libdca is a free library for decoding DTS Coherent Acoustics streams. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

 license, and is developed by Gildas Bazin of the VideoLAN

VideoLAN

VideoLAN is a project that develops software for playing video and other media formats across a local area network . It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client and VideoLAN Server , but most of the features of VLS have been incorporated into VLC, with the result...

 team. The library is based on the DTS Coherent Acoustics standard (ETSI

European Telecommunications Standards Institute

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute is an independent, non-profit, standardization organization in the telecommunications industry in Europe, with worldwide projection...

 102 114 v1.2.1).

The library is used in VLC media player

VLC media player

VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...

 and is able to decode DTS audio tracks from DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

s. It can also decode DTS files (.dts) directly, as well as DTS-WAV files (.wav). libdca is able to decode DTS-ES streams as well, however can only decode the standard 6 channels as the additional "Extended Surround" extensions (for Matrix and 6.1 Discrete) require ES Extensions to the codec

Codec

A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...

.

libdca comes packaged with a small proof of concept

Proof of concept

A proof of concept or a proof of principle is a realization of a certain method or idea to demonstrate its feasibility, or a demonstration in principle, whose purpose is to verify that some concept or theory that has the potential of being used...

 decoder dcadec (formerly dtsdec). This program is able to decode DTS audio streams into stereo

Stereophonic sound

The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...

 WAV

WAV

Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...

 or into a single multichannel

Surround sound

Surround sound encompasses a range of techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and...

 WAV, as well as being able to be played back through the sound card.

See also

• Digital Theater System
• VLC media player
  VLC media player
  VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
  
  

External links

• libdca Project Homepage
• ESTI Publications Download Area - Search for "DTS Coherent Acoustics" for the ETSI standard publication