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Old 15th December 2019, 09:41   #1  |  Link
hammer
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best film audio for 3.1 q80 samsung soundbar

Hi I have tried researching and all I get is music and 10 best soundbars.

I would like to get the best out of my Samsung q80 3.1 soundbar.
it has atmos and dts . its connected by hdmi to use arc

with movies what is the best suitable sound quality.
aac ac3 mp4 I am not sure which to look out for

Hoping for advice and some sort of best few audio choices

thanks in advance for help
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Old 15th December 2019, 10:53   #2  |  Link
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mp4 is just a container, it's not a codec. Look at it as a "box" in which you put things. For instance, you can have an H.264 video which is a .h264 elementary stream and an AAC audio which is a .aac. Once you mux them with, let's say MP4Box, you get a .mp4 which is a container that "contains" your AAC audio and your mp4 video. Of course containers are not blind boxes, in the sense that you cannot mux anything into anything as some codecs only accept some containers and so on. (For instance I hate when at work journalists come to me with a microSD saying that they just shot a reportage for our news channel and when I ask them how was it shot they say "It's an mxf" which is literally just a container that can contain almost anything from MPEG-2 to H.264 to DNX etc.).


Anyway, back to your question, both the codecs you suggested (AAC and AC3) are lossy codecs which means that if you have a lossless audio stream like a PCM or FLAC and you re-encode it to AAC or AC3, you're gonna lose quality. I gotta say though that PCM files (.wav) although they are lossless, they are very big because of the very high constant bitrate, so lossy codecs will definitely help you save space. AC3 arrived slightly earlier than AAC and it's a broadcast codec. What I mean by that is that it was meant to replace .mp2 and include 5.1 support. It's still used nowadays to air channels all over the globe. Satellite channels like ours generally have a bitrate of 384 kbit/s at which AC3 is fairly good and will be fine to listen to movies and music through your sound bar while you're watching TV. The problem with AC3 is that since it's a broadcast codec, it won't be supported by pretty much anything other than TV decoders and computers. This is because it was not meant to be used by users to share files between their devices. mp2 was exactly the same, it was meant for broadcast and users at the time had .mp3 which was for users shared files. Unfortunately, since files at the time had to be carried by very "primitive" devices, they had to be tiny and developers decided to implement into mp3 a crappy polyphase filter bank which used a very bad psychoacoustic model. This allowed people to carry very compressed mp3 files, but they were inferior to mp2 files at high enough bitrate. For instance, in my bachelor thesis (2016 / it's not in English) I demonstrated how mp2 was better than mp3 with reasonably high bitrates by using difficult scenes to encode like clapping of several different people in the Royal Albert Hall. So, a few years later, AAC arrived to replace mp3 as mainstream audio codec for end users and to be the rival of AC3. I gotta say that the codecs achieve rather similar results and that AC3 is slightly inferior at bitrates like 192 kbit/s. As to high bitrates, they are pretty much the same and I consider an AAC at 320 kbit/s to be perfectly fine, at 384 kbit/s to be good and at 540 kbit/s to be crystal clear, like you're going to struggle to find differences with the master even if you use headsets. AAC also uses VBR (although it can also be used with CBR) to raise and lower down the bitrate as needed. AAC is compatible with pretty much anything that isn't from the stone age like your mobile phone will support it, your tablet will support it, the stereo in your car will probably support it and so on and of course your TV and sound bar support it (-> still assuming none of them is from the stone age).

So, to finally answer your question, I would go with AAC.
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Old 15th December 2019, 18:27   #3  |  Link
videoh
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hammer View Post
with movies what is the best suitable sound quality
Forum rule 12: Do not ask "what's best" because this question cannot be answered objectively. Each and everyone has their own view about what's best in a certain area. The best is what works best for you!

https://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm

I'm not a moderator but I did stay at a Holiday Inn.
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Old 15th December 2019, 20:30   #4  |  Link
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informative answer

thanks for that and sorry for asking best i will slap my own wrist
so i will be on look out for 264 or 265 with aac
thanks again just want the best sound to go with movies
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Old 15th December 2019, 23:43   #5  |  Link
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Yeah... don't ask what's best because it invariably results in someone sidetracking the thread by telling you not to ask what's best.
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Old 16th December 2019, 11:35   #6  |  Link
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Quote:
Originally Posted by videoh View Post
... I'm not a moderator but I did stay at a Holiday Inn.
I read the question, but after the FranceBB big answer I don't say nothing.

Of course the best audio can be one encoded loseless like TrueHD (Atmos), DTS-MA or FLAC. No one with lossy encoders: ac3, aac, ... can be the best.

BTW the question was "best out of my Samsung q80 3.1 soundbar", and for a limited audio equipment (soundbar) maybe is enough other options.
Of course a soundbar can't output 3D audio surround (Atmos), also the 2D audio surround (5.1) can't be played ok, only simulated.

Maybe the best option for a soundbar is enough a good stereo encode with aac (at 160 kb/s for instance).

This is an example how a "best" question may be answered with many opinions.
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