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I hope this is the right forum - I looked at all the Stack Exchange communities, and this seems the best fit...

As a musician, engineer, and home AV enthusiast, I encounter various digital audio bitstreams from stereo SPDIF to Dolby Digital 5.1, to DTS, Atmos, etc. These can be transported over various physical media - Coax, Optical, HDMI. When things don't work, I find I spend an excessive amount of time debugging.

I'm looking for a tool to help diagnose these bitstreams better than trial and error - answering the questions: is there a signal, and if so, what is the type?

Such a tool could be implemented as standalone hardware or software that runs on Linux or Windows. Even a Raspberry Pi should have sufficient capability to identify the bitstream. I've been searching and have found nothing like this.

If I have to roll my own, the best information I found (on DD only) is at Wikipedia which links to the ATSC AC-3 standard That also points to a decoder liba52 which was last updated in 2002. Can anyone offer better suggestions on a place to start?

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  • A nice AudioPrecision audio analyzer with the appropriate interfaces (ap.com/analyzers-accessories/interfaces-modules) will do the job. Not cheap, though.
    – audionuma
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 13:04
  • As @audionuma points out, there exists test equipment in the $$$$ price range. As far as I can determine there is nothing available in terms of DIY hardware or open source software. One option of last resort is to buy a cheap receiver with the appropriate inputs, and look at the front panel display. Not very compact or convenient, though.
    – tim11g
    Commented Dec 5, 2021 at 23:55
  • I ran across this post on a [DIY SPDIF transceiver](hackaday.com/2021/12/06/… ) for the Raspberry Pi. It is out of stock unfortunately. It tells me there may be some built-in SPDIF decoding capabilities already in the Pi. I'll study and report back.
    – tim11g
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 21:22

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