[Openal] Openal, S/PDIF and surround

[Alfredo Pironti]

> 
>> Where am I wrong? Is it possible to obtain what I'm looking for? In the
>> case openal is not able to generate AC3 directly, is it possible to let
>> openal generate the 6 channels audio, and then encode them in AC3 via 
>> software, and send them via S/PDIF?
> 
> The solution is to get a sound card that has hardware AC3 encoding
> support. There are only a few of them - nVidia's Soundstorm is one
> solution, and I belive there is another based on some C-media chipset.
> They should work with OpenAL using the "Generic Hardware" device,
> except on Vista which doesn't allow any sound acceleration at all.
> 
> Of course, if you're talking about Linux, forget it - unless someone
> does something with a software AC3 encoder for ALSA, it won't happen.
> 

Yes, I'm using Linux. Btw, softwares like mencoder should be able to 
encode ac3 streams. I don't know if this can somehow be used with alsa, 
but it in principle we seem to have the pieces of software, it's just a 
matter of bringing them together. Moreover, as Chris Robinson suggests, 
the a52 alsa plugin plus the latest version of openal may do the work (I 
still have to try, and I will keep you updated).

Thank you for the support.
Cheers,
Alfredo