[MPlayer-users] Low human voice in DVD playback

[Vladimir Mosgalin]

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Wei Chong wrote:

WC>I have a 2 way speaker (2 speaker, 1 woofer, 1 jack to
WC>my soundcard audio out).
WC>Whenever I play DVD, the background sound such as
WC>chopper flying and gunshot is pretty clear, however
WC>human conversation is so low in volume, I can't
WC>comprehend the whispering.

Maybe it's the way dvd is mastered. If conversation comes from center
speaker, you can use "pan" audio filter to increase volume from center
speaker (so when it will mixed into your stereo system, it will be more
loud).

If conversation comes from other speakers, it is possible that the only
solution is to compress dynamic range of sound, to make loud chopper and
gunshot sounds more quiet and to make quiet conversation more loud. But
since mplayer can't do that on the fly, you need to rip audio from dvd,
decompress it, use sox to perform range compression, then encode sound
to some format (probably to ac3 or 6-channel vorbis) and to load it
instead of original sound when playing a dvd.

WC>Due to other dependency in the system, I hope to get a
WC>solution without recompiling my own kernel with ALSA
WC>driver.  However, if that is the only solution, please
WC>enlighten me.

If I guessed your problem right, that won't help you...

Btw, if your kernel is configured well (you use regular kernel from your
distribution, for example), you don't need to recompile it to add alsa
support. Just compile alsa drivers as an add-on to existing kernel,
nothing else is required.

-- 

Vladimir