[Android] Plea for a custom channel downmixing filter

[herbert-thomson at tutanota.com]

Dear VLC Developers for Android,


I'm writing to you because I think there is a critical feature missing in almost all video players you can use on an Android TV.

The problem is the following: When watching movies one constantly has to do volume up and down because the dialogue is too quiet and the background music is too loud.

A lot of people have this problem:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/g0d2vv/is_anyone_else_having_problems_with_watching/

This is a really widespread problem. Maybe not for enthusiasts with a proper 5.1 system, but for all ordinary people it is a problem.

It was discussed that the issue is the channel mixing strategy from 5.1 to stereo. People have suggested better channel mixing coefficient that solve the problem: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=168267

However, you always have to reencode the movie with ffmpeg for this custom channel mixing. You cannot do this is the movie is on a BluRay or whatever. 

But the solution would be so easy: The video player on my TV should do this channel mixing. In real time! That's totally possible. Just make an option to set custom channel coefficients for each channel. This would be a very useful feature! We need a way to input a formula like "FL=FC+0.30*FL+0.30*BL" (or with different values) into VLC channel down mixing algorithm. There should be an option in the UI to realize this. A text box where you can write a custom formula, or something like this. Or a table where you can specify coefficients for each channel. Shouldn't be too much effort.

Please consider implementing something like this. I can ensure you, VLC for Android TV would skyrocket if this was available. For a lot of people this would be such an important feature. 

Best,
Herbert

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