Found this thread on the Digidesign User Conference recently. Laki asked…
Looking at getting one of these and offloading my hardware boxes. Anybody care to weigh in on which to buy? The Neyrinck or Minnetonka version.
Mike Aiton posted…
Just a thought, but if you have the Dolby Audio Tool blue box, dont’t let go yet. The problem that I see with the software encode/decode solutions is that you can’t listen to your downmix with the metadata that you are encoding with. In the Uk on the Sky plaform, most viewers hear the downmixed 5.1 to 2.0 (as they don’t have a 5.1 decoder) so it is vital to be able to hear this. The network doesn’t transmit the LtRt that you sweated cobs over and loving put in your second programe audio on ch 7&8.. That said, I have passed this observation to Paul Neyrinck and he is “smarter than the average bear”, so I am sure a solution will be forth comming.
quadraphonics added…
I have tried both the Minnetonka and the Neyrinck software Dolby-E solutions, after using the hardware for a while and ended up purchasing the Neyrinck software. It was exceptionally easy to work with and the plug in (both encoder and decoder) worked just like the hardware – just faster. We have done well over 100 shows since we got this software. If you have any questions about how it performed in our workflow, I would be more than happy to help.
laki replied…
Thanks Randall! Tried both demos and came to the same conclusion.