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Topic: Free SBC encoder and decoder (Read 12338 times) previous topic - next topic
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Free SBC encoder and decoder

I'm looking for a free SBC encoder/decoder for my Windows box for evaulating the quality of SBC.

In some SoundExpert tests (look at the list on the right) i've seen there's an SBC Windows executable (sbc_encoder.exe) from Philips which can be run on Windows to encode SBC audio and it seems there's a companion decoder aswell. Does anybody knows if this is available anywhere online for downloading? I can't seem to find any info about it so it's either very rare or can be only accessed by partners of Philips.

I can't seem to find any other tool for this but maybe it's just hidden from me.

Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #1
The Multimedia.cx wiki references a Windows binary of reference [de|en]encoder as part of the A2DP test specification.  Might not be a freely available kit, though. A cursory search doesn't return anything like that, anyway.

 

Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #2
I thought about finding the reference implementation which is often available as a source code but i can't find that either. 
Also the Philips encoder would be more interesting than the reference encoder because later one is propably not fine tuned at all. But of course if we can find the reference code that would be more than nothing

I even thought about stripping out the SBC encoder/decoder lib from BlueZ because it's the closest to what i like to experiment with. I guess it can only handle raw bitstreams. I don't know how difficult it would be to write a CLI wrapper around that.

Re: Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #3
I know this is a very old thread, but I have not seen anything more recent here at HA to address this question.  Further, I spent a lot of time recently looking, and only recently found this source.

Github has both source and prebuilt executables :

https://github.com/icecoobe/sbc-windows

I am trying now to build from source.  If anyone has more experience than me (very likely), please help me with this project.

Re: Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #4
Not sure what you are looking for in a sbc encoder, but i found out that ffmpeg can also convert to sbc. The source also is available.

I tested it out with music and unfortunately the soundquality is horrible. The sound has a strange distortion most of the time.

I did not try any options, which might fix the distortion.

Re: Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #5
Not sure what you are looking for in a sbc encoder, but i found out that ffmpeg can also convert to sbc. The source also is available.

I tested it out with music and unfortunately the soundquality is horrible. The sound has a strange distortion most of the time.

I did not try any options, which might fix the distortion.

Yes, I know of ffmpeg's sbc abilities.  Unfortunately, access to many of SBC's configurable parameters are not available via command line switches.

Re: Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #6
Not sure what you are looking for in a sbc encoder, but i found out that ffmpeg can also convert to sbc. The source also is available.

I tested it out with music and unfortunately the soundquality is horrible. The sound has a strange distortion most of the time.

I did not try any options, which might fix the distortion.

Yes, I know of ffmpeg's sbc abilities.  Unfortunately, access to many of SBC's configurable parameters are not available via command line switches.

To clear up some confusing users here:
Note that there is no container that accepts sbc so you need to put same parameters when decoding and encoding.
Parameters like number of channels and sample rate.

Re: Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #7
Much easier solution:

https://btcodecs.valdikss.org.ru/sbc-encoder/

It's not double-blind, but it gives you an easy way to hear differences (or not) for various SBC parameters.

As for my earlier post about sbc-windows, there are some issues when you compile from source.  I am in contact with the developer.

Re: Free SBC encoder and decoder

Reply #8
As we found out in this other thread, there's a complete SBC encoder provided with the BlueZ Bluetooth stack, and it's the one used by Android.

It's the same what the tester web application is using linked one post above me, compiled with Emscripten.
For the bitpool options you might wish to read the other thread, however it's very unlikely that you encounter an Android phone with a bitpool setting lower than 53 nowadays, which basically eliminated any significant issues with SBC.

I would like to also recommend these two articles:
- Audio over Bluetooth: most detailed information about profiles, codecs, and devices (very good article)
- Bluetooth stack modifications to improve audio quality on headphones without AAC, aptX, or LDAC codecs (it's possible to bypass some of the limitations of the Bluetooth stack and to send an even higher bitrate SBC output from your Android phone; haven't tried, requires a custom Android build)