Normalize Audio

[trothwell]

Is there a good step-by-step guide to normalize the audio in Sage TV 5?

I somehow got ffdshow audio working before. But I had to reinstall windows and lost everything. I've tried using the Radlight Filter Manager and the latest ffdshow but it still doesn't work.

The other threads about this don't really go into what needs to happen inorder for it to work.

Any help would be appreciated.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by trothwell

Is there a good step-by-step guide to normalize the audio in Sage TV 5?

I somehow got ffdshow audio working before. But I had to reinstall windows and lost everything. I've tried using the Radlight Filter Manager and the latest ffdshow but it still doesn't work.

The other threads about this don't really go into what needs to happen inorder for it to work.

Any help would be appreciated.

My biggest complaint on audio was that the AC3Filter would have the HD volume really low and the sd volume would be blaring. I don't know why, and didn't care to learn. For me, the purchase of Sonic's decoders for 15 bucks solved my problem. I use NVidia for video and Sonic for audio. And when I want digital output I go into setup to change my codec then start the DVD or whatever.

I too just rebuilt my system over the weekend because of an issue with the NVidia decoders, so this is all fresh for me.

B

[trothwell]

http://www.sonic.com/products/Consum...layer/Decoder/

I couldn't find a trial version. Although in the feature set it talks about the "smart level". Does this normalize the audio?

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by trothwell

http://www.sonic.com/products/Consum...layer/Decoder/

I couldn't find a trial version. Although in the feature set it talks about the "smart level". Does this normalize the audio?

I am no audiophile, but to me it does. I find my HD channels come in around the same level as my pvr-500 ones. It will also down mix the DD5.1 to 2 channel stereo so you don't have to run the stereo receiver all the time. It is really worth the 15 bucks.

IMHO

B

BTW - I tried the video decoder and prefer the performance from the NVidia one instead.

EDIT - From their site:

What is your refund policy?
Sonic Solutions offers a 30-day money back guarantee on all of our products. If you require a refund please contact Customer Service.

Sonic Solutions will refund the actual price paid by the user for the product, taxes and shipping will not be refunded.

To qualify, all components of the product must be returned to Digital River via a Return Merchandise Authorization Number or, in the case of an electronic purchase, a Letter of Destruction must be completed and received prior to the credit being processed.

[KarylFStein]

I've been wrestling with this over the past few days. What ended up working best for me (so far) is to install AC3Filter and configure it to only handle AC3, DTS, and PES. Those options are on the System tab. Then, I adjusted the Gain until the DVD and HDTV sound was about the same as the SDTV. My gain ended up at 10. I also checked DRC. Now switching from regular TV to a DVD or an HD channel doesn't mean having to change the volume.

The only thing I don't like is the fact that I can't upconvert the stereo signal to 5.1. It would be nice if you could use different profiles for different inputs. Also, the audio on a DVD has a pretty wide range, so I end up adjusting the volume up and down e.g. when switching from dialog to action. The "Auto Gain Control" setting handles this, but then the audio ends up being softer overall and I'm back to a volume gap between HD and SD.

[xlr8shun]

getting ffdshow audio to work is fairly easy, all you need to do is open the ffdshow audio filter configuration window, and at the top of the left hand side, in the scroll window, select 'codecs', and then enable the formats you would like ffdshow to 'intercept' and process.

my guess for sage recordings would be to scroll all the way down on the right hand side to "uncompressed" and change it from 'disabled' to 'all supported'. this will allow ffdshow to insert itself in the rendering graph of ALL uncompressed audio that is processed by the computer.

another example is if you have some divx or xvid, they usually have mp3 audio, you would change the mp3 entry from 'disabled' to one of the codecs in the dropdown. then every time an mp3 audio stream was played, ffdshow would insert itself into the graph and would allow you to manipulate the audio.

[trothwell]

When I installed ffdshow, I enabled everything (all the codecs). But it still doesn't work.

I must have done something wrong. I'm gonna try and do another reinstall and try to isolate.

[trothwell]

I got it working, and I think I know what happened. I installed 5.0.4 which I believe is a newer version than I had used before. So I thought, maybe I've got everything setup the same way--so it must be Sage behaving differently.

So I reinstalled XP. I installed ffdshow checking all the boxes for codecs (audio + video). I ran mplayer2 (the window's original media player) and tried a video and I saw the ffdshow logo's on the tray. So I know that mplayer2 believe's ffdshow to be the highest preferred for the codecs of that file.

