Blu Ray Audio Hacks - For the love of multichannel music...

pcosmic

pcosmic

Senior Audioholic
As we all know, many movies have great soundtracks. But, when the OST is released for these movies, they release a letdown of a stereo CD. It would be lovely to have the original Dolby/DTS/Auro mulitchannel mixes released in Blu Ray Audio for such soundtracks. But, no one cares enough to release Blu Ray Audio for these soundtracks (that one can purchase).

So, is there a way to extract the multichannel mix soundtracks only (isolate the soundeffects, etc) from a Blu Ray or UHD movie?

The other issue is copyright protection. A couple of softwares i tried had copy right protection! I bought the damn movie blu ray. I am certainly entitled to extract its soundtrack for my listening pleasures (i would think). But, is this a dead end?

Considering the above mentioned, can any of you geeks help a helpless old man here?
 
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depechefan

Audioholic

Maybe try looking at this thread. A combination of Makemkv and an audio extraction tools looks like the recommended solution.
 
pcosmic

pcosmic

Senior Audioholic

Maybe try looking at this thread. A combination of Makemkv and an audio extraction tools looks like the recommended solution.
I tried the solution there. Basically, MakeMKV gets you over the copyright restrction and lets you create a backup file. That's a good thing. The other software, Audiomuxer, that they recommend lets you extract the DTS multichannel audio from that backup file.

HOWEVER, this is where it gets shut down...... The audio you extract has all the movie dialogue, sound effects, (crashes, gunshots, etc) mixed in with the composer's soundtrack. There appears to be no way to just isolate the soundtrack from the composer.

After doing some research, i found this thread that gets into why the above mentioned is not doable.....

https://www.reddit.com/r/AudioPost/comments/5jm4l2
Thanks for the suggestion though.....
I just think it is obnoxious that when a movie soundtrack is released for purchase, they only release it as a 2 channel cd when a native DTS/Dolby/Auro multichannel mix exists out there!! It could easily be released as Blu Ray Audio!!
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
There's dvd audio extractor with some claims for bluray, but it doesn't even work well with all my dvds, and the few blurays I tried were no go. I'm just playing my discs until such time I find something that works....maybe something in the dvdfab lineup?
 
A

acepaul

Audiophyte
I get the desire to do this but thinking it is possible makes about as much sense as wanting to remove the main character from a background shot when they used a green screen. Once the surround sound is mixed, there is no going back. Separate information from the individual tracks used to create the mix simply do not exist in the final product. If that was how it worked the audio files would be huge and the players and receivers would have to act as mixers forced to take the audio from sometimes over 100 tracks and then would need the specification for how much volume/delay/reverb/etc. each track would need for each channel in the mix. And really, putting together a Dolby Atmos surround mix is 1000 times more complicated than that.

The short answer is, unless you just want the end credit songs, not happening.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
I get the desire to do this but thinking it is possible makes about as much sense as wanting to remove the main character from a background shot when they used a green screen. Once the surround sound is mixed, there is no going back. Separate information from the individual tracks used to create the mix simply do not exist in the final product. If that was how it worked the audio files would be huge and the players and receivers would have to act as mixers forced to take the audio from sometimes over 100 tracks and then would need the specification for how much volume/delay/reverb/etc. each track would need for each channel in the mix. And really, putting together a Dolby Atmos surround mix is 1000 times more complicated than that.

The short answer is, unless you just want the end credit songs, not happening.
A bluray is limited to 7.1 discrete channels plus some metadata for Atmos implementation. Getting around copy protection is the biggest problem. You don't have to access all the original tracks before the multich mix was created....
 
