Software DVD Players, and audio...

[Malcolm Boyce]

So a while back, I was listening to a concert DVD using WinDVD, and was horrified by the sound of the "Dolby Digital" quality that was coming from my speakers. There was an obvious pumping of compression that was so ridiculous it couldn't be what was intended. This began my journey to figure what was going on...

The first thing I did was to try another "player". PowerDVD was different, but not any better, and even Windows Media Player, and RealPlayer exhibited the same types of things. I thought, could it really be the way this disc was supposed to sound? Nope... My Sony stand alone player sounded much better. So what's the dang deal???

I went back to WinDVD, supposedly the more popular of the software players to see if there was a settings issue. I like to think that players won't default to adding crap without telling you, but you know how it can go sometimes. I couldn't find anything in the version of WinDVD that I had that would help, but I found a conspicuous looking thing by way of an audio stream property that said "Volume Boost" - ON!!! Of course, no way to turn that particular beauty off!

I did some serious research, as this was starting to really drive me. It turns out that most of the popular "DVD" players that come with computer drive packages default to "Volume Boost" like settings. This is basically a fast attack, slow release limiter to run the (unlike CD) dynamic range of DVD audio up into "loud enough for computer speaker" range. Even worse than the default setting being this, most of these players won't even allow you access to this setting, and even if you do have access, they are so full of BS audiophile jargon that you can't even tell how to turn all that DSP jive OFF to just get the stream the way it was intended.

So listeners beware, and if you think you're hearing something funky with your DVD, and it's not James Brown... Check the settings! I finally found that the new version of Power DVD will allow you to turn that crap off and listen to stuff without the spaces in between the songs being louder than the music of the concert.

Please... Default "audiophile" DSP to OFF, or at least let me turn it off.

FIN