In the previous part, we had found a way to convert a WMA 5.1 stream into AC3. And this method should work for pretty much any audio source. However, some people may suggest other solutions, like foobar2000 or dbPowerAmp. Both tools are incredibly useful and can help you in most cases, however, in my case they were of no help.
First, dbPowerAmp is, at least to my knowlegde, not able yet to encode into AC3. This means that you should first create an intermediate file using another format, like Vorbis, FLAC, AAC or even WAV. This way, you will simply create another (big) file with a very short life. Furthermore, I have seen that many people have issues with the order of the 6 channels.
Secondly, foobar2000 has more or less the same problem. There is currently no plugin to encode directly in AC3. However, you may define a new converter, or encoder based on Aften. In this case, you would define the arguments of the encoder with identical values to what we defined in the previous part. Unfortunately, in this case, I’m not understanding the added value of foobar2000 compared to bepipe.
Furthermore, for both tools, we still should have to solve the issue of downsampling from 96 KHz to 48 KHz, and I have not found yet whether any of those tools offers this feature. If anyone has got any suggestions, she/he’s welcome.
