Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital, formerly known as AC-3, is a digital audio coding technique that reduces the amount of data needed to produce high quality sound. Dolby Digital takes advantage of how the human ear processes sound.
Surround sound is an integral part of the home theater experience, and with that, there are lots of surround sound formats in use, depending on your audio system's capabilities, speaker layout, and content.
Probably the most used are formats that are part of the Dolby Digital family. In this article, we discuss three: Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital EX, and Dolby Digital Plus. These formats are commonly used on DVDs and streaming content and are also present as a supplemental selection in Blu-ray and Ultra HD Disc content.
What Dolby Digital Is
Dolby Digital is a digital audio encoding system designed for use on DVDs, Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs, and, in some cases, for TV broadcast and streaming content. This system provides efficient transfer for audio signals that may be composed of one, or more channels, that can be decoded by a home theater receiver or AV Preamp/Processor with a Dolby Digital decoder and distributed to one or more speakers.
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Almost all home theater receivers in use have a built-in Dolby Digital decoder and all DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc players are equipped with the ability to pass Dolby Digital signals via a technique referred to as bitstream to properly equipped receivers for decoding.
Dolby Digital is often referred to as a 5.1 channel surround system. However, the term 'Dolby Digital' refers to the digital encoding of the audio signal, not how many channels it has. Dolby Digital may also be referred to asDD, DD 5.1, AC3
- Monophonic: Represented by one or two speakers. However, with two speakers, both reproduce the same sound so the sound will appear to come from the space between the speakers.
- 2-Channels: Represented by two speakers - one on the left and on the right front of the listening position.
- 4-Channels: Represented by four speakers - Two placed on the left and right front of the listening position, and two on the left and right, and slightly behind the listening position.
- 5.1 Channels: Represented by five speakers (left, center, right, left surround, right surround), and a subwoofer (.1)
Dolby Digital EX
The Dolby Digital EX format adds a third surround channel that is placed directly behind the listener. The means that it is a 6.1 Channel system.
The six channels are represented by six speakers (left, center, right, left surround, center back, right surround), and a subwoofer (.1.).
This means that the listener has both a front center channel and, with Dolby Digital EX, a rear center channel. If you are losing count, the channels are labeled: left front, center front, right front, left surround, right surround, subwoofer, with a surround back center. A home theater receiver with a Dolby Digital EX decoder is required to access the full 6.1 channel experience.
However, if you have a DVD, or other source content, that contains 6.1 channel EX encoding and your receiver does not have an EX decoder, the receiver will default to Dolby Digital 5.1. What it does is sort out the extra EX information and distribute/mix it within a 5.1 channel sound field.
Usually, this means that the 6th (center back) channel is placed into both the left and right surround channels as a mono signal, which in turn creates a 'phantom' rear center back channel without having to have a physical rear center speaker.
This is not as accurate as a setup that includes a dedicated rear center channel speaker as the output level can't be adjusted independently of the left and right surround channels, but you are still able to hear the sound that was originally encoded for the center back channel.
Dolby Digital Plus
Dolby Digital Plus is a high definition digital-based surround sound format that supports up to 8-channels (7.1) of surround decoding. The channel distribution is as follows: front left, front center, front right, left surround, right surround, left surround back, right surround back, and subwoofer.
In addition, Dolby Digital Plus contains a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 bitstream that is compatible with standard Dolby Digital-equipped receivers. This means on a 5.1 channel receiver you will hear a 5.1 channel mix of the soundtrack, rather than a 7.1 channel mix. The surround back left and right channels are folded into the left and right surround channels.
Dolby Digital Plus is one of the several audio formats employed by Blu-ray Disc format. Dolby Digital Plus is compatible with the audio portion of the HDMI interface, as well as being applied in streaming and mobile audio applications. Dolby Digital Plus is also built into the Dolby Audio platform for Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser.
Although Dolby Digital Plus has its own specific label designation, in many applications, Dolby Digital 5.1 and 6.1 (EX) are often referred to as just Dolby Digital.
No matter which format in the Dolby Digital family discussed above you have access to, the goal is to provide a room-filling surround sound listening experience that enhances the home theater viewing experience or a fuller audio experience from a compatible home theater receiver, PC, or portable device.
However, depending on your content and components, there are additional Dolby home theater audio formats to be aware of including Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos.
-->The Dolby audio decoder is a Media Foundation transform (MFT) that encodes mono or stereo audio to Dolby Digital, also called Dolby AC-3. The encoder does not support multi-channel input, such as the 5.1 channel configuration.
Important
For versions of Windows prior to Windows 8, the Microsoft implementation of the Dolby Digital technology is restricted under terms of the Dolby Digital licensing program to use by Microsoft applications.
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For more information about Dolby Digital audio, refer to Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) document Digital Audio Compression Standard (AC-3, E-AC-3) Revision B.
Class Identifier
The class identifier (CLSID) of the Dolby audio decoder is CLSID_CMSDolbyDigitalEncMFT, defined in the header file wmcodecdsp.h.
Output Types
The output type must be set first, before the input type. The following table lists the required and optional attributes for the output media type.
