Freeware Media players and AC3Filter

[corsair91]

Freeware Media players and AC3Filter


I personally prefer VLC Media player Freeware

https://www.videolan.org/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player

VLC uses its own Codecs and is completely separate from other Media players such as Windows Media player, so can happily co-exist with other players. You do have to decide what file default applications you wish to set.


http://archive.flossmanuals.net/vlc/
http://archive.flossmanuals.net/_booki/vlc/vlc.pdf
http://archive.flossmanuals.net/_booki/vlc/vlc.epub


VLC Tweak Guide (2019)
https://tweakguides.pcgamingwiki.com/VLC_1.html



I am very wary of any codec packs as very easy to completely mess
up media players using Standard Windows codecs such as
Windows Media Player.


Another Freeware alternative is

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema
https://mpc-hc.org/

an extremely light-weight media player for Windows.

As far as I can recall it uses Standard Windows Codecs.


One of the features Windows Media player probably lacks is AC3Filter
functionality (not required for VLC media player as already included).

Retail Media Players such as PowerDVD or WinDVD sometimes bundled with DVD Burners should have AC3Filter functionality already included.


AC3Filter

http://www.ac3filter.net/wiki/AC3Filter

http://www.ac3filter.net/wiki/AC3Filter_Help

http://www.ac3filter.net/wiki/Download_AC3Filter


AC3Filter is a high quality free audio decoder and processor filter. It allows media players to playback movies with AC3 and DTS audio tracks. Also it can process any audio track, much of processing options allows to adjust the sound in almost any way. It is possible to upmix any audio source to 6 channels. Filter can do multi-channel and digital (SPDIF) output. It can encode any audio source to AC3 on-the-fly and send it over SPDIF to the receiver.


Features

Playback

Watch movies with AC3 and DTS audio tracks
Listen multi-channel (AC3/DTS) AudioCD
Playback WAV files with AC3/DTS content, ripped from multi-channel AudioCD without any conversion of these files.
Playback raw .AC3 and DTS files (with help of AC3File filter)

Process

Up-mix any audio track (even plain stereo) up to 6 channels
Down-mix any audio track to any number of channels (to match your speaker configuration)
If you have an external Dolby ProLogic decoder, you may use ProLogic down-mix to help DPL decoder to extract surround information
Watch movies under poor hearing conditions (noisy environment, weak speakers, ...)
Decrease dynamic range to watch movies at night
Apply time shift to the audio track to synchronize audio with video.
Adjust gain of every input/output channel independently to compensate loudness differences
Adjust time delays for every channel to compensate different distances to loudspeakers.

SPDIF

Passthrough AC3 and DTS over SPDIF without any change to external decoder
Encode any audio to AC3 and transmit it over SPDIF
USB sound cards supported

[fleetp]

I use VLC media player almost exclusively.