What's the best ac3 decoder?

[P0l1m0rph1c]

Due to recent evolutions in AAC encoding with nero's codec, and the possibility of using two different apps for transcoding, (besweet and fb2k), that use two different decoders, a question rises.

Which of these two decoders(azid or liba52) is the one that achieves best quality?

Is it worth it to convert to WAV or AIFF with besweet and then encode with foobar?

I mean all this in order to preserve the 48000 Hz samplerate.

[bobsc]

Originally posted by P0l1m0rph1c
Which of these two decoders(azid or liba52) is the one that achieves best quality?
Azid has more options for example -L -3db that would provide better 2 channel output.

[KpeX]

In general, Azid is considered better quality, liba52 is an open source AC3 decoder. However, two points come to mind:

1. As with all lossy audio the quality is based 99.5% on the encoder and only .5% on the decoder (relative numbers). But in this case as bobsc mentioned options are important too.

2. The loss introduced in transcoding to AAC will be much greater than the loss between using different decoders.

[neoviper]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but I recently had quality problems usid Azid v1.9 (b922) to decode a 2ch AC3.

Command line:
azid.exe -c normal -s stereo t.ac3 azid.wav

Results in clipping-like distortion sometimes in the speech.

When using liba52 (with foobar2000) the resulting wav sounds identical to the AC3.
Am I missing some crucial switch or is there a problem with Azid?

The ac3 and the wav files can be downloaded here (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~erjoni/ac3dec/).

[graysky]

I have a 5.1 AC3 file generated from DGIndex (Jersey Girl-AC3 T01 3_2ch 448Kbps DELAY 0ms.ac3). When I try to convert the AC3 to either ogg, mp3, or wav either using besweet or oggmachine the resulting file is always too quite. I have tried using normalizing to 100% or not at all, and using hybrid gain or not at all. I should mention that I'm interested in stereo output... I have no special speaker system, just the stereo speakers in my TV :)

Can anyone tell me how to decode my file to either wav or directly ogg such that the output file will have the same volume level as the original AC3? I'd even do this with azid.exe and commandline, it doesn't have to be a gui method.

Thanks!

[graysky]

...anyone?

[daphy]

@graysky

read your private messages :mad: