WAV to AC3 Encoder 4.4

Defined by its creator as a “simple GUI for Aften A/52 audio encoder”, WAV to AC3 Encoder is far from being just a simple GUI. It is a sophisticated, professional, and comprehensive free tool that will allow you to create your own multi-channel AC3 (or Dolby Digital) audio streams from standard WAV files. It supports both multi-channel and multiple-mono input, and the resulting AC3 file can be customized down to the smallest detail.

The application comes with two very different interfaces, one for the novice user, and a professional one for those who know what they are doing. Thus, if all you want is a quick high-quality WAV to AC3 conversion, everything you need is in the standard view. The default presets used by the program will professionally encode your wave audio files without further hassle. If, on the contrary, you wish to design your own AC3 files to fit all your audio preferences, then you should switch to the advanced view.

Here you will be able to decide on every little detail regarding the output AC3 file – advanced encoding options, bit stream info metadata, dynamic range compression and dialog normalization, input filters, or alternate bit stream syntax, to name just a few. Under each of these headings, you will find a series of features, each of them with a defaulted value and a number of options. You can set your own collection of presets for each of the features available, and save them for future use. From here, you can also access a MUX Wizard, which will help you to select in a graphical way the right combination of channels for your AC3 file, from mono to a six-channel output. Here you can load a different file for each channel (when recorded separatedly), and the formats supported are WAV, PCM, RAW, BIN, AIFF, AVS, etc.

The program can also be used from the command line, and you can find the supported commands in the help menu. This is all the help you will get from the program, so do not expect any when tweaking with the different values of the advanced interface.