What is cheapest way to add AC3?

[phlatwound]

Photto, not sure how your setup is configured, but I had to use a stereo mini plug-to-Y RCA males coming out of the Sonic Voom, to go into my audio inputs.

Wal Mart has that adapter w/6' cord for about $4 w/tax.

 

[Phottoman]

Phottoman

Your A/V Receiver might have a digital coax audio IN instead of optical audio IN. Check all around it, including its Manual. It will work too, if you sat receiver has digital coax audio OUT.

I have looked, all over. I haven't seen the manual for quite some time and inbetween there was a major move. Most books are still in storage, but I took the Sony out of the cabinet and gave it a good look over, no optical or digital IN. The FTA receiver is the Conaxsat DUO and DOES have an optical OUT.

I'll be ordering the sonicvoom you all mentioned today.

Also, if I hadn't mentioned it, the setup of Slaving the second Duo to the First Duo was a sucess. I used a "newsat" setup, now I have to copy the channel list from the DUO, put it into Channelmaster and rename all those Newsats. A project for tomorrow, I'll be off tomorrow, plus the Motor and LNBs from Sadoun arrive tomorrow, so a full day is planned around my dishes.

(And there, I did it, 100 Posts.)

Photto

 

[Phottoman]

Photto, not sure how your setup is configured, but I had to use a stereo mini plug-to-Y RCA males coming out of the Sonic Voom, to go into my audio inputs.

Wal Mart has that adapter w/6' cord for about $4 w/tax.

Today is "Shopping day" after work, and Wal*Mart IS on our stopping off list, so I will check there. If not, possibly they have them on their online store.

Thank you Phlat.

 

[zamar23]

I bought an HD Ready TV many years ago, whole different story, but for buying it AT THAT TIME, I also was able to purchase my first (and only) 5.1 surround sound system. And it IS Dolby (has the logo on the front).

Ray Dolby and his Lab developed a number of sound processing techniques since 1965 advancing each other. Which of these Dolby Icons is depicted on your A/V Receiver?

Also, if someone owns Sonic Voom, what is the set's weight with packaging? What kind of batteries it works with, how many required, and for how long it runs on one charge at max output? Can it amplify audio signal, by which device - the Decoder or Headphones? Is there a power adapter for it, does it have a power port - what kind, and what are power specs required? Can it be powered any different way? Any weblink for its Manual? Here's a bit more descriptive post on this unit.

 

[Mr Tony]

Today is "Shopping day" after work, and Wal*Mart IS on our stopping off list, so I will check there. If not, possibly they have them on their online store.

Thank you Phlat.

otherwise Radio Shack has them. This is the item
3-Ft. 1/8" Stereo to Dual Phono (RCA) Plug Y-cable - RadioShack.com

and the 6 footer if you need that
6-Ft. 1/8" Stereo to Dual Phono (RCA) Plug Y-cable - RadioShack.com

 

[zamar23]

Can Sonic Voom work with 7.1 and regular PCM digital sound, and what audio channels & speakers one can hear out of headphones in this case? Here's an interesting comment about inner working of its Decoder module. It looks like the whole conversion thing is just about picking up Left and Right audio channels out of decoded AC3 signal mux, meaning one can't hear any sound, placed on Central or other channels of a 5.1 system. Does its Manual say, it can be used as an AC3-to-Stereo converter, or its just a little user "invention"? It might be that a regular Stereo jack (as opposed to Sonic Voom non-standard headphones jack) overlaps not only Left and Right, but also Central Speaker contact in the Decoder, adding Central Channel to one or both Stereo channels. Hence, the sound completeness will depend on what's left for Surround and Subwoofer channels (if the Sub channel is not blocked by Sonic Voom at all). Well, I guess using the Decoder unit for AC3-to-Stereo conversion is not "by design", and success depends mostly on how original AC3 mux is done. In other words, it decodes and de-muxes AC3, but doesn't re-mux it to Stereo by design for any possible AC3 mux, hence its just a matter of luck to hear a complete sat channel AC3 sound track via Stereo. Would be interesting to learn more about Cyberhome's technique of reproducing AC3 sound via a two 3-speaker headphones pair. Can someone post a close-up photo of the Sonic Voom Speaker Connector Jack?

 

[Anole]

right tool for the job:

I doubt many Standard Def broadcasts have real 5.1 sound.
Probably just left/right, encoded with Dolby 2.
So, the Voom decoder is likely fine.

