Forced stereo downmixing

His guys

Is there any wat to tell the WD TV Lve HD box to downmix an AC3 5.1 encoded video to 2.0 stereo?

Thanks.

Set the output mode in the Settings to “Stereo” instead of “Digital”.

Hi

I’ve tried playing with that setting, but no succes.

Primaryly dialogue is kind og muffled or muted. As I don’t have 5.1 setup, I was hoping the box would downmix (if that is the right term) to stereo - but it doesn’t seem to be happening.

No, it’s happening.  That’s what happens when 5.1 gets hardware downmixed to stereo.

Even with a DVD in a stand-alone DVD player, if I play the 5.1 audio track through the stereo RCA outs, the dialogue is very quiet and the background music and sound effects are deafening.  I’ve tried 3 different stand-alones, and they all downmix 5.1 the same way (which is the same way the WDTV does it).

On the few DVDs I had that didn’t have a 2.0 AC3 track that I could choose to play, I had to watch with the subtitles turned on, because if it was quiet enough so that the music and effects weren’t blaring, then I couldn’t hear the dialog.

It’s infinitely better, for any discs that have it, to choose/rip the 2.0 AC3 track if you’re only going to listen in stereo, instead of just choosing/ripping the 5.1 track and relying on hardware downmixing (either from a stand-alone DVD player or a WDTV).

For any discs that don’t have a 2.0 track you can rip, I’d look for decent audio software that can create a proper-sounding 2.0 downmix AC3 track.

Thanks roofingguy

I actually took the time to search the forum and found some other threads concerning this. So the box is working as intended.

Oh well, gotta convince my wife that we absolutely need a new sound system.

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Oh well, gotta convince my wife that we absolutely need a new sound system.

:smileyvery-happy:

The sad part is that the original firmwares had better emphasis to the mixdown, until WD “fixed” it.

But I’m still thinking the current bad audio can’t be called a “bug” because it’s exactly what the original discs sound like on every player I’ve tried, and if I recall others have concurred.  There’s still folks asking WD to “unfix” the downmix. :wink:

So I will actually need to set up a 5.1 system to view the media that I have that only has a 5.1 enccoding? Do any of you know if a sound bar, will handle the 5.1 output?

Well…

If your video is connected by composite or component, then all the soundbar would need would be an optical or HDMI input (which is pretty much guaranteed).

If your video is connected by HDMI, then the soundbar will either need optical in, or it would need both HDMI input and output, so that it can pass the video on to the TV.

As long as those conditions are met, it should “work”.

But how well it will work would depend on the soundbar… since most of them are only really approximating surround sound, they generally have less than the full 5.1 speaker set… so it depends on how the soundbar decides to emphasize the differernt tracks.  I don’t think you can fiddle with it quite like you can with true AVR systems, where you can decide yourself how much goes to each speaker.  It could be better than the WDTV’s stock mix, but then again it may not.  Without having one to try, I can’t answer.

Your best bet would probably be to get it demo’d in the store, and deal with a store with a decent return policy for if it doesn’t sound as good when you get it home.

Obviously the soundbar would also have to be AC3 5.1 (and DTS 5.1) capable, but they pretty much all are, by definition… the whole point is to approximate a 5.1 system without having a big amp and speakers everywhwere… it’d be kinda silly if it wouldn’t handle surround sound at the inputs and only accepted stereo.