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acepaul

Audiophyte
A bluray is limited to 7.1 discrete channels plus some metadata for Atmos implementation. Getting around copy protection is the biggest problem. You don't have to access all the original tracks before the multich mix was created....
Even if you are able to bypass copy protection, there is no separate track for music vs sound effects, dialogue, etc. There will often be other mixes for different languages and/or other surround formats. Music/sfx/dialogue are all mixed at the studio. Am I missing something here?
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Even if you are able to bypass copy protection, there is no separate track for music vs sound effects, dialogue, etc. There will often be other mixes for different languages and/or other surround formats. Music/sfx/dialogue are all mixed at the studio. Am I missing something here?
There's no need for such. Generally the center channel has most of the dialog, tho. SFX is where they want it. There's no particular separation of SFX from music. If you want to copy a soundtrack that plays by itself would be one thing, capturing parts of soundtrack that have music/sfx intertwined would probably be of interest only to superfans. I would like to rip the music tracks of concert discs for the most part myself, not so much from movies unless there's a dedicated soundtrack (like Oblivion or Tron:Legacy for example)
 
A

acepaul

Audiophyte
There's no need for such. Generally the center channel has most of the dialog, tho. SFX is where they want it. There's no particular separation of SFX from music. If you want to copy a soundtrack that plays by itself would be one thing, capturing parts of soundtrack that have music/sfx intertwined would probably be of interest only to superfans. I would like to rip the music tracks of concert discs for the most part myself, not so much from movies unless there's a dedicated soundtrack (like Oblivion or Tron:Legacy for example)
Ok, that makes more sense. I was imagining snippets of music with varying levels of volume to accommodate dialogue and other sound...

Sounds like MakeMKV is your best bet then. Used to use Handbrake back in the day but it is pretty useless now.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Ok, that makes more sense. I was imagining snippets of music with varying levels of volume to accommodate dialogue and other sound...

Sounds like MakeMKV is your best bet then. Used to use Handbrake back in the day but it is pretty useless now.
As there's no simple way to rip my blurays or SACD multich discs, I'll just play them.....MKV for me hasn't been much of a solution but I'm probably doing it wrong :) but even at that its simply not worth the effort that I can tell.
 
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acepaul

Audiophyte
As there's no simple way to rip my blurays or SACD multich discs, I'll just play them.....MKV for me hasn't been much of a solution but I'm probably doing it wrong :) but even at that its simply not worth the effort that I can tell.
Yeah, not like the good old days when you could just extract the audio tracks you wanted. (DVD's)
Having to rip audio+video then extract the audio from the subsequent MKV container is a real pain and slow.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Yeah, not like the good old days when you could just extract the audio tracks you wanted. (DVD's)
Having to rip audio+video then extract the audio from the subsequent MKV container is a real pain and slow.
Such is drm and all that. Why i don't mind simply playing those particular discs....all my cds are ripped and played from there
 
pcosmic

pcosmic

Senior Audioholic
Even if you are able to bypass copy protection, there is no separate track for music vs sound effects, dialogue, etc. There will often be other mixes for different languages and/or other surround formats. Music/sfx/dialogue are all mixed at the studio. Am I missing something here?
Bypassing copy protection is easy with several softwares out there. Dialog, sound effects and the track are separate on game blurays (easy to extract the soundtrack on game blu rays)s, but appear impossible on movie blu rays. It is a shame because i would think that the multichannel mix for the soundtrack exists and should be easy to release on a blu ray audio. But, they seem to put the OST on a 2 channel CD when they release it (facepalm).
 
A

acepaul

Audiophyte
Bypassing copy protection is easy with several softwares out there. Dialog, sound effects and the track are separate on game blurays (easy to extract the soundtrack on game blu rays)s, but appear impossible on movie blu rays. It is a shame because i would think that the multichannel mix for the soundtrack exists and should be easy to release on a blu ray audio. But, they seem to put the OST on a 2 channel CD when they release it (facepalm).
Except for end credits, they would have to remix all the OST for a surround release. Keep in mind that with dialogue, sound effects, etc happening in conjunction with the music, there are slight tweaks to several parameters made on an individual speaker level. Volume, reverb, EQ, delay, etc are just some of the adjustments made while blending the master mix. Also, quite often only part of a song is played during movie scenes. To have a consistent surround mix that would be pleasing for just audio listening, it would definitely have to be remastered. Good point you made on video game soundtracks. The only exception to that might be cut scenes.
 

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