AC3 to RA: Convert Audio from AC3(Dolby Digital AC-3 Audio) to RA(RealAudio) with River Past Audio Converter, AC32RA converter, conversion

What is AC3?

Dolby Digital, formerly known as AC-3, is a digital audio compression format. Dolby Digital takes advantage of how the human ear processes sound. When coding noise is close to the frequency of an audio signal, that audio signal masks the noise so that the human ear hears only the intended audio signal.

Dolby Digital is used with digital versatile discs (DVDs), in North America only. European DVD's use MPEG audio instead.

Dolby Digital provides five full-bandwidth channels, front left, front right, center, surround left, and surround right, for true surround sound quality. A low frequency effect (LFE) channel is included that provides the sound needed for special effects and action sequences in movies. The LFE channel is one-tenth of the bandwidth of the other channels and is sometimes erroneously called the subwoofer channel. This multichannel scheme is known as 5.1 channel.

To convert AC-3 audio to other formats in River Past software, please have AC-3 Decoder filter installed.

What is RA?

RealAudio was developed by RealNetworks and supports FM-stereo-quality sound. To hear a Web page that includes a RealAudio sound file, you need a RealAudio player or plug-in, a program that is freely available from a number of places.

More information is available on RealNetwork web site.

To convert other audio formats to RealAudio, you will need River Past RealMedia Booster Pack in addition to your audio software.

Additional Requirements

To convert from AC3(Dolby Digital AC-3 Audio) to RA(RealAudio) audio with River Past Audio Converter, you must have River Past RealMedia Booster Pack installed.

Launch River Past Audio Converter

Once River Past Audio Converter is installed properly, launch Audio Converter.

Add File

Click on the "Add File" button on the tool bar. The standard file open dialog appears. Select "AC3 - Dolby Digital" in its "Files of type" combo box.

Select the file you want to convert and click "Open". The file will be added to the conversion file list.

Note: To convert from AC-3 files, you must have open source AC-3 decoder installed.

Once the AC-3 Decoder Filter is installed, you will also find a AC-3 Control Panel in your (Windows) Start | Settings | Control Panel area. It allows you to change the settings for the decoder. Often, you may find the default volume from the decoder is lower than desired and it is necessary to adjust the volume in this control panel.

If you cannot add the AC3 file, please verify your AC-3 Decoder filter installation.

River Past Audio Converter

Select output format

Use the setting panel on the bottom of the window to control the output format. Click on the toggle to the left of the "Format" label to expand the panel. Select "RA - RealAudio" as the "Audio Type".

Note: To convert to RealAudio, you must have River Past RealMedia Booster Pack installed.

You can change the audience, mode, complexity, sample rate, channel (stereo or mono) and bits/sample.

The audience specify the target audience of your video. Normally, it is based on the bitrate of quality. For example, to enable users of 256k DSL connection to play the video from internet, set the audience to "256k DSL or Cable". The choices for "Mode" are "Music" or "Voice".