Kodi Community Forum

I just got myself a late 2011 Mini for my XBMC.

I noticed straight away that the music playback was not optimal, especially with music having lots of dynamic- and/or "complicated" sound were played. I had enabled Replay gain and Crossfade, and it took awhile to figure out why the sound was getting distorted, even missed some frequencies, and especially the highest- and lowest tones were humming and hissing. Those settings were killing the music in my setup, making the sound stage narrow and felt overly compressed.

Edit: All my files are Apple Lossless, but do I suspect the flac source of some of them are not of highest quality. And some of the newer albums have no dynamic range at all, just to make the music sound loud on cheap portable players.

I am using a USB DAC with Bel Canto and System Audio speakers. Is this something that just I am experiencing?

I have no idea what you posted but it's not xbmc.log

davilla Wrote:I have no idea what you posted but it's not xbmc.log

Looks like an unrelated image. It's about loudness wars.

It is "loudness war", and what it does to the music when enabling replay gain or other "enhancements" is to make every sound louder by increasing the output by over peaking and therefor distortion- and destroying the soundstage with flat, and lifeless music as a result. Especially as mentioned, with newer recordings.