VideoLAN Client Dynamic Range Compression

A little note on something related to my earlier post.

By default VLC's Dolby decoder follows Dynamic Range Compression (sometimes called DRC) encoded into AC3 files. While this is great for TV's built in speakers and the tinny PC speakers that came with your Packard Bell, that isn't optimal for THX certified home theater systems.

Thankfully it's easy to fix the issue. The following instructions are with respect to VLC 0.9.6.

1. Start up VLC.
2. Click Tools, then Preferences.
3. At the bottom of the Preferences screen, click All.
4. In the left list, click Input/Codecs, Audio codecs, then A/52.
5. Uncheck A/52 dynamic range compression.
6. While you're there, click DCA (stands for DTS Coherent Acoustics, the DTS codec used in DVDs, not to be confused with the Theatrical DTS codec) in the left list, and uncheck DTS dynamic range compression.
7. Click Save.

Now you can enjoy your HDTV/DVDs with a dynamic range you didn't think was possible!

Audio Path for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS

So I was looking for a price list on Dolby multichannel encoders, and came across this page. Dolby has PDFs available for ABC, CBS, NBC & PBS detailing the pathway the original feed takes from satellites through your local affiliate and finally into your HDTV. It is interesting to note that only NBC gives the local station the full uncompressed audio stream to all it's affiliates. ABC does give a nice 640Kb/s AC3 stream however, and CBS gives a Dolby E stream (a Dolby technology which encodes up to an 8 channel digital stream into 2 uncompressed audio channels). Now if only all the local stations could give Bozeman the surround sound goodness available in the source (KTVM excepted, of course).