Cavern VS dcaenc

Somewhat tangential, but here's a cool somewhat open-source project related to Dolby Atmos:

https://cavern.sbence.hu/cavern/

https://github.com/VoidXH/Cavern

The visualizer, which is what I was _most_ interested in (along with software decoding) is written in C# and the rendering is done in Unity -- both things I valued & thought were cool. In theory, you could build a DIY multi-channel "receiver" with this type of software if given enough audio outputs (and/or put something like Dante to use).

I explored it a bit further but it's relatively cost prohibitive, especially if you want to do something like accept HDMI input, it gets messy. AFAICT, at least when I went down this research path a few months back, even finding & getting dev kits/boards with HDMI input (of semi-recent generation) was non-trivial & pretty pricey.

Some TVs have a SPDIF output that you can connect to a D/A converter, but that's also an external box which you don't want. The thing here is that modern TVs typically have an integrated Class D amp for their speakers that has a direct I2S input for the DSP. The manufacturer doesn't bother adding in a seperate D/A chip on the board as it doesn't need it.

The good thing though is that those cheap $10 HDMI audio extractors do work if you have a playback device that outputs PCM over HDMI. As a side note those extractors are also a great way of getting 5.1 surround sound from a HTPC running Dcaenc [1] into an old pre-HDMI AVR.

1. https://gitlab.com/patrakov/dcaenc

This project seems to be an option: https://gitlab.com/patrakov/dcaenc, but i just wanted some reassurance to avoid hitting a bitter dead-end... (I single boot windows atm on the gaming PC)