2013-09-03, 14:00
Thanks for the explanation popcornmix.
I'm currently using <ac3downmixgain>18.0</ac3downmixgain> to try and get the Movies/TV volume closer to my other equipment (PC and Xbox360), so that I don't have to adjust the TV volume drastically when switching between sources.
Movies generally sound OK although could probably do with a boost of the centre/dialogue channel on the downmix, even if the other channels have to be reduced to compensate. Maybe the DRC will help with this though, by allowing me to increase the gain without loud sections being too loud. Some movies are louder than others (generally stereo and probably badly encoded with too much gain) but most of them, particularly the quality multi-channel encodes are around the same level, so I don't think they've been encoded particuarly quietly.
I'm not sure that I do want a normalisation scheme, as I think that would ruin the dynamics in the music. What I think I need is just a user adjustable (i.e. in advancedsettings.xml) reduction (e.g. 30db) that applies to the music playback, to reduce it to around the same level as Movies/TV. I guess in theory ac3downmixgain could be used to instead boost movies to the same level as music but I guess it doesn't apply to stereo movies or TV, so that's not really going to work.
iPlayer has the same problem and is much louder than Movies/TV, so that needs a similar reduction amount, although I don't know if there's a mechanism to do this on a plugin level.
I'm currently using <ac3downmixgain>18.0</ac3downmixgain> to try and get the Movies/TV volume closer to my other equipment (PC and Xbox360), so that I don't have to adjust the TV volume drastically when switching between sources.
Movies generally sound OK although could probably do with a boost of the centre/dialogue channel on the downmix, even if the other channels have to be reduced to compensate. Maybe the DRC will help with this though, by allowing me to increase the gain without loud sections being too loud. Some movies are louder than others (generally stereo and probably badly encoded with too much gain) but most of them, particularly the quality multi-channel encodes are around the same level, so I don't think they've been encoded particuarly quietly.
I'm not sure that I do want a normalisation scheme, as I think that would ruin the dynamics in the music. What I think I need is just a user adjustable (i.e. in advancedsettings.xml) reduction (e.g. 30db) that applies to the music playback, to reduce it to around the same level as Movies/TV. I guess in theory ac3downmixgain could be used to instead boost movies to the same level as music but I guess it doesn't apply to stereo movies or TV, so that's not really going to work.
iPlayer has the same problem and is much louder than Movies/TV, so that needs a similar reduction amount, although I don't know if there's a mechanism to do this on a plugin level.
