sound in vlc

[Michael Flohr]

Hi,

> 1. sound volume low
> sound volume is extremely low, much lower than other programs (e.g.
> quake3). and I already *have* everything at max in aumix. how about an
> option to boost the audio? this seems to be a general DVD problem as
> I'm fairly sure that my windos players show the same behaviour. this is
> especially true for the speech. soundtrack (musical score) is almost
> ok, but speech volume is *very* low.

As far as I know this has to do with the way sound is
recorded. In order to get a cinema like noise for special
effects (explosions and the like, but also music), everything
is gauged with respect to these loudest sound pieces. I have
the feeling that they even expand the difference between
soft sound (e.g. speech) and loud sound (e.g. shooting)
artificially to "highten the experience".
However, I noticed that some DVDs offer the same
sound track (i.e. the same language) in two different
encodings, Dolby 5.1 and Dolby Surround. The
actual output, in particular of speech, is quite different,
the former being much better balanced than the latter as
far as small PC speakers are concernded.

> 2. sound turning off
> when changing audio tracks during playback, it sometimes loses the
> audio altogether, i.e. silence.

I noticed the same for some DVDs, e.g. "Contact".
However, one of my Windows DVD players (Mediamatics)
has the same problem. Conjecture: All the DVD I own
where this happens also offer a soudtrack where some
of the movie makers comment the movie while you watch it.
Once selected, you can't switch back to a normal soundtrack.
Could this have something to do with it?

Michael

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