Where you -would- find 5.1 sound for sure, is on HD broadcasts, but there you'd be using an HD FTA receiver anyway.
And you'd either be letting it decode to red/white (and with unknown results), or you'd take optical/coaxial sound out and feed to a proper decoder/amplifier.

 

[tvropro]

HA HA, TvPro, did you read the part where I am trying to do this "ON THE CHEAP."

Photto

Ya I read it I only payed a few hundred more

I'd like to build a SPDIF to analog converter but it seems kinda involved. If you can get the Sonic voom you can't beat that price with a stick.

 

[Tron]

Zamar23, the Sonic Voom unit will output PCM when it isn't decoding a Dolby Digital channel, so it works as a digital to analog converter on regular channels. While the unit does decode Dolby Digital 5.1, I'm not sure what it would do with a 7.1 stream. I don't think one would find such a stream in the FTA satellite world anyway, and I'm not even sure that a TOSLINK or SPDIF connection can handle 7.1 audio. Blu-Rays sometimes have 7.1 streams, but in such a case you would use the HDMI out and a "real" sound system.

There are two headphone connectors on the front of the unit, so it has two 5.1 channel analog outputs. The connectors themselves are strange; The front left and right channels come out of a standard 1/8" stereo phone jack. Right next to that jack is a sort of edge connector. On the actual 5.1 channel headphones that are designed for use with the unit, the 1/8" plug and the edge connector are molded together. Since most FTA audio seems to be 2.0 stereo only, as Anole mentioned, I just have the 1/8" stereo to RCA cable plugged into the jack. The other channels are not connected, since I am not using the headphones.

 

[zamar23]

Thanks, Tron! Still, it would be interesting to understand, how Cyberhome reproduces Dolby Surround effect with these headphones. Are you sure, each of its headphone jacks is a 5.1 connector? It looks like each headphone might have 3 speakers: Central with some lower freqs added to emulate a Subwoofer to some degree, Left (or Right) and Left Surround (or Right Surround). When used together, a pair of such headphones recreates Dolby Surround sound effect. But in such scenario, how its possible to get both Left and Right Stereo channels out of just one OUT connector instead of two? It might be that for unification purposes both OUT connectors are wired with all 5.1 signals out, but the Plug itself disconnects irrelevant signals, or each Headphone is wired to take only signals relevant to it.

Are you able to get exact same Stereo sound from any one of two Sonic Voom Decoder OUTs? Can you post a close-up picture of its Plug? Are both its Plugs exactly identical in proportions of contact surfaces and spacers? How long it can run on a single battery, and of what type - AAA regular / rechargeable, AA or rectangular? Any chance of getting its full Spec Sheet or Manual with power reqs?

 

[Phottoman]

Ray Dolby and his Lab developed a number of sound processing techniques since 1965 advancing each other. Which of these Dolby Icons is depicted on your A/V Receiver?

Coounting down from the top of the linked page, it was the sixteenth logo, the "Pro Logic II"

 

[B.J.]

In case anyone is interested, the headphones on one of my Sonic Vooms didn't work, so I took it apart to some extent just out of curiosity (I never use the headphones anyway).
I've uploaded 4 pictures below (sorry not very good focus, I didn't have proper lighting handy).
The first picture is of the plug. You can see the mini stereo plug, with L/R and ground, then along side of that is a flat edge connector with 4 contacts. So it seems like it feeds a total of 6 speakers, ie 6 wires plus ground.

A bit up the wire from the plug, was a moulded module on the wire. I cut open the black plastic cover, but that revealed a circuit board that was encased in what appears to be polyethylene plastic. The 2nd picture shows a side view, showing the black plastic cover, clear polyethylene and the circuit board.

The 3rd picture shows a partially out of focus view of the circuit board. A lot more complicated than I suspected. I'm not sure why all that wasn't put inside the decoder module. Perhaps the decoder module is matched to a high impedance and the module on the cord is to change this to a low impedance earphone or something like that... I don't have a clue.