Attribute | Description | Remarks |
---|---|---|
MF_MT_MAJOR_TYPE | Major type. | Required. Must be MFMediaType_Audio. |
MF_MT_SUBTYPE | Audio subtype. | Required. Must be MFAudioFormat_Dolby_AC3. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_SAMPLES_PER_SECOND | Samples per second. | Required. The following values are supported:
|
MF_MT_AUDIO_NUM_CHANNELS | Number of channels. | Required. Must be either 1 (mono) or 2 (stereo). |
MF_MT_AUDIO_CHANNEL_MASK | Specifies the assignment of audio channels to speaker positions. | Optional. If set, the value must be 0x3 for stereo (front left and right channels) or 0x4 for mono (front center channel). |
MF_MT_AUDIO_AVG_BYTES_PER_SECOND | Bit rate of the encoded AC-3 stream, in bytes per second. | Optional. See Remarks for valid values. If this attribute is not set, the encoder uses a default bit rate, as described in Remarks. |
If the optional attributes are not set, the encoder adds them to the media type after the type is set.
Input Types
The following table lists the required and optional attributes for the input media type.
Dolby Digital Youtube
Attribute | Description | Remarks |
---|---|---|
MF_MT_MAJOR_TYPE | Major type. | Required. Must be MFMediaType_Audio. |
MF_MT_SUBTYPE | Audio subtype. | Required. Must be MFAudioFormat_PCM or MFAudioFormat_Float. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_BITS_PER_SAMPLE | Number of bits per audio sample. | Required. The value must be 16 if the subtype is MFAudioFormat_PCM, or 32 if the subtype is MFAudioFormat_Float. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_SAMPLES_PER_SECOND | Samples per second. | Required. Must match the output type. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_NUM_CHANNELS | Number of channels. | Required. Must match the output type. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_BLOCK_ALIGNMENT | Block alignment, in bytes. | Required. Calculate the value as follows:
|
MF_MT_AUDIO_AVG_BYTES_PER_SECOND | Bit rate of the encoded AC3 stream, in bytes per second. | Required. Must equal block alignment × samples per second. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_CHANNEL_MASK | Specifies the assignment of audio channels to speaker positions. | Optional. If set, the value must match the output type. |
MF_MT_AUDIO_VALID_BITS_PER_SAMPLE | Number of valid bits of audio data in each audio sample. | Optional. If set, the value must be identical to MF_MT_AUDIO_BITS_PER_SAMPLE. |
The encoder does not support sample-rate conversion or stereo/mono conversion.
Remarks
Each Dolby AC-3 audio frame contains 1536 audio samples per channel. However, each input buffer to the encoder may contain any number of PCM samples. The size of each input buffer must be a multiple of the block alignment. The encoder caches input samples until it has enough for 1536 audio samples per channel; at which point the encoder outputs one AC-3 frame.
Each output buffer contains one raw AC-3 frame. The duration is equivalent to the duration of 1536 PCM samples at the current sampling rate (32 msec) at 48 kHz sample rate, 34.83 msec at 44.1 kHz, and 48 msec at 32 kHz). The size of each output buffer depends on the bit rate and the sample rate.
Dolby Digital Plus
To specify the encoding bit rate, set the MF_MT_AUDIO_AVG_BYTES_PER_SECOND attribute in the output type. The following table shows the relation between encoding bit rate and MF_MT_AUDIO_AVG_BYTES_PER_SECOND.
Bit rate (kbps) | MF_MT_AUDIO_AVG_BYTES_PER_SECOND | Remarks |
---|---|---|
64 | 8000 | Mono only. |
80 | 10000 | Mono only. |
96 | 12000 | Mono only. |
112 | 14000 | Mono only. |
128 | 16000 | Mono or stereo. |
160 | 20000 | Mono or stereo. |
192 | 24000 | Mono or stereo. This is the default setting for mono. |
224 | 28000 | Mono or stereo. |
256 | 32000 | Mono or stereo. This is the default setting for stereo. |
320 | 40000 | Stereo only. |
384 | 48000 | Stereo only. |
448 | 56000 | Stereo only. |
The default encoding bit rate is set at 256 kbps for stereo and 192 kbps for mono. The default settings are reflected in the media types returned by the encoder's IMFTransform::GetOutputAvailableType method.
Example Media Types
Here is an example of the media types that are needed to encode 16-bit integer PCM, 48-kHz stereo audio at the default bit rate of 256 kbps.
Output media type:
Attribute | Value |
---|---|
MF_MT_MAJOR_TYPE | MFMediaType_Audio |
MF_MT_SUBTYPE | MFAudioFormat_Dolby_AC3 |
MF_MT_AUDIO_SAMPLES_PER_SECOND | 48000 |
MF_MT_AUDIO_NUM_CHANNELS | 2 |
Input media type:
Attribute | Value |
---|---|
MF_MT_MAJOR_TYPE | MFMediaType_Audio |
MF_MT_SUBTYPE | MFAudioFormat_PCM |
MF_MT_AUDIO_BITS_PER_SAMPLE | 16 |
MF_MT_AUDIO_SAMPLES_PER_SECOND | 48000 |
MF_MT_AUDIO_NUM_CHANNELS | 2 |
MF_MT_AUDIO_BLOCK_ALIGNMENT | 4 |
MF_MT_AUDIO_AVG_BYTES_PER_SECOND | 192000 |
Requirements
Minimum supported client | Windows 8 [desktop apps UWP apps] |
Minimum supported server | None supported |
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