technical: DRC and GAIN overflow

[Tza]

DRC: Alright, I know what this is, I know how to do it. Questions are: 1. should I? 2. Is there any sofware that performes gated DRC?

Gain Overflow: should I +gain an audio track so that its highest peak maxes out, or should I ignore the 1 or 2 spurious high points and +gain it for that?

details and background:

DRC: I know that ac3 usually has no DRC, and that DRC is supposed to be added by the playback system. However, that's not the case with mp3 which I'm converting to. DRC 'flattens' sound, making it less vibrant, so it would be nice to avoid on that basis.

Gain: If I clip the spurious high points, I get audible pops when listening. If I don't, my movies are all different volumes. I can't rely on the discs I have to be of consistant volume, especially the "less well mastered" imports.

So, three questions. Any answers / opinions?

[Tza]

bump

[Sven Bent]

as far is i know

if you turn you ac3 into mp3 you need to use DRC (normla if you are using Azid)

is the same thing yu ou DVD player does when playing the ac3 file.
så you shouls NOT notice the sound become flat because both dvd playback of ac3 and computer playback of the mp3 has perfomed the same DRC

about gain i would use Azids' autodetect feature (-a)
which will give you mostly 0 but sometimes 1-2 overflows


Analog inpit+digital remix-> iDRC -> AC3 -> DRC -> analog out
Analog inpit+digital remix-> iDRC-> AC3 -> DRC -> mp3 -> Analog out

iDRC = inversed dynamic range
so to get the original meant sound you NEED to DRC

[Tza]

Sounds reasonable to me, thanks.