The wire heading to one of the earphones had a slice in it, probably why it didn't work, so I opened it up to see how many wires were in it. There were 4 sets of wires, I presume to 3 speakers plus a common ground. However each of these "WIRES" is actually a half dozen or so of the thin-est guage of magnet wire I have ever seen twisted along with dozens of very fine threads of some polymer, like polyester of some kind. I guess the threads were just for support.
The 4 wire groups were not separated in any way, so I assume that they had a varnish coating like magnet wire does, which means that to solder them, you'd have to somehow strip the varnish from them first..... plust the polyester thread would melt, and gum up your soldering iron. So I gave up the idea of re-soldering the wires to my headphones. 4th picture shows the wires.

I didn't take a picture of the headphones themselves, but there ARE 3 speakers in each earphone. One big one, center-bottom, and two smaller ones to the top, one forward and one to the rear.

One additional comment. The way most of us use the sonic voom, ie just use a regular 1/8" mini plug from the module to the L/R RCA connectors on our TV or stereo..... this is NOT "adding AC3" capability, it IS extracting the L/R audio from the AC3 so that you can get audio from channels with AC3 audio only. I think this is obvious to most, but I keep seeing some posts worded in ways that it sounds like they are expecting this, or any other device to generate AC3 audio into a L/R RCA input of a stereo. It's no longer AC3, just L/R.

 

[zamar23]

Thanks B.J.

It looks like the company wanted to separate the digital-to-analog Decoder from Headphones, possibly to create a second market for the set as an unofficial low cost "AC3 conversion" module. I take it, a single plug is wired to 2 headsets, and the second jack is intended for a second headsets pair. Nor sure, why they didn't use a Dual 3-pin [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS_connector"]TRS connector - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Split-arrows.svg" class="image"><img alt="Split-arrows.svg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Split-arrows.svg/60px-Split-arrows.svg.png"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/a/a7/Split-arrows.svg/60px-Split-arrows.svg.png[/ame] instead. The board shown looks somewhat similar to Dolby Pro Logic analog sound matrix solution, a remuxer of sort. In some analog TV broadcasts Dolby Surround muxes analog surround sound into stereo, and on the receiving end Dolby Pro Logic demuxes it to analog surround. "Dolby Pro Logic II technology is also used by broadcasters to encode their stereo signals specifically for Pro Logic II playback. This makes it possible for them to deliver specific surround and localization effects over stereo services that are more like discrete 5.1 transmissions, without compromising regular stereo and mono playback." May be that's why it sounds like a genuine Stereo, when a regular Phono connector is used. Interesting stuff.

What kind of battery it uses, and for how long can run on it? Did you manage to find a power adapter for it?

 

[Anole]

I unwrapped mine today:

It comes with a little battery pack that looks like something from a cell phone.
Also comes with a charger/power supply.
Even comes with a coax cable (RCA plugs both ends) as well as a short optical cable.

What's possibly more interesting, is that there is a DIN-like connector, labeled: Dolby 5.1, with lots of pins.

You really should just get one and play with it.
That'll answer all the questions.
Most of us are happy to use it to give Dolby 2.0 through left/right, to get sound on encoded FTA channels.

 

[Mr Tony]

I ended up getting one to try

 

[zamar23]

I take it, analog Dolby 5.1 connector jack with pins is in the Decoder, intended possibly for output to an amplified surround speakers set, instead of remuxing signals sent to its headphone set. It looks like they have patented this wonder. Not sure why its discontinued: are there more compelling Surround Headphones on the market?

 

[mikelib]

Received my Cyberhome yesterday from Amazon, (I couldn't resist after reading all of the good things about it on satelliteguys). I had a chance to check it out tonight, the Telemundo station on AMC-5 79W went Dolby sometime this week. The music and sound was awesome, now if I only could understand what was said!

 

[Mr Tony]

Telemundo (KTEL) went dolby once before but I think language 3 was regular audio

I cant check right now as its POURING out so I have no signal across the board

 

[Mr Tony]

Well yesterday I got my Cyberhome AC-3 setup headphones

neat little unit...kinda bummed the headphones wont work on anything else due to the weird plug thingy

Havent hooked it up yet but just happy to get one so I can record PBS stuff now without having to change wires around on the Quali

 

[Tron]

Ice, the front left and right come from the 1/8" stereo jack, so for 2.0 encoded AC-3, any pair of computer speakers will plug into the unit and work. I use my Sonic Voom to listen to the front left and right on the PBS channels regularly, and it always works very well for monitoring purposes. You won't get the surround channels on a 5.1 stream without the edge connector, though...