Dolby Digital Plus

Dolby Digital Plus
MIME / IANAaudio/eac3
Created byDolby Laboratories
Encoding formatsE-AC3

Dolby Digital Plus, also known as Enhanced AC-3 (and commonly abbreviated as DDP, DD+, E-AC-3 or EC-3), is a digital audio compression scheme developed by Dolby Labs for the transport and storage of multi-channel digital audio. It is a successor to Dolby Digital (AC-3), and has a number of improvements over that codec, including support for a wider range of data rates (32 kbit/s to 6144 kbit/s), an increased channel count, and multi-program support (via substreams), as well as additional tools (algorithms) for representing compressed data and counteracting artifacts. Whereas Dolby Digital (AC-3) supports up to five full-bandwidth audio channels at a maximum bitrate of 640 kbit/s, E-AC-3 supports up to 15 full-bandwidth audio channels at a maximum bitrate of 6.144 Mbit/s.

The full set of technical specifications for E-AC-3 (and AC-3) are standardized and published in Annex E of ATSC A/52:2012,[1] as well as Annex E of ETSI TS 102 366.[2]

  1. ^ Advanced Television Systems Committee (17 December 2012), ATSC Standard: Digital Audio Compression (AC-3, E-AC-3) (PDF), Washington, DC: Author, ATSC A/52:2012
  2. ^ Digital Audio Compression (AC-3, Enhanced AC-3) Standard (PDF), European Telecommunications Standards Institute, 20 September 2017, ETSI TS 102 366 V1.4.1 (2017-09, retrieved 21 September 2023