LeeBorkman Wrote: 
> I was inspired by your article to try converting my own copy of the same
> music from multi-channel ac3 into something that my SB3 could deal with.
> Unfortunately, I could not get an uncorrupted copy of spdifconvert.zip
> from the forum, so I decided to try another (hopefully simpler) route. 
> It didn't work, however, so possibly you can point me in some other
> direction...
Hi Lee!

I don't know why, but there have been problems with the zip file; it
was re-posted later in the guide by chrisal, who constructed the zip
file differently, and it seems to be more accessible to some people:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showpost.php?p=74188&postcount=17

If that doesn't work for you, I'd be happy to send it to you; email me
if you'd like that.
> All I did was load my 6-channel AC3 file into foobar2000, and convert
> directly to 6-channel FLAC.  Easy enough, and fast as fast.  I checked
> the resulting FLACs, and they are great, play back beautifully through
> Foobar2000, though rather large, as you would expect.  Fight Test, for
> example, is a 76Meg FLAC from a 14Meg AC3.
> 
> So now I scan the FLACs into my slimserver library, no problems.  The
> trouble comes when I try to *play* them.  I get "Ran out of decoder
> data memory" on my SB3 screen, then the screen craps out with garbage,
> and I have to give it a hard reboot to recover.  No problem with
> 2-channel FLAC files at all.
> 
> Do you think that my conversion process is flawed, or is the problem
> somewhere else?I suspect (without knowing the details of the SB firmware) 
> that decoding
a FLAC of that size is just too difficult for the client hardware. 
There's three times as much data to decode per second than with a
standard stereo WAV, so it's certainly a harder job -- in terms of CPU
and memory requirements, I mean.

I was going to suggest trying with the 6-channel WAV pre-decoded from
FLAC, but I'm not sure if it will work -- I know that the SB2/SB3
currently sees 48kHz WAVs as being 44.1kHz, and I think it assumes
stereo data also.  So in fact a variant of bug#128 may prevent this
from working.

I'm curious: the success you had playing back through fb2k, was that
over a digital connection to your receiver, or does your soundcard have
the 6 analogue outputs?  I ask because I don't know if receivers can
generally understand 6-channel PCM audio data, which itself would be a
barrier to your solution working.  (Sorry to be such a downer!)  I'd be
happy to be corrected however.

So I think that there are a few barriers to getting this method
working.  I really don't know the situation with receivers, but if they
can deal with 6-channel PCM then the only real problem is getting the
data through the SB2 -- and as with full-bitrate DTS, it's going to
require either a change to the onboard FLAC decoder or the way in which
WAVs are streamed.  If this can all be overcome, it would provide an
alternative for those who have multi-channel files from another source
but no AC3 encoder (such a thing not being free, I think).
> Thanks heaps for your good work,
> LeeBB
You're welcome!

BTW Lee, since you mentioned Fight Test: did you know that The Soft
Bulletin has just been re-released as a 5.1 mix also?


-- 
smst
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