SpecScript v2.0 - 5.1 AND 7.1 upmix scripts and utilities (now faster)

[EMR]

I think I should report an oddity I've recently experienced when trying to create a surround version of the Ben-Hur OST, using the official CD as the stereo source. Versions 1.8 and 1.9 of SpecScript failed to process the entire recording. Both times, tracks 35 and 36 were left blank, and track 34 played for a few seconds, and then went blank as well. The upmix of the other 33 tracks was fine. This was done on a Windows 11 Parallels virtual machine on a Mac running macOS Sonoma. Perhaps the problem is particular to me, but I can't figure out why my hardware or my virtual machine might consider the last three tracks to be blank or nearly so. Is there a time processing limitation whereby SpecScript might cease its upmixing operation?

For what is worth, I finally "succeeded" by splitting the stereo OST into two portions and upmixing them in succession. This time around, all tracks were valid. Then I reassembled the two independently upmixed portions.

 

[zeerround]

Were you doing the whole cd as one audio track?

 

[EMR]

Were you doing the whole cd as one audio track?

Exactly. I had previously created a cue file. Then I appended all individual tracks into one single track, so that I could upmix everything in one go.

 

[zeerround]

You are likely exceeding the size of wav or FLAC files. I would need to check, as I normally use formats that don’t have that issue, but you are doing the “unexpected” in any case. You can drag and drop an albums worth of individual tracks (or more) to do them all “in one go”, and will get better dynamics matching, and faster processing to boot. I strongly suggest that approach.

 

[EMR]

The total size of the assembled 5.1 FLAC for the whole album is 2.14 GB, nothing to write home about.

 

[zeerround]

For CD audio (44.1 KHz, 16 bit, stereo) It looks like the maximum time SpecScript can process (with default 2x upsample) in a single track is about 1 hour. This has to do with several points where "legacy" tools are used, that don't support wav formats (or other formats) with larger file sizes than 4GB.

SpecWeb can handle larger. So you could use that, but again individual tracks are the strongly suggested method. You can drag and drop all of them at once, to have them all processed.

I might, at some point, poke around with this, but again both SOX audio and CenterCut are legacy tools (no longer developed) and I would have to add file format support on my own.

 

[EMR]

Yes, the one-hour limit would explain the situation with the Ben-Hur OST. Thank you!

The reason I processed the entire CD in one go is the fact that there were tracks intended to be played without interruption. Perhaps I could have processed them separately and joined them together at the end of the process, but I feared the transition between tracks might be noticeable in that case.

 

[zeerround]

Track to Track transition is one of the regression tests I run when developing upmix tools. SpecScript is both "bit perfect" (nothing added or removed before or after the track. Same number of samples in and out) and Dynamics matched to the original track within 0.5 dB, so there is no audible difference in volume.

The "acid test" for this Styx, Paradise Theater, tracks one and two. Track one is quiet and track two is loud, and the track transition is between syllables on the sung word Para-dise.

If you are starting with the type of cue file where there is one big audio track and index times in the cue file, I would use foobar2000 to break it up into individual tracks, but other tools like AudioMuxer or Music Media Helper can also do that (AFAIK).

FYI on increasing the total time limitation in SpecScript, I spent some time yesterday and found a format supported by all tools in the later part of the script, that supports >4GB files, which is aiff (This turned out to be BAD INFO from AI, but I do have it working with a combination of w64 and flac). That leaves CenterCut as the one piece that supports only wav, so for CD stereo I think we might be closer to 2 hours now (Only tested functionality, not duration, yesterday).

 

[zeerround]

FYI I have here a version of SpecScript that can handle up to 2 hours and 10 min of CD quality audio, as one track.

Going beyond that will take some C# coding, which is a little out of my core expertise. But I think what I have so far, and maybe some parallelization can form the basis for the next release.

 

[zeerround]

Thread title and Post at top of thread updated to announce SpecScript version 2.0. Faster, and with support for unlimited audio file size and support for DSD file inputs.

 

[niunduro]

Se actualizaron el título del hilo y la publicación en la parte superior del hilo para anunciar la versión 2.0 de SpecScript. Es más rápido y admite archivos de audio de tamaño ilimitado y entradas de archivos DSD.

¡Hola!
¿El zip que aparece es la versión 1.9, no la 2.0?, gracias, el enlace de la descarga es de la versión anterior.

 

[Jiko]

Hi Glenn,

The link is still the 1.9 version.

Cheers,
Jim

 

[zeerround]

Looks like I edited the text of the URL without the changing underlying link. My bad.

Let's try again: https://surroundbyus.com/sbu/download/SpecScript 2.0 Release.zip

I also fixed the link in the top post.

 

[Jiko]

Thanks Glenn,

Cheers,
Jim

 

[zeerround]

FYI if anyone has or is planning on getting a Windows on Arm device (MS Surface or Copilot+ PC) SpecScript/SpecWeb (mostly) works out of the box.

Certainly reach out to me if you encounter any issues but I am able test here (Windows 11 insider build running on a Raspberry Pi 5 ;0)

I'll start an ARM native port. for performance reasons, but frankly it will probably depend on all the 3rd party libraries I use also being ported.