We all know the modern complaint: movie sound sucks now unless you have a high-end sound system. Frantically turning down the volume after turning it up to hear the dialogue only to need to turn it up again can be frustrating. Now, this doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but why not have a “Volume A” and “Volume B” you can easily set and toggle between with the simple press of a button?
Am I the only psycho that just uses the TV as a monitor and my phone as the remote to the PC? After that, you can pretty much macro or script whatever you want.
Every time I see a thread like this I feel the same way.
Sure I have to admit there are downsides to it but oh my goodness the number of benefits from running something like Kodi is huge. If you are willing to take a hit to dynamic range of your audio you can fix all but the most extreme cases of audio level problems. I’m sure there are a bunch of other ways to handle it as well.
Control from a phone app once you have Kodi open works great.
Windows or Linux at your preference.
Only ever used old free hardware too so the complaints about the cost of a PC never made sense to me either.
Are we talking about downmixing? If that is the case, Jellyfin has built in downmixing. Kodi might have something too.
Nope although it has that as an option as well. There are two options I use. The first is to boost the center channel on surround mixes since the voice is almost always on that channel.
Then more specifically in Kodi there is both a main volume option and a separate volume boot option that if you look into the documentation says that it is able to increase volume differently by moving up the middle of the audio while reducing the dynamic range. In other words reducing the difference between the lowest and highest sounds so it can increase it without clipping.
I basically change the main volume to what I want and then since both main and boost use the same numbers I reduce it by the exact same number I increase the boost level. End result is moving the bottom and middle of the audio volume closer.
In an ideal setup like a literal quiet audience in a full IMAX or with studio monitor grade headphones etc. the dynamic range is nice. Let’s you hear talking normally and then get blown away by the action right at the top of the safe listening range. Or for classical orchestra music the quiet solot small instrument then a full booming with the entire band going.
But in reality I have five kids running around. Even in stuff like Pixar I still like having a fairly aggressive setting for the boost. It lets me set a default fairly aggressive one and then only occasionally need to edit it manually from the default for particular movies.
Also a self reply to add that I don’t use the downmix because I got lucky and in addition to free old PC hardware which most people in the USA at least can also get free or cheap if you are creative with old business hardware. The addition is I got an AV Receiver just barely new enough to support HDMI so I do have the full range of channels on very cheap speakers.
Having used Kodi elsewhere the downmix seems to work just fine and a lot of current and still fairly cheap sound bars can interpret surround mixes directly.
We use our TV as monitor for a mini PC I setup to watch shows and movies via streaming and an external harddrive (connected to a router so you can watch what’s on there from any device).
We barely ever watch any TV channels.
We us a wireless keyboard with mouse pad. The TV remote is only used to turn it on, volume and to switch to a different input for the gaming console.
That’s what I do, and I installed an audio compressor to level out the audio volume. Now I don’t have to stress about disturbing the neighbours with TV explosions.
You’re probably one of the few people that has heard the dialog from Tenet then. Christopher Nolan films are some of my favorites, but wow, was that audio messed up. I had to create an equalizer profile just for that.
While watching Tenet, I quickly realized I can’t watch this movie in the normal way. Subtitles were obligatory, but the plot is such a labyrinth that you’ll get lost in no time. I ended up taking notes and referring to some videos that explain what’s actually going on. I also had to go back and forth many times. While “watching” the movie that way, I ended up spending several hours. A simple two hour movie became a two day project.
Yes, I know I’m doing it wrong. You’re supposed to just watch it the usual way, be super confused, watch it again, be a little less confused etc. After watching it about 10 times you’ll probably understand what’s going on. If you don’t use subtitles, even 20 times won’t be enough.
I just used subtitles
Subtitles are great. I almost always have them on to aid comprehension. I find that I pick up on more subtleties that way. I feel like I still want to be able to process almost all of the dialog with audio alone so that the subtitles add an extra layer of understanding.