Audio Quality - Football crowd noise...

[briands]

Trying to watch the Colts and Browns today and the announcer dialog is practically impossible to understand over the static of the crowd noise. I checked off of the live feed (analog cable) and there is a lot of crowd noise but you can understand the announcers. On the recording it seems the audio compression is having problems with the noise. Any suggestions?

[waynedunham]

Could be a bad mix from the network. I've noticed the same thing even on regular TV for some baseball games. They've got the crowd mike turned up so loud you can barely hear the announcers. Sometimes I have to play with my receivers DSP modes to get the dialogue to take "front and center" over the background.

Sadly you probably don't have that option if you're watching on the computer.

[nielm]

could also be the audio record level set too high so that you get clipping on the convertion on loud noises, meaning that subtle sounds (the announcers) are lost...

No idea how to modify this... try searching for something like 'audio level'

[Keith]

How do you have the sound set up? Are you trying to listen to the tiny TV speakers? or "computer speakers"?

I run the sound from my Audigy 2 ZS Platinum to my Onkyo surround receiver over an optical SPDIF cable. I set the receiver's DSP for cinema surround and set the Audigy driver for "small room" acoustics (seems to give me better effects than "living room" for some reason). Depending on the network, the stadium announcements echo through the room just as they do in a stadium, the crowd noise is all around me, and the play-by-play comes from the front center speaker.

Of course it makes a big difference which network you're watching. CBS is only so-so, most times they're not very good. ESPN is really good, Fox is usually decent. ABC is OK (I take points off because they yak too much).

[briands]

I use analog out through my receiver - straight stereo to some bookshelf speakers. Nothing special, but OK. When I switched to the live broadcast (analog cable straight to TV - bypass HTPC) it was much better. Still a lot of crowd noise, but the announcers were audible through it.
I think neil was on the right track though that the record level is probably clipping. I started doing some digging and found on SHS sight that this is a known issue. There was also a registry change to lower the sound record level. I've done that last night, but have not had a chance to check for improvement.

[nielm]

see also this thread How do I Attenuate Hauppauge PVR USB2 audio input level?

[eobiont]

I had this problem. I have a Dell that has fairly crappy built in Sound Max audio. I didn't realize that I had to configure that audio driver for the kind of speakers I have hooked into the sound out. It was set to 2 speaker setup. When I switched to 5 channel (to match my actual speaker setup) everything worked.


When I had this set wrong, the surround was very loud, but the center channel was nearly inaudible. I ran the volume up and could listen to the audio, but then was blown away when something was sent to the surround speakers - way way too loud. Sound like the same problem as you.

So I'd recomend that you check your audio drivers to make sure they know what kind of speaker setup you have.