AC3 to WMA: Convert Audio from AC3(Dolby Digital AC-3 Audio) to WMA(Windows Media Audio) with River Past Audio Converter, AC32WMA 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 WMA?

Short for Windows Media Audio, a Microsoft file format for encoding digital audio files similar to MP3 though can compress files at a higher rate than MP3. WMA files, which use the “.wma” file extension, can be of any size compressed to match many different connection speeds, or bandwidths.

Additional information is available on Microsoft Windows Media page.

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 "WMA - Windows Media Audio" as the "Audio Type".

Note: To convert to WMA files, you must have Windows Media Format 9 runtime installed.

You can change the compressor, and depending on the compressor, you can change the sample rate, channel (stereo or mono), bits/sample, and bitrate.