect from forum members is to test this player for upmixing, as I don't have 5.1 setup.

moserw can you please guide us on this player.

Links for this are given below:

Download Link:
[2008/12/22] The KMPlayer 2.9.4.1434 Release - The KMPlayer's Forums

How to Upmix using KM Player ?
How to upmix 2ch mp3 to 5.1ch? - The KMPlayer's Forums
 
Last edited:
LOL - Think Cranky is the best suited among us for such stuff.

I will go through it. I remember using KMP a while ago. Find Foobar, XMPlay to be the best followed by Winamp and Quintessential Media Player (QCD) and that's what I keep on my system. Media Monkey was my mainstay a while ago especially since it could manage huge database of files with ease.

Not sure though that MP3s are the best source to upmix. WAV/FLAC would be better. Shall keep ya posted.
 
Vivekam - yes, KMP can do this and more. In fact this is not the only player that can do this. This can even be done on Foobar. You can convert stereo to multi channel surround automatically.

In any case - you can use your receiver to switch to a multi channel mode as well - even without utilizing any feature in the player itself. So, any specific reason for asking the question?

As far as audio players are concerned - Foobar with SRC and ASIO is the best. Nothing else I have heard comes even close to it. XMPlay makes a valiant attempt. But that is about it. Mediaportal also has ASIO support, I believe. But that is a whole different software directed at a different crowd.

QMP when it was going strong was among the best. Sadly now it is not in circulation. There has been a new version released just now but it is still pretty buggy.
 
@thevortex
I was looking for an easy way to convert flac/wav files to 5 channel and store it on a dvd or hard disk as a file.

But I think it is not possible. May be I am wrong on this. I need to find out more before reaching this conclusion.

Thanks,
vivekam
 
vivekam,

Why would you want to convert your FLAC/WAV files to 5 channel? I guess I dont understand this.

If in case you want to listen to these lossless formats on all your speakers - switch the mode on your receiver to Dolby or DTS or some such surround format. That would work. So, I am not sure what you are looking for.
 
Checked, nothing all that great. SQ is on par with most, but Foobar is certainly ahead. In fact KMPlayer seems more famous/geared towards playing video files. It certainly does handle all formats, but then so does VLC and I've had no problem with VLC and MPC/K-Lite Codec Pack combo, the mainstays on my system.

Note, this is only on initial impression. Will give it a more thorough work over and post my FB.
 
As far as audio players are concerned - Foobar with SRC and ASIO is the best. Nothing else I have heard comes even close to it. XMPlay makes a valiant attempt.

thevortex,

In total agreement here. Though I like the sound of XMPlay too with its BASS engine too and also especially for its low system resource usage (though God knows I should not be complaining of that). BTW, what's the sample rate you've had best results with and which converter in SRC?
 
Moser, TheVortex. pardon me for doing this. But I am going to ask a really dumb question.

How can you take a two channel audio and 'upmix' it to 5.0 leave alone 5.1? Where is the sub woofer data created from? Am I right in understanding that the 2 channel data is just sent to 5 channels using some logic? But, for the life of me, I cannot understand how LFE data can be created. Does the software isolate the low frequency sounds and send it to the LFE channel?

Am I thinking in some wrong way altogether? Or is there some magic here that I need to understand?

Cheers
 
Checked, nothing all that great. SQ is on par with most, but Foobar is certainly ahead. In fact KMPlayer seems more famous/geared towards playing video files. It certainly does handle all formats, but then so does VLC and I've had no problem with VLC and MPC/K-Lite Codec Pack combo, the mainstays on my system.

Note, this is only on initial impression. Will give it a more thorough work over and post my FB.

Moserw - KMPlayer is probably the most versatile player around currently. Its audio quality is just as good as the Windows Directsound system. It does not have ASIO support. And when you disable all DSP plugins there is not much to choose from between other players.

I have heard people comparing and contrasting this with the BASS engine. Personally what I have found is that KMPlayer seems to slightly increase dynamics (highs and lows) - which is not all that good a feature when I dont want it to do that.

For audio alone you can do better than KMPlayer or VLC or MPC for that matter.
 
Moser, TheVortex. pardon me for doing this. But I am going to ask a really dumb question.

How can you take a two channel audio and 'upmix' it to 5.0 leave alone 5.1? Where is the sub woofer data created from? Am I right in understanding that the 2 channel data is just sent to 5 channels using some logic? But, for the life of me, I cannot understand how LFE data can be created. Does the software isolate the low frequency sounds and send it to the LFE channel?

Am I thinking in some wrong way altogether? Or is there some magic here that I need to understand?

Cheers

Venkat - you caught us there! The right terminology to be used should have been Stereo upmix to 5.1. Not 2 channel to 5 channel. Sorry we were a bit lazy there. Hope this helps.
 
thevortex,

In total agreement here. Though I like the sound of XMPlay too with its BASS engine too and also especially for its low system resource usage (though God knows I should not be complaining of that). BTW, what's the sample rate you've had best results with and which converter in SRC?

The best sampling rate I have used is 48000 on SRC. I would love to use something higher but some reason when I go to 96000, my Marantz receiver is not able to make use of the .1 signal (subwoofer).

This has happened only since I have used the hacked Essence drivers for my D2X card...But 48000 is working wonders for me anyway. So, for now I am happy.

That plus ASIO takes Foobar to a different level. XMPlay is the only one which gamely competes. With a remote in use, I would like to try Mediaportal to see how it copes up.

I would also recommend AIMP - it uses a completely different audio engine. I have tried this multiple times before and with the latest version I am almost inclined to give it a longer run this time. The thing that stops this from being my default is the lack of an ASIO plugin.
 
