4 ms·

SoundStorm vs Dolby is such a turning point story. Nvidia had a 5 billion op/s DSP and Dolby digital encoding on that chipset. Computers were coming into their

SoundStorm vs Dolby is such a turning point story. Nvidia had a 5 billion op/s DSP and Dolby digital encoding on that chipset. Computers were coming into their own as powerful universal systems that could do anything. Then Dolby cancelled the license. To this day you still need very fancy sound cards or exotic motherboards to be able to output good surround sound to a large number of av receivers. There are some open DTS standards that Linux can do too, dunno about windows/Mac. But it just felt like we slid so far down, that Dolby went & made everything so much worse. (Media software can do Dolby pass-through to let the high quality sound files through, yes. But this means you can't do any effect processing, like audio normalization/compression for example. And if you are playing games your amp may be getting only basic low quality surround surround, not the good many channel stuff.)

izacus 2y ago
I'm bit confused about your last paragraph - what's low quality about Dolby Atmos / DTS:X output you get for games these days?
dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
throwaway81523 2y ago
Do you mean AC3? Ffmpeg has been able to do that since forever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Theres some debate about what patents apply, but even Dolby had to admit defeat as of 2017. So yes, a 640kbit/s 6 channel format is available for encoding on ffmpeg & some others. I don't know if games are smart enough to use this? It also feels like a very low bar. It's not awful bitrate for 6 channels but neither is it great. It's not a pitiful number of channels but again neither is it great. Last & most crucially, just because one piece of software can emit ac3 doesn't make it particularly useful for a system. I should be able to have multiple different apps doing surround sound, sending notifications to back channels or panning sounds as I prefer. Yes ffmpeg can encode 5.1 media audio to an AVR but that doesn't really substitute for an actual surround system. This is more a software problem, now that the 5.1 AC3 patents are expired. And there have been some stacks in the past where this worked on Linux for example. But it seems like modern hardware (with a Sound Open Firmware) has changed a bit and PipeWire needs to come up with a new way of doing ac3/a52 encoding. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/3253 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/32...
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    I once went down a rabbit hole of trying to get realtime AC3 encoding on my desktop PC, and I broadly failed. That was a long time ago. It is now 2024. Do we still need that today? For modern AVRs we have HDMI, with 8 channels worth of up to 24bit 192kHz lossless digital audio baked in. For old AVRs with multichannel analog inputs, motherboards with 6 or 8 channels of built-in audio are still common-enough, as are separate sound cards with similar functionality. What's the advantage of realtime AC3 encoding today, do you suppose?
    - throwaway81523 2y ago
      One reason to want Dolby encoding is to play back on your consumer home theater gear that decode it. Alternatively though, just don't use that kind of gear.

izacus 2y ago

I'm bit confused about your last paragraph - what's low quality about Dolby Atmos / DTS:X output you get for games these days?

dangsux 2y ago

[dead]

throwaway81523 2y ago

Do you mean AC3? Ffmpeg has been able to do that since forever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Theres some debate about what patents apply, but even Dolby had to admit defeat as of 2017. So yes, a 640kbit/s 6 channel format is available for encoding on ffmpeg & some others. I don't know if games are smart enough to use this? It also feels like a very low bar. It's not awful bitrate for 6 channels but neither is it great. It's not a pitiful number of channels but again neither is it great. Last & most crucially, just because one piece of software can emit ac3 doesn't make it particularly useful for a system. I should be able to have multiple different apps doing surround sound, sending notifications to back channels or panning sounds as I prefer. Yes ffmpeg can encode 5.1 media audio to an AVR but that doesn't really substitute for an actual surround system. This is more a software problem, now that the 5.1 AC3 patents are expired. And there have been some stacks in the past where this worked on Linux for example. But it seems like modern hardware (with a Sound Open Firmware) has changed a bit and PipeWire needs to come up with a new way of doing ac3/a52 encoding. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/3253 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/issues/32...
- ssl-3 2y ago
  I once went down a rabbit hole of trying to get realtime AC3 encoding on my desktop PC, and I broadly failed. That was a long time ago. It is now 2024. Do we still need that today? For modern AVRs we have HDMI, with 8 channels worth of up to 24bit 192kHz lossless digital audio baked in. For old AVRs with multichannel analog inputs, motherboards with 6 or 8 channels of built-in audio are still common-enough, as are separate sound cards with similar functionality. What's the advantage of realtime AC3 encoding today, do you suppose?
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    One reason to want Dolby encoding is to play back on your consumer home theater gear that decode it. Alternatively though, just don't use that kind of gear.