Hardware Dolby Volume Technology

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...ology-review/1

It's more than clever normalising and keeping the bass intact at low volume; Dolby Volume aims to inject some of the vibrancy back into audio when you can't play the TV "teenage bedroom loud".

[DougEdey]

Very good idea, someones actually noticed the problem!

[Denis_iii]

I've been waiting for this for yeeeears, remember reading about this yonks ago and was like awesome i'll buy that and its finally coming to market nothing pisses me off more then enjoying a show and suddenly being blasted by adverts with much higher volume, especially disconserting when dozing

[Jipa]

Varying sound levels can be irritating (say in youtube for example, I don't really watch TV), so as long as the system leaves the actual data alone and just adjusts the base playback volume I'll be fine with it. There are just so many ways of getting rid of even the last bit of dynamics in modern music it's not even funny...

[Denis_iii]

everyone should have dolby volume integrated into there eardrums at birth

[perplekks45]

Just yesterday I watched Match of the Day and after that started my 360... Give me that, Dolby! N-O-W!

[GFC]

It's from the section "Omg, why nobody actually did that already ?". It's a feature that i would find useful all the time.

[Er-El]

This is long overdue, but I just can't understand why they HAVE to use proprietary chipsets and not do the same thing over the CPU too...

[Bindibadgi]

Originally Posted by Er-El

This is long overdue, but I just can't understand why they HAVE to use proprietary chipsets and not do the same thing over the CPU too...

Because Dolby is primarily AV and professional field first (where the money is).

[LAGMonkey]

GAH those blooming adverts and iplayer noises. i get constant reminders that its "LOUD" and then too bloody quiet to hear (yep buzzcocks WAS the worst offender). I Soooooooo need this technology.

[outlawaol]

This would be very useful for the average person in a apartment. I know first hand that I cant crank my audio up on my movies. My bass is nearly non-existent because it seems that its directly tied into being either just right when its quite to overly ear drum bleeding loud at certain points in the movie (IE explosions, loud background track going bananas over some scene). I am generally the type that loves to crank it up, after all why do we go to the movies? Big screen Big sound! I am not unhappy by any means of my surround sound system, but more annoyed that I can not actually use it as it was intended. I cant tell you how many times I adjust the volume as I watch a flick. My brother has this reciever that does something similar to this if I recall. It has this 'night mode' that dumbs down the audio to be more quite. I think its a panasonic.

This technology couldnt come any faster to the 'movie goers' in an apartment complex. ( I am sure that our neighbors hate us actually)

[Fly]

My Yamaha DSP-A1 did this over 10 years ago, maybe not as technically, but it was definately an option. Dynamic Range Compression.

[Tulatin]

Range limiting software can do it too, but it's very helpful to have this sort of thing. That way when you're watching a quiet clip and TURN IT UP YOU DONT GO DEAF

[Techno-Dann]

As a bit of an audiophile, I really don't want Dolby compressing my music (which is what this is really doing, albeit per-frequency rather than overall), but also as an audiophile, I would love to have this sort of thing for keeping different audio sources at about the same level. As long as that's settable, I'd love to have it. As long as it can be told to do the latter but not the former, I'm interested.

[thecrownles]

Originally Posted by Techno-Dann

As a bit of an audiophile, I really don't want Dolby compressing my music (which is what this is really doing, albeit per-frequency rather than overall), but also as an audiophile, I would love to have this sort of thing for keeping different audio sources at about the same level. As long as that's settable, I'd love to have it. As long as it can be told to do the latter but not the former, I'm interested.

If they're doing it by adjusting levels as per an equalizer, then wouldn't they not actually be compressing your music but just modifying the tone balance and intensity? This is equivalent to passing your music through bandpass filters of different frequencies and recombining it. It can be done lossless in analog, so I presume they have some lossless EQ algorithm that they use.

[B1GBUD]

Can't wait for this really, I hate watching CSI and turning the sound up to listen to quiet dialogue, only for the kids to be woken up when the you get the music / helicoptor flyover sequences.

It's about time Dolby

[Player-x]

We've love to see it on some HTPC soundcards though and the sooner the better.

I don't see the problem if you wane use it whit your HTPC, just get a DD-Live soundcard and a Dolby Volume supported receiver and you have what you need.

But at AVS-forums i found some info about "Dolby Volume" that would exclude the technology for me as useful

Here is some info on Yamaha's Advanced Dynamic Range Compression(ADRC) and a few of the other volume leveling options.

Yamaha’s ADRC acts in a very similar way to Dolby Volume. It evenly compresses the Dynamic range across all of the speakers while still maintaining all of the original frequencies. The highs and the lows are all preserved but the volume level is fixed at a certain level.

The best thing about Yamaha’s ADRC(besides being widely available now) is that it is actually dynamic. If you listen to movies at a low receiver volume then the affects of ADRC are increased. In that case the dynamic range of the film or TV content is reduced to one single volume level and it never gets loud or quiet. It just maintains the audio integrity of the content at a single volume level. As you increase the volume on the receiver the affects of the ADRC are decreased and the dynamic range of the audio is increased. As you get up to movie theater audio levels the affects of the ADRC are reduced to almost zero. At that point you are essentially hearing the audio with its original dynamic range. All of the crashes are loud and the low whispering is much softer.

