Hardware Dolby Volume Technology

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/12/21/dolby-volume-technology-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".

 

Very good idea, someones actually noticed the problem!

 

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

 

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...

 

everyone should have dolby volume integrated into there eardrums at birth

 

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

 

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

 

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).

 

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.

 

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)

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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!!

 

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.

 

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