Guide: Perfect playback & Display calibration (3 Viewers)

[kiwijunglist]

Hi, thanks for the thread. I was having some issues with CCCP and MKV's and I think this has made the playback much better.

However, I only have stereo sound and I am not sure if this has made the voices lower.

Do you have any suggestions in making the voices louder for a stereo setup? (2.1)

Enable LAV Mixing, Stereo Output. Center Level = 0.7 , Surround = 0.7 , LFE = 0.0
Type msconfig in start menu, disable your sound card services/effects program. (Check under services + startup). After disabling this you should no longer get a sound effects icon in the system tray (bottom right corner). This might be called Realtek audio, depending on your motherboard.
Right click on volume icon in system tray (bottom right corner), Select playback devices, Speakers, Properties. Disable everything (eg. disable equalizer, sound effects, turn off all enhancements, etc)
Restart computer.

Try some movies... (for most people the audio should now be fine, and they shouldn't have to adjust any of the values below...)

If problem is you can't hear voice audio in quiet scenes, then enable dynamic range compression (DRC) in LAV Audio settings 75%. Bump it up to 100% as needed. DRC basically increases the volume of all sounds (not just voice) in quiet scenes.

If problem is you can't hear voice audio in loud scenes, then increase Center Level = 1.0 , Decrease Surround Level = 0.4 in LAV Audio settings. This setting will only effect 5.1 / 7.1 audio sources.

If above still is not enough, then you may need to use an equalizer preset to bump up the normal vocal frequencies, right click volume icon, playback devices, speakers, properties, equalizer preset/sound effect mode = Voice/Vocal or something like that.

PS. Because you used other codec packs, you should enable system tray icon in LAV audio, then playback a movie in MediaPortal in windowed mode (Press ALT+Enter), then while the movie is playing, check there is a LAV Audio icon in the system tray, to ensure you are using LAV Audio and not some crap that was left behind by CCCP

 

[Spaldo]

Thanks for the reply ed76. I already have that option enabled and it doesn't quite bump the voices up enough in low volume scenes.

kiwijunglist, thanks for your extensive reply. Some good tips there. I have disabled Realtek audio, enabled DRC and will now give it a go and see how it sounds

Hopefully there isn't any CCCP left and the new codecs take over...

 

[svortevik]

The option for adaptive HW deinterlacing is not avaliable. My cpu is i3 4130 with HD Graphics 4400.

 

[axlt2002]

Hi! First of all thanks for this guide!

Just one request: it would be possible to have the guide in a .pdf (or .doc) format in order to have it available even if I'm not connected to the Internet? May be print it or waht else...

Thanks anyway!

 

[kiwijunglist]

You can print web pages. Most browsers have the option to save webpages to disk as well. You can also select all and copy paste into a word document.

 

[juro]

Hi,

many thanks for this perfect guide. Anyway I still struggle around with droped frames during the years even with my brand new hardware.

I have the following environment: Pc is connected via HDMI to AVR (pass through) to TV. Mostly I watch tv without switching on the avr , sometimes I would like to have 5.1 digital sound over the AVR.
So I unfortunately have to switch between 2 audio profiles . Analog and digital (pass through). Here I use ffdshow audio. I created 2 profiles . Each of them I saved as reg file. Switching between the profiles is solved with multishortcut plugin which I then put on my remote. So far not too bad, But in a lot of cases I have to restart my PC that I can enable my digital profile?!
So I have too questions:
1. Is there no general way just using one audio profile and hardware/software is doing the rest. I thought thats this was done with the digital hdmi connection between all the devices, but unfortunately not.
2. I would like to use the Mediaportal audio renderer solving my droped frames problem. If there is no general solution (question 1) I would expect to switch between the MP Audio renderer options under "AC3 Encoding" > "Mode". I did not find information about such an option. Is there a way to meet my requirements?

Many thanks!

BR
JuRo

 

[kiwijunglist]

I'm thinking...
1. If you follow the guide to the letter, it should work for your situation, the tv should automatically downmix.
2. mpar does not support multiple profiles/settings, however above should work.

 

[juro]

I'm thinking...
1. If you follow the guide to the letter, it should work for your situation, the tv should automatically downmix.
2. mpar does not support multiple profiles/settings, however above should work.

to 1, my Panasonic ( I only hear a noisy grizzling sound) unfortunately did not do this, only thing I didn't test so far is the thing with Arcsoft TMT5
to 2,

 

[axlt2002]

You can print web pages. Most browsers have the option to save webpages to disk as well. You can also select all and copy paste into a word document.

Hi tanks for the suggetions! Good points! ;-)

One additional quesiton: any news to the section about "Audio - bit perfect play for music" (or something similar)? Right now it refers only to the DTS dll. I'm actually looking for setting-up MP to play liquid music in the best way...any suggestion?

Thanks a lot in advance!

 

[kiwijunglist]

There is quite a bit of information in the MP Wiki regarding bit perfect audio playback for music. I haven't got much experience in this area.