The “Dynamic” portion of ADRC is great because I don’t have to mess with any settings when the wife and kids leave the house. I simply just turn up the volume and “BLAM” the full dynamic range of my theater is instantly unleashed. I believe Dolby volume will require you to enable and disable it.

There is also a HUGE drawback to Dolby Volume that I have not seen mentioned. If I am not mistaken Dolby volume can only be applied to Dolby sources. If you have a DTS, DTS-MA, DTS-HD, PCM, or Analog source I do not believe Dolby volume can be used. Yamaha’s ADRC can be used on any digital signal. Since we use digital audio from almost every source now ADRC is effective with any source. However, Dolby volume will be useless with many Blu-rays because more and more of them are going to DTS-MA. In addition it is still unclear whether Dolby volume can process PCM audio which would rule out the PS3 entirely as an option for it.

[Bindibadgi]

I didn't know it can be applied to Dolby sources only - that's news to me. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere but I will ask.

Thanks for the info!!

[Bluefan]

A normalising/gain control feature that works on the fly to make sure that you can hear both the tender, loving whispers in that late night movie, without waking the family as someone chucks a pipebomb through the window, breaking the moment (of your movie.. not your living room) with a bang.

Well, this would be what I DON'T want. Those tender loving whispers should be tender and soft, and that pipebomb should sound like one. Letting a pipebomb sound like a soft voice or vice versa is a bad idea. I want to be shocked and blown away when things blow up, and not when someone just speaks. So the volume of both should be left as they are, very different.

[Htr-Labs]

Originally Posted by Techno-Dann

As a bit of an audiophile, I really don't want Dolby compressing my music (which is what this is really doing, albeit per-frequency rather than overall), but also as an audiophile, I would love to have this sort of thing for keeping different audio sources at about the same level. As long as that's settable, I'd love to have it. As long as it can be told to do the latter but not the former, I'm interested.

Originally Posted by thecrownles

If they're doing it by adjusting levels as per an equalizer, then wouldn't they not actually be compressing your music but just modifying the tone balance and intensity? This is equivalent to passing your music through bandpass filters of different frequencies and recombining it. It can be done lossless in analog, so I presume they have some lossless EQ algorithm that they use.

Actually, if I may step in here and politely correct you fine gentlemen, I will explain to you how this works. First off, this is not compressing any form of PCM signal at all. They are not modifying the tone/balance or intensity. This is as simple as reproducing an accurate signature, taken from an original and put back as it was where it should be. Example - I have 2 playing cards. I record both cards laying on a table for 30 seconds. I remove one card, record for another 30 seconds, replace that card and record for a final 30 seconds. In total that means I have 90 seconds of recording. Assume the first position, 2 cards, is the chorus. Assume the second position, 1 card removed, is a verse. It is simple enough to figure out that we cannot reproduce the same exact mix of frequencies from an instrument at any time. They may sound the same to the human ear, but mind you, if they were measured you would find differences within the millionths and billionths scales. Very minute differences such as this are amplified with they collide with other frequencies. In music, an octave (sometimes abbreviated 8va or P8) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. So basically what this system is doing is as follows. (I wish I could draw you a flow chart but I have no time right now)

Step 1 - Identify resident frequencies.
Step 2 - Compare class by class decimal frequencies to their octave perfections. (Never done the same twice, simply because we are human and therefor not perfect)
Step 3 - Identify the over/under amplified frequency and cut its resident harmonic tone by whatever percentage will take it to perfect.
Step 4 - Analyze said perfected frequency and compare to original.
Step 5 - Repeat for all frequencies at all octaves, compare and adjust, reproduce, output.

That should give a rough and simplified explanation of how this works. Basically what this means is, if I am using a FLAC encoded music file, it will essentially analyze that file, bit-by-bit, convert to frequency by lateralization charting( i.e. tonal mapping/harmonics deficits)
and tune the coding as it should be reproduced, not what it actually says. This is not exactly the same as a gain filter which simply adjusts total deficit volume on the fly. This is actually perfecting EQ on the fly per frequency to whatever the hardware can handle, i.e. thousandths, millionths, billionths scales, most likely depends on processor speed and memory available to cache write operations on the fly. Whether that is 16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit, or greater I can not say, as I really honestly do not know. I can guarantee you this though; we will see sound cards running via PCI express x8 or possibly x16 to handle the extra bandwidth requirements. We are talking an exponential increase in the amount of Operations Per Second. (Of course that is if they plan on releasing this system to it's full potential, if they don't it will basically just be another software execution to push over on to the CPU, which means it will be in a very unrefined crude state.) This all means it would be a digital conversion schema, not analog.; and I doubt very seriously any engineer would want to do this analog. Very exciting, hope that helps some of you understand it.