AC3 Audio playback and record issues

[sbt5]

I dont have any dolby surround sound equipment for either my computer or home dvd player. I normally playback the audio through my 2 channel stereo amp. Often the volume on my recorded dvds is very low and I really must crank up the volume on the home stereo for normal listening. When playing back dvds on my computer I normally set the main gain control on the AC3filter to the maximum position. In addition I often turn up the gain on bsplayer's equalizer. How can I be sure that I am recording my dvds at the correct audio levels. I generally use belight & besweet to convert the audio to AC3 2 channel or to mp2 audio.

:stupid:

[mic]

Generally there are a lot of complaints that ac3 in general is quieter then the audio file you use for encoding. I don't know of a lot of ways around that, except if you go through the various threads it seems more common with Besweet versus some of the other methods.

If your audio is off a DVD, the ac3 track on a retail DVD, expecially if/when 5.1, often comes from the theater sound track, which has a great deal of dynamic range -- there is a very big difference or range in volume levels from lowest to highest. A lot of software you can use with the original ac3 has options to use dynamic compression, such as DGIndex, and if you use it during or after conversion to wav or mp2, you will probably notice a big difference.

When recording audio, the level in the wav file itself is often lower then the max -- sometimes by quite a bit. You'll sometimes notice a difference between brands/models of soundcards. In that case you'll want to do normalization, which raises the levels throughout the wav. The downside you may encounter though is that any noise (usually hum) is also made louder, requiring additional filtering.