Moserw - KMPlayer is probably the most versatile player around currently. Its audio quality is just as good as the Windows Directsound system. It does not have ASIO support. And when you disable all DSP plugins there is not much to choose from between other players.

I have heard people comparing and contrasting this with the BASS engine. Personally what I have found is that KMPlayer seems to slightly increase dynamics (highs and lows) - which is not all that good a feature when I dont want it to do that.

For audio alone you can do better than KMPlayer or VLC or MPC for that matter.

I'm sorry, I meant VLC and MPC for video. For audio I've always preferred Foobar followed closely by XMPlay. Agree about KMPlayer, it's on par with others, but that's not enough incentive to move to it at least for me. Either ways I have found Foobar offers a lot more customization than others, just have to learn to tweak it, it's unbeatable on that front. For straight out of the box playing though I prefer XMPlay and even good old Winamp.
 
Moser, TheVortex. pardon me for doing this. But I am going to ask a really dumb question.

How can you take a two channel audio and 'upmix' it to 5.0 leave alone 5.1? Where is the sub woofer data created from? Am I right in understanding that the 2 channel data is just sent to 5 channels using some logic? But, for the life of me, I cannot understand how LFE data can be created. Does the software isolate the low frequency sounds and send it to the LFE channel?

Am I thinking in some wrong way altogether? Or is there some magic here that I need to understand?

Cheers

Venkatji,

You're right! In this scenario 2 channel data is sent to all channels just like the Dolby Pro Logic II & DTS Neo:6 settings in the AVR.

However, the other alternative i.e. recreating music with 5.1 FX is also possible. In this scenario the LFE data is created from the stereo data. I was pretty much taken up with listening to music in 5.1 when I went the HT route, but soon got tired of it and realized FLAC rips in stereo are the best. In fact even got rid of 5.1 speaker system on the PC and moved to 2.0 speaker system. But like I said in the early days of my HT experience 5.1 music was the "thing" and lots of albums of this 5.1 upmixed or DTS upmixed are available on the internet. Just Google "DTS Upmix" and you will find lots of torrents and maybe you can d/l one of them to check how it sounds. I remember getting Brothers In Arms by Dire Straits in 5.1 DTS and really loved the track Money for Nothing in 5.1. Of course this will never be as good as genuine 5.1 DVD audio, but still is the 2nd best since nothing else exists. There are lots of tutorials on how to convert your stereo music to 5.1 like this one Tutorial How to DTS Upmix an album so you can try it out for yourself with one of your CDs too. That or d/l I guess just to try for novelty's sake. Nothing to beat stereo for music though.
 
Thanks TheVortex and Moser.

If I understood the Tutorial right, the set of software first rips the stereo in mono. It then creates the same mono in all channels. In step two where the surround channels are created, the amplitude is enhanced.

As a third step it creates a 0.1 channel by extracting data that has frequencies between 80 and 120 Hz. Finally all these six files are sent through a DTS encoder to create a 5.1 WAV file.

As the author says, 'a DTS Upmix cannot replace the real thing but its a decent approximation. A DTS Upmix, is a way of faking it. He also very vehemently advises against using MP3 files which completely vitiates the OT's objective.

Interesting. Shall try this and also compare the output to a original 5.1 Audio disc I have of the same song.

Cheers
 
When done right and played on the right h/w it does really come out in 5.1. Also, it comes as true DTS i.e. my Onkyo AVR recognizes it as such which is more than my Divx rips which only come in Dolby Digital and also DTS content is less in DVDs too. But the novelty feature does wear off after a while. Where I really found it cumbersome was that each album had to be written on a CD (it would not burn on a DVD) and only then it could be played on my DVDP via the HT system. The PC was no help since I kept getting ground loop. Burning CDs meant back to having lots of media and that only defeated the purpose of ripping in FLAC and having all content easily accessible. That finally turned me off 5.1 music!
 
Thanks TheVortex and Moser.

If I understood the Tutorial right, the set of software first rips the stereo in mono. It then creates the same mono in all channels. In step two where the surround channels are created, the amplitude is enhanced.

As a third step it creates a 0.1 channel by extracting data that has frequencies between 80 and 120 Hz. Finally all these six files are sent through a DTS encoder to create a 5.1 WAV file.

As the author says, 'a DTS Upmix cannot replace the real thing but its a decent approximation. A DTS Upmix, is a way of faking it. He also very vehemently advises against using MP3 files which completely vitiates the OT's objective.

Interesting. Shall try this and also compare the output to a original 5.1 Audio disc I have of the same song.

Cheers


Venkat you wont hear the same as what the author intends as the mixing and mastering techniques and tools create very different signatures. You may or may not hear better than the original
 
Venkat you wont hear the same as what the author intends as the mixing and mastering techniques and tools create very different signatures. You may or may not hear better than the original

Oh, I understand that very well Marislians. I was actually looking this whole concept of 'artificially' up-mixing with a large skeptical eye, or should I say ear. After all nothing can come close to have 5 or 6 independent channels of music and mixing them intelligently to maintain the rhythm and timing.

At the same time, I am very curious to see what this software does. I have a couple of 'real' multi channel audio DVDs. So I am going to go get the CDs of the same songs, up-mix them using these software, and see what the difference is. Should be an interesting experiment.

Cheers
 
Oh, I understand that very well Marislians. I was actually looking this whole concept of 'artificially' up-mixing with a large skeptical eye, or should I say ear. After all nothing can come close to have 5 or 6 independent channels of music and mixing them intelligently to maintain the rhythm and timing.

At the same time, I am very curious to see what this software does. I have a couple of 'real' multi channel audio DVDs. So I am going to go get the CDs of the same songs, up-mix them using these software, and see what the difference is. Should be an interesting experiment.

Cheers


Fair enough...I am also interested to hear the outcome of this venture.
 
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