Turning .DTS files into an Audio CD

So I've come across some interesting files on the internet. They are .DTS files, which, I believe are the ripped contents of my MTV Unplugged DVD of Nirvana. It's an awesome DVD that sounds great. The only issue is that I can't play audio DVDs in my car...Well that's not exactly true. I can play them, but the car has to be stopped and the parking brake has to be on to start the DVD. Not very convenient.

The .DTS files are the ripped DTS formatted files from the DVD, which is a nice start, but I wanted to turn these into an Audio CD with DTS surround sound. It was a long journey and I won't bore you with all the details, but I will give you the simple (not really simple) way that I solved the problem.

The problem: You can't rip .DTS files that are sampled at 48Khz directly to a CD. You will get an error in the recording software (Nero etc) that says you can't record these in redbook audio. This makes sense, since the redbook format only supports 44.1Khz sample rate.

I couldn't find a simple program to just take the DTS file and re-encode it to a .WAV file with 44.1Khz. I'm still looking for a way to reauthor a DVD that will just auto run in my DVD player, but until that happens this is my next best thing.

So, here what you need to make this work:

.DTS Files Encoded with 6 channel audio
Tranzcode_v0.30_guiv1.4.rar
Audio Commander
Surcode DVD-DTS
Nero Burning ROM

Most of this stuff is a simple websearch away. I'm lazy, so I haven't put up the links. But search and you will find them.

Step 1. -- Break the .DTS file into it's constituent parts with Tranzcode. If you have the tranzcode GUI, then it's as easy as selecting the .DTS file as the input. Check the 6 channel radio button and hit 'RUN'.

Step 2. -- Open up audio commander. On the bottom left where it says 'uncompressed' select frequency [44khz]. channels = mono, bit depth=16-bit... Now on the left select add files. Choose the wav files that were created in step 1. You can add them all at once. now go to [file]-->[convert]. This stalled a couple times for me. not sure why. I just aborted and restarted. It should only take a minute or so to convert all you wav files. This will convert your files from 48khz to 44.1 khz. make sure you select a differnt directory to put them in, just to keep things in order.

Step 3. -- Open surcode. here you add the files that you converted from step 2. Do it in this order...I did and it worked fine. a) sample rate set to 44.1, b) click the 'left front' button. c) select the file from step 2 that has "FL" at the end. d) select the 'RF' file for right front. e) go down the list and fill in the rest of the files. Double check to make sure that you have all 6 channels in the right spots. Encode time should be 0:00:00:00. don't mess with it. Stop time should have automatically set to the time from the Wav files. Don't mess with it. Now go to Destination and type in the name of the file that you are saving. For speed I just copied the song name during an earlier process and it pasted it here. Make sure the destination folder is, again, a differnt folder so you don't get things messed up. I would suggest at the onset having a 'DTS' folder, a '48khz' folder, a '44khz' folder and a 'final' folder. If you did this right and chose the right destination folder, then you should have the newly encoded 44.1khz wav files all tucked away in your 'final" folder.

Step 4. -- Open up nero express. Choose the music option. choose Audio CD. now just copy and paste, or drag your WAV files into the new project box. Make sure that you aren't going over the 80 minutes allowed on the CD. Put a blank CD in the drive and hit burn.

Once this is complete...if you did it right. You will have a DTS Audio CD with 6 channel surround. It worked great for me, though it is a real pain in the butt. It take a long while to do all the re-encoding. I wish there were a "one-step" program that could do all this for me, but since I haven't found that...this is what I will use.

Please note that this creates Digital DTS Audio. THIS IS NOT A STANDARD CD FORMAT!!! You cannot play this on a regular CD player and expect it to play. You will hear a loud hissing sound. That's because the normal Right and Left outputs from the CD channels are used to hold the surround information. The only way this will work is:

1) play it on your PC with the correct software (CyberPower DVD, VLC DVD etc...with DTS plug-ins)
2) Play it on a CD player that has a SPDIF for Digital out. This has to be connected to the digital in of a receiver that supports DTS surround playback.
3) Play it on a DVD player that supports DTS surround...you will likely need a DTS receiver or have a DVD player with 6 channel speaker outs or 6 channel line outs for a receiver.

In my case, my car has a DVD play that supports DTS surround (lucky me). and it works great!!

You have to listen to:

Sting - Brand New Day
Nirvana unplugged

They are awesome in DTS.