libdca a free DTS Coherent Acoustics decoder

libdca is a free library for decoding DTS Coherent Acoustics streams. The code is written by Gildas Bazin and was based on the a52dec project. It is released under the terms of the GPL license.

The DTS Coherent Acoustics standard (ETSI 102 114 v1.2.1), as published by the ETSI, is available here (look for DTS Coherent Acoustics).

Development status

BIG FAT WARNING: libdca is still in early development stage so don't expect too much of it.

Right now, I am concentrating on finishing the implementation of the core part of the specification. The library should however already be quite useable.

A few things are still lacking there but they should mainly affect low-bitrate DTS streams which don't seem that common anyway (some of the missing things are: Joint channels coding, Dynamic range, etc… - see the TODO file).

There might also be quality issues, but for some early code it does seem pretty decent to me.

None of the extensions (extra channels, 96/192kHz sample rates) have been implemented (and unfortunately the public standard provides only minimal information on them).

Getting libdca

Current release is libdca-0.0.6.tar.bz2

The latest libdca source code can always be found in the GIT repository:

$ git clone https://code.videolan.org/videolan/libdca

Provisional Warning: DTS Inc. claims that use of libdca software, to decode DTS compressed sound data on a DVD could violate DTS's patent rights. If you are unsure about the legality of using and distributing this code in your country, in particular in the USA, please consult your lawyer before downloading it.

Support

For support information, have a look here.

A libdca-devel mailing list is also available.

Projects using libdca

VLC media player: a cross-platform video player and streaming solution.
Media Player Classic: a win32 player just like WMP6.4 except that it has a lot more features.
Xine: a free multimedia player.
FFmpeg: a complete solution to record, convert and stream audio and video.
MPlayer: a free multimedia player.
ffdshow: a DirectShow filter for most A/V codecs.

If you use libdca in another project, let me know!

Where to find DTS Coherent Acoustics samples

Some very good samples are available on the swedish radio website.