Quiet DVD Audio

[Deke]

OK. I don't know if I'm the only person who gets this, but some DVDs have really quiet sound, so that to even hear it, you need your speakers maxed. Others are fine, it only happens on specific disks.

Anyway, when ripping the audio off these disks, the resulting AC3 file is also horribly quiet. Now I tried AC3Machine (w/ BeSweet) and I set it to automatically determing gain. It picked up about 17.5 dBA and raised the volume to a suitable level. Unfortunately, it had done some odd things to the AC3 file, and actually created a mutated MP3 (yes I checked it was set to AC3 output). PowerDVD wouldnt touch it, and of course, it didnt want to be muxed to an AVI properly.

So I checked what version of BeSweet, and it was an old one, so I grabbed the latest copy. Now I did the same process, but the auto-find gain only found 0.9dBA. This wasn't cutting it. So I manually set the gain increase to what had previously been find, 17.5 dBA. And the resulting AC3 file had no sound.

I read that someone had tried using VDub to raise the volume post-muxing. So I tried that. VDub and Nandub both threw errors, claiming that the input format was invalid. So I clearly cant use that option.

So...uhh...I'm stumped! How the heck do I raise the volume of this AC3 file?

~Deke

[ookzDVD]

@Deke,

Mind if you could tell me the title ?

I never found that problem before.

Thank you.

[Deke]

Well, it exists on a number of disks in my collection, but the one in particular is "Ghost World". This one is by far the worst I've ever encountered. Fellowship:EE has this problem, but not to the same extent. Dogma also had the problem.

~Deke

[Deke]

I tested the DVD in my mums new Phillips Set-top player, and they have the same quiet sound there. So its not just my setup, the audio IS actually really quiet.

I found that using AC3Filter's post-processing, can boost the dBA up a suitable amount, but seeing as I have a Dolby receiver here, its not the best way of doing things.

Any ideas?

~Deke