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Any plans to develop a standard for sending digital multichannel signals that aren't encoded in DD/DTS?

H

Howard

Lifer
The restriction of PCM/DD/DTS encoded audio really sucks. I want to connect my sound card to a nice system without processing/DAC until the last moment.
 
I'm actually working on something similar to what your describing...

In a nutshell, I'm designing a AC-3 to 5.1 channel decoder circuit. What's the difference between my design and the ones you see in 99% of the consumer electronics?

One thing, its going to be EXTREMELY clean, and what I mean by that is its going to be using seperate toroidal transformers for digital and analog section, seperate bridges, a few optioisolators, and the best DAMN DAC/FILTER/OP-AMP combo money can buy. I'm looking at anywhere from $60-$100 per channel, plus about $60 for the power supply components and ac-3 decoder ic.

I figured I'd rather spend $300 on parts and design my own equipment rather than blow $5000 on something that'll sound just about the same, if not worse.

This'll let me connect it to anything that has a ac-3 data stream, including pc sound cards.

Couple this baby to my modd'ed klipsch speaker and heads will turn, mouths will drool. 🙂
 


<< In a nutshell, I'm designing a AC-3 to 5.1 channel decoder circuit. >>


Don't all surround processors do exactly the same thing?

What I'm thinking about is a way to send a digital surround audio signal over one cable, while not being encoded in DD/DTS. I know that you can send AC3 over S/P-DIF, but what I want is the ability for multichannel PCM to be able to do the same.
 
If (or when) sound cards are produced with two standard S/P-DIF or TOSLink digital-outs for separate F/R audio, you can have your wish. The only problem is, you'd have to have two 2.1 systems with digital-in or some other arcane setup.
 
Yeah, your right, all receiver that can decode AC-3 does the exact same thing, but not all receivers are built with quality components. A $10,000 receiver most definitely sounds better than a typical $300 one you see that retail stores. What I'm aiming for is that $10,000 receiver, or just the decoder section.

As for why you can't send 6 channels of data through one optical link, I think its not worth the expense in terms of equipment and bandwidth required. A 6-channel data stream sampled at 24bits/96khz will require about 12Mbits (24*96000*6). But what you CAN do is decode that AC-3 signal into 3 seperate s/pdif signals, with each signal carrying two channels, ie, signal 1 contains FL and FR, signal 2 contains RL and RR, and signal 3 contains Center and SUB.


Cirrus Logic makes some AC-3 decoders that can output the results into 3 s/pdif data streams like I described above.

Also, marantz makes speakers that have BUILT-IN DSPs that do the digital to analog conversion (the connection to the speaker box is a digital one). I think each pair runs at about $7000 for the lowest model. If I had my way, that would be the route that I'd take.
 


<< As for why you can't send 6 channels of data through one optical link >>


But you can send 5.1 through an optical link. ???
 
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