Does this software not support eac3 file input?

[bluewidy]

Hello. I'm a Spatial Audio Lover. Spatial Audio is always present in my life. In my spare time, I listen to Dolby Atmos or Sony 360 Reality Audio music and watch Dolby Atmos movies on my Oculus Quest 2.

I use Dolby Access to loopback recording the binaural rendering output of an EAC3 JOC track, then merge it with the content using mkvtoolnix and watch it as Spatial Audio on Oculus Quest 2.

Actually... this is very inefficient. Because I have to spend 2 hours on loopback recording to watch a 2 hour movie on Spatial Audio.

So I've been looking for software that downmixes Dolby Atmos audio to binaural audio for thousands of years. And I finally found your interesting software.

But there is a problem. I put the EAC3 JOC file with the extension .EAC3 in the batch file, but the result does not exist.

And I have one more question. Does this software perform a binaural rendering process for Atmos objects? To my eyes it just looks like a 7.1 virtual surround converter, not a 3D binaural mapping like Dolby Access.

[ThreeDeeJay]

Hi there.
This tool relies on HeSuVi, which is limited to 7.1 (virtual) surround sound.
It may be able to virtualize the Atmos 7.1 downmix if ffmpeg supports it (I'd recommend updating the .exe), but for true spatial 3D audio, it would require a completely different tool, probably something that supports batch conversion so you don't have to record the loopback and remux/merge with the video file.

On the bright side, there is really promising tool that supports EAC3 JOC and Dolby Atmos rendering which you should definitely check out:
https://github.com/VoidXH/Cavern
http://cavern.sbence.hu/cavern/
It's still in development and I'm not sure if it supports command line scripting, but it's open source so you could request a feature or even modify the code to your needs if you're feeling adventurous.

The other potential alternatives are probably Dolby reference software, but it can easily dip into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
https://customer.dolby.com/content-creation-and-delivery/dolby-media-encoder-with-dolby-ac-4-v330
https://professional.dolby.com/product/media-processing-and-delivery/drp---dolby-reference-player/

[bluewidy]

Thank you very much for your detailed and kind reply! The Dolby tool you introduced has already been tried by me in the past.

https://customer.dolby.com/content-creation-and-delivery/dolby-media-encoder-with-dolby-ac-4-v330 : It's paid, but you can try it for free for a certain period of time.

https://professional.dolby.com/product/media-processing-and-delivery/drp---dolby-reference-player/ : And it's free.

Anyway, in conclusion, they don't support binaural downmix. So I contacted Dolby Support directly, and they said what I was looking for didn't exist : https://professionalsupport.dolby.com/s/question/0D54u00008kBU5MCAW/is-there-a-mixing-software-that-can-downmix-and-export-dd-joc-truehd-format-to-binaural?language=en_US

In the end, this is my last hope : https://github.com/VoidXH/Cavern

Of course, this also doesn't support what I want : VoidXH/Cavern#26 (comment)

However, they are working on implementing the ability to generate an atmos master file from an EAC3-JOC bitstream! : VoidXH/Cavern#28 (comment)

And DaVinci Resolve Studio is equipped with Dolby Atmos Binaural Renderer. They support the ability to take a Dolby Atmos master file and output it as 3-dimensional binaural audio! So this allows me to achieve what I want.

[ThreeDeeJay]

Interesting. I guess I might as well try the Dolby apps.
By the way, in case you missed it, Cavern got an update for DD+ JOC and just noticed the option for batch/command line scripts

Which copied this to my clipboard to construct a batch file, tho I'm not sure it would do what you're looking for. Might be worth a shot, especially as the app gets progressively updated
-count 16 -override 0 0 0 false -override 1 -45 0 false -override 2 0 -45 false -override 3 0 45 false -override 4 -45 -45 false -override 5 -45 45 false -override 6 0 -90 false -override 7 0 90 false -override 8 -45 -90 false -override 9 -45 90 false -override 10 0 -135 false -override 11 0 135 false -override 12 -45 -135 false -override 13 -45 135 false -override 14 0 180 false -override 15 -45 180 false

[bluewidy]

Thank you. I think... this seems to refer to the headphone virtualization process developed by VoidXH. But the sound of what he developed is terrifying. So I've reported this in the past, and he told me to use Dolby Access instead : VoidXH/Cavern#26 (comment)

[ThreeDeeJay]

Ahh, then I guess I'm not the only one who hears audio crackling 😅
That'll probably be fixed soon enough since the dev has been actively developing updates

[bluewidy]

Yes, that's right. Crackling sound is the problem. However, he has no intention of fixing this. Because for my issue he assigned the label "wontfix".

[bluewidy]

Btw, I appreciate your continued interest in what I am trying to achieve. and I'm glad I met someone who likes spatial audio.

[ThreeDeeJay]

Ahh, I see. That's unfortunate, I was looking forward to a good built-in spatializer.
and no problem, you're definitely not alone. We have a small community who share the same interest here if you wanna join: https://kutt.it/BinauralCommunity | https://discord.gg/invite/RhRMbmQ

[bluewidy]

I would like to talk more with you on a topic related to spatial audio. May I PM you through Discord?

[ThreeDeeJay]

Sure, why not?
tho if it's an open question, feel free to use any of the relevant public channels in case someone else can pitch in, since we have plenty of members (some a lot more knowledgeable than I am)