On 2011-11-27, Richard G Elen wrote:
If you are wanting to distribute a "quad" G-Format (ie decoded from B Format to speaker feeds) recording, I'd recommend DTS-CD format.
What's the licencing policy of DTS, by the way? I seem to remember all of the codecs can be a tricky in that regard if you go commercial or wide enough in scale. If I'm not entirely mistaken, then I'd say one of the AAC profiles would still be preferrable, because it's eminently better as a codec, at least as well-supported by now especially in the online world, and probably more future-proof, having been adopted by big players like Apple.
The encode software is inexpensive; it appears to have some advantages over AC-3 for Ambisonic-derived work; you can distribute files or CDs; the free player would be VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) - and of course virtually any modern home theatre system will also work; and here's a paper on how to do it (and the pros and cons): http://ambisonic.net/pdf/ambisonics_around.pdf
Ambisonic compatibility, that's a big question mark in my mind. True, even the consumer version of DTS minds precise phase better than AC-3. But then on the other hand when each of DTS, AC-3 and AAC switch into coupled stereo, that's not per se too bad because essentially that makes ambisonic degrade into an infinite decoding radius. In theory the problems should only come in near-field conditions where pure amplitude panning doesn't cut the mustard. Perhaps with reverb as well, as something of an anti-DirAC kind of effect because of lost independence between channels.
Channel coupling, though, was designed primarily for independent speaker feeds with pairwise panning. If the source if quadraphonic, as I suspect it here is, then none of this should be too relevant, should it?
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