Now, when I run SageTV (using Default) as the filter, it doesn't use ffdshow even though I know that the system has ffdshow as the preferred. So it must be SageTV's behavior to prefer the built in one if using default (since I don't know how to explicitly say I want ffdshow from within SageTV). So I take the SageTV's audio decoder out of the equation by renaming "Common\stvmcdsmpeg.ax" to something else. I run SageTV and it still doesn't show the ffdshow logo. Maybe AC3Filter is still preferred internal to SageTV, so I rename "SageTV\ac3filter.ax". Now when I run SageTV it uses ffdshow for the audio just like I want. Yay!

So my question for the SageTV guys, am I correct in that when you select "Default" it doesn't exclusively look at the MERIT values?

[trothwell]

So I got ffdshow audio working, but it just doesn't sound very good, even though I found the best one at [link].

I went to the next thing, I looked for a single pass normalization direct show filter and came up with Matrix Mixer. It looks like the matrix part of AC3Filter. The only thing I don't like about it is the inability to change the options of the filter when used with SageTV. In mplayer2, you could go File -> Properties -> Advanced -> Select MatrixMixer -> Properties and have access to the options to change during playback. In ffdshow you can enable a systray icon to access these properties.

Is there a way to access this same thing through SageTV?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

My biggest complaint on audio was that the AC3Filter would have the HD volume really low and the sd volume would be blaring.

As I am temporarilly back in the mere mortals (ie analog stereo and a "tube" TV ), I think I might have gained some insight into this.

As some know, I normally run through a nice HT system. In that system, I don't have any audio level issues to speak of.

However, since I'm in process of rebuilding my HT system, I'm back in stereo land, and am having to deal with what I think a number of you are dealing with. It appears that AC3Filter (and probably some other audio decoders) do some massive overkill normalizing their downconversion matrix, which results in very low levels for downconverted AC3 audio.

So how many of you with low levels for DVD are running stereo setups?

The basic issue is this, to go from 5.1 -> 2.0, you need to need to sum a bunch of channels into one (ie L or R + Center + L or R surround + sub). Theoretically, to do that without clipping, you need to reduce each channel so the sum is not more than the max level.

However in practice that's not really a problem. To solve this, if you're using AC3Filter, just uncheck the "normalize matrix" option on the Matrix tab.

[mkanet]

If you're using Nvidia new decoders, you can get this to work very easily by going into the Nvidia audio control panel settings; select "Dynamic Range Control=Late Night"

Note, I've only used this on a stereo speaker setup. I didn't have much luck with AC3 filter, I could never get it to sound right. This works very well for me when normalizing analog DirecTV audio and ATSC digital audio.

[steingra]

I am not sure if this is a related issue or not. But I have two video sources: one is a Mediacom Digital 2550 receiver for cable, and thats connected to an internal hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150.

And source two is a disk network 811 receiver connected to a hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2

It seems like audio from the PVR-150 is noticably lower when watching on any client (a PC or Media MVP). It kind of bothers me that the audio isnt the same levels from these two different sources, but I never tried troubleshooting it very much.

And I just wondered if this might be related to what you are talking about here?

If not maybe this can be moved to the correct thread.

[robertmcox]

To summarize:

(this worked for me, btw -- awsome tips/explaination KarlFStein and Stanger89)

Because DVD/ATSC has a wider dynamic range, we must compensate:

Nvidia DVD Decoder
AC3Filter installed by Sage

in sage/detailed setup/video-audio:
- audio renderer = default directsound
- audio decoder = default

in sage/detailed setup/dvd:
- audio renderer = default directsound
- audio decoder = ac3 filter

in wmplayer/tools/options/dvd/advanced:
- Main = gain 12, drc enabled 11
- Mixer = gain 12, auto matrix all options EXCEPT normalize matrix
- Gains = gain 12, drc enabled 11
- System = ac3, dts, pes and NOT PCM, mpeg audio
= prefer ac3 filter

This has the effect that AC3Filter is used for DVD playback and adds
preamp, so the volume level is louder. AC3Filter also compresses the
dynamic range, but does not normalize the audio, so loud segments are
still loud and soft segments are still soft, like you'd expect.

Now when watching non-DVD sources, AC3Filter will still insert itself
in the graph, but will just pass its input back out to the default
audio decoder for the system (in this case, the Nvidia Decoder).

This solution works for stereo output from sound card. I would guess the situation/solution changes if you use SPDIF passthru to an external decoder, but this I cannot test...

--- ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS ---

Other alternatives gathered, but not tested (by me, anyways)

1 - Disable ac3filter by "regsvr32 /u ac3filter.ax" and then choose to use the Sonic Audio Decoders which have built in compression.

2 - Disable ac3filter by "regsvr32 /u ac3filter.ax" and then choose to use the NVidia Audio Decoders. Enable compression on the filter by choosing "Late Night" under "Dynamic Range Control". Get the properties of the audio decoder, if it's your default, via wmplayer/tools/options/dvd/advanced.

3 - Use/configure ffdshow for audio filter.