So you have 5 speakers (or more) setup, and you would like to experience surround music? Here is a nice experiment, which could blow your mind in surround experience.
We will create a DTS-WAV sound file, with 5 different and unique music channels.
What you need:
- Skaletracker
- Audacity
- Surcode DTS
- Sound mods
- VLC Player
So let’s start. In this example, I have a XM mod, “Ancient Stories II” by Awesome / Wildbits.
SkaleTracker tells us, this mod has 0-29 = 30 channels. The composer used these channels however he liked or needed. A nice feature of SkaleTracker is, that if you disable channels, and save the output to WAV, the disabled channels are not included in the saved file. Because of that, we can split the music into 5 unique channels for our goal (Front Left, Front Right, Center, Rear Left, Rear Right). For the first of 5 wav’s, I have enabeld only channels 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25. The next wav will contain only channels 1,6,11,16,21,26. By doing this 5 times, we get all 30 channels devided over 5 streams. But keep in mind, it’s completly random, depending what the composer dicided to do with the instruments over the channels.
| wav 1 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| wav 2 | 1 | 6 | 11 | 16 | 21 | 26 |
| wav 3 | 2 | 7 | 12 | 17 | 22 | 27 |
| wav 4 | 3 | 8 | 13 | 18 | 23 | 28 |
| wav 5 | 4 | 9 | 14 | 19 | 24 | 29 |
Now we have de-selected all channels, except 0,5,10,15,20,25, we can save this one as wav 1a.
Next we can do the same for the next channels, 1,6,11,16,21,26
And repeat it for all 5 wav’s…
Now the tricky part. Because harddrives (ide, sata, nvme) don’t write 100% accurately, we need to check if all wav files are identical in size. While I was writing my first wav, I could see we miss 8192 bytes (34.381.868 – 34.373.676).
So I had to repeat the 1st step of saving the 1st wav (channel 0,5,10,15,20,25). The second run returned the exact same size as the other 4:
File 1a could be deleted and 1a2 (second run) now renamed as 1a, because we will use that one.
The next step is, converting the stereo wav’s to mono, as surcode requires the input wav’s to be mono. Open each of 5 wav’s in Audacity. Convert them to mono by navigating to “Tracks”, choose “Mix” and select “Stereo to mono downmix”. After you see the 2 channels merged into 1 mono, you can save the file by exporting it to WAV. I choose to add mono after the filename so you don’t get confused.
Now we need to re-check if filesizes are still correct, after conversion. In this case all mono wav files should be 17.190.956 bytes. And they are.
Next step would be to start Surcode and process the files into 1 DTS WAV.
First we have to set the destination file. I used the following settings (just randomly actually).
- Left front wav 1a mono
- Right front wav 1b mono
- Center wav 1c mono
- SubBass LFE n/a
- Left Surr wav 1d mono
- Right Surr wav 1e mono
Now hit encode and wait for about 1 minute.
Your DTS-WAV will be ready and can be used to play.
For Playback, you can use VLC Player or burn it on a disc.
Please note, if you play this WAV not on DTS equipment, you’ll hear only loud noise! Please be carefull, because this could break your speakers!
Now enjoy some surround music, with instruments coming from each speaker. I can tell you, the experience is mind blowing!
| “Ancient Stories I DTS WAV” | download (save target as) |
| “Ancient Stories II DTS WAV” | download (save target as) |
| “Awesome – Fancy – Bolero DTS WAV” | download (save target as) |