The EBU ADM Renderer (EAR) is a complete interpretation of the Audio Definition Model (ADM) format, specified in Recommendation ITU-R BS.2076-1. ADM is the recommended format for all stages and use cases within the scope of programme productions of Next Generation Audio (NGA). This repository contains a Python reference implementation of the EBU ADM Renderer.
This Renderer implementation is capable of rendering audio signals to all reproduction systems mentioned in "Advanced sound system for programme production (ITU-R BS.2051-1)".
Further descriptions of the EAR algorithms and functionalities can be found in EBU Tech 3388.
Note: Version 2.0 of the renderer represents also the reference implementation of ITU-R BS.2127 (ITU ADM Renderer)
A initial set of ADM files to test the EAR can be found under
To install the latest release from PyPi:
$ pip install ear
EAR supports Python 2.7 and Python >=3.6 and runs on all major platforms (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows).
If you want to run the unit tests you can install all extra requirements with pip:
$ pip install ear[test]
The EAR reference implementation comes with two command line tools:
ear-render
Is the main tool to render BW64/ADM audio filesear-utils
Collection of useful ADM utilities
usage: ear-render [-h] [-d] -s target_system [-l layout_file]
[--output-gain-db gain_db] [--fail-on-overload]
[--enable-block-duration-fix] [--programme id]
[--comp-object id]
[--apply-conversion {to_cartesian,to_polar}] [--strict]
input_file output_file
EBU ADM renderer
positional arguments:
input_file
output_file
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-d, --debug print debug information when an error occurs
-s target_system, --system target_system
Target output system, accoring to ITU-R BS.2051.
Available systems are: 0+2+0, 0+5+0, 2+5+0, 4+5+0,
4+5+1, 3+7+0, 4+9+0, 9+10+3, 0+7+0, 4+7+0
-l layout_file, --layout layout_file
Layout config file
--output-gain-db gain_db
output gain in dB (default: 0)
--fail-on-overload, -c
fail if an overload condition is detected in the
output
--enable-block-duration-fix
automatically try to fix faulty block format durations
--programme id select an audioProgramme to render by ID
--comp-object id select an audioObject by ID from a complementary group
--apply-conversion {to_cartesian,to_polar}
Apply conversion to Objects audioBlockFormats before
rendering
--strict treat unknown ADM attributes as errors
To render an ADM file, the following three parameters must be given:
-s
followed by the target output format to render to- the name of the input file
- the name of the output file
For example ear-render -s 0+5+0 input.wav output_surround.wav
will render the BW64/ADM file input.wav
to a 0+5+0
target speaker layout and store the result in output_surround.wav
.
The optional --layout
parameter allows to specify the real loudspeaker positions and screen dimensions of a reproduction setup.
Refer to the layout file documentation for more information about its format.
--fail-on-overload
makes the rendering process fail in case an overload in the output channels to ensure any signal clipping doesn't go unnoticed. Use --output-gain-db
to adjust the output gain.
--enable-block-duration-fix
automatically fixes durations of audioBlockFormats
in case they are not continuous.
Please note that the proper way to handle this situation is to fix the input file.
--strict
enables strict ADM parsing mode. Some of the currently available
ADM/BW64 files may not strictly adhere to the BS.2076 specification, for example by including xml attributes that are not part of the standard.
The default behaviour is to output a warning and continue processing.
When strict mode is enabled, warnings are turned into errors and processing is stopped.
Please note that, depending on the size of the file, it may take some time to render the file. At the time of writing, the parsing of the ADM XML data is relatively slow when the ADM is large (>= a few megabytes).
The ear-utils
command provides various subcommands which can be seen on the help message
when called with ear-utils --help
:
Each subcommand may have its own command line options, which can be
displayed using ear-utils SUBCOMMAND --help
, where SUBCOMMAND
is one of the supported subcommands.
usage: ear-utils [-h]
{make_test_bwf,replace_axml,dump_axml,dump_chna,ambix_to_bwf}
...
EBU ADM renderer utilities
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
available subcommands:
{make_test_bwf,replace_axml,dump_axml,dump_chna,ambix_to_bwf}
make_test_bwf make a bwf file from a wav file and some metadata
replace_axml replace the axml chunk in an existing ADM BWF file
dump_axml dump the axml chunk of an ADM BWF file to stdout
dump_chna dump the chna chunk of an ADM BWF file to stdout
ambix_to_bwf make a BWF file from an ambix format HOA file
usage: ear-utils ambix_to_bwf [-h] [--norm NORM] [--nfcDist NFCDIST]
[--screenRef] [--chna-only]
input output
positional arguments:
input input file
output output BWF file
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--norm NORM normalization mode
--nfcDist NFCDIST Near-Field Compensation Distance (float)
--screenRef Screen Reference
--chna-only use only CHNA with common definitions
To convert an ambiX file in an ADM one, the following two parameters must be given:
- the name of the input file
- the name of the output file
The optional parameters are :
- The normalization of the signals (N3D, FuMa or SN3D, which is the default value)
- The NFC Distance, i.e., the distance at which the HOA mix was created. A float value between 0 and 20 meters must be given. The default value 0 means no NFC processing.
- The screenRef flag, which tells if the audio content is screen related or not. The default value is False, which means no screen scaling.
For example, ear-utils ambix_to_bwf --nfcDist 2.53 input.wav output.wav
will create an ADM file called output.wav containing the audio samples of the input.wav file and the ADM metadata corresponding to an ambiX file with SN3D normalization, an 2.53 meters nfcDist, and no screen scaling.
Please note that the software implicitly assumes that all the HOA channels are in ACN ordering and that no channel is missing. For example, it will assumes the signal is a 4th order HOA signal if it finds 25 channels ((4+1)²=25).