Hi, I'm also a newbie here, and have a problem similar to one that's already been discussed, except the explanations given were about using command lines with which I'm mostly unfamiliar. I have a 6 channel dts mkv movie that played unsatisfactorily on my stereo entertainment system. I could hear the background music and some voices very well, and other voices barely at all. I'm trying to use eac3to more gui to downmix to stereo, and have also made other settings, such as down convert 24 bit to 16, and resample audio to 44100. I choose number 4 for highest quality and set the output type to also be dts. The plan is then to remux that audio file back into the movie unchecking the original with mkvtoolnix.
So far so good, right? Please don't laugh then about what I'm about to say.
I don't find a button to convert. Nowhere can I find anything that says convert, start, mux, go, run... nothing.
How do I get it to do its work and produce the output file?
Voice is coming from the center channel, so if you cannot hear them, the center channel is probably missing.
Before you start editing your video files, first check if you playback has any options to resolve the issue.
Which entertainment system do you use? Does it have any downmix to stereo options? Maybe it even has an option to increase the center channel volume. How is it connected to your stereo?
If that doesn't work then eac3to is a good tool to downmix your videos to stereo. But downmix to 16bit and resample to 44.1khz are not necessary at all.
Personally i would use AC3 because it is much more efficient than DTS. If this is about a music bluray you may want to use a lossless format like flac, DTS-ma or DD truehd.
Eac3to is command line program, so it might be a bit of hassle to get going. You might wanna try a frontend gui.
Check http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=125966 for more info like frontend gui. The Doom9 forum is better for these kind questions btw.
I've never used MKV but it's a flexible "container" format, which can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing because of the many, (sometimes unknown) audio/video formats...
Audacity (with the optional FFMPEG import/export library) should be able to open all six channels. From there, you can mix-down to your taste.
SoX can probably do it, but yo might have to do some experimentation to identify the channels.
...A DVD or Blu-Ray is standardized and will mix-down properly if your DVD/Blu-Ray player has stereo-analog outputs, and your Audio/Video receiver, or DVD/Blu-Ray player software also knows how to properly mix these formats down to stereo. (DVDs & Blu-Rays also usually have a stereo track that you can select, although it's not required by the standard.)
Normal "spoken" dialogue, is hard to hear because it is usually mixed at ~ -27db. This leaves an enormous crest above dialogue levels, intended for effects & explosions. It is done intentionally, since movie soundtracks are mixed and mastered for theaters / cinemas.
This makes movie soundtracks incompatible with headphones or regular apartment rooms, since they have different acoustic properties.