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Topic: AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio (Read 5624 times) previous topic - next topic
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AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

I'm trying to extract audio from my DVDs (especially concert DVDs or music video DVDs), and I would like to be able to listen to them on my computer (without having to swap DVD discs all the time or bother with the video).  My computer is capable of playing multichannel audio with its 4.1 speaker configuration (two front, two sats, one LFE, no center).  I have been able to succesully extract the audio and create AC3 files, which contain the 5.1 multichannel data.  However, I have yet to be able to find a program to play the AC3 file, correctly utilizing all of my speakers.  There are a few AC3 decoders out there, but they downmix to stereo WAV, which defeats the purpose (for me, at least) of ripping from the DVD instead of a CD soundtrack.  Has anyone found an AC3 player, or (ideally) plugin for Winamp that makes full use of multiple (>2, non-stereo) computer speaker setups?  Is there another way to accomplish this, perhaps?

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #1 –
ac3filter
Its a wmp filter though.  maybe someone ported it to winamp?

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #2 –
Quote
ac3filter
Its a wmp filter though.

Or more generally - direct show filter.

Quote
maybe someone ported it to winamp?

Perhaps the author himself?
WinampAC3

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #3 –
I use Power DVD for replayin ac3 files. Power DVD supports not-decoding the ac3 file and sending the stream through an optical digital cable directly to my Dolby Digital amp.

Winamp should be able to decode ac3 files to six different channels...

If the plugins do not work, try to transcode the ac3 to ogg with besweet or headac3he (yeah, transcoding sucks). Winamp should be able to decode the multichannel ogg file properly.

fragtal
I love the moderators.

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #4 –
Thanks a lot.  AC3Filter works great with WMP.  It took me a while to figure out that I shouldn't set my speaker settings to 2/2+LFE, even though that's what I have, and instead use the SPDIF pass-through.  The 2/2+LFE kept giving me Blue Screens of Death for some reason, but the SPDIF works like a charm.  I miss out on all of the extra settings, but I don't seem to need them.

WinampAC3 doesn't work as well, unfortunately.  You'd think that it would, since it's virtually the same as AC3Filter, just modified for use in Winamp, but it is problematic.  It has no SPDIF setting, and I'm not so sure that it can given Winamp's output methods... I'm not too clear on what the SPDIF pass-through does.  The 5.1 setting places the channels incorrectly (front channels are right, and surround channels are left, and not sure about LFE), but I didn't really expect this to work, given my 4.1 setup.  The Quattro setting just seems to mirror the front L/R channels to the surround speakers, plus no bass.

Do you know if there are any plans to continue development on this plugin?  I suppose I should probably e-mail the author myself.

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #5 –
Quote
If the plugins do not work, try to transcode the ac3 to ogg with besweet or headac3he (yeah, transcoding sucks). Winamp should be able to decode the multichannel ogg file properly.

Not a bad idea, but the thought of transcoding makes me cringe.  I'm not entirely up on all things Ogg, but I've heard that Ogg is merely a wrapper for a coding format (usually Vorbis).  Is this correct?  Would it be possible to either wrap the AC3 file in Ogg and trick Winamp into playing it (although I don't know how without an AC3 input plugin), or perhaps decode the AC3 into separate WAV files for each channel, then wrap the WAVs into one Ogg?  (What would happen to file size in the latter case?  Does Ogg compress, or is that up to the Vorbis part?)

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #6 –
When he said transencode to ogg, he meant transencode to vorbis  Generally when a person says ogg, they mean vorbis (audio.) Ogg is indeed just a wrapper and has nothing to do with compression, vorbis is just the codec used to compress the audio.

AC3 player to maintain multichannel audio

Reply #7 –
ogg is a container for vorbis and flac audio files. Some time ago I read about a OGG Tarkin video codec... but I never got to know more about it.

I don't know if it is possible to wrap ac3 or wav files in an ogg file...

You can try it or ask one of the programmers.

fragtal
I love the moderators.