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[apturbo]

Here's the situation....  I am playing 5.1 or higher surround movies but am only utilizing 2 speakers, front left and front right.  It is hard to watch movies due to the obvious reasons, i.e. extreme low and highs in volume making it difficult to hear low volume scenes when only dialogue is present.  What is the best approach, i.e. settings/options to choose in this situation?  Thanks.

[apturbo]

Although no one has responded yet, (not complaining), just wanted to say I have messed with many of the options, stoped play, and restarted and have not heard a difference.  Thanks again.

[Matt]

MC18 adds a configurable 'Adaptive volume' in Options > Video.  It's designed to help with exactly this problem.

[apturbo]

so none of the myriad of available options in v16 or v17 will help in this situation?  what are all of these options for if they don't help my situation as outlined aboved? 

under playback options in audio you have several choices for channels, I've tried center channel only thinking that would work, no luck.

under dsp studio you've got a crazy amount of choices in there, volume leveling is in there and some other stuff that looks good but again haven't found the right combination to solve my issue.

if someone's already covered this and it's easier to do so, just point me in the right direction for my answers and i'll give that a go. 

[muzicman0]

you could add a vst audio compressor to the signal chain, which is what I have done.  Works OK, but I haven't spent too much time on adjusting the settings of the compressor.

[apturbo]

sorry, where is that option located?

[muzicman0]

Options:Audio:DSP & Audio format and click the manage plug-ins button.

If you are not familiar with how a compressor works though, I suggest googling it...it's not hard to setup, but can be difficult to tweak if you are unfamiliar.

there are plenty of free VST compressors out there to download (the one I am using right now is the VST compressor from Reaper...to be honest though, I really don't like it, I've just been too lazy to change it out).  Once you have the compressor installed, I would drag it up the signal chain prior to the EQ section, but after output format.

mm0

[apturbo]

Once you have the compressor installed, I would drag it up the signal chain prior to the EQ section, but after output format.

mm0

You lost me at the quoted above. Okay well looks like i have something new to learn here.  I looked at Reaper but haven't tried yet.  Guess once i do things will start to make sense.  I searched for "vst" and "movies" and "compress", etc... it looks to me like all the vst's out there are for audiophiles only and not meant for down converting multiple channel audio to 2 channel which is what i need.  Do you have anything more to add that might save me some time figuring this out?

Thanks!

[muzicman0]

I thought you were looking for something to even out the volume...maybe I misunderstood.

An audio compressor has a threshold, a ratio, an attack time, and a release time (and sometimes a knee).  Basically, once the audio level passes the threshold, the level is only allowed to raise based on the ratio.  Lets say you have the threshold set at -20db, and the ratio set to 1:4.  Once the audio level crosses the threshold (-20db), then the input volume has to increase by 4db to get an output increase of 1db...IE: if the input level is -16db, then the output is -19db.  A 1:5 ration means that every 5 db increase raises the output by 1db.

What this does is smooth out the volume level.  It's very easy to overdo compression though, and get rid of all dynamics, so be careful!

I assume that at some point in the signal chain (I assume at the 'Output Format' stage), the 5.1 audio stream is converted to stereo, so that is why I said to put the compressor after that.  You can also use a multi channel compressor to compress all 6 streams (5.1 surround), but I haven't found a good free option for that yet.  I have played around with the multi channel Deft compressor, and it appears that it will work good, but it's $70.

mm0