I have an old tv that I use only for movies. I plugged in some laptop speakers and I’m more or less satisfied with the arrangement except I 'd like to rein in the volume ride I get with a lot of dvds … chase scene, gunfight, music … turn it down, back to conversation, turn it up. I have an idea, but before I reinvent the wheel, I’d like to know if there’s anything on the market.
I disagree with your premise that there is any such thing as a “DVD”, so this is a terrible debate.
But then perhaps you’d have better luck with this thread in GQ
Whoops. My bad. Please move.
The device is called a limiter (or compressor/limiter), and should be available at a local music store - the sort that sells guitar amps and suchlike. I’m seeing relatively cheap units from the likes of Behringer in the $100 range. You need a two channel unit for your left/right stereo signal.
Thanks for the start.
This information is no help. It is just a you are not alone FYI. Elsewhere, I believe it was on the Netflix forum, persons were having the same complaint with instant view.
Use of subtitles may enable one to use a lower volume. Subtitles take a bit of practice. Rent some foreign movies in a language you don’t understand for practice.
Thanks for your sympathy.
Yep, and I’ve had plenty … seldom watch a movie without 'em. Many dvds without subtitles provide closed captioning, something I recently discovered. Headphones are an option. You can control the volume by shifting them a bit, beats reaching for the remote.
I envisage a little black box plugged in between the tv headphone jack and the external speakers … it uses a couple of AA’s, has a little lcd and a couple of buttons that allow you to define the volume envelope. Simple and inexpensive to manufacture (I’m supposing) and from your post I gather it would enjoy brisk sales.
Some DVD players have this feature built-in. Every receiver I have ever seen has had this feature also (usually called “night mode” or something similar, the idea being that you’re watching at night and don’t want to wake up the whole house when the GORRAM SPACE SHIP EXPLODES!)
Yeah, the first DVD player I used had this; I’m not sure if every one does. Some TV’s might have it. It might be tricky to figure out what they call it, though.
Trying to use a professional compressor would be way too much trouble for most people. You’d probably have to find adapters to hook it up, and it would be tricky to get all the settings right.
My home theater receiver (and three others I’ve encountered) has settings for limiting dynamic range in the audio setup menus. I’ve sometimes used this when kids are watching DVDs to tone things down, but set it back to ‘normal’ for my own movie use. Since you don’t have an HTR this isn’t much help, except to say that more elaborate setups can deal with this easily.
I’m not clear from your OP what is playing back the DVDs – a DVD player? A laptop?
My older Adcom pre-amp provides a dynamic range compressor mode as well as all my HDTVs. However, they **only **work for certain audio encoding formats, such as Dolby Digital and several others.
All of my DVD players – including my Blu-Ray player – also offer dynamic range compressor mode, but I think they, too, work only for certain audio encoding formats (but I’m not certain).
Finally, I’ve watched a number of movie DVDs that allow you to enable dynamic range compressor mode in the “setup” menu of the movie in question. But I don’t think that’s very common (thought I might be wrong about that).
Thanks for your responses. I swear I answered last night night but must have neglected to post:smack:
Anyhow, I’m using DVD player plugged into my TV. The TV does offer DRC (dynamic range control) which has been on from the get go but without effect that I can notice.
ETA: The DRC is only supposed to work with dolby digital.
I’d love to get something like this for my car radio. I like to listen, on occasion, to classical music. The problem with a lot of it is that there are long stretches of ultra soft parts (I can’t spell piamissimio, I think) which absolutely disappear when driving on I5 in Washington (the noisiest pavement in the Interstate System). So if you set the volume for that, you are risking a broken eardrum shortly. I’d even get a new radio of one came with that feature.
Probably wouldn’t be hard to make something that does this. A microcontroller, a DAC/ADC, a battery. You think there’s a big market for this?
I have used a pro compressor/limiter inline with my DVD audio with some success, but I would agree with thirdname that this is not a great solution for most people. The settings are indeed tricky to dial in and they change as you watch different movies.
What I have found is that many DVDs have a 5.1 audio track and a 2 channel stereo track. The 5.1 is often the default track and by setting it to the stereo track improves the intelligibilty of dialog. Then you can turn the volume down a bit and still hear the dialog and not get blown away by the loud parts.
Not all DVDs have the stereo track and in this case, adding a center speaker will bring back the low volume dialog.
Now I have a surround sound receiver that creates a phantom center channel using only 2 speakers and now watching DVDs is a very pleasant experience.