Increase Dialogue Volume with 4.1 setup

[MrNuka]

I've got my PC connected to my AVR (Denon X520BT), which connects to my Oled B6. I'm using MPC-HC with Madvr, I got Bitstreaming enabled in LAV. My AVR doesn't have Audyssey, Dynamic Volume or any of that but I'm having a hard time understanding Dialogue in some Movies, i'ts perfectly fine on my headphones obviously. I don't have a center speaker atm, since my fronts are pretty old and don't really have a matching center (Quadral Shogun Mk IV).
Is there any way to increase the center volume, before mixing it into both fronts? Aside from my Quadrals I got 2 rears and a subwoover.
Thanks.

[Asmodian]

With bitstreaming the AVR is the only thing that could do anything like that.

You will have to switch off bitstreaming if you want to be able to use software mixing. LAV audio does allow you to mix the center channel into a 4.0 stream at whatever level you want between 1 and 0.

[MrNuka]

Thanks for your answer, that's what I figured. What exactly do I lose when not bitstreaming btw?
And since the LAV Mixing is only 4.0, what happens to my subwoover? Asking because I'm not home till evening.
My PC: EVGA GTX 1070, i5 6600k, Asrock Z170 Extreme 4

[huhn]

you are loosing nothing at all at least with a normal speaker layout. you may even win better audio sync and maybe you are even avoiding useless processing.

for the LFE channe this is kind of tricky.
your AVR should have a LFE cross over so this should fix it.
because i'm not really sure if 4.1 is an output option.

alternatively you can use AC3 filter with a custom matrix and analog output by using 5.1.

[MrNuka]

Thanks huhn, maybe I should've mentioned that I'm mainly watching my high quality blu-ray rips, most of which have a DTS-HD, or Dolby TrueHD audio format, I've read that I'm losing HD Audio when not bitstreaming?

Yes my AVR has Crossover but what happens to the .1 channel, since my PC is only sending 4.0, or am I missing something?

[sneaker_ger]

You don't lose HD when not bitstreaming. (You would lose Atmos/DTS:X extensions because LAV Audio does not include a decoder for them but your receiver does not support them anyways.)

[MrNuka]

Alright sounds good, Imma try it out when I get home. What I still don't get is, what will happen to the LFE (.1) channel, since LAV doesn't have a 4.1 output?

[nevcairiel]

You can configure that in LAV Audio, by defaults its dropped but you can set it to downmix into the front channel.

[huhn]

does someone know if windows/HDMI support 4.1?

AC3 filter supports 4.1 output. this sound like a clean way to do it.

[nevcairiel]

HDMI of non-standard layouts is a bit problematic. You basically get 5 channel HDMI, whichever layout that happens to be is not clear. Might be 4.1 or 5.0.

[MrNuka]

Mixing the LFE channel into the fronts and relying on crossover is not ideal, since LFE goes up to 120hz and my crossover setting is at 80.

@huhn does AC3Filter support HD Audio?

[huhn]

just decode it with lavfilter and use AC3 filter on the output PCM.

[MrNuka]

just decode it with lavfilter and use AC3 filter on the output PCM.

Okay finally got to my Pc and installed AC3 Filters, seems kinda confusing. MPC detected it apparently and it shows in my Filters. How do I know if LAV or AC3 Filters is decoding and what settings should I use for the best audio possible? The Mixer/Gains tabs seem pretty in depth and exactly what I need though. Hope someone can shed some light on this.

[huhn]

set the output to 4.1 quadro and activate bass redirection in gains.
that should be the basic after this you can still change settings like stereo expend and voice gain. and may change the bit deep output 24 or 32 bit float i'm not sure how this filter is working internaly or if it knows what dithering is.