Strange? Audio problem

[kalle-kalle]

This happen to some of the movies, not all.

I start a movie, i have the video and the sound.. But i can ONLY hear the soundeffects, when someone talks i cant hear a damn thing.

Hope you understand.


Ive reinstalled VLC a several times and rebooted my comp.

Do i need to download some codecs or its just an option i need to fix.


Thanks, kalle.

[CloudStalker]

It may be that your sound card is configured to 5.1 surround sound even though that's not what you're using. Go to: Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Select the Audio tab and then select "Advanced" under Sound Playback > from the drop-list select "Desktop stereo speakers". VLC should follow suite configure accordingly.

[Saribro]

Yeah, I've got the same problem with a number of AC3 files, speakers are definitly configured as stereo.
A temporary workaround can be to enable "headphone virtualisation", though it messes up the dynamic of the stream somewhat.

[DJ]

In Windows or in VLC

[Saribro]

In VLC I only have the choice between Mono and Stereo device, and the Mono won't even play the voice (I'm guessing center channel?) with headphone virtualisation on.

[EDIT]
Just for the heck of it, in Windows speaker setup, although it's set up as stereo, when I press Test for the 5.1 device, it reports as being in use. So there's definitly something getting garbled somewhere, the trick is probably in finding it ... :/

[DJ]

VLC does NOT have a channel mapping or detection issue for AC3 or DTS.

[kalle-kalle]

Ehm, i use 5.1 speakers.. And how do i tell VLC that i got it, if that's the problem

[Saribro]

Hmm, I'd say that's even stranger...
When the file is playing in the VLC menu -> Audio -> Audio Devices. The obvious choice would be A/52 or 5.1 or however it will be called, I'd say try out the different options if needed. If nothing else, at least we might get some more useful datapoints to try and track this down.

[DJ]

Ehm, i use 5.1 speakers.. And how do i tell VLC that i got it, if that's the problem

By setting the Windows Sound System for the correct number of speakers.

[Saribro]

I've just discovered my problems were not caused by speaker-setup, but by the Volume Normalisation filter (either active by default from preferences, of enabled via the Extended GUI). Pretty annoying actually because I use it pretty much all the time :/. Oh well time for a seperate thread I suppose :).
Another option to try perhaps.