[Mehedict]

Hey everyone,

I just noticed the DRC feature on my Sony AV receiver doesn't work when watching movies from XBMC.
When turned on, it's supposed to decrease the dynamics range (quiet and loud scenes difference).
But all it does is just decrease the volume globally, with no effect on the dynamic range.


This makes me curious.. does the Blu-Ray/DVDs have any DRC metadata in the audio track which is absent in my .mkv movies?
It's only intended to work with Dolby Digital, not with DTS, so that's why I first thought of the metadata thing.

Or is it a matter of configuration? I use an optical SPDIF with everything hooked up as it should be.

Anyway, if I don't get it working, is there any software-based alternative to this? I'm in an apartment block with lot of noise-sensitive neighbors, i need this feature.

Thank you all...

[Jogee]

It might be because XBMC has some measure of DRC built in and the amp doesn't get a chance to do anything. But I'm not sure that it applies with bitstreaming, however. Assuming you are not bitstreaming here.

Check out the applydrc tag in advancedsettings.xml. I turned it off in my setup since I want the AVR to do all this kind of work.

Ciao.

[DDDamian]

Just FYI - the <applydrc> tag is no longer valid. The limiter settings are valid (a bit below <applydrc> in the Wiki page linked above) but apply only if you force XBMC to decode the audio to pcm, and only really kick in if you use the Volume Amplification feature.

[Jogee]

Thanks, DDDamian. Good to know.