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[markvodhanel]

Hello, I am a relatively new user of the JRiver system.  I discovered this while trying to find the best way to drive my BW MM-1 speakers.  I thought I was with-it with my PotPlayer/madvr/lav setup for video, but soon found that this was just routine for JRiver.  Then I learned to use the media database to organize my media in detailed way I never would have thought possible.  It tells me that I have 280.5 days of continuous programming, and that is just video!  Next I discovered and implemented the media network ie: Gizmo.  Well....  I am just stuck now.  I'm afraid you folks are going to have to get used to me.

Anyway,  I have always wanted a way to bring out, or un-obfuscate the dialog in movies.  I suppose if everything was multi-channel with a center channel, it would be a simple matter of raising the volume on this channel.  I figured that there might be a chance that the JR mixer that converts stereo to multi-channel might be breaking out the dialog for the center channel and I might be able use this somehow.  I had no success with this, and that may be simply due to my lack of experience.

I did find an effective solution, however, and I wanted to pass it on.  JRiver can use standard VST plugins, so I found a compressor plugin that is designed for vocals.  It is the Voxango Voxformer.  It works very well.  I can just set it to one of its standard, medium-compression settings, and leave it.  I can now follow dialog without fiddling with the volume, or turning up too high.  I works well with the JRiver volume leveling, and I position it just before the adaptive-volume option.  The other audio aspects of movies remain intact.

[HTPC4ME]

would you be so kind as to explain the steps to achieve this (wasapi, asio, direct stream, dsp settings, hdmi spdif, etc..)?  We are always grabbing for the remote, during action scenes the house windows break, quieter scenes we can hear church mice but no dialog.

thanks in advance

[fitbrit]

Welcome, markvodhanel, and thanks for the tip! Great first post. I would also be interested in how you set this up. The last episode of Breaking Bad had almost all dialogue at a whisper. Quite frustrating.

[Matt]

Welcome.

If you're doing surround sound output, you can increase the volume of the center channel in Room Correction (or Parametric Equalizer).

If you're downmixing to two channel, adaptive Volume in 'Night' mode will help.  Someday I'd like to offer some JRSS mixing options for this particular case.

[fitbrit]

Welcome.

If you're doing surround sound output, you can increase the volume of the center channel in Room Correction (or Parametric Equalizer).

If you're downmixing to two channel, adaptive Volume in 'Night' mode will help.  Someday I'd like to offer some JRSS mixing options for this particular case.

Thanks Matt. This is a definite improvement (the latter option)

[markvodhanel]

Sure, to add some detail...

Get the 32-bit version of the plugin - should be easy to find.  It is not free, but will work in a demo mode with intermittent audio lapses, but good enough to see the effect.

Just put the one dll file in the 'C:\Program Files (x86)\J River\Media Center 19\Plugins' directory and it should be good to go.

Then from the DSP Studio menu invoke the 'Manage Plugins' button, lower-left and pick the option for VST plugins.  It should be in the list.

I'm not sure if it makes much difference, but I dragged it just above the Adaptive Volume plugin.  I also, under Options, turned on Process Independent of Internal Volume.

The standard program I selected was 'Medium Compression'.  There are tons of settings to fiddle with, but I shied away from this, and made that initial selection my default.

That is the relevant part of the plugin addition, and I believe it should work with any way you chose to configure the low-level audio connection.  But to answer the question, I am using Wasapi, and all my media is audio analyzed.  The speakers are driven via USB.

[fitbrit]

Thanks a lot for the details.

[HTPC4ME]

Thanx markvodhanel.. will give this a go tonight.

[markvodhanel]

I added one more piece to the audio shaping chain that seems to benefit the vocal compression performance. It’s at the end of the chain, the topic of many opinionated threads.  Ie: waspi vs. ks vs. asio4all, vs. jpray, whatever…..

A German company Ploytec does a kernel-level, asio usb driver for the pros, and I guess it is a full class 2, usb audio driver capable of handling high speeds and multi channels (in and out).  I just use it to drive a two channel dac at a modest 44,100 by 16 bit which is way overkill.

My thinking is:  let JRiver and the VST plugin do the big audio shaping at 64 bit precision and spoon feed the refined result to the embedded dac.  This dac has it’s own dsp and it is receiving exactly what it natively uses (via this kernel level, usb driver).  I can say the end result sounds good.  The audio is very crisp and responsive.

This manufacturer sells a generic version.  Normally it is packaged and customized by an audio manufacturer for equipment driven by usb.  I had to patch the installer to get it to recognize my dac, and bind to it properly.  I use server 2012 which further resists unsigned drivers.  But this usb driver is a solid product designed for commercial applications.

As I eluded to above, I have tried all the other driver-level methods to link to an external dac and have found all of them very effective.  When I compare them however, I always have a hard time pointing to any particular one and saying that one is better than the other.  My bad ear, maybe.  This German driver is a no-brainer though.  There is a clear difference 

[HiFiTubes]

I couldn't get the Voxengo Voxformer trial to load into JRMC19 as VST. I was pointing at the .dll and it reports some kind of error. It's not in a zip file.