There is a lot that goes in to sound engineering in order to make a movie going experience really good. Basically the sound is engineered to sound really good on the 100ish channels that movie theaters have, but when going to a home they have to crunch all that down to work with a 2.1 or 5.1 etc and there is inevitably loss due to overlapping frequencies and even immersive aspects. How can a voice seem to be as loud as an explosion for example.
On top of those difficulties you have directors like Christopher Nolan who has said that he doesn’t care about home audio and that his movies are made to be seen in a theater.
There is a lot that goes in to sound engineering in order to make a movie going experience really good. Basically the sound is engineered to sound really good on the 100ish channels that movie theaters have, but when going to a home they have to crunch all that down to work with a 2.1 or 5.1 etc and there is inevitably loss due to overlapping frequencies and even immersive aspects. How can a voice seem to be as loud as an explosion for example.
A simple sound compression of the entire signal would solve the issue. VLC player has this feature and it’s working perfectly.
I was wondering if there’s a software compressor for the master channel of a computer. Like many, I usually stream movies nowadays, so VLC is of no use unfortunately. Any ideas? I’m on windows, if that matters.
Windows actually has this function in the sound settings. I tried it once, but it was way too harsh. It basically removed the entire dynamics, which is pretty bad in its own way. I tried the feature quite some time ago, so maybe it’s better now, I don’t know.
Yeah, unfortunately while it’s very simple to set up compressor levels in a DAW or even in feature-rich players like VLC, I haven’t come across any easy way to blanket apply one to your computer’s output without weirdly looping it through something like Ableton.
It seems like it should be so simple to have in Windows sound settings, but it’s never been an option. Sometimes there’s a toggle for “normalization”, but that gives you no control at all. You at least should be able to set compression ratio, lower threshold (in dB), and upper threshold (in dB).
Sometimes there’s a toggle for “normalization”, but that gives you no control at all. You at least should be able to set compression ratio, lower threshold (in dB), and upper threshold (in dB).
That’s the thing, the Windows setting completely squashes the dynamics, it’s just way too much.
