Audio Levels on HR Releases

hello, i'm having issues with the audio levels on hr releases. i have to turn
my volume right up, and it's still fairly quiet. i have no problems on the sd
releases so i'm wondering if it's something i'm doing wrong. can anyone shed
some light on this issue?

cheers

what are you using to play it?

hr releases can have more than one audio track, its default is set to 5.1
normally so you will have to set it to sterio

i'm using media player classic, and my ac3 decoding is already downmixing to
stereo. i've also 'boosted' the volume to max in mpc as well. so i'm
stumped, i have no idea why its so quiet on my computer. does anyone else
have this problem?

because for hr the ac3 is pulled as is from the broadcast stream
unlike lower rez hdtv releases which is ac3 converted to 2 channel (stereo)
mp3. basically ac3 is converted with normalization to mp3 so you get about
a +15 db boost on average.

mixing to stereo on a stereo only set up is the first step. the second of
course it use an app/decoder that can normalize in real time. like ffdshow,
ac3filter, vlc and yes mpc. in mpc just turn on normalize in the options.
you do not need hard boost in mpc or to turn up your speaker volume etc...

good luck 🙂

thanks, that seems to have done the job. i had tried that normalise before,
but it requires a restart of mpc for the changes to take effect which i didn't
realise, so i figured it hadn't worked the last time i tried it and turned it
off again. :s

anyway, thanks for all your help!