3 ms·

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.

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.