[linux-audio-announce] ac3jack - realtime AC3 stream encoder for JACK

Introducing the initial release of ac3jack, bringing you realtime AC3 stream encoding of any JACK audio. http://essej.net/ac3jack/ ac3jack is a tool for creating an AC3 (Dolby Digital) multichannel stream from its JACK input ports. Using this tool, an AC3 stream (up to 5.1 channels) is encoded in realtime and either written to a file or streamed to standard output. When streamed to stdout and piped through the ALSA tool 'ac3dec -C', the AC3 stream can be passed out the SPDIF port on your audio interface for connection to a multichannel surround receiver. In this way, you can achieve full 5.1 surround mixing and monitoring of your JACK applications with a single digital cable, and no need for hardware supporting discrete inputs and outputs. AC3 is a compressed audio stream, so quality is somewhat compromised. It is the price you pay for easy surround sound. After all, if it is good enough for DVD and film soundtracks, it must be OK. Please try it out, read the usage notes, and let me know of any build or runtime problems you find..... jlc