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View Full Version : Custom mixing/splitting BD/HD-DVD audio?


puntloos
10th July 2007, 13:06
Gents,

Here's my situation, I own a bighugeexpensive(tm) set, tailored for digital audio. More specifically it is 2 channel, and it expects only standard digital audio into its stereo DAC. (i.e. it demands PCM - spdif, USB, toslink)

My question is this:
Is there some way to 'split, then mix' a BD/HD-DVD stream into:
- video signal - send it (over HDMI? VGA? DVI?) to a TV. Details irrelevant for now.
- 2 front audio signals signals - send it to my big audio set
- the rest of the channels to some auxilary set I could buy - probably analog?

Obviously, in 'DTS' terms, I would like to send left, center, right and subwoofer to my quite capable main set, and the sound effects/echo channels, i.e. 'rear' to some reasonable auxilary gear.

Some roads to the solution:

1/ Rip the BD/HD-DVD and use some (a lot?) of processing to do this splitting, mixing and building some 'comprehensive 4.0' video file? What apps can 'remix/split' the audio, and what video player can indeed produce a stereo spdif on my main sound card (or the virtual USB soundcard my DAC provides) and the rear signals perhaps into the HDMI or a second soundcard with 2,3,4 analog outs?
2/ Do it in legit hardware, maybe Gefen's Home Scaler (http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4298) to extract stereo SPDIF and 'pass through' the rest of the signal to a HDMI decoder receiver where I will only connect rear and video. I am worried though that the 'extracted SPDIF' contains the stereo mix of all surround, i.e. useless for the helicopter chase scene where you want the chopper sound only from behind you, not coming from front speakers as well.

Anyone have thoughts on this issue?
- Tips for software/hardware needed
- Thoughts on if this is possible at all
- Solutions you have tried (success? failure?)
- What can already be done, what would require work (perhaps the people from VLC Video player (http://videolan.org) could be convinced to do some 'stuff')
Thanks!

dmz01
10th July 2007, 16:48
I don't think this is the right forum for this discussion, but here it is anyway.

SPDIF is limited to 2 channel PCM, so what you want is a player with a build-in multiformat to stereo decoder. Last time I checked most hardware players can be set to output 2 channel PCM (DD Pro Logic compatible) over SPDIF (in addition to AC3/DTS) and multi-channel PCM over HDMI. Just get yourself a good hardware player and you should be all set.