AC-3 — Dolby Digital
The clip as AC-3 (Dolby Digital) — the multichannel codec used in DVD/broadcast. Rendered here in stereo; for testing AC-3 decoding and conversion.
Rendered preview of the ac3 file (71 KB). Download above for the original.
Specifications
- Source
- 3 s A-major triad, 44.1 kHz stereo
- Codec
- AC-3 (Dolby Digital)
- Lossless
- false
What is a .ac3 file?
AC-3 (Dolby Digital) is a lossy multichannel audio codec designed for surround sound, supporting up to 5.1 channels. It is standard for DVDs, digital broadcast, and home-theater audio tracks. Raw AC-3 files carry the encoded surround bitstream directly.
How to use this file
Use an example AC-3 file to test surround-sound decoding, channel-layout handling, and media pipelines that demux or pass through Dolby Digital tracks.
How to use this file for testing
“AC-3 — Dolby Digital” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Conversion testing, Audio analysis. The same content exported across many formats and linked as a group, so you can convert one and diff against the expected twin.
Documented properties for this file: AC3 · 72,724 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Media fixtures are short and synthetic by design. Prefer waveform or transcript ground truth in the same group when measuring ASR, trim, upscale, or sync tools; do not assume broadcast-quality masters.
Code examples
<audio controls preload="none" src="triad.ac3"></audio>Related files
- wav1 kHz Tone @ 16000 Hz Sample Rate (WAV)A 1 kHz sine tone sampled at 16000 Hz — part of a sample-rate ladder (8/16/44.1/48/96 kHz) of the identical tone, for testing resampling, sample-rate detection, and aliasing.
- wav1 kHz Tone @ 44100 Hz Sample Rate (WAV)A 1 kHz sine tone sampled at 44100 Hz — part of a sample-rate ladder (8/16/44.1/48/96 kHz) of the identical tone, for testing resampling, sample-rate detection, and aliasing.
- wav1 kHz Tone @ 48000 Hz Sample Rate (WAV)A 1 kHz sine tone sampled at 48000 Hz — part of a sample-rate ladder (8/16/44.1/48/96 kHz) of the identical tone, for testing resampling, sample-rate detection, and aliasing.
- wav1 kHz Tone @ 8000 Hz Sample Rate (WAV)A 1 kHz sine tone sampled at 8000 Hz — part of a sample-rate ladder (8/16/44.1/48/96 kHz) of the identical tone, for testing resampling, sample-rate detection, and aliasing.
- wav1 kHz Tone @ 96000 Hz Sample Rate (WAV)A 1 kHz sine tone sampled at 96000 Hz — part of a sample-rate ladder (8/16/44.1/48/96 kHz) of the identical tone, for testing resampling, sample-rate detection, and aliasing.
- wav440 Hz Tone @ 16-bit (WAV)A 440 Hz sine tone stored as 16-bit PCM — part of a bit-depth ladder (8/16/24-bit) of the identical tone, for testing bit-depth conversion, dithering, and quantisation-noise handling.
Generated by generation/audio_